Tag: free speech

Arizona State University Caught in Free Speech Tug-of-War Over Gov-Funded “Disinformation” Battle

Arizona State University (ASU) is a public school and therefore undisputed subject to the US Constitution’s free speech rules. Yet a new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) demonstrates that it was prominently involved in working with, and on behalf of the US government. To affect free speech.

That would be a blatant example of what Congress is investigating and what the critics are calling Big Tech-(Big) Government collusion, given that the target of the “collaboration” the university was involved in was online “disinformation.”

The thing to remember when talking about this collusion is that the current White House had enough wits about it to never make a “beeline” reaching the end result of censorship. From what is known from the congressional probe and the Twitter Files alone, this was always instead a meandering effort that included many seemingly intermediary and/or legitimate actors.

According to James Rushmore for Racket News, in this case, ASU was the recipient of grants (and, in line with the overall “process” – the purpose of the one given in January 2024 and reported by the Washington Examiner is not clearly stated). The grant though did come from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC).

In and of itself, not ring many alarm bells – until the reason behind it, and the activities of GEC are taken into account. Those activities, in the case of ASU’s involvement, meant working with government agencies to flag what was decided to be disinformation, but also something referred to as “falsified media.”

The obsession with “Russian disinformation” featured here as well, a hallmark of “arguments” of the political party that came to power in 2020 in the US. But also a hallmark that had been introduced into public discourse with the party’s defeat four years earlier. The claims have since, but it seems to no avail, been thoroughly debunked.

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The Big Tech Think Tank Campaigning to Censor Satire

The Brookings Institution, seems to believe it has solved the problem faced by those who would like to censor memes. The problem is that memes are a form of satire, and censoring them while claiming to be a democracy is a difficult task.

But now, senior Brookings Institution fellow Nicol Turner Lee and Isabella Panico Hernandez, a project assistant, have revealed their thinking: AI memes should be treated as election disinformation “manifested” through satire.

One could use a similar form of mental gymnastics to say that this kind of argument represents a call for censorship manifested through supposed concern about disinformation.

The Brookings, meanwhile, is not just any foot soldier in the “war on memes”: it is a powerful think tank funded by the likes of Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, but also massive financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase (via its philanthropic foundation) and that of Mastercard, Impact Fund.

Brookings speaks about memes, particularly those AI-generated (adding some AI panic into the mix can only help the cause), as an extremely dangerous phenomenon hidden behind humor, and perceived as humor by pretty much everyone.

But the think tank, and others going after memes, present themselves as smarter and able to understand the true nature of this clearly humorous and often satirical imagery, which they say only “seem harmless” and “appear innocuous.”

Instead, the authors of the article say memes can influence how voters perceive candidates and other election-related information, “could potentially lead to violence” – and are “globally perceived” as being capable to “fuel extremist behavior” – which is in contrast to the US, supposedly because of the lack of appropriate regulation.

And so, less than a month before the presidential election, these according to the authors insidious messages use humor merely as a vehicle to spread dangerous influence, but are not properly tackled in the US.

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Jack Smith Trump Filing Argues That Free Speech Is Criminal

Illegal DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith wants Twitter jail to be physical. His new election-interfering filing against Donald Trump essentially argues that Trump’s free speech should be considered criminal.

Challenging the integrity of election results is almost as old as the United States itself, and Democrats have most certainly been claiming that elections are fraudulent or illegitimate since Andrew Jackson. Remember when Hillary Clinton and her supporters claimed that the 2016 election was a fraud? Jack Smith apparently does not, because his new filing against Trump argues that Trump’s speech, including his tweets, about election integrity and election fraud is reason to prosecute and convict the former president.

The First Amendment protects Americans’ free speech when criticizing the government and criticizing elections. In America, you have always been allowed to claim that you thought elections were fraudulent, whether that is true or not. It’s a First Amendment right. Smith wants to criminalize that constitutionally protected free speech when the Democrats’ most formidable opponent uttered it. But if you think it will stop with Trump, think again. The Democrat party has become the anti-free speech party, the party of the censorship industrial complex.

The Biden-Harris administration and the Harris-Walz ticket want to silence Americans as much as Smith wants to silence Trump. Didn’t John Kerry just describe the First Amendment as a “block,” and didn’t Tim Walz just endorse and defend censorship during the vice presidential debate?

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Hillary Clinton says social media companies need to moderate content or ‘we lose total control’

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday that social media companies must moderate content on their platforms or else “we lose total control.”

Clinton told CNN host Michael Smerconish that while there have been some steps taken at the state level to regulate social media, she wants to see more done by the federal government to moderate content.

“We can look at the state of California, the state of New York, I think some other states have also taken action,” Clinton said.

“But we need national action, and sadly, our Congress has been dysfunctional when it comes to addressing these threats to our children,” she added.

Clinton said she believes the issue should be “at the top of every legislative political agenda” and called for the repealing of Section 230 of the Communications Act, which protects online platforms from being held liable for third-party content, such as user content on social media. This immunity applies to the content itself and the removal of content in certain circumstances.

“We should be, in my view, repealing something called Section 230, which gave, you know, platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs, that they shouldn’t be judged for the content that is posted,” Clinton said.

“But we now know that that was an overly simple view, that if the platforms, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter/X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control,” she continued. “And it’s not just the social and psychological affects, it’s real life.”

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Don’t Let the ‘Infaux Thugs’ Close Down Debate

Today’s censors wield cudgels with the word ‘information.’ Content they don’t like they call ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation.’ The justification is fake. The protection is faux protection. Pretending to protect people from bad information by means of censorship may be called infaux thuggery.

The cudgels are hidden, of course, but it is not hard to see through the pretence and discern the underlying message: knuckle under or we will hurt you.

The UK’s Online Safety Act exemplifies infaux thuggery, as does Brazil’s recent action against X (formerly Twitter). The Australian government is dominated by another gang of infaux thugs. The UK, sadly, not only practices infaux thuggery at home, it tutors the world in infaux thuggery.

The same goes for where I live, the United States. Kamala Harris threatens: ‘If you act as a megaphone for misinformation… we are going to hold you accountable.’ Hillary Clinton calls for criminalization of speech not to her liking. Harris’ running mate Tim Walz threatens: ‘There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation and hate speech.’

Thankfully, that’s not true, at least in the US. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. responded, the US Constitution ‘is exactly what prevents the government from stifling dissent by labeling something “hate speech” or “misinformation.”’ Alarmingly, former Secretary of State John Kerry recently lamented that the First Amendment ‘stands as a major block to…hammer it [“disinformation”] out of existence,’ and implied that that ‘is part of what this race, this election is all about.’

Of course, malicious actors, including enemy states, may spread lies to sow discord – especially online. So too can those who are simply ill-informed. Yet in the absence of censorship, big lies will be torn to shreds. In this battle, the infaux thugs are on the wrong side.

The infaux thugs use ‘information’ to confuse matters. The content they suppress is more aptly termed narratives, interpretations, opinions or judgments. Those terms are more capacious, befitting frank and open debate and controversy.

In their hostility to open debate, the infaux thugs are mounting an attack on modern civilisation. They evoke our crude instincts from pre-modern life, instincts for a small, simple society, in which the leader’s narrative must be believed by all and enforced upon the members of the band. If you don’t share the leader’s narrative, you are a miscreant. You are to be corrected, expelled or destroyed. At the very least, you are to shut up.

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Curbing Global Censorship: House Republicans Take Aim at US-Funded Speech Crackdowns Abroad

A new bill introduced by House Republicans, the No Funding or Enforcement of Censorship Abroad Act (HR 9850), aims to prevent the US government from bankrolling censorship in other countries of content that is legal under US laws.

Chris Smith, Jim Jordan, and Maria Elvira Salazar are behind this draft that they say would protect and promote American values abroad – and those include free speech.

The bill’s authors hope to stop the use of foreign assistance funds to support censorship abroad, as well as US law enforcement from cooperating with authorities abroad conducting such policies.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

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Yes, Tim Walz, You Can Shout ‘Fire’ In A Crowded Theatre

It would be nice if everyone on a presidential ticket understood how the First Amendment works, but unfortunately, that seems to be too much to ask of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. During an exchange about censorship and threats to Democracy—springing, inexplicably, from Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) dodging a question about whether former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election—Walz made two major free speech fumbles. He claimed there is no First Amendment right to “hate speech” and repeated the myth that you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theatre.

When Vance pivoted to correctly pointing out that Walz had previously “said there’s no First Amendment right to misinformation,” Walz interjected, adding “or threatening, or hate speech.” 

But Walz is wrong. While threats aren’t protected by the First Amendment, “hate speech” most certainly is. Speech that is merely offensive—and not part of an unprotected category like true threats or harassment—has full First Amendment protection. Walz’s mistaken belief that it seems intuitively impossible for Americans to express offensive or hateful ideas reveals a censorious nature, which is extremely troubling for someone seeking the vice presidency. 

“The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly rejected government attempts to prohibit or punish hate speech,” reads a rundown on hate speech from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment group. “The First Amendment recognizes that the government cannot regulate hate speech without inevitably silencing the dissent and dialogue that democracy requires. Instead, we as citizens possess the power to most effectively answer hateful speech—whether through debate, protest, questioning, laughter, silence, or simply walking away.”

But that wasn’t Walz’s only error. A few seconds later, he said “You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme Court test.” Again, this is incorrect. It’s a common misconception that shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre isn’t protected by the First Amendment—a myth that originates from a hypothetical used in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ 1919 Supreme Court opinion in Schenk v. United States. 

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Meet the First Tenured Professor to Be Fired for Pro-Palestine Speech

Maura Finkelstein never hid her support for Palestinian liberation during her nine years working as a professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College, a small liberal arts school in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

“I have always had an ethical practice of making sure that I include Palestine in my teaching,” Finkelstein told me. “It was never outside the bounds of what I do.”

For Finkelstein, who is Jewish, this was not always easy. More than 30 percent of Muhlenberg’s 2,200 students are Jewish, many of them vocal supporters of Israel.

Neither her longtime public support of Palestinians, however, nor the courses on Palestine she taught in her early years at the school prevented Finkelstein from earning tenure in 2021. Following the arduous tenure process, professors are supposed to enjoy lifetime job security and robust safeguards of academic freedom. The bar for dismissal from a tenured academic position is by design meant to be extremely high, requiring justifiable cause.

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John Kerry vs. The First Amendment

If irony had a throne, John Kerry would be leaning on it, monologuing about democracy’s headaches at this week’s World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Meetings. Here, the former Secretary of State and America’s first designated Climate Envoy complained about the modern “crisis” of governance—that awful, inconvenient reality where everyone has a voice. Apparently, too many people are ruining what used to be a good thing.

Kerry, cloistered in the comfort of the Davos bubble, reminded us just how difficult it is to govern when the masses actually get to speak their minds. “It’s really hard to govern today,” Kerry lamented, exuding the charm of someone frustrated that the rabble is talking back. The referees of truth, as he calls them, have been “eviscerated.” You know, those old-school arbiters—the gatekeepers of facts—who made sure the right people got to say the right things, ensuring a comfortable consensus among the elite.

Back then, if something was decided to be true, well, it stayed true.

But now, that pesky First Amendment and the democratization of information are making it all so much harder.

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Judges in TikTok Case Seem Ready to Discount First Amendment

A US circuit court panel appears ready to uphold a federal law that would effectively ban the popular social media network TikTok because it’s owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The legal attacks on the video platform—which FAIR (8/5/20, 5/25/23, 11/13/23, 3/14/24) has written about before—are entering a new phase, in which judicial interpreters of the Constitution are acting as Cold War partisans, threatening to throw out civil liberties in favor of national security alarmism.

Earlier this year, despite widespread protest (Guardian, 3/7/24), President Joe Biden signed legislation forcing TikTok’s owner “to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States” (NBC, 4/24/24). Advocates for the ban charge that data collection—which is a function of most social media networks—poses a national security threat because of the platform’s Chinese ownership (Axios, 3/15/24).

Given that TikTok is a global platform, with 2 billion users worldwide, demands that ByteDance sell it off are in effect another name for a ban; an analogy would be Beijing allowing Facebook to operate in China only if Meta sold the platform to a non-US company.

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