Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer warned that a gag crackdown on President Trump by Twitter and other tech giants is counterproductive because history shows that it only fuels conflict.
It’s a slippery slope that leads us all to a worse place,” Fleischer said on Fox News’ “Bill Hemmer Reports” on Monday (Jan. 11). Censorship doesn’t remove people’s minds, it creates a dangerous underworld. That’s what we’re seeing, and it’s not going to end well.”
Host Bill Hemmer mentioned that radio host Rush Limbaugh told listeners that day that “we,” meaning conservatives and the conservative movement, were being “censored out of existence.
“This is going to end badly,” Fleischer commented, “with more anger and finger-pointing. If you have a party that does that, if you realize that the only way you can communicate is to lash out, then you will lash out.”
He further noted that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris personally called on Twitter to ban Trump from using the platform last year.
“Twitter made a mistake. That’s what Kamala called for on the campaign trail, isn’t it?” She urged Twitter to block the president,” he said. Now, with a Biden-Herakinli administration about to take office, Twitter is doing what they want. This doesn’t look good and it ends worse.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also stressed in his Voice of America speech Monday that the media should report real news and not censor speech and suppress free speech as big tech companies like Twitter and Apple do, because such practices are contrary to what the United States was founded on and what it promotes around the world.
The big tech companies involved in censoring conservative speech have experienced some immediate and “counterproductive” consequences in the past few days.
As Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller tweeted Sunday, “75 million Americans voted for President Trump. Other than their votes, their pockets are the most powerful means of communication. We don’t have to spend money on any company that participates in the culture of elimination. Corporate America is about to learn this the hard way.”
On Monday, Facebook and Twitter, which blocked Trump and conservative rhetoric, fell heavily by 4 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively, while Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix and other index stocks also fell more than 2 percent.
Twitter shares have fallen back about 13% from their peak in December last year, and Facebook and Amazon have also fallen back about 15% and 12% from their peak in September last year.
In addition to domestic discontent in the United States, the behavior of technology giants have also been criticized by dignitaries in other countries.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, through her spokeswoman Steffen Seibert, said it was “problematic” for the management of social media platforms to interfere with the fundamental right to freedom of expression by permanently blocking the accounts of the U.S. president.
According to RFI, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was shocked by Twitter’s actions and said “the digital oligarchy is one of the threats hanging over all countries and democracies.
AFP 11 reported that French politicians from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left “Unbowed France”, to Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right “Union Nationale”, have criticized the technology oligarchy for controlling public discourse.
Mélenchon said, “Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon cannot be allowed to use Trump’s actions as an excuse to arrogate to themselves the power to control public debate.” Le Pen, on the other hand, said it was “a power grab for democracy by a large private corporation.
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