24 Aug 2021 Even The Taliban Thinks Your Collusive Censorship Of Americans Is Pure Repression

I gotta ask, Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Nick Clegg. What’s it like, that feeling when even the Taliban recognizes that your censorship of American citizens’ speech about topics of public concern – in collusion with the current administration – is Taliban-level repressive, such that it will brook no objections from the West about its own civil- and human-rights abuses?

Scott Shepard

Does it taste like shame? Or do billions in largely unearned wealth make shame impossible?

To its minimal credit, Facebook has demonstrated enough situational awareness, having permanently banned Donald Trump, also to ban the Taliban. Not so Twitter, which continues to ban Trump, but is happy to allow the Taliban to continue to use its platform as long as the exchanges don’t get too violent.

The mind reels.

How’s this for violence, guys? The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has declared that Americans who question COVID policy “including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions” (perceived?), are terrorist threats whom DHS will have to watch to make sure they don’t engage in public violence. As NBC reported, DHS also plans to surveil Americans who have expressed concern that there might have been fraud in the 2020 election.

A police arm of the federal government has declared its intent to investigate as proto-terrorists those who disagree with government policy or who notice and comment about documented facts regarding the 2020 election.

Is that violence? At Facebook, Zuck and Cleggy have declared that mere objection to “concepts, institutions, ideas, practices, or beliefs associated with protected characteristics, which are likely to contribute to imminent physical harm, intimidation or discrimination against the people associated with that protected characteristic,” qualifies as bannable hate speech. And while the “protected characteristics” are defined neutrally, we all know, and past history has demonstrated, that Facebook and other social media outlets put a one-way spin on their bans.

But more to the point, Facebook gents, are DHS threats to treat Americans as criminal enemies for the offense of employing their constitutional rights of free speech and press things that “contribute to imminent physical harm, intimidation or discrimination against the people associated with that protected characteristic?” Or is “use of constitutionally protected liberties” not a protected characteristic or behavior, in your minds? Or is it protected only when used against conservatives and libertarians?

Time to ban DHS, then? Or nah?

Meanwhile, Facebook, is “sexual-assault victim and accuser” a protected characteristic? If so, then explain your continued employment of Dani Lever, who helped to shame an accuser of disgraced former Governor and potential future Convict Andrew Cuomo – one of at least 13 accusers of that benighted monster on whom you so recently showered so much praise. Or is it true now at Facebook, as it was true in the Clinton era in the “mainstream” media, that victim attacking is just fine, as long as it’s deployed to protect a leftist?

And Twitter, since you still welcome the Taliban while proclaiming that you had to ban Trump because he was a threat to our democracy: What do you think? Is DHS labeling dissent as terrorism a threat to our democracy? Or are all of your windy explanations simply cover for your active interference in American public discourse? Cause that will matter when the antitrust suits start. It seems pretty obvious that it’s time to regulate your wretched shop as though it were the Bell telephone system.

And Jack, about that claim that the Taliban can stay because it’s as yet solidly less violent than Donald Trump and all sorts of other customers you’ve banned: Biden Administration failure has abandoned perhaps 15,000 Americans in Afghanistan. When they start to be killed or taken hostage by the Taliban, what will you tell their survivors about the relative peacefulness of that organization? And what will you tell the court when they sue? Will you then have to admit that all of your babble about trust and safety is so much pernicious piffle? Or will you find another soapbox to climb on? Bad news: the free-discourse box is not available to you. You’ve burned yours down.

The next 3 ½ years are going to be horrific.

The Biden Administration has certainly failed so far, and we may well say that the whole presidency has already failed. As proof, I need offer only this: Watch Biden’s 10-minute, days-late catastrophe of a press conference from last week, and then watch Jack Kennedy’s performance after the Bay of Pigs. Biden simply lacks the facilities to do the job even minimally, and his backup squad is far, far worse than incompetent. The result is going to be third-rate appointees making execrable decisions like the nonsense that DHS put out even as Kabul was falling, with no adult oversight at all, and assisted by the comprehensively corrupt deep state. Many, many people across the political spectrum are starting to twig to that.

The social media martinets have a choice: Recognize this, and end your collusive relationship with this addled and bereft administration; or help to drive the dissolution of American democracy, and then reap that whirlwind.

Scott Shepard is a fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and Director of its Free Enterprise Project. This was first published at Townhall Finance.