Now they tell us, “Censorship is free speech!”

Whatever Happened to.   .   .?

 

Tucker Carlson called Barack Obama “a sinister figure” (4.11.22 broadcast). This was after Obama said, to an Atlantic Magazine forum,

If you are a, a, uh woman. If you are a person of color. If you are now a trans person right now in certain parts of this country, what’s said matters. Uh and what you now have is, is these product designs that are .  .  . in a non-transparent way that we don’t have much insight to uh, um a series of editorial choices are essentially being made that uh undermine our democracy, and oftentimes when combined with any kind of ethnonationalism or misogyny or racism can be fatal.

Translated, Obama means, “Say something leaders find offensive to women, non-whites, or LGBT, and we shut down — in the name of democracy — your speech.” Simplified further, “Censorship is free speech.”

Obama fleshed out his "democracy through censorship" theme last Thursday, in an address at Stanford. He cited a recent study that paid regular FOX News watchers to watch CNN instead for a month:  

These were not swing voters, [but] hardcore Hannity-Carlson fans. [By] the end of the month, people's views on certain issues, like whether voting by mail should be allowed or whether electing Joe Biden would lead to more violence against police .   .   .  their views had changed by 5, 8, 10 points. [A]t the margins, they had reshaped their perspectives in meaningful ways.

Looking at Obama’s address, Washington Examiner’s Byron York said the ex-president was telling his Silicon Valley social media audience they could similarly take a share of FOX viewers, “play the role of the good guys, CNN,” and convert “the bad guys, FOX News.” They could, in other words, “play the role of Democrats in changing the views of Republicans.”
 

Or maybe, York suggested, “that is precisely what social media companies are already trying to do — well, perhaps they could do even more.”

To Obama, "Now is the time to pick a side. Do we allow our democracy to wither, or do we make it better? That is the choice we face."

In their view, “For democracy to survive, it needs less Republicanism (more censorship)!” 

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