By Selwyn Duke
Whether or not the pen really “is mightier than the sword,” as Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote, words can move mountains. As with music, they have charms that can soothe or incense — or inspire opposition to the powerful. So it’s no surprise that the powerful want to control words via censorship.
Enter Western Europe, which is now trying to kick its censorship into high gear.
Be warned, too: The same speech-squelching efforts were pursued by the Biden administration. And, do note, this will return with a vengeance the moment the Democrats retake the presidency.
The issue, wrote The Telegraph’s Sam Ashworth-Hayes last Thursday, concerns defense — of the indefensible.
As Hayes put it:
Say, for a moment, that you had embarked on a sweeping project to remake your country without the approval of its population, confident that utopia would result. Then say that the project stalled, that criticism was mounting, but that any attempt to undo the project would make things worse and kill your career to boot. How might you handle this problem?
The writer is referencing Britain’s, France’s, and Spain’s culturally suicidal importation of vast numbers of Third World migrants. This policy’s disastrous effects are now more obvious than ever. But the left-wing immigrationists responsible can’t undo the damage without being undone themselves. So their response?
Keep digging the hole — and ensure no one can complain about it and further blow your cover.
Obscuring the Great Replacement
To this end, Spain’s ruling left-wing coalition has decided to legalize 500,000 migrants. Brazen to the last, they even acknowledge that this foreign army will help them combat the “right.” We’ve heard this before, too, from Andrew Neather, who was an aide of ex-prime minister of Britain Tony Blair. Neather admitted in 2009 that the previous 15 years’ mass Third World migration into the U.K. was designed to “rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”
And so that fewer people can talk about the above, authorities in Britain, France, and Spain, Hayes informs,
took aim at Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), ostensibly in order to protect children. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez … announced plans for a social media ban for under-16s. That was the headline measure.
Following in its wake, however, were references to taking action against “platforms whose algorithms amplify disinformation”, insistence that “spreading hate must come at a cost… that platforms can no longer afford to ignore”, and plans to make executives criminally liable for content on the platform.
The timing of this is ironic, too. Left-wing British paper The Guardian just had to essentially retract a hit piece on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The issue?
It was based on misinformation.
Will the European Union now censor the (mainly left-wing) press?
Legacy media are notorious for peddling falsehoods, too. The Hunter Biden laptop story, the Covington Catholic kids affair, and the Trump/Russia-collusion hoax are examples. And since Britain is helping spearhead this censorship effort, let’s not forget its relevant trespasses on the Muslim rape-gang outrage. (Relevant tweet below).
Pretext, Not Principle
Hayes then continued:
In France, meanwhile, police raided X’s Paris headquarters as part of an inquiry aiming to protect children by halting deepfakes. But the investigation was triggered in the first place by an MP in Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party complaining after Musk’s purchase that X had “reduced diversity of voices”, and a separate complaint that the site hosted “nauseating political content”.
This is misdirection. Now, deepfakes can be a problem. They enable you to realistically portray anyone doing anything, including acting criminally (e.g., abusing a child). It would seem that this should be handled via defamation law, however, just as damaging written material is. Big Brother’s iron muzzle is unnecessary.
And what of reducing a “diversity of voices”? As someone who spends much time on X (too much), first I’d ask for the data on this. I doubt it’s true. Second, insofar as some leftists have disappeared from the platform, this has been their own doing. I’ve seen countless high-profile liberals who’ve formally left X, or not posted in years, as part of a “boycott.” And those remaining often limit who can see or respond to their posts (leftists don’t like pushback).
This brings us back to European efforts at stifling dissent. Hayes writes of Britain’s Office of Communications’ (Ofcom’s) inquiry into X over concerns related to AI-generated sexual content. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall stated the government would fully support blocking access to X if regulators decide to do so. She claimed that opponents were tolerating the creation and sharing of sexually manipulated images of women and children.
As Hayes points out, though:
The capability in question — Grok [AI] editing pictures of real people into revealing clothing — shouldn’t have been available in the first place, but it has now been fixed.
Hypocrisy
In fact, unlike legacy media, X is remarkably self-correcting. Just consider its “community note” system. Informational democracy in action, this is where a correction is placed under a post if a robust number of X users detect an objective error. Know this, too: I’ve never seen an incorrect community note yet.
But the establishment censors don’t care about that. They also don’t care that any new and burgeoning technology will have some growing pains. Why, they don’t even appear to care about “protecting kids.”
As Hayes mentions, there’s no Ofcom probe into platform Roblox, even though it’s facing child-exploitation lawsuits. The U.K. government is also reluctant to more deeply examine the aforementioned rape-gang scandal.
This is because the actual issue isn’t safety. It is, rather, control of the high-tech “pen,” which really is mightier than the sword. Just consider a finding by liberal researcher Dr. Robert Epstein. He determined that here in the states, Big Tech was capable of shifting up to 15 million votes toward a given presidential candidate at election time. This is enough to swing races and determine who our leaders are.
In fact, it’s arguable that President Donald Trump wouldn’t have won in 2024 had Musk not acquired X. The purchase broke the left-wing Big Tech phalanx, which I’d dubbed “GoogTwitFace,” reducing it to just GoogFace. A complete about-face it was not — but it did rob the left-wing puppeteers of one Big Tech pen.
That was an unforgivable trespass to the establishment would-be autocrats. And that’s the real reason they’re targeting X and free speech.
This article was originally published at The New American.
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