Why Donald was trumped by his desire to blow with the hot air of the unfettered cyber world
The debate over free speech
The banning of Donald Trump from twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat has caused a freedom-of-expression furore not seen in America for half a century and before.
The Independent Workers of the World – Wobblies as they were known – fought for free speech for nine years in the 1900s. They wanted One Big Union.
Almost 50 years later the Free Speech Movement demanded to be allowed to speak their minds out and suffered mass arrests at the US’s seats of learning.
On each occasion they faced the Right-wing of ‘good ol’ ya all’ conservatism which simply revealed a deep anxiety within the Right about something or other.
And there is much evidence that this fear was sparked by laws designed to stop wars and protect all complexions of humanity.
The question has to be then – why was the Right so afraid?
But this present-day furore is different. Apart from anything else it involves right-wing attacks on mammoth businesses – the normal happy-hunting ground of capitalists and conservatism.
Those who believe in wage slavery.
This time the enemy of the republicans are billionaires who have, for decades, used their giganticness and the lack of the natural tangibility of their businesses to actually live in an artificial world far beyond the control of earth-bound laws.
Were they then supporting the clampdown on unfettered free speech because of a fear of moves to regulate them?
So the next simple question has to be were these behemoths right to dump Trump, the king of paper unimaginable wealth, from the supposed ‘cyber voice of the people’. And what grounds were they doing it on? Grounds that include legality, philosophy and morality?
In reality social media, perhaps by accident, was protecting America’s First Amendment?
I say a resounding YES they did, they protected it!
One hallowed section of the wide-ranging First Amendment says that the US government cannot restrict speech, the press or other forms of communication media.
And fundamentally, that’s what gives us our free speech.
But we have to remember that social media is not a form of government – despite running its own fiefdoms in the massively unregulated Wild West of Cyber space.
This nebulosity of social media, this lack of control, this lack of governance over its world-wide ‘population’ means they are NOT in violation of the First Amendment.
And yet the grand influencer of the Free World, The Donald, actually did try desperately to restrict the reporting of traditional media by under-mining it as ‘fake news’ and by banning news providers from his conferences.
Was that because he didn’t want to be caught out over something? Misinformation for instance?
Remember mainstream media never ‘banned’ Trump in the four years he was in power.
After all even his staunchest supporters have to admit that he did blunder through at lot of his Presidency stating many things as facts when they actually weren’t.
In fact the Washington Post – a leading daily constantly under fire for the application of its own free speech in its political reporting – has said that Trump made 30,753 false or misleading claims in his ‘quadruplet’ of years.
But like Donald Duck he took to the uncharted waters of social media until it began to take against him in a far more draconian way than the hated MSM had ever done.
It started to ban him!
Then even his friend Parler, where many with strong and sometimes unpalatable views, rested their slippers by the roaring fire of, I for one would say, scary political ideas, was removed by Amazon.
Yes, the mainstream media picked away at his suggestion that disinfectant would counteract COVID-19 – we were horrified at him urging his supporters to “fight” to overturn the election.
We were shocked that he seemed oblivious to the fact he could be culpable in endangering life.
Supporting the fears that were created by such – dare I say – incendiary-ness? – Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter, is quoted as saying: “A company making a business decision to moderate itself is different from a government removing access, yet can feel much the same.”
Let’s remember Donald Trump pledged to defend the Constitution and yet so much suggests Trump has made a mockery of the First Amendment’s right to freedom.
Yes, the President should be allowed free-speech just like everybody else. And by calling the news media “the enemy of the American people” and describing their efforts as “fake news” he almost certainly didn’t offend the spirit of the First Amendment.
However when he hinted darkly at government retribution against news providers he had crossed the Rubicon.
His government of course denies that any retaliation was going on.
Yet Trump threatened to withdraw the press credentials of reporters who criticized him. They were pompously considered to be impertinent.
But individual writers, like me, may think twice before publishing pieces they believe are true.
America is not a Central European state where so many journalists have – and still do – work under threat from governments. Look at what is happening in Russia right now.
America is supposed to be the land of the free where you can state your case in a no-holds-barred fashion.
Except apparently in the minds of so many when it comes down to the traditional media.
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