ROGER SIMON: Beware the Asperger’s Fascists of Big Tech.
Unlike, say, Albert Einstein who did not “settle” for Isaac Newton, the powers that be at YouTube evidently believe in that oxymoron “settled science.” They have removed, lest we ignoramuses be misled into believing or even being exposed to anything that was said, a panel discussion on the response to COVID-19—the masks and the lockdowns—with four public health experts from Stanford University, the University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School.
Why censor then, given the impeccable backgrounds of the participants? The unspecified medical experts at YouTube/Google/Alphabet could undoubtedly spout some reasons the science in their “humble” opinions is settled on these matters (until Anthony Fauci changes his for the umpteenth time).
But the views of the four panel experts are readily available elsewhere, so why bother to block them?
Well, that may be true, but these experts appeared in a lengthy panel discussion led by Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Imagine a long and serious panel on something scientific led by the current president of the United States. For that matter, imagine the current president passing a high school physics test.
So the Democrats are seeing a problem down the road, a problem with the potential of growing even bigger than Donald Trump, if such a thing were possible, a Republican presidential candidate who is considerably smarter than they are and, thus far, keeps his cool and is willing to punch back at their excesses.
Besides that, he might be more appealing to the “soccer moms” than Trump.
Better to wipe him out now. And who better to do that than Big Tech? DeSantis doesn’t like them—he’s initiating legislation to diminish their power—and they, for that and other reasons, certainly don’t like him.
Interesting here is why Big Tech is the way it is, why its leaders—with the exception of Peter Thiel and a few others—so uniformly think the way they do.
They’re extremely bright (largely) guys who have reinvented the way we communicate and even live and made giant fortunes in the process. They used to be nerds, but now they’re big shots, inhabiting expensive homes in the most expensive place in America, Silicon Valley.
Given their history and the monomaniacal, focused manner in which they got there, I would wager many of them suffer from Asperger’s—“a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.”
They get technology, they get business, but they don’t really get people. They don’t read widely, only within their world. Their machines have revealed the truth and they want to make sure the world follows their orders, which are, after all, politically correct.
When they censor they are doing what they are convinced is the right thing. They are what we may call Asperger’s Fascists.
Blocking a video with “four public health experts from Stanford University, the University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School” just because DeSantis is with them seems pretty churlish of YouTube. Don’t they know he enjoys bipartisan support?