“Twitter is a Private Company. It Can Do What It Wants To.”
Musk’s takeover has revealed the near-totalitarian control the Left had over public discourse
I’ve seen so many hail the arrival of Musk as the “end of democracy” and the “dawn of hate” it’s almost comical. That is, until you begin to put the pieces together. For many months, the Left has used Twitter being a private company to its advantage. Its leadership and workforce were ideological allies, so it was convenient (and easy) to do away with the “public square” argument. You would think — since Twitter is still a private company, but now wants to give its users free speech — all would still be well. But it isn’t.
Musk’s takeover has, almost overnight, laid bare the near-totalitarian hold a single ideology had over public discourse. From the mountain of “stay woke” t-shirts found in Twitter HQ to the deliberate suppression of “counterproductive” speech, the Left had been shaping — and by extension, controlling — how people thought and how they spoke.
In that context, the uproar comes as no surprise. They were having it so good, after all. They couldn’t be challenged. Anyone who dared question the vocal minority would be canceled and lose their jobs — forget unjustifiably being labeled “alt-right” and “bigot.” It was, unquestionably, tyranny of the minority.
As a pushback, the Left seems to be scrambling to find anything to show Musk is in bed with the Far-Right. This, of course, comes in the face of the man saying all he wants Twitter to be is a place of “free speech and civil debate.”
The media wasn’t too far behind either. From amusingly disastrous boycotts to stoking fear, they’ve made no bones about where they stand. That they have no interest in allowing people to converse freely. That this takeover might — just might — expose how they too had been feeding their audiences’ minds with content designed to get them to think the way they wanted them to think.
In that sense, Musk letting Trump back was all they could’ve asked for — more ammunition. You only see the insincerity when you realize that if someone is truly dangerous, the last thing you want is for them to operate in the shadows. Trump on Twitter — where you can see him — is a much lesser threat than Trump on a platform you’re never going to open.
It’s not like this is a new idea, either. They know this. But free speech was never the goal. The very cornerstone of democracy had to be branded as a “threat” to democracy. And the Left was only too happy to let this continue.
They’ve, especially when it comes to Twitter, made every argument under the sun as to how free speech is bad. But they didn’t stop to think about what they themselves were doing. After all, look at the Soviet Union, Maoist China, modern China, Russia, and Libya under Gaddafi. The desire for controlling speech is the same.
Labeling critics of your ideology as “bigots,” “transphobes,” and “Nazis” is tyrannical. It’s totalitarian. True believers in democracy listen with the intent that the other person might know something they don’t. All the Left has done is try and remove that person from the equation altogether. And if one viewpoint — and only one — is allowed to be aired and shared, the result is simple — mass brainwashing.
Perhaps Twitter now will act as an antidote to that. Become a public square where both the Left and the Right are allowed to say what they want to say. And even that statement right there is going to have many Leftists angry. Whether it’s because they’re used to having things go their way or because, more often than not, Conservatives are able to poke holes in their way of thinking, I’m not sure — but it has to change.
And in order for that to happen, a simple premise needs to be accepted: people, generally, are not evil. They are not the “hateful white supremacist transphobes” you think they are. They simply think differently and that is not a crime. Continue to penalize that and you are — in mindset — not much different to the Big Brother Orwell had in mind.
And unless you’ve been completely won over, your mind might be resisting what I’m saying but I bet your gut is telling you something different. It’s easy for ideologies of love and tolerance to devolve into those of hate when its proponents seek to do little else but silence dissent. It makes you hard-hearted, controlling, and authoritarian — characteristics that don’t sit well with those who mean well.
Meaning it’s time to put the “thought police” to rest. Democracy fares better and so do we if it remains in the pages of 1984 and not out in the world. People must be heard, even when we don’t like it. If it shatters our worldview, then it shatters our worldview — an outcome that’s still better than knowing you never allowed the other side to speak up in the first place.