U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (D-CA) said Sunday, May 2, that the “powerful alliance” between the U.S. left and “giant technology companies” has threatened free speech and the free market principles of “competition and innovation” in the United States. innovation” free market principles. It’s time for people to break away from the leftist social media,” he said.
Hawley made the remarks Sunday during an interview on “Life, Liberty & Levin. Host Mark Levin also said that Big Tech is “very concerned about people who don’t agree with the establishment or don’t agree with the Democratic Party.
For example, if you make a comment that disagrees with Dr. (Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser), you’re likely to get points off,” Levin said. Even if you’re an expert at Stanford, an expert at Oxford, an expert at Yale or Johns Hopkins, you’re likely to pay the price as long as your views don’t match the views of the federal bureaucracy’s government statements.”
Levin went on to dismiss those who help review published articles for alleged misinformation as “third parties,” “hacks,” and “not real people.”
“So we have this huge censorship machine going on,” Levin said, “and then you have Parler (a social media outlet that allows conservatives to have a voice), you try to start your own platform, and they all unite, they all get together, it’s like they’re all calling each other And then …… They (big tech companies) cut them off …… They (Big Tech) take them off their store. They (Big Tech) take them off their platform …… It’s anti-American.”
Hawley agreed, responding, “It’s anti-American. It’s anti-free speech. It’s anti-First Amendment. …… And there’s nothing wrong with that, the left is cheering for them [Big Tech].”
Hawley added, “You sometimes hear Democrats talk about these companies – they like the power that these companies have. They like that. They like the power that Facebook and Twitter have, over speech, and they want them to do more of it.” “The left wants more censorship from Facebook. They want more censorship from Twitter. They want more censorship from Google. So there’s a powerful alliance between the left in this country and these giant corporations.”
Hawley’s forthcoming book, The Tyranny of Big Tech, also exposes that “the left can achieve through these companies what they could never achieve through the government. Because if it were the government explicitly trying to censor us and tell us what we can say, then the First Amendment would actually block it for us …… However, when the left uses these giant monopolies to do that, then it works just fine.”
“That’s why they go out and say, ‘Oh, the First Amendment doesn’t apply to Facebook,’ ‘The First Amendment doesn’t apply to Google, so censor it,’ and they want to combine the power of the government with the power of these companies . And that’s dangerous for free speech.”
Hawley’s book, which is expected to hit newsstands May 4, was initially slated to be published by Simon & Schuster. But the company dropped Hawley as a client after the Jan. 6 incident at the Capitol and after Hawley and other Republicans objected to certifying Electoral College votes in certain battleground states in the 2020 presidential election.
Hawley explained, “I think it was the petition drive that started on Twitter – certainly amplified by Twitter – that led corporate publishers to say we should back off.” “It’s a book that the corporate left doesn’t want anyone to read, and with good reason.” “It’s all about how big tech and big corporations are working hand-in-hand with big government to try to run our country, to silence our speech, and to take over our government. And we have to stop them from doing that.”
Hawley argued that big tech companies are “interfering big time” in the 2020 presidential election. He cited Twitter and Facebook for limiting the spread of reports about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and suspending the accounts of reporters and the New York Post when they tried to share those stories.
Hawley warned, “If the American people can’t decide what we want to read and what we don’t want to read, if we can’t decide what kind of news we want to read, if we can’t talk about it together, if I’m not allowed to share what I want to share …… How will our democracy exist if there are censors who can effectively shut me down when I express a contrary view?”
He concluded, “What I’m saying is that it’s time for us to take back control of our own social communications from these companies. People actually spend less time on platforms and as much of our lives as possible using actual relationships, good old-fashioned face-to-face meetings, phone calls, texting”, Holly said, “We need to move away from platforms so they don’t control every aspect of our lives.”
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