Liberals Drive State Censorship – OpEd

Liberals are the force behind censorship efforts. They defend the state and seek to silence anyone who questions its narratives.

Twice in the month of April Barack Obama spoke about “disinformation.” First at the University of Chicago and then at Stanford University he claimed that democracy is at risk because of social media. Democracy is certainly at risk but not because of anyone’s tweets. His words were really meant to frighten Americans into accepting censorship should anyone dare to present a narrative that differs from the state’s. Of course, that isn’t what Obama said. He spoke of Trump’s claims of election fraud and racist posts and all sorts of things that liberals would support. But neither Trump nor anyone else on the right was his target. The left are his targets and the need to silence the public about Ukraine was the reason for his renewed efforts to address an issue concocted by the democratic establishment.

Less than one week after the Stanford speech the Department of Homeland Security announced the establishment of a Disinformation Governance Board. (They needed Obama to lay the groundwork with his disinformation tour.) Of course only conservatives and those who are truly on the left saw the danger in what some called a Ministry of Truth, as described in George Orwell’s 1984.

While republicans deemed lesser lights and the butt of liberal jokes such as Representative Lauren Boebert spoke out against the very problematic entity, liberals said nothing at all.

Bernie Sanders, House members known as “the Squad” and others thought of as progressives or leftists were silent. While democrats go along with and defend every Biden administration policy, republican members of congress held a press conference to share their concerns. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other republicans are seeking to defund the Board. “The President’s Ministry of Truth is just an un-American abuse of power, which is a scheme conjured up by Washington Democrats to grant themselves the authority to control free speech.” Of course abuses of power are very American but McCarthy’s assessment of what Biden and the democrats want to do is correct.

Fortunately there was enough pushback that the Biden administration felt the need to create a Fact Sheet in order to quell doubts about the dubious endeavor. “The working group does not have any operational authority or capability.” In other words, it is unneeded. Or rather it is needed to discredit anyone who dares to oppose state narratives, especially now when the Ukraine crisis needs a constant supply of public buy-in.

Yet the question must be asked about liberals’ silence. There was a time when they would be the first to oppose governmental overreach, including any efforts to control public discourse or to even give an appearance of limiting what was deemed acceptable to speak and to write.

But liberals are joined at the hip with the democratic party and that means they are the worst purveyors of misinformation and the group most interested in censorship. The Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post represents the democratic wing of the duopoly, and presented the Propaganda or Not hit list after the 2016 Donald Trump political earthquake. The fear that Trump might actually do what working people wanted was the cause of their fear and the need to label him and anyone who rejected the establishment agenda as a Russian bot, Putin puppet, or useful idiot.

Now Ukraine is the focus of their fervor. The Biden administration needs to misdirect attention from its instigation of the crisis. They want the public to accept every claim without question and believe that Vladimir Putin is evil, that the Ukrainian military can defeat the bigger, better equipped, and better staffed Russian army, and keep silent when $40 billion is spent on the effort. They don’t want the public to question why their needs are deemed to be too expensive while Ukraine is turned into a forever war and cash cow for the military industrial complex. Biden is forced to create a stupid expression such as, “Putin’s price hikes” to explain sanctions that can’t hurt Russia but also hurt Americans too.

Liberals are the heart of the establishment. The prestigious schools, think tanks, and high positions in corporate media are populated largely by democrats. It is democrats who have the power to declare certain thoughts unthinkable and make sure that inconvenient narratives do not see the light of day.

It is liberals who are most closely allied with the state and who most vigorously defend it. They are silent about a Disinformation Governance Board, and also went along completely with the plan to steal $40 billion in public money and send it to Ukraine, or rather to defense contractors and Ukrainian oligarchs.

Sneer at Lauren Boebert if you like. Her reasons for opposing censorship are not those of the left but she doesn’t go along with wholesale war propaganda either. In that regard she has more to say for herself than Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. The people making fun of Boebert would be far more effective if they made demands of fake heroes in the liberal class. Of course if they did that they wouldn’t be liberals any more. They just might have become true leftists.