What is the value of freedom of speech?
By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
Elon Musk was the darling of the left with Tesla and SpaceX. Since he bought Twitter, now X, and removed the active censorship that was going on, he has fallen out of favor.
The Wall Street Journal cried on Aug. 20 that “Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover is now the worst buyout for banks since the financial crisis.” The article goes on to say the banks that loaned Musk $13 billion have not been able to resell these loans, a practice normally done with loans of this size.
In Brazil, X has been forced to shut down after a judge wanted to impose censorship rules.
Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that the Biden Administration forced Meta (Facebook) to censor certain content.
Kamala Harris proposed violating the First Amendment, freedom of speech, as far back as October 2019 when she said (per the Wall Street Journal again and referring to President Trump), “He has lost his privileges and it should be taken down. And the bottom line is that you can’t say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter. The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.”
You can be sure a Harris administration will do anything possible to censor those they don’t like. Meanwhile, in France, they had Christians protesting against the Olympic opening ceremonies. According to Premier Christian News on Aug. 6: “Christian campaigner Carole Farrow told Premier Christian News that police had made the arrests under orders from ‘high-level political authorities,' despite the activists 'not violating any local laws.'"
“According to Farrow, the protesters were handcuffed, strip-searched, denied access to their devices and held in police custody overnight without food or water on ‘non-existent charges.’ She also claimed they were subjected to ‘severe psychological pressure’ and illegally denied contact with lawyers and family members.”
It has also been in the news this past week that France arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov. Telegram is another social media site.
Then we know the mainstream media, print, TV, as well as the internet, regularly censors the news on both the right and left.
Free speech is under attack around the world. The individual needs to be very careful about content, checking several sources if you can. And you are most certainly invited to check this column’s statements, too.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.
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