The Censorship Is Getting Worse

The Censorship Is Getting Worse
Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department, testifies before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government in Washington on Dec. 5, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
Jeffrey A. Tucker
12/7/2023
Updated:
12/10/2023
0:00
Commentary
At a Capitol Hill hearing on Dec. 5, Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) asked the following of President Joe Biden’s assistant attorney general, Kristen Clarke: “Let me just make sure I understand: You are not aware of the Missouri v. Biden litigation [on federal censorship] currently being taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court?”

She answered, “Unfortunately, I’m not.”

This case has been described in federal court as the most important free speech case in U.S. history, following the biggest violations of the First Amendment ever. It’s before the Supreme Court now, and an emergency injunction will be ruled on within a few months. It has been widely covered in the media.

The Biden administration is now on record claiming to have never heard of this case.

This is absolutely astonishing.

We can only hope that she’s lying. If not, we have a very serious problem. It means that the Biden administration is woefully ignorant of a case that will profoundly affect the government’s relationship with technologies we depend on every day. Her response certainly suggests that the Biden administration is doing nothing to prepare.

There is every bit of evidence that the censorship is ongoing and getting worse. Last week, I recorded a podcast over 90 minutes that discussed the pandemic response and the economic fallout. I said nothing incendiary. Others who have listened said the same. There’s nothing that stands out as censorable, other than some very blunt talk about how the lockdowns and vaccine mandates came about, and the effects. That might have been enough.

Yes, the video was posted on X without incident. Were it not for Elon Musk, there would be no social media platform that is free of this government-pushed censorship. That’s how close we are to having an East German-style regime in this country. It’s a terrifying reality.

And as regards my own interviews, YouTube might already have removed a dozen or more of them. It’s routine now. I must be on some list. YouTube is owned by Google, the world’s most powerful tech company by far. This means that I’ve been specifically targeted by a company that might as well be, and probably is, a front for the CIA.

All these venues are captured and controlled: Google, YouTube, Facebook and Meta, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram, Amazon, Microsoft, and most major media organizations.

This is happening right here in the land of the free!

I’ve had a concern ever since Missouri v. Biden was initially filed. One might suppose that if we had the rule of law, the government would adapt to the prospect of its activities being called illegal. That didn’t happen. Then, the injunction came down. Nothing changed. Then, the injunction was affirmed by the appeals court. Nothing changed. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case for the injunction. Still, nothing has changed.

The First Amendment is very clear: The government cannot abridge free speech. And yet it’s happening every day and on every mainstream platform.

How is this possible? Here’s where we get into some interesting speculation.

Sometimes, it seems like we have two federal governments working at cross purposes. The first one is the old one, made of old-style courts and agencies. Let’s call it the legacy government.

The other government is the Biden administration and the new class of bureaucrats that seized control of the government sometime most overtly from March 2020 onward. This is the government of the Great Reset.

The new is working in parallel with the old, sometimes even at cross purposes.

The new government has nothing but disdain for the old Constitution, the American founding, federalist principles, liberty and human rights, and the old values of family, faith, and freedom. All of this is irrelevant to them. What it loves is technology, degrowth, social distance, surveillance, data sharing, “clean” energy, open borders, a disarmed population, and every wackadoodle idea you can think of from “gender-affirming” surgeries to depopulation to universal decolonization, including the surrender of all property rights.

This new government doesn’t really believe in democracy. It pretends to practice it, provided that the process keeps the right people in charge; that is, the administrators of the Great Reset. But mostly, it wants all elections rigged by technology and trickery, so make sure that no elected official threatens its fragile power.

It has its own agencies while ignoring the rest. It has the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was established only in 2018 but now has enough power to divide the workforce on a whim and censor all social media postings. It has a vast network of nonprofits, foundations, and universities, plus kept reporters.

It constitutes a government within a government. Everyone in Washington knows who works for what. The old civil service has been deprecated while the new administrative class is hard at work pulling all the strings. The new class doesn’t need or want a president, which is why it’s perfectly happy with a doddering old fool in the White House and an inarticulate ignoramus for a spokesperson. It’s glad to ignore all the goings-on with public relations and so on, so long as it retains power.

You might say that my theory is overwrought. But think about it, and see if you can find any evidence that contradicts this. I see none. We will find much evidence to support it. The open admission of President Biden’s assistant attorney general that she knows nothing about the free speech case against President Biden is further proof of my point. We have lived through a silent coup.

As for the FBI and CIA, I’m guessing that both groups exist within these agencies. Don’t forget that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that the entire top echelon of the CIA is controlled by people who have no regard for democracy. The same can be said of the FBI. This is why they’re working so hard to erase the memory of the former president and prevent him from coming to power once again.

The No. 1 most important job of a new president is to reverse this coup. The agencies and individuals that participated need to be summarily fired and the agencies completely abolished. We cannot even think of a serious reform toward freedom until this is done. Whomever you favor to win, let this please be a consideration.

If we don’t act fast, the revolution will be permanent. The people will have lost control of the government completely and forever. Censorship will be just the beginning. We’ll go full Chinese Communist Party before you know it. I can think of no greater priority than putting a stop to this now. Otherwise, there will come a time when all the people who remember what freedom feels like will be dead—and the Founding Fathers’ dreams along with them.

Worse yet, we won’t even be able to talk about it.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of "The Best of Ludwig von Mises." He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
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