There's been a curious drumbeat over the last month or so, an increase in well-known Democrat leaders calling for legal changes to force social media companies to take steps to remove "disinformation" and "misinformation" from the Internet.
We see, first of all, NPR's new CEO protesting that the truth gets in the way of getting things done:
NPR's new CEO: "Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done."
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) April 17, 2024
This gets to the heart of the cultural divide in the modern West: whether you believe truth is a priority or a hindrancepic.twitter.com/Pkwy5kkNWy
RFK Jr. noticed.
Truth gets in the way of getting things done, all right. Question is: What kind of things get done, in ignorance of the truth? https://t.co/kVCh4iBLEG
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 15, 2024
John Kerry, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, and Biden apparatchik, complained that "The 1st Amendment stands as a major roadblock for us right now."
John Kerry calls for a Ministry of Truth:
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 29, 2024
"The 1st Amendment stands as a major roadblock for us right now" pic.twitter.com/1mtpjjxeM7
Hillary Clinton makes a Kinsley gaffe, telling more of the truth than she should:
Hillary Clinton says that social media companies must censor people's content or else "we lose total control." pic.twitter.com/eOB9cStozX
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 5, 2024
Senator Mark Kelly now is raising the stakes.
Sen. Mark Kelly, who sits on the US Senate intelligence committee, said on CBS this morning there is a "significant" and "huge amount of misinformation" coming from the Russian, Chinese, and the Iranians.
— Nandita Bose (@nanditab1) October 6, 2024
Kelly estimated that 20 to 30% of political content that Americans are…
Add to that Mark Kelly's assertion — without evidence — that a quarter of political internet is Russian, Chinese, and Iranian misinformation, and, well, the last time the intelligence community asserted something was Russian misinformation, the main scream media instantly jumped to their bidding to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop; they were just as anxious to push the pee tape and the Alfa Bank email story. All of which were indeed disinformation — directed against Trump.
I'm not generally one to fall for conspiracy theories. Among other things, it's hard to tell a conspiracy from simply a bunch of people of the same mindset. Trotsky called them poputchik, "one who travels the same path," a term that became common in English as "fellow traveller." It doesn't quite apply here since poputchik meant someone in agreement with the Party's aims, but not a Party member, and these are mainly Party members — Democrat this time, but see what I did there? — who are pushing this.
The point is that if you have a bunch of people with the same goals and similar intentions, they can look co-ordinated.
There's a word I learned when I was studying at the medical school: "pathognomonic." Greek root, a gnomon is the indicator on a sundial, and patho from "pathos," a quality that evokes suffering. In medicine, something is pathognomonic if it's a symptom that more or less conclusively indicates the presence of a particular disease. In measles, it's something called Koplik spots — white spots in the mouth that nearly invariably indicate the patient has measles, even before the characteristic rash. If you have Koplik spots, you very nearly certainly have measles, and so they're said to be pathognomonic of measles.
I think saying that truth is a barrier to getting things done, that the First Amendment is a major roadblock, that social media must be censored if they are to maintain total control is pathognomonic of an advanced case of the disease of authoritarian, even totalitarian, fascism.
And that's a disease we must defeat.
