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The Twitter Files' ongoing disclosures that the U.S. government was involved in suppressing the free speech of Americans have been shocking if not surprising. Conspiracy theories seem to be the new spoiler alerts. The information comes via a trove of documents from deep within the social media company that have been shared with journalists via Twitter's owner and CEO, Elon Musk. And the most recent documents revealed that it wasn't just Democrats; the Trump administration pressured the social media platform to "combat misinformation" during the early days of the pandemic.
Specifically, members of administration came looking for "help from the tech companies to combat misinformation" about "runs on grocery stores," journalist David Zweig reported. And yet, as Zweig notes, there were runs on grocery stores.
6. At the onset of the pandemic, according to meeting notes, the Trump admin was especially concerned about panic buying. They came looking for “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation” about “runs on grocery stores.” But . . . there were runs on grocery stores. pic.twitter.com/duzk2I1Y7T
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
The Trump administration thought that by censoring free speech and violating the First Amendment they were protecting Americans from dangerous behaviors.
In other words, they did what the Biden administration did.
Of course, Biden's people took things further, asking Twitter to focus on anti-vaxxer accounts. Per Zweig, President Biden claimed social media companies were "killing people" for allowing vaccine misinformation. In compliance with the Biden administration's requests, Twitter suppressed the views of many doctors and scientific experts if they "conflicted with the official positions of the White House," effectively erasing the public debate around COVID.
We know now that many of these medical experts were proven right. The vaccine did not stop the spread as many had claimed. The unvaccinated were denied entry to American life and their houses of worship, demonized by the elites and even their neighbors who were now conditioned to look down on them.
Yet like the Trump administration before them, the Biden administration thought that by censoring free speech and violating the First Amendment, they were helping Americans, protecting them, defending them from their own dangerous choices.
It was still wrong. And that's the lesson here: Messing with the free speech protections upon which this country was founded is always wrong, even when done with the best intentions.
Of course, much of the censorship done on Twitter at the behest of the FBI was done with terrible intentions. Based on other documents excavated by the Twitter Files, journalist Michael Schellenberger revealed that the FBI and intelligence community "discredited factual information about Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings." The FBI, which by October 2020, had turned Twitter into a branch of the agency, used the platform to censor any speech they didn't like under the guise of "Russian propaganda," "foreign influence," or "election interference."
The agency primed the executives at social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to believe that Russian "hack and leak" operations were coming, using the fear of "Russian collusion" not just to censor but to delegitimize the New York Post's reporting about Hunter Biden's laptop, though every word of the story was true.
One can make the argument that both the Trump and Biden administrations were using the platform in an attempt to help the American people, to protect them from supply shortages or a virus. But it's clear that the FBI was using the platform to further a political agenda.
While the revelations about the Trump and Biden administrations using the platform were revealing and newsworthy, a rogue agency is a bombshell. Not all Twitter Files are created equal.
That is why they created the First Amendment, to hold the government accountable to the people. Attempting to take away Americans' rights, either with the best of intentions or the very worst, shows exactly why taking away those rights is dangerous no matter who does it.
Ari Hoffman is the host of The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI and the West Coast Editor of The Post Millennial. Originally from New York, he now lives with his family in Seattle, WA.
The views in this article are the writer's own.
