The Tentacles of the Social Media Octopus By Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness
The sharper wits of Silicon Valley know that if the public sees their products as toxic extensions of left-wing groupthink, the majority of Americans will shun them.
shared theme in all dystopian explorations of future and current totalitarian regimes—whether China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Cuba—is government control of all media information, fueled by electronic surveillance.
A skeptical public learns to say one thing publicly but quite another privately. It nervously nods yes at the news while at work, but at home cynically assumes the opposite of whatever is publicly said to be true.
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Such electronic propaganda has sadly become characteristic of the world’s oldest consensual government.
In America we once believed our First Amendment prevented a government monopoly on information. But in the age of globalization, the Internet, and social media, the state has become the enemy—not the protector—of free speech.
One obvious sign is that the Biden Administration keeps trying to create new sorts of ministries of truth or “Disinformation Governance Boards.” It alleges such Orwellian censors must combat “disinformation” and “misinformation.” In fact, these bureaucracies are designed to criminalize unwanted free expression while also advancing state propaganda.
Among our Washington officials, the following myths were once declared the official version of the “truth”:
- Mounted border patrol agents “whipped” innocent illegal aliens.
- Officer Brian Sicknick was violently “killed” by Trump protestors.
- An “armed” insurrection sought to stage a pre-planned coup on January 6 designed to overthrow the government by violent means.
- Christopher Steele’s dossier was a factual, well-researched compilation.
- Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a serial sexual assaulter.
- Jussie Smollett in Chicago’s wee hours valiantly fought off white, racist MAGA-hatted thugs.
- Hunter Biden’s laptop was abject Russian disinformation.
- And Joe Biden does not suffer from serious cognitive issues.
What is unique about these lies is not that the government and its media partners advanced them, but that to this day, some continue to disseminate such untruths in spite of widespread and publicly available information discrediting them.
California Governor Gavin Newsom just signed into law a bill criminalizing the work of doctors who express public doubts about medical orthodoxy. Specifically, the law warns that so-called dissident opinion is synonymous with “misinformation.” It is now a crime for doctors to spread “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”
