Tag: free speech

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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The Left Is Gaslighting America With Its Double Standards On Violent Rhetoric

Political violence has long been a part of American life, but recent events, including a second attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, have ignited a debate over the role of rhetoric in encouraging such violence.

It should be clear to anyone who has been paying attention since Trump announced his candidacy for president back in 2015 that the left’s consistent use of incendiary language (framing him as a Russian agent, as literally Hitler, and as an existential threat to America and democracy) doesn’t just dehumanize him. It also fosters a volatile climate where political violence against him and his supporters becomes justifiable — especially to individuals who increasingly see themselves as “defenders of democracy” or “anti-fascists.”

The left, however, doesn’t see it that way. In fact, even after a second assassination attempt, Democrats and the media still believe it is not their rhetoric that is to blame for the attempts on Trump’s life, but rather Trump himself.

Hours after the second assassination attempt was reported, “Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt went on the air and stated: “Today’s apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail itself. Mr. Trump, his running mate, J.D. Vance, continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in [Springfield,] Ohio. This weekend, there were new bomb threats in that town.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre joined in, once again calling Trump a “threat.” In response, Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Peter Doocy asked Jean-Pierre, “How many more assassination attempts on Donald Trump until the president and vice president and you pick a different word to describe Trump, other than ‘threat?’”

Jean-Pierre proceeded to attempt to gaslight all those on the right with similar concerns. “The question that you’re asking … is also incredibly dangerous in the way that you’re asking it,” said Jean-Pierre, “because American people are watching … Because it — your question involved a comment and a statement — and, you know, it is — that is also incredibly dangerous when we have been very clear in — in condemning political violence from here.”

In other words, to the left, repeatedly lying and calling Trump an existential threat to America is not dangerous, regardless of the number of attempts on Trump’s life. The real danger only arises when someone questions whether those on the left should stop lying about Trump and moderate their rhetoric.

Of course, this framing does not apply to those on the right when they legitimately express concern over the chaos caused by a massive influx of 20,000 Haitian immigrants into Springfield, Ohio. It is then, as Lester Holt alluded, that words magically become violence once again, even when no one is directly targeting Haitian immigrants, and, as Gov. Mike DeWine noted in a Sept. 16 press conference, all 33 separate bomb threats received at that time had turned out to be hoaxes, with many coming from overseas.

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Ireland drops controversial “hate speech” legislation to criminalise online speech deemed as “incitement to hatred”

On Saturday, The Irish Times reported that the Irish government will drop the incitement to hatred section of the bill, focusing instead on hate crime legislation that provides for tougher sentences when hate is proven as a motivation for an offence.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee said that the “incitement to hatred” element of the bill does “not have a consensus” and will be dealt with at a later time.  She is “adamant” that hate crime legislation would be enacted.  In the meantime, she plans to include committee stage amendments to the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 in the Seanad.

The decision comes after increased opposition from within the government, opposition parties and free speech groups, including tech billionaire Elon Musk, who vowed to fund legal challenges against the proposed legislation.

The controversy surrounding the bill highlighted concerns about the potential for vague definitions and overreach, with critics arguing that it could criminalise memes, books or videos deemed politically offensive.

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