When the Bolsheviks (later, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) seized power from the Russian monarchy and installed Vladimir Lenin as their premier, they did so while claiming to champion freedom.
Yet one of their first major actions was the Decree on the Press of November 1917, which called for the suppression of the “bourgeois” press.1 The second general provision of the Decree clarifies that they will suppress any publication that, “sow[s] sedition through demonstrably slanderous distortion of facts.”2 The Soviet bureaucracy to correct “misinformation” was born.
Here in America, the birth of the modern Censorship Industrial Complex is less clear. Michael Shellenberger at Public News has been able to report that a whistleblower who shared with his team the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL) files that the leader of CTIL, a “former British Intelligence Analyst,” was, “‘in the room’ at the Obama White House in 2017. She then received the instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a ‘repeat of 2016.’”
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Further, the CTIL Files “show US and UK military contractors working in 2019 and 2020 to both censor and turn sophisticated psychological operations and disinformation tactics, developed abroad, against the American people.”3
These actions had a chilling effect on our political discourse, especially the 2020 election. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta has said that FBI agents pre-bunked the Hunter Biden laptop story with all of the social media platforms.4 We also know the FBI had already verified the laptop the year before,5 which raises questions whether the FBI agents knowingly lied to Zuckerberg and the others in order to suppress the story.
When the New York Post published its series on Hunter’s “Laptop from Hell,” 51 former intelligence officers orchestrated a lie to influence the results of the 2020 Presidential election at the behest of a Biden surrogate who is now Secretary of State, Tony Blinken (according to Mike Morrell’s testimony).6
Once Elon Musk took over Twitter 1.0, the Twitter files showed not only close coordination7 between DHS, the FBI, CISA, CTIL and other government contractors and third-party NGOs, but that Twitter itself had been infiltrated by former FBI Agents, who specifically implemented and justified the political speech censorship campaign perpetrated by that organization.8
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After all of this was uncovered, several states sued the Biden Administration in Missouri v. Biden (now Murthy v. Missouri at the Supreme Court) and received a ruling in their favor that prohibits the government from certain actions, including “specifically flagging content or posts on social media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” The judge went further to underline the serious nature of the actions taken by the government:9
“…the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’ he wrote, adding in a footnote that the fictional agency is “responsible for altering historical records and disseminating propaganda to manipulate and control public perception.”
And yet, yesterday at the Supreme Court, the Biden Administration argued (and the Justices seemed to seriously consider) that this is much ado about not a whole lot; it is simply the government “persuading” these social media companies to take actions on their own. Hogwash. The aim, depth and breadth of the targeting of political speech and political adversaries is stunning, but the case yesterday is unfortunately limited to the particular Plaintiffs’ experience of harm. Let us say plainly: the entire American citizenry and our cherished Republic’s institutions are irrevocably harmed by such actions by the government.
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However, based upon the entirety of the oral arguments, it is not likely the Supreme Court will reach the needed landmark decision to deny these Bolsheviks the overreaching totalitarian nanny state they seek to protect. Let’s face it, when Justice Brown-Jackson complains that the Bill of Rights is “hamstringing” the government’s censorship efforts,10 we can’t rely on their judgement.
So, how can champions of free speech and the Bill of Rights take the next step in combatting secret police monitoring our public utterances and seeking suppression of wrong opinions?
As always, the answer to all of your questions is money.
The United States Congress is empowered to make law and control the appropriations made by the Executive Branch, including all of the agencies under the injunction. Congress must act to defund any effort by the United States Government to monitor her people’s speech and suppress it. There is no Constitutional justification for any law enforcement nor “cybersecurity analyst” nor intelligence officer to monitor our speech and secretly recommend its censoring. Full stop.
Congress should pass a law as soon as possible that simply reads:
No employee of the Federal government nor any of its contracted employees, nor any money whatsoever may be authorized to review American citizen’s online speech without probable cause to suspect a crime. Any action taken by the government regarding any citizen’s speech – out loud, online, or otherwise – must be made public and subject to the due process provisions of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
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Congress, it is time to stop relying on the Court system and to start governing again. This is the most important issue of our time. Without free speech, none of the rest matters. Just ask all of the ghosts Stalin created.
Justin Weller is the Founder and Editor of The Country, and host of the podcast The Country with Justin Weller. Prior, he was a general manager and sales leader in startup and Big Tech firms, interned on Capitol Hill, and was a Contributing Editor at mxdwn.com. This piece is republished from The Country
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Tampa Free Press.
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