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Why is the left freaked out about Elon Musk buying Twitter for $44 billion? Because it hates free speech

Here’s what you need to know about the biggest push-back ever against Big Tech censorship

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks in a "fireside chat" at the National League of Cities (NLC) 2018 City Summit in Los Angeles, California, Nov. 8, 2018. (Photo: Reuters/Kyle Grillot)

From the origins of COVID and the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, to allegations of fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, to issues of gender identity, many contentious issues have torn apart the United States and the world over the past several years.

All these are important issues, and they deserve open discussion and debate. Yet many politicians, establishment elites and Silicon Valley oligarchs believe you should trust them to provide you with the truth on these matters, and have taken it upon themselves to decide which views are too dangerous to be heard.

Elon Musk, however, is a notable exception. Musk is a tech billionaire who calls himself a “free speech absolutist.” Musk believes that tech platforms should abide by the principles of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and has acted upon this belief in his recent $44 billion purchase of Twitter. 

While many view Musk’s acquisition as a welcome relief from Big Tech censorship, many others are terrified.

Why do so many establishment elites view Musk’s purchase as such a threat? It is because our ruling class is obsessed with maintaining control of publicly accepted narratives.

This establishment concern with narrative control has always existed, of course, as societies have always been united by common stories. There have always been orthodoxies, and there have always been heresies.

The modern world, however, has become less and less rooted in objective truth. Many are now influenced more by the information they receive through legacy media outlets and social media platforms than by the eternal, biblical truths upon which much of Western civilization was founded. 

Those who operate the media have taken advantage of this, establishing a kind of political mythology through a selective and manipulated depiction of world events. The public is then told what to think about these events, and how to respond. This is what Sovereign Nations’ Michael O’Fallon calls “fertile fallacies” – media-orchestrated false narratives, wrapped around kernels of truth, which are pushed in order to achieve strategic societal objectives.

A world increasingly disconnected from objective truth is ripe for manipulation. Knowing this, the ruling class has actively promoted subjectivist philosophical movements, and constructed a unified communications apparatus through which they disseminate their own orthodoxy. 

This reality is made clear in the censorious actions of Twitter and other Big Tech platforms. Rather than allowing open discussion of critical issues, they have actively silenced particular voices, stories and beliefs.

The most prominent example of this overstep was Twitter’s banning of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump. While Twitter and other platforms used the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to justify a temporary ban, the wider political strategy was made clear when the ban became permanent.

Trump was not the first politically motivated ban, nor the last. Dr. Robert Malone, a key inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, was banned for what Twitter called “COVID-19 misinformation.” Malone had become a prominent and outspoken opponent of lockdowns and COVID-related mandates, and was banned a day before appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience, the world’s most popular podcast.

Long before Trump and Malone, InfoWars host Alex Jones was banned by Youtube, Spotify, Apple and Facebook in a single day in 2018, and banned from Twitter just a month later. At the time, Jones warned that this set a dangerous precedent for free speech, and would eventually lead to the censoring of other, more mainstream conservatives. This warning was echoed by several conservative voices at the time, including by those who disagreed with many of Jones’ views, such as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and political commentator Ben Shapiro

It is now clear – all free speech advocates should have heeded this warning.

Beyond its banning of high-profile people, Twitter has repeatedly censored stories – many of which were later proven to be accurate – because they challenged establishment narratives. This included censorship of The New York Post’s scoop on Hunter Biden’s laptop, posts about the COVID vaccines’ failure to prevent the spread of the virus, and information about the reality of the gain-of-function coronavirus research (funded by Anthony Fauci) that went on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Many stories like these were censored in the name of protecting the public from “misinformation,” “extremism,” “conspiracy theories” and “hate speech.”

The reality, however, was that Twitter had kept the public from the truth.

But despite all of this unjustified social media censorship, Musk’s apparent tipping point was when Twitter suspended The Babylon Bee – a Christian satire site. The Babylon Bee’s Twitter account was suspended after satirically declaring U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine (a man who self-identifies as a woman) its first annual Man of the Year, following the USA Today’s naming of Levine as one of its “Women of the Year.” 

It is evident from these examples that the establishment views narrative control as essential to the future they seek, and those who run Twitter have thus far been happy to enforce this narrative control. It is no surprise, then, that the establishment is scared that such an important public platform as Twitter is now in the hands of a “free speech absolutist,” and will no longer be run by those dedicated to maintaining the power of the establishment through censorship.

Nor is it surprising that the Biden administration announced the creation of a “Disinformation Governance Board” at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, just days after Musk’s Twitter deal.

For those of us who seek objective truth, however, Musk’s purchase has come as a breath of fresh air. While Christians are not “free speech absolutists” – God Himself has set certain limits on our speech – Twitter’s rampant censorship threatens the discovery of truth, and should be opposed. 

Furthermore, it contradicts the values upon which America was founded. As Musk stated after reaching a deal with Twitter, “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy.” 

Should Musk stay true to his word, his purchase of Twitter will prove a positive step toward restoring this bedrock principle.

ALL ISRAEL NEWS is committed to fair and balanced coverage and analysis, and honored to publish a wide-range of opinions. That said, views expressed by guest columnists may not necessarily reflect the views of our staff.

Jacob Leonard Rosenberg is an American-Israeli, an Evangelical Christian and the son of the founder of ALL ISRAEL NEWS. He writes about the intersection of science, technology, individual liberty and religious freedom.

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