Elon Musk is a modern-day gladiator fighting to protect free speech — the bedrock of liberty.
Yet instead of combatting a tiger or violent swordsman at the Colosseum in ancient Rome, the battle royal is happening at Twitter’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, where he’s up against a myriad of tyrannical forces that want to control speech and public discourse to advance a political agenda and sway elections in Democrats’ favor by censoring the truth.
Musk is up against the Democrat Machine and its devious allies in the Deep State and politicized FBI who pressured social media companies during the 2020 election to censor so-called misinformation on Twitter and other online platforms. This stealth censorship campaign by the highest echelons of the almighty government included spiking the New York Post’s accurate reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop to help Joe Biden get elected.
Evidence of Deep State election interference emerged when 51 former U.S. intelligence “experts” signed a letter asserting the scandalous laptop was “Russian Disinformation,” which was a lie to dupe voters. Of course, months later, The New York Times and other media outlets finally confirmed the laptop was legit long after Biden won the election. Embarrassingly, CBS News confirmed the laptop is authentic this month –769 days — after the New York Post broke the story.
How convenient…
And if that’s not enough headwind Musk is facing from the vast censorship cartel here in the States, he’s also combatting left-wing activist groups and other powerful forces who are demanding corporations yank its Twitter advertising to punish its new independent-minded CEO for not toeing the line on mass censorship of conservatives and free thinkers. Today, thuggish political operatives and Democratic politicians are effectively enforcing a “if you don’t play, you pay” type of operation not unlike protection rackets the mafia employed during its heyday.
If all that’s not alarming enough, Apple, the monopolistic tech giant, is escalating threats against Twitter to cripple the platform. “Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted this week. “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America? What’s going on?” he asked Apple’s CEO Tim Cook.
If all this doesn’t send a chill up your spine, what will?
We’re living in an age of information warfare where whoever controls speech and the flow of information gets to shape public opinion as a means to control the masses, sway voters and obtain power. Censorship of the masses is one of many oppressive tools used by authoritarian regimes like China and Russia to advance that outcome.
But frighteningly, it’s becoming the “new normal” in America.
We’re witnessing a form of corporate tyranny where businesses are catering to the “woke” mob and acting at the behest of the ever-growing authoritarian government silencing political opposition and dissent under the opaque guise of “content moderation.” Cancel culture is out of control, but thankfully for America, Musk is fighting the good fight and understands what’s at stake.
“This is a battle for the future of civilization,” he tweeted on Monday. “If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.”
He’s correct. Freedom of speech is vital to a free nation and something our Founding Father and first President George Washington warned about: “If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
And abolitionist Frederick Douglass wisely stated, “Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”
The statesman also said, “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power.”
Prophetic words indeed.
Bottom line: Americans must stand tall and protect our God-given rights or watch them taken away from us, one tweet at a time.
Adriana Cohen is a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. To find out more about Adriana Cohen and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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