The buzz spreading across our nation today portrays President Joe Biden as the puppet master of a censorship empire. Built on federal agencies, this regime has reportedly influenced major technological platforms to suppress dissident voices. The First Amendment, the cornerstone of this argument, was established expressly to protect an individual’s right to challenge government actions. Yet, the Biden administration has seemingly turned it on its head by suggesting a sovereign right to stifle public opinion.
Soon, we’ll witness the Supreme Court’s verdict on Murthy v. Missouri. This lawsuit has been brought forth by the attorney generals of Missouri and Louisiana to fight back against possible Biden-led collusion between the federal government and technology conglomerates to censor American citizens. Creation of task forces within the Department of Homeland Security, State, Justice, Defense, Health & Human Services, Science Foundation, and the Treasury reveal a vast, intricate network purposed toward this end.
Case in point, the DHS’s National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin released this year citing “false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19” as terrorism risks. Then, a now-dismantled Disinformation Governance Board was set up to allegedly combat foreign influence. Yet, it endorsed censoring Americans for speaking up, and even used tax dollars to fuel this anti-free speech initiative.
Similarly, the Department of State and its Global Engagement Center have been implicated in concerted efforts to censor social media content, especially that regarding foreign influence affairs. The question arises of who truly determines the nature of these ‘foreign influence campaigns’.
The Department of Justice, through the FBI, has been accused of maintaining a dubious relationship with Twitter, prompting content regulation on the platform. Moreover, they also convinced companies like Facebook and Twitter to muzzle reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, impacting public knowledge and potentially influencing voter behavior.
While the Department of Defense collaborates with NewsGuard to evaluate reliability scores for various media sources, the Department of Health & Human Services is entangled with litigation over censoring Americans. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, along with the CDC, has been charged with pushing social media platforms to curtail content they dubbed ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’.
Even the National Science Foundation joined the censorship bandwagon, with millions in grants allocated to entities developing AI tools to counter ‘mis- and disinformation’. Lastly, the Department of the Treasury roped in financial institutions to snoop into Americans’ financial data, further infringing on privacy rights.
What does this reveal? An expansive, coordinated effort to censor dissent is at play. It’s time we express outrage toward this flippant use of tax dollars to suppress free speech. Speak to your representatives, hold Big Tech accountable, and fight back to preserve our Nation’s First Amendment rights. We must champion transparency, demand clear definitions for ‘hate speech’, and push for conservative voices to receive equal footing.
