Kerby Anderson

Both liberals and conservatives believe in free speech. The radical left used to pretend to value free speech, but no longer. One example is a bill proposed by two Democratic senators that would allow the federal government to punish Big Tech companies for not censoring more views. If you already think Big Tech censors too much, imagine what would happen if this bill became law. The argument rests on the idea that too much “misinformation” is being spread on the Internet. The bill would establish what sounds like a “Ministry of Truth” described in George Orwell’s book, 1984. It would determine what is approved medical science, and what is not. Mario Loyola reminds us that in the past, public safety has been used as a justification for persecuting political opponents. Often the “misinformation” label is “a rhetorical trick, employed for its value as a political weapon rather than a signifier.” It can be used “to proclaim obvious falsehoods while suppressing their political adversaries’ right to speak obvious truths.” Over this last year we have discovered that truth isn’t as settled as experts would like for us to think that it is. We’ve had conflicting statements about the effectiveness of masks, questions about the safety of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, along with dogmatic statements that the virus surely did NOT come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Once you allow government officials to censor information about medicine and public health, it is merely a small step to allow those same officials to censor opinions and information on topics like sexual orientation and critical race theory. At a time when most of us believe Big Tech is censoring too much, there are those on the left who believe they must censor even more.