Thursday, December 27, 2018

George Soros; a Leading Point Man in the anti-free speech ‘broad anti-Facebook movement’


Following up on my 12/18/18 post, NJ Star-Ledger Repudiates the First Amendment, Calls for Censorship, the subject New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial Move fast, break things: Facebook living up to its creed had this to say:

[A Republican opposition research firm], known as Definers, also spread lies that depicted Democratic megadonor George Soros - a recurring villain in Republican conspiracy theories - as the leader of a "broad anti-Facebook movement . . . "

I left these comments:

George Soros IS a leading point man in an "anti-Facebook movement"--that is, to get social media under government control. Just read his 2/15/18 Guardian article calling on the EU governments to “break Facebook and Google's dominance.”

“These companies,” Soros asserts, “influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This interferes with the functioning of democracy and the integrity of elections. This would have far-reaching political consequences. People without the freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. This danger does not loom only in the future; it played an important role in the 2016 US presidential election.”

What do we mean by ‘the functioning of democracy” if not for freedom of all participants--billions of average people--to attempt to influence how people vote through persuasion and debate? Not according to Soros, because he doesn’t approve of U.S. election results. So we need government control to restore “freedom of mind!” Voting for Trump or Brexit is “manipulation.” Voting for Hillary or against Brexit is “freedom of mind.” What Soros really hates is freedom of average people’s minds. So now that elections are not to his liking, he wants to bring the power of the government’s guns down upon the private companies whose successful open platforms empowers average people to share ideas and make up their own minds: “It is only a matter of time,” Soros threatens, “before the global dominance of the US internet companies is broken. Regulation and taxation, spearheaded by [EU commissioner for competition Margrethe] Vestager, will be their undoing”—to the advantage of government dominance over our intellectual lives.

Broken. Undone. Get that? Replaced by government dominance. So much for free elections--and free speech.

Related Reading:


'Fake News' Is Not an Excuse to Regulate the Internet—Zach Weissmueller for Reason.com—“Both Democrats and Republicans are missing the mark when they call for the government to control the flow of information on the internet.”



1 comment:

Mike Kevitt said...

Soros is after free speech alright. So is the government, and Soros works thru the government, not on his own, against free speech. Government, of course, works on its own against free speech. But nobody, not even the government, works directly against free speech, nor against any other unalienable individual rights.

They all work against ALL such rights by indirection, so 'nobody can tell'. Use taxation or other indirect means to shut people up. Thus, people HAVEN'T been censored. So, they can't scream censorship. They might only complain about taxation or about other stuff. If they complain about censorship, they have no legal or moral ground to stand on. They can only complain about taxation and other stuff on THEIR OWN moral grounds and, therefore, on their own legal grounds which they, thus, intend to establish. If they succeed, they can blabber all they want without fear. But censorship was never the issue. Nor was freedom of speech.

Censorship and free speech are issues only when government directly and explicitly shuts people up. Only then, according to Ayn Rand, might people legitimately and morally revolt, physically and violently.