We Conservatives want the other side to keep talking and talking and talking – and the Left lives to silence their opponents. It is becoming clear that “journalists” are becoming the shock troops for the socialists Cancel Movement, where only the “approved” speech can be uttered.
Coerced Speech leads to Coerced Thought leads to Totalitarianism. Emphasis mine.
Free speech is no longer sacred among young journalists who have absorbed the campus lessons about “hate speech”—defined more and more broadly—and they’re breaking long-standing taboos as they bring “cancel culture” into professional newsrooms. They’re not yet in charge, but many of their editors are reacting like beleaguered college presidents, terrified of seeming insufficiently “woke.” Most professional journalists, young and old, still pay lip service to the First Amendment, and they certainly believe that it protects their work, but they’re increasingly eager for others to be “de-platformed” or “no-platformed,” as today’s censors like to put it—effectively silenced.
These mostly younger progressive journalists lead campaigns to get conservative journalists fired, banned from Twitter, and “de-monetized” on YouTube. They don’t burn books, but they’ve successfully pressured Amazon to stop selling titles that they deem offensive. They encourage advertising boycotts designed to put ideological rivals out of business. They’re loath to report forthrightly on left-wing censorship and violence, even when fellow journalists get attacked. They equate conservatives’ speech with violence and rationalize leftists’ actual violence as . . . speech.
It’s a strange new world for those who remember liberal journalists like Nat Hentoff, the Village Voice writer who stood with the ACLU in defending the free-speech rights of Nazis, Klansmen, and others whose views he deplored—or who recall the days when the Columbia Journalism Review stood as an unswerving advocate for press freedom.
This is but a snippet from a much longer article, Journalists Against Free Speech, at City Journal. As a Free Speech Absolutist, I’m horrified to read what I did there. But then again, there’s a reason why the MSM is held is such low regard – they’re bringing it upon themselves. There are enough alternative media sites on the Right to get some of this leaning out.
Go read it – if you treasure our Right to Free Speech as I do, it is a chilling read.
It won’t be surprising – the Left tried to shut Josh Moore down and tried to shut us down as well. We all know that the major platforms of Twitter and Facebook are not friendly to Conservatives. It is who they are and what they do.
Free Speech – one of the foundational pillars of our Representative Republic. Yet, we see attacks by those who are protected by the Constitution wishing to undermine and destroy that Constitution.
It does give rise to the question, even as the Berlin Wall fell, who really did win the Cold War? Or put another way, why have we let a second instance of a Trojan Horse incident happen again?
(H/T: Instapundit)
