Left-learning journalist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald has become the voice of reason with a number of issues, the biggest one being censorship. In fact, when he left The Intercept, the very online news organization that he co-founded, it was because he believed editors were doing everything in their power to bury negative stories about the Biden family.
Greenwald spoke out about Twitter's desire to hide the New York Post's story on Hunter Biden's laptop. And now he's speaking out about Big Tech censorship.
The investigative reporter shared a thread on Twitter explaining the real reason the left cheers Big Tech censorship: because it takes out their political opponents.
In the last three months, tech giants have censored political speech and journalism to manipulate U.S. politics -- banning reporting on the Bidens, removing the President, destroying a new competitor -- while US liberals, with virtual unanimity, have cheered.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 12, 2021
The ACLU said the unity of Silicon Valley monopoly power to destroy Parler was deeply troubling. Leaders from Germany, France and Mexico protested. Only US liberals support it, because the dominant strain of US liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 12, 2021
https://t.co/qD9OdwlPbV pic.twitter.com/9jbdVTuOpB
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 12, 2021
He reminded readers of one important point: House Democrats warned about the powers associated with the monopolies companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter have. Suddenly those concerns and issues have gone by the wayside since they collaborated to shut down Parler.
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Just three months ago, a Dem-led House Committee issued a major report warning of the dangers of the anti-trust power of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. Left-wing scholars have been sounding the alarm for years. Now it's here, and liberals cheer:https://t.co/C2om0SHgLb
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 12, 2021
Probably the worst discourse tactic liberals are using is to accuse you of being pro-Terrorist or sympathizing with white supremacy if you question or are concerned about any of the powers they're seizing & wielding for their new War on Terror - taken right from Cheney and Rove.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 12, 2021
Social media monopolies have been censoring to please powerful factions for years, signalling that this moment was coming. Few cared when Palestinian journalists & activists were banned at Israel's behest. You have to object to this as a principle:https://t.co/OyElNWwoue
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 12, 2021
Greenwald also stated the biggest mistake came earlier this year when Facebook and Twitter worked to ban reports about the Bidens. Remember: Twitter repeatedly deleted the New York Post's breaking report about Hunter Biden's laptop. They even went so far as to suspend the Post's Twitter account. Facebook continually attempted to "fact check" the story, which the Post had as an exclusive.
This was all a precursor to where we are today.
I still think the most ominous and consequential moment was when FB and Twitter united to ban reporting about the Bidens in the weeks before the election. Twitter mostly expressed regret. FB did not. Liberals & **journalists** overwhelmingly cheered. That showed what was coming.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 12, 2021
The attorney explained the reason Parler had success: they really were a platform of free speech. Users had the ability to post what they wanted without algorithms deciding what people should and should not see and what news stories should be buried. The other plus, for many users, was that their information wasn't being sold to advertisers to manipulate.
What was just done with Parler can't be overstated. They created a system where they can not only ban and silence whoever they want from their monopolistic platforms, but also remove entire platforms, their competitors, from the internet. New weapons don't get used only once.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 12, 2021
The biggest reason the left cheers Big Tech censorship, according to Greenwald, is because they're Democrats' biggest donors. Why would Democrats call out the platforms or seek legislation to solve the Big Tech monopoly issue? Because it goes against their biggest donors' best interests. It's politics as usual.
From Greenwald's newsletter (emphasis mine):
Not only did leading left-wing politicians not object but some of them were the ones who pleaded with Silicon Valley to use their power this way. After the internet-policing site Sleeping Giants flagged several Parler posts that called for violence, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked: “What are @Apple and @GooglePlay doing about this?” Once Apple responded by removing Parler from its App Store — a move that House Democrats just three months earlier warned was dangerous anti-trust behavior — she praised Apple and then demanded to know: “Good to see this development from @Apple. @GooglePlay what are you going to do about apps being used to organize violence on your platform?”
The liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg pronounced herself “disturbed by just how awesome [tech giants’] power is” and added that “it’s dangerous to have a handful of callow young tech titans in charge of who has a megaphone and who does not.” She nonetheless praised these “young tech titans” for using their “dangerous” power to ban Trump and destroy Parler. In other words, liberals like Goldberg are concerned only that Silicon Valley censorship powers might one day be used against people like them, but are perfectly happy as long as it is their adversaries being deplatformed and silenced (Facebook and other platforms have for years banned marginalized people like Palestinians at Israel’s behest, but that is of no concern to U.S. liberals).
That is because the dominant strain of American liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism. Liberals now want to use the force of corporate power to silence those with different ideologies. They are eager for tech monopolies not just to ban accounts they dislike but to remove entire platforms from the internet. They want to imprison people they believe helped their party lose elections, such as Julian Assange, even if it means creating precedents to criminalize journalism.
..
So much of this liberal support for the attempted destruction of Parler is based in utter ignorance about that platform, and about basic principles of free speech. I’d be very surprised if more than a tiny fraction of liberals cheering Parler’s removal from the internet have ever used the platform or know anything about it other than the snippets they have been shown by those seeking to justify its destruction and to depict it as some neo-Nazi stronghold.
Parler was not founded, nor is it run, by pro-Trump, MAGA supporters. The platform was created based in libertarian values of privacy, anti-surveillance, anti-data collection, and free speech. Most of the key executives are more associated with the politics of Ron Paul and the CATO Institute than Steve Bannon or the Trump family. One is a Never Trump Republican, while another is the former campaign manager of Ron Paul and Rand Paul. Among the few MAGA-affiliated figures is Dan Bongino, an investor. One of the key original investors was Rebekah Mercer.
Liberals today are about silencing those they disagree with. That's no surprise. We see it on college campuses, and online. Any time a company takes any kind of stance that doesn't align with the left, the company has to "be taken down." It's how we got this cancel culture movement that has dominated our society. And, sadly, this is just the beginning.
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