{"id":35591,"date":"2020-11-09T09:31:48","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T13:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=35591"},"modified":"2020-11-09T09:31:48","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T13:31:48","slug":"the-censoring-of-the-potus-is-completely-unprecedented-whos-behind-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=35591","title":{"rendered":"The censoring of the POTUS is completely unprecedented—Who’s behind it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Censoring Donald Trump Is More “Dangerous To Democracy” Than Anything He Could Ever Say<\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

Oligarchs and social media giants are now claiming a monopoly on \u201cthe truth\u201d, that should worry everyone<\/h3>\n

Kit Knightly
\nOff-Guardian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The media have called the election for Biden, but the counting goes on and there is a legal case in the offing. But whoever emerges from this deluge of sludge, fraud and propaganda to become president of the United States, there has undoubtedly already been one big loser \u2013 freedom of speech.<\/p>\n

Late on Tuesday night\/early Wednesday morning, Donald Trump \u2013 the elected President of the United States \u2013 emerged from the White House to make a speech.<\/p>\n

He accused the Democratic party, the political establishment, the media and tech giants\/social media companies of working together to steal the election and put Biden in the Whitehouse.<\/p>\n

You likely didn\u2019t see all of it, because most of the mainstream news channels simply refused to broadcast it.<\/p>\n

Earlier that night, MSNBC had\u00a0cut away from Trump\u2019s first speech<\/a>\u00a0claiming victory, with anchor Brian Williams claiming it was \u201cnot rooted in reality\u201d and \u201cdangerous\u201d.<\/p>\n

Social media companies were doing the same thing. Within hours of it being set up Facebook\u00a0deleted a group protesting the election result<\/a>, while twitter reduced the President\u2019s timeline to this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t about defending Donald Trump, or even agreeing that the election was rigged (although there is plenty of evidence to suspect as much). This is about a principle. Donald Trump is the elected head of state, and he is being denied a platform to address the people he represents by the faceless servants of corporate media oligarchs.<\/p>\n

This is a terrible, terrifyingly awful precedent to set.<\/p>\n

The owners of Comcast or Warner Bros or Disney or Facebook or Twitter are\u00a0not<\/strong>\u00a0elected officials. They have\u00a0no legal authority<\/em>, and thus\u00a0no accountability<\/em>. Yet they are claiming the right to determine what elected officials can and cannot say to the people who elected them.<\/p>\n

There is a strain of thought that this kind of censorship is justified.\u00a0\u201cSpreading disinformation puts lives at risk\u201d<\/em>, they say.\u00a0\u201cIf the media stopped people lying we wouldn\u2019t be in this mess\u201d<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0\u201cthe news should only broadcast the truth!\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The argument goes that\u00a0\u201callowing Donald Trump to \u201cpublicly undermine our democratic institutions will erode the public trust and could lead to violence.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

But I would argue that empowering billionaires to hold a monopoly on \u201cthe truth\u201d is far more dangerous to democracy than anything Trump could ever say.<\/p>\n

To people inclined to disagree, I leave these five questions. Answer them, if you can:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Who made the decision to censor the elected President of the United States?<\/li>\n
  2. Who granted them this power?<\/li>\n
  3. Whose interests do they serve?<\/li>\n
  4. To whom are they accountable?<\/li>\n
  5. In the future, who gets to decide \u201cthe truth\u201d?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    ___
    \n    https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2020\/11\/08\/censoring-donald-trump-is-more-dangerous-to-democracy-than-anything-he-could-ever-say\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Censoring Donald Trump Is More “Dangerous To Democracy” Than Anything He Could Ever Say<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}