Among the most jarring revelations in recent weeks was that by Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook censored mention of the Hunter Biden laptop story as a result of warning by the FBI. But the FBI isn’t the only agency that has attempted to engage in online censorship of views it doesn’t like. Over 50 administration officials with at least a dozen federal agencies have been involved in various efforts to pressure social media companies to crack down on “misinformation.”
This makes it clear that the push towards censorship of content the administration doesn’t like isn’t just the result of a few bad apples or the result of a few people at social media companies overreacting. This is a deliberate attempt to censor news on the part of the government, and social media companies are only too willing to bend over backwards to accommodate the federal government’s requests.
It appears that reaching out to social media companies to ask them to censor information is considered de rigueur for the Biden administration, just something that officials do when they don’t want contrary or embarrassing information to spread. But it’s also a sign that, as much as the Biden administration and Democrats liked to demonize President Trump and his supporters as fascists, it’s actually the Biden administration that is acting like fascists.
We have collusion behind the scenes between government and private industry, with the facade of private ownership. But it’s the government really calling the shots and determine which information sees the light of day and which information is suppressed.
A truly open and free society can’t tolerate this type of behavior, which is why it needs to be rooted out as soon as possible. Every instance of this censorship push needs to be publicized, and every word of government utterance should be scrutinized. If Republicans aren’t willing to go to the mats to fight back against this abuse of power, Democrats will continue to exercise it until they no longer have opponents who will fight back against them.
