Musk Takeover Bid Terrifies the Pro-Censorship Blue Checks

O n the news of “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk’s hostile takeover bid of Twitter, the Washington Post’s Max Boot took to social media, along with many others, to claim that the threat of unregulated speech undermines “democracy”:

First of all, who is “we”? There is no grand “we” in a pluralistic open society engaged in debate. He wants content moderation. And maybe the inability, or refusal, to comprehend this obvious fact is the root philosophical problem with all those who say they are “frightened” by unmoderated political speech. If “democracy” meant small-l liberalism, then Boot would be defending free expression, as a neutral value, not just a principle upheld by law. But these days, “democracy” often amounts to little more than majoritarian bullying. And “content moderation” is little more than an effort to control political discourse.

For those like Boot, democracy’s future is always hanging in the balance; it depends on shutting down dissent, or holding on to unilateral one-party rule, or ensuring an ideological monopoly over major cultural institutions. For democracy to survive, Democrats must federalize elections, Democrats are the only ones allowed to gerrymander, and elected Republicans must be stopped from implementing curricula in schools. For democracy to survive, we must squash any deviation from the dominant view.

“Orwellian” is such an overused term, but what word better sums up the “democracy” defender’s view of speech? In an unpublished introduction to his greatest work, Animal Farm, Orwell argued that the oppressive cultural environment that inhibits discourse is just corrosive to freedom as state censorship. “The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech,” he wrote, is self-censorship, not because people are “frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion.”

The progressives who are having a tantrum over Musk’s bid (and I’m skeptical much will change on social media, since it’s run and staffed by the same kinds of people, no matter who owns it) aren’t primarily anxious about the potential uptick in violent threats or doxing. They are “frightened” of stories that undercut their power. Boot, for instance, claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop story, obviously a threat to the Biden family and Democrats and therefore widely censored by private industry, was “quite possibly part of a Russian disinformation campaign.” One Rolling Stone writer said today that Musk “seems intent on turning the social media platform into a cesspool of hate speech, misinformation, and abuse.” But progressives act as if virtually all dissent from their positions is tantamount to hate speech and misinformation. It’s a neat trick.

Boot’s comment that we need more content moderation also reminds me of Robert Reich’s recent insane claim that “the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth” is unregulated speech on the Internet. Indeed, Musk is like Putin, according to Reich, because he has “tweeted reckless things” and is openly “contemptuous of the SEC,” if you can imagine such horrors. Or take the incomparably preposterous Jeff Jarvis, who tweeted today, referring to Musk’s move, “It feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany.”

Reich and Jarvis are, of course, correct that many authoritarians roam our digital spaces. They themselves just happen to be two of them. Yet even their right to speech should be defended — while mocked, debunked, ignored, and debated. Twitter allows users to curate their experiences. Boot, who doesn’t like debating his critics, blocks me and many others, for instance. That’s his right. The problem is he wants a way to limit other users’ experiences as well.

Axios says that Musk is “increasingly behaving like a movie supervillain.” An accusation you probably won’t hear leveled at billionaire Carlos Slim, the New York Times’ largest shareholder, or Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post.

If Musk takes over Twitter, and you never know how a hostile bid will work out, the Left’s cherished belief in the right of privately owned social-media companies to make their own decisions regarding speech, a position I agree with no matter who runs the company, will quickly dissipate, as it has in every other economic sector. Those who believe it’s okay to compel Americans to buy state-mandated insurance, who want to dictate how corporations compensate their employees, who want to tell you what energy you must use or what car you can drive, who want to force nuns to buy abortifacients, are not, it goes without saying, reliable champions of property rights.

Until now, society’s most powerful information gatekeepers have either allied themselves with progressives or been cowed into submission. Now that a single billionaire, a man whose main business is building electric cars to help mitigate climate change, has decided to enter the fray and create a platform that honors erstwhile liberal ideals about speech, democracy is again teetering on the precipice.