On May 14 Elizabeth Renzetti wrote an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail on the “problem with social media.” Citing its abuse to propagate lies which might even turn an election, she focuses on Trump’s insistence that the 2020 election had been stolen from him which no doubt had much to do with the events of Jan. 6. She does not, of course, mention that Hillary stated repeatedly that she was robbed in 2016 and that the violence in the streets of Washington on the day of Trump’s inauguration was at least partially her responsibility. Ought Hillary to have been banished from Twitter as was Donald Trump?
The Left is engaged in a concerted effort, both in Canada and the States, to censor online speech it deems to be duplicitous if not hateful. It seems to me there is a demonstrable difference between ideas and opinions one may find obnoxious due to one’s political biases, and those which ought in fact to be censored if not submitted to criminal prosecution. It is one thing to criticize the barbaric regimes of various Islamic nations and another to promote violence against perfectly innocent Muslims. But the irrational Left consistently conflates rational critiques with utterly unconscionable invocations to violence. Absurdly, the 2019 murder of more than 50 innocent Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, led to an article in Canada’s Globe and Mail which suggested that Ezra Levant’s Rebel News Network was at least partially responsible inasmuch as it was a constant critic of radical Islam. Such is the laughable “logic” that informs many of the censorship efforts coming from the Left, “logic” that is in fact rife with political bias. Such is the logic behind Renzetti’s article.
Most are familiar with Elon Musk’s controversial attempt to purchase Twitter whose free speech policies he has found troubling at times. Clearly an advocate of online censorship, Renzetti spends much of her article mocking Musk’s simple-minded, “frat-boy” approach to the issue, her disdain culminating in the following: “Mr. Musk doesn’t even seem to understand the platform he wants to buy: He thinks it skews to the left politically, while Twitter’s own analytics show that it amplifies more right-wing content.”
This statement is nonsense. In citing the left-wing bias of Twitter, Musk is clearly referring to the ideology of those who run the company rather than to its content. Moreover if Twitter and other online platforms are dominated by “conservative” views, it is because those views have no access whatsoever to 90% of the mainstream media. While Renzetti implies the arguments to Free Speech coming from the Right are a threat to the Democratic process, the online censorship she promotes would spell the very end of that process, opponents to the “liberal” status quo left with little voice whatsoever. That, of course, is the ultimate goal of ideologues such as Renzetti, those who comically, sadly, see their point of view as the only one worth defending. And so while she is perfectly happy with the cancellation of Donald Trump’s Twitter account, she would no doubt be appalled at the suggestion that CNN, MSNBC, etc., etc., ought to be held criminally responsible for ignoring the Hunter Biden scandal which very well might have turned the 2020 election in Trump’s favor. In 2021 Project Veritas produced video evidence of CNN staffer Charlie Chester bragging that his network’s anti-Trump propaganda had in fact led to his defeat. Was this gross abuse of its platform not the very sort of “conspiracy” the Left loves to cite as evidence of the need to censor right-wing speech?
Such is the bias that pervades our culture. Such is the bias of two articles I have before me written by “academics” who brazenly misrepresent both the meaning of Postmodernism and the values of the European Enlightenment in support of their devotion to “inclusiveness.” Their duplicity is appalling and no doubt indiscernible to those who didn’t spend eight years in university studying the history of Western Civilization. But I did and can’t help but wonder if they ought to be cancelled for publishing their brazen lies, or if in fact free and open discussion is integral to the progress of our world. The two geniuses in question will be the subject of my next blog.