White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted on Thursday that the administration is contacting Facebook and telling them what posts that it deems to be “problematic” based on what the administration claims is “misinformation.”
“This is a big issue of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic. In terms of actions, Alex, that we have taken or we’re working to take I should say from the federal government, we’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office,” Psaki said.
“We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We’re working with doctors and medical professionals to connect to connected medical experts … who are popular with their audiences with accurate information and boost trusted content. So we’re helping get trusted content out there.”
In the successor ideology, there is no escape, no refuge, from the ongoing nightmare of oppression and violence — and you are either fighting this and “on the right side of history,” or you are against it and abetting evil. There is no neutrality. No space for skepticism. No room for debate. No space even for staying silent. (Silence, remember, is violence — perhaps the most profoundly anti-liberal slogan ever invented.)
And that tells you about the will to power behind it. Liberalism leaves you alone. The successor ideology will never let go of you. Liberalism is only concerned with your actions. The successor ideology is concerned with your mind, your psyche, and the deepest recesses of your soul. Liberalism will let you do your job, and let you keep your politics private. S.I. will force you into a struggle session as a condition for employment.
One of the gravest threats to our democracy today is a powerful group of Big Tech corporations that have teamed up with government to censor the free speech of the American people. This is not only wrong—it is unconstitutional. To restore free speech for myself and for every American, I am suing Big Tech to stop it.
Social media has become as central to free speech as town meeting halls, newspapers and television networks were in prior generations. The internet is the new public square. In recent years, however, Big Tech platforms have become increasingly brazen and shameless in censoring and discriminating against ideas, information and people on social media—banning users, deplatforming organizations, and aggressively blocking the free flow of information on which our democracy depends.
No longer are Big Tech giants simply removing specific threats of violence. They are manipulating and controlling the political debate itself. Consider content that was censored in the past year. Big Tech companies banned users from their platforms for publishing evidence that showed the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese lab, which even the corporate media now admits may be true. In the middle of a pandemic, Big Tech censored physicians from discussing potential treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, which studies have now shown does work to relieve symptoms of Covid-19. In the weeks before a presidential election, the platforms banned the New York Post—America’s oldest newspaper—for publishing a story critical of Joe Biden’s family, a story the Biden campaign did not even dispute.
Perhaps most egregious, in the weeks after the election, Big Tech blocked the social-media accounts of the sitting president. If they can do it to me, they can do it to you—and believe me, they are.
Jennifer Horton, a Michigan schoolteacher, was banned from Facebook for sharing an article questioning whether mandatory masks for young children are healthy. Later, when her brother went missing, she was unable to use Facebook to get the word out. Colorado physician Kelly Victory was deplatformed by YouTube after she made a video for her church explaining how to hold services safely. Kiyan Michael of Florida and her husband, Bobby, lost their 21-year-old son in a fatal collision caused by a twice-deported illegal alien. Facebook censored them after they posted on border security and immigration enforcement.
Meanwhile, Chinese propagandists and the Iranian dictator spew threats and hateful lies on these platforms with impunity.
This flagrant attack on free speech is doing terrible damage to our country. That is why in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I filed class-action lawsuits to force Big Tech to stop censoring the American people. The suits seek damages to deter such behavior in the future and injunctions restoring my accounts.
Our lawsuits argue that Big Tech companies are being used to impose illegal and unconstitutional government censorship. In 1996 Congress sought to promote the growth of the internet by extending liability protections to internet platforms, recognizing that they were exactly that—platforms, not publishers. Unlike publishers, companies such as Facebook and Twitter can’t be held legally liable for the content posted to their sites. Without this immunity, social media companies could not exist.
Democrats in Congress are exploiting this leverage to coerce platforms into censoring their political opponents. In recent years, we have all watched Congress haul Big Tech CEOs before their committees and demand that they censor “false” stories and “disinformation”—labels determined by an army of partisan fact-checkers loyal to the Democrat Party. As the cases of fellow plaintiffs Ms. Horton, Dr. Victory and the Michael family demonstrate, in practice this amounts to suppression of speech that those in power do not like.
Further, Big Tech and government agencies are actively coordinating to remove content from the platforms according to the guidance of agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Big Tech and traditional media entities formed the Trusted News Initiative, which essentially takes instructions from the CDC about what information they need to “combat.” The tech companies are doing the government’s bidding, colluding to censor unapproved ideas.
This coercion and coordination is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has held that Congress can’t use private actors to achieve what the Constitution prohibits it from doing itself. In effect, Big Tech has been illegally deputized as the censorship arm of the U.S. government. This should alarm you no matter your political persuasion. It is unacceptable, unlawful and un-American.
Through these lawsuits, I intend to restore free speech for all Americans—Democrats, Republicans and independents. I will never stop fighting to defend the constitutional rights and sacred liberties of the American people.
Mr. Trump was the 45th president of the United States.
But wanting to keep the money flowing is not the only reason the national security bureaucracy and its media partners are targeting Trump supporters. The Biden administration embodies the interests of America’s increasingly powerful oligarchy, comprising the corporate as well as the political establishment. This class represents glaringly small segments of the country like tech workers, teachers unions, and cultural elites. The oligarchs have incentivized street gangs from antifa, Black Lives Matter, and pro-Palestinian antisemites to weaponize their resentments by turning them loose on the Democratic stragglers unlikely to support initiatives at odds with their own interests, like defunding urban police forces.
Using law enforcement as public sector proxies for their campaign of political warfare, Democratic Party officials are employing a similar tactic. By turning the justice system loose on their opponents, they send a general warning to anyone foolish enough to stand against them. That is why the Biden administration has made a point of treating the nonviolent Jan. 6 offenders more harshly than other Americans who have come to the Capitol to exercise their First Amendment rights. We brought the system down on the head of a nonviolent grandmother for walking through an open door. You might be next.
However, Park — who says she was also sold into slavery — disagreed with the two-time Olympic-qualifying hammer thrower.
“The fact that she’s complaining about this country, the most tolerant country, she doesn’t really understand history,” she said.
“I was a slave … I was sold in China in 2007 as a child at 13 years old. The people actually called slavery under Chinese Communist Party in North Korea. There is actual injustice.”
Park added that there are “people dying to come to America at this very moment” and Berry is taking her freedom for granted.
“I just hope they go to North Korea, China and see how humans are being oppressed,” Park said, referring to people who criticize the US.
“And they will truly understand how valuable the freedom that we have is.”
