Early Sunday evening, Elon Musk posted a new Twitter poll: “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.” Over seventeen million votes were cast, and the Yes votes won with over 57 percent.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
So will Musk really give up Twitter after shaking up the entire world, and especially the U.S. political and media establishment that has now definitively proven that it opposes the freedom of speech?
He may be joking. He may be planning to step away from day-to-day operations of the platform and leave it to a like-minded person. Or he may be tired of all the abuse and threats, which were only going to increase the longer he pursued his free-speech agenda. If there was any doubt about David Horowitz’s dictum that “inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out,” there isn’t any now. Back in April, Musk tweeted: “By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.” That this was remotely controversial was bad enough in itself. Even worse is that Musk now, after just beginning to restore the freedom of speech on Twitter, faces government investigations, doxing, and worse to come.
Meanwhile, there has been the expected chorus of voices warning us how terrible freedom of speech really is. The Washington Post warned on Nov. 22 that “Musk’s ‘free speech’ agenda dismantles safety work at Twitter, insiders say.” The Post claimed that Musk had brought turmoil to the Twitter offices, and that he “has stoked the culture-war issues that helped inspire him to purchase the company in the first place.” The “Democracy Dies in Darkness” scandal sheet lamented that Musk was “a fierce advocate for the right ‘to speak freely within the bounds of the law,’” and stated that he “has moved rapidly — at times erratically — to undermine a regime built over a decade to define dangerous language on the site and protect vulnerable communities, replacing it with his own more impulsive style of ad hoc decision-making.”
Working from the same tired and totalitarian Leftist talking points, Time Magazine on Dec. 5 echoed the Post in calling Musk “erratic” and likewise warned that this freedom of speech business was dangerous: “Musk’s erratic behavior does not bode well for the future of free speech on social media, as his support for this principle is seen as upholding of racism and conspiracy theories as gospel.” NPR turned to none other than the Mary Poppins of Disinformation, Nina Jankowicz, the disgraced former head of the Biden administration’s aborted censorship mechanism, the Disinformation Governance Board. Jankowicz lamented that Musk was going to allow a “free speech free-for-all,” which would be “eventually silencing marginalized voices.” The would-be Reich Propaganda Minister asserted that this “free speech free-for-all is going to mean less speech for marginalized groups… If we were to remove all the protections that Twitter has, I really worry about the silencing effect that that would have for women and marginalized voices.”
Related: The Left Doesn’t Value Free Speech, and That’s a Problem
Yeah, sure, that’s the ticket. You let people say whatever they want, barring exhortations to violence or criminal activity, and “women and marginalized voices” will be hardest hit. The worst enemies of women in the world today are the Leftists who insist that men can be women and that burly male athletes can declare they’re female and set all manner of new records in female sports, but never mind. Jankowicz’s nonsense about “women and marginalized voices” is just dog-whistling the Leftist lemmings so that they know they need to support the authoritarian agenda she represents.
So is Musk giving up? If so, it will be a tremendous blow to the freedom of speech in the U.S. The other social media giants are still censoring patriotic voices as lustily as they always have. If he really beats a hasty retreat, once again the authoritarians will have won the day and control all the major means of communication. All free people can hope that this poll is just some kind of stunt, and that he has something else up his sleeve.
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