I think Jeff Mackler goofed up just a little in the below article. Ted
Cruz is not a Florida senator.
Trump’s “free speech” for billionaires
https://socialistaction.org/2021/02/09/trumps-free-speech-for-billionaires/
February 9, 2021
By Jeff Mackler
The world noticed when two billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack
Dorsey, pushed a button and de-platformed then president Donald Trump
from their social media empires. “After close review of recent Tweets
from the @realDonaldTrump account and the content around them,” Twitter
wrote, “we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of
further incitement of violence.” That was before Trump was impeached by
the House of Representatives for “incitement to insurrection.” Whether
he will be convicted with the required two-thirds vote of the U.S.
Senate remains to be seen. As we go to press a divided and embarrassed
Republican Party appears more concerned with debating whether the Senate
has the “Constitutional” right to convict an ex-President on any charge
than with adjudicating whether Trump incited a mob to violently negate a
presidential election. Such are the exigencies of capitalist parties and
politics, today plagued with internal divisions regarding whether to
pander to the most racist, reactionary elements it encouraged under
Trump’s leadership or to split the party and look elsewhere for support
in the electoral arena. On these matters, we have no advice to offer the
twin parties of war, racism and reaction. Our orientation is to the
working class masses, the only force capable of effectively challenging
the rule of the billionaire elite.
Corporate “free speech” monopoly
With Trump’s ban, eighty million Twitter followers and another 35
million from Facebook had to look elsewhere to follow his daily rants.
But there is no comparable “elsewhere” in this largely monopolized
private-for-profit – not free speech – industry, whose unprecedented
reach covers the globe. With Twitter’s generous algorithm assistance
Trump’s magnified tweets boosted Twitter’s corporate profits big time.
No doubt, Twitter or Facebook accounts that challenge capitalist
politics are accorded the reverse end of the algorithm spectrum, if not
banned outright. The latter is the growing experience of activists
concerned with social justice, antiwar, anti-racist and Palestinian
freedom issues. Many of their websites and/or posts are removed outright.
Kevin Roose’s Jan. 11, 2021 New York Times Interpreter column is
explicit in telling us that in the capitalist world of privately-owned
social media the rich have every right to ban any ideas that counter
their interests. Says Roose, “No serious thinker believes that Twitter
and Facebook, as private companies, are obligated to give any user a
platform, just as no one doubts that a restaurant owner can boot an
unruly diner for causing a scene.” True enough! Under capitalist rule,
the billionaire elite’s privately-owned social media and/or their
government can “legally” boot us out at their discretion, decreeing our
“unruly” views as threats to their “national security” – the same
pretext they employ to justify their Patriot Act surveillance state
wherein the entire population is subjected to their ever prying-spying
devises.
The same exclusion of dissenting views applies to the entire spectrum of
corporate media, from television to radio and print.
Need we add that the capitalist monopoly on “democratic” elections
resides in two “competing” multi-billionaire parties with their
corporate media dominating the discourse?
Socialist vision of free speech
In the society that we seek to establish, an egalitarian socialist
society aimed at the emancipation of humanity from capitalist
exploitation and oppression in all its manifestations, the working class
through its own democratically-chosen representatives will preside over
a nationalized social media complex aimed at social enlightenment and
the free expression of ideas. The democracy that we fight for consists
in the rule of the vast majority – socialism – not the rule of the one
percent! In the meantime, we fight against all manifestations of
corporate and government censorship knowing full well that success is
directly proportional to our power in the streets as opposed to
necessary but subordinate engagement in “legal” battles for free speech
for everyone.
Trump’s worldwide soapbox
Trump’s unimpeded soapbox allowed him to saturate the internet with
endless waves of racist, sexist, anti-LGBTQI hatemongering, war
threatening mendacious fabrications on the subject of his choice while
pillorying his enemies and basking in the adoration of his ever
misinformed followers. He had a direct line to every newsroom in the
country. “Without the tweets,” Trump told the Financial Times in 2017,
“I wouldn’t be here.”
Before the Jan. 6 Trump-encouraged mob attack on the Capitol no Twitter
or Facebook executive seriously challenged his “right” to lie, cheat and
steal, to threaten nations with “obliteration,” to openly advocate and
initiate military coups, threaten nuclear war, orchestrate regime change
wars, officially order assassinations (Qassem Soleimani in Iraq), impose
deadly economic sanctions on 39 nations, order the bombing of Iranian
nuclear research facilities and assassinate Iranian scientists. It was
only when Trump moved to challenge the sanctity of capitalist elections
that the top echelons of the ruling elite pulled the plug.
Manufacturing Consent
Today, free speech applies with full force only to the private corporate
media. They are the Manufacturing Consent purveyors of the Orwellian,
Truman Show/Potemkin Village world of lies, distortions and half truths.
Media magnate multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch (family wealth at $16.9
billion) presides over the News Corp empire that includes The New York
Post, The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal and Fox News.
Murdoch’s “free speech” monopoly allowed him to simultaneously call for
Trump’s impeachment via one outlet and to denounce the 2020 election
results on the other! In sharp contrast social movement activists are
allowed to utter a modicum of ideas to the precious few until the
thought control czars consider that we present a threat to the status
quo. Then the full force of state repression is set into motion, limited
only by our power to resist with mass forces in the streets.
Exposing corporate media censorship
A glimpse of the operational guidelines of today’s print media was
provided by a Jan. 2021 Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) survey
of the major media’s reportage on recent events in Venezuela.
Over a three-month period analyzing some 78 articles (1/15/19–4/15/19)
FAIR found that “Not a single commentator in the Washington Post, New
York Times or on the big three Sunday morning talk shows or PBS
NewsHour… challenged the Trump administration’s coup and sanction
actions aimed at forcing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to step
down.” “Race-baiting, xenophobic bigot” That Trump, the unexpected 2016
presidential winner, is and has been a lying, whacked out, egomaniacal
narcissist is common knowledge among most everyone in the Washington,
D.C. political community. A sampling of assessments from leading
Republicans prior to Trump’s emerging as their 2016 candidate is
instructive. Florida Senator Ted Cruz stated that: Trump is “utterly
amoral,” a “serial philanderer” and “a narcissist at a level that I
don’t think this country has ever seen.” Cruz again: “This man is a
pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and
lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.” South
Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham declared: “He’s a race-baiting,
xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t
represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are
fighting for. … He’s the ISIL [ISIS] man of the year.” And from Florida
Senator Marco Rubio: “We’re on the verge of having someone take over the
conservative movement who is a con artist.” Trump is the most “vulgar
person to ever aspire to the presidency.” Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary
of State, predicted in March 2016 that Trump would become “an
authoritarian president who ignored our Constitution.” But Trump won
and immediately became a tolerable embarrassment to the ruling rich,
which tried without much success to “civilize” their unexpected monster.
But generally, Trump satisfied their overall needs. Their system
remained intact, albeit tarnished. Today, and immediately following
Trump’s 2016 election, most of these same Republican buffoons ape
Trump’s every lying, hate-filled word and deed, each vying for the
post-election loyalty of his “base,” eyeing an easy future ride to fame
and fortune. Capitalism’s “free speech” media monopoly and its $14.3
billion in 2020 election campaign expenditures aim at shifting the blame
for its inherent failings onto society’s most oppressed and exploited,
the Black, Brown and Native American communities, women, immigrants and
LGBTQI people. It’s mind-bending propaganda machine demonized Black
Lives Matter activists as violent property destroyers along with
“socialism,” capitalism’s increasingly less effective red-baiting resort
to discredit all who challenge its minority rule. Building a working
class opposition The corporate media notwithstanding, working people
have their own vehicles to defend and advance their interests, beginning
with their basic solidarity and capacity to unite in building powerful,
democratic organizations that champion their interests in the streets,
at the point of production, in their own communities and in schools and
universities everywhere. In this framework, independent of and against
the corporate parties and their kept media, they are rapidly
discovering, as evidenced last summer by the 20 million Black Lives
Matter protestors and their supporters in 2000 cities across the nation,
countless ways to communicate with their sisters and brothers to
challenge the heavens and bring into being a new society cleansed of the
horrors attendant to a capitalist system in deep decay.
Socialist Action News
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