Free speech: as Brazil goes, so goes … ?
There are growing ominous signs that the leftist governmental forces arrayed against freedom of speech are growing bolder and bolder. Now that the Gramscian march has given them control of the more conventional forms of media, such governments would like to block their citizens from access to other sources of information that could challenge their grip on power.
Prior to the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, it was easier for governments (or, during the time of the Trump administration, anti-Trump government agencies such as the FBI) to muzzle Twitter through a combination of suggestions and threats, as well as deceptions. Now that it’s much more difficult to do, they may resort to outright blocking of the platform – as did Brazil recently.
Brazil has not just banned X (formerly Twitter) from the entire country, but citizens will now be fined $9000 a day (more than the average salary in the country) for using VPNs to access the platform. X is the main source of news for Brazilians, who will now be left with government-approved sources or face financial ruin in seeking unfettered information.
The Guardian is reporting that the confiscatory fines are part of a comprehensive crackdown on efforts to get news through X, including ordering all Apple stores to remove X from new phones.
The move puts Brazil with China in the effort to create a wall of censorship between citizens and unregulated information.
For the anti-free speech movement, Brazil is a key testing ground for where the movement is heading next. European censors are arresting CEOs like Pavel Durov while threatening Elon Musk.
However, it is Brazil that foreshadows the brave new world of censorship where entire nations will block access to sites committed to free speech values or unfettered news. If successful, the Brazilian model is likely to be replicated by other countries.
The current administration in Brazil is leftist.
Here’s some reaction from our own left:
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison responded to the ban with a posting declaring “Obrigado Brasil!” or “Thanks, Brazil!” Ironically, he did so on X.
Ellison previously praised the virulently anti-free speech group Antifa and promised that it would “strike fear in the heart” of Donald Trump.
And this from Kamala Harris is ominous:
This is what she actually believes.
Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and the Democratic Party (Kamala is just a puppet) wants to destroy it. https://t.co/kntGcq2WnK
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 3, 2024
[redacted] 🙂
Dax already wins the award for best comment.
I hated the whole idea of Twitter from the time it first appeared and never even considered signing up for it. But I think I’m about to, just because of the way they’re going after Musk.
Kamala Harris has no more interest in the U.S. Constitution than she does in burial rites of the Tang Dynasty.
It’s hard to find words to express how shocking Harris’s comment is.
Shes the american jacinda ardem
I wondered about this. The clip is from 2019, and Harris is calling for Trump to be thrown off Twitter, which he was. Elon Musk now stands for free speech against all the powers that be, in Brazil, Europe, and especially the USA.
“There are growing ominous signs that the leftist governmental forces arrayed against freedom of speech are growing bolder and bolder.” neo
They sow the seeds of their own destruction. The bolder the repression, the more certain their violent fate. No doubt some among them think they can use state apparatus to repress resistance but what works in South American societies won’t work in America.
Kamala Harris: “He [Musk] has lost his privileges.”
“Can someone please explain to her that freedom of speech is a RIGHT, not a “privilege”? Robert F. Kennedy Jr
There is no basis whatsoever for asserting there to be ‘rights’ absent them having been granted to us by our creator. As absent a creator invested in his creation, all that remains is individual opinion and the coercion of the mob.
Leftists, having rejected the possibility of a creator involved with humanity, are left with nothing but State granted privileges subject to revocation. What apparently Robert Kennedy jr has yet to grasp is that the left doesn’t accept the existence of rights. They believe there are only revocable privileges. Harris was inadvertently blurting out her ‘truth’.
Very well stated, Geoffrey Britain (unfortunately).
I find what your state to be one of the fundamental dividers of many, regarding political thought. Does one believe people are free, truly free; or not? If one thinks about this seriously for more than 5 minutes one is led to the former truism; people are free. Yet few spend time thinking about it.
I am as naturally free as a man my age living in North Korea. The difference in our lives is my North Korean counterpart citizen lives near a despotic man with weapons who has coerced other men and women with weapons to force the will of the despotic man on others.
If you look at the pantheon of nations currently extant you see a variety of “rights” as defined by those who govern them. And those rights are in flux. And a government can collapse and all rights return to the citizens. And, no matter what rights a state proclaims, one crazed person can use force to attempt to eliminate that right from another; speech, liberty; even life. Hamas killing Israeli hostages doesn’t mean those hostages had no right to life. It means their killers are barbarians who want to control others.
All humans have free minds and the right to express their thoughts. The fact that Kamala Harris would attempt to use force to restrict people from exercising that right does not change it from a right to a privilege. It changes her from a free thinking friend of humanity to a despot.
Human rights never change. The fact that Kamala Harris wishes to control Elon Musk and what he says should disgust all freedom loving men and women.
Or, as Geoffrey Britain wrote more succinctly, “… all that remains is individual opinion and the coercion of the mob.”
I have heard a different account of the origin of the American natural right thinking (or ideas), which finally resulted in our founding and framing documents — which documents I understand as actions in themselves as opposed to words merely. That account is by turns rich, complex, human and so “historical” in some sense, yet nonetheless fairly intelligible in its tracery. That account too, so far as I’m aware, does not include or entail any portion of a divine revelation or direct dispensation for its foundation. Thinkers, rather, worked these ideas over multiple centuries of effort into a skein of political thread with which (in the American instance) to build a fabric of government. Here is to hoping that account does not go missing.
Yep, it’s starting to cascade:
– Britain (with Starmer)
– France (with Macron)
– Brazil (with Lula)
– The US? (with “Biden” or “Harris” or whatever “Yes We CAN”didate!!)
– Canada (with Trudeau…if he can get away with it)
Coming soon to a country near you!
But TRUMP! (And Hungary’s Orban!!)