If you think cancel culture is only a radical left thing — think again. In the UK Christians watched in horror and amazement as prayer, silent prayer, wasn’t simply mocked as Democrats have done here, but punished. A woman has been repeatedly arrested for praying silently in the vicinity of an infant sacrifice center. Even after a court threw out the charges and awarded damages, the police arrested her again. Law doesn’t matter to them, only their agenda. Here in the US, leftists mocked people for praying after a shooting tragedy. But in the UK apparently they’re worried it works and they don’t want to spare any child from death by doctor. Ban guns, but not child sacrifice. Don’t talk to anyone about it, not even God.
JD Vance rightfully called out the UK over their new obsession with all forms of censorship, especially social media. But when it comes to something American conservatives care about strongly, they show themselves even more zealous in punishing speech than their Brit counterparts. They removed the mask of pretense as defenders of free speech, first to stop any criticism of Gaza and now conservatives, justifiably angry at the murder of Charlie Kirk are imagining how they can punish those who mock & cheer the murder. Politicians see an opportunity to virtue signal to their base and they’re producing bills that are a repudiation of Charlie’s life’s work. Charlie Kirk spent his life and gave his life supporting free and open debate, tolerating those he disagreed with and inviting them to “Prove Me Wrong”.
But now multiple GOP congressmen are proposing bills to prove Charlie wrong and punish speech they don’t like. The punishments are radical and in violation of 8th Amendments prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment — lifetime social media bans, revoking business licenses, even driving licenses for speech the government doesn’t like. This tactic of using BigTech corporations as their hit men is not new. I’ve been banned for life from YouTube for opposing the “pandemic” lockdowns, mRNA genetic weapons, etc. They won’t even allow me to put up a music channel. I’ve been fired by “alt media” for opposing Stop the Steal and banned by Thiel’s mafia on PayPal & Venmo. This is not an abstraction for me, but everyone should recognize that the Chinese “social credit” system is just a beta test for what the technocracy seeks to establish everywhere for everyone. An idiotic and ignorant suggestion by a young Tik-Toker is being echoed everywhere calling for censorship of the press. She completely misunderstands the Smith-Mundt Act but she wants to call it the “Charlie Kirk Act”. Such is life in the American idiocracy police state. Who knows, she might get a virtue signaling congress critter eager to latch on to Kirk’s immensely popular coattails to actually introduce such nonsense.
Congressman Clay Higgins (R-LA) has declared his intention to introduce a bill that is even more authoritarian and idiotic. He declared in a post on X:
I’m going to use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk. If they ran their mouth with their smartass hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities, armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a Constitution… those profiles must come down.
So, I’m going to lean forward in this fight, demanding that big tech have zero tolerance for violent political hate content, the user to be banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER. I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
I’m starting that today.
Higgins screams that he has “zero tolerance” for content he hates. And wants those he hates “banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER. I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice.” Do you find it as alarming as I do that someone without a shred of respect for free speech, raging like a toddler with a temper tantrum is in a position of power? He’s the one who shouldn’t be trusted with a driver’s license. Imagine the road rage if he sees a bumper sticker that sets him off!
Higgins knows that the Constitution he swore to uphold as a condition of his office says at the very beginning of the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law abridging” free speech, etc. So Higgins will circumvent it and has no problem telling us that he will “lean into” pushing BigTech to censor what he doesn’t like. But even before they were outed with documentary proof, we all knew that censorship was coming from government pressure even though BigTech provided a beard for it. This oath-breaking, reprehensible traitor, Higgins, has rage explained how the technocracy’s social credit system works. He’s proud of it. He sits on the House Armed Services Committee so he presumably can bring pressure on the military industrial complex to do this if any of them have any qualms about it (doubtful).
Charlie Kirk didn’t just fight for free speech against the censorship that has come to dominate our so-called “universities”, he also fought against post-modernism – the idea that there is no such thing as absolute truth and authority. So Rep Higgins’s intended bill opposes BOTH free speech and embraces the leftist post-modern idea of a “living Constitution”, that it is not fixed and literal but malleable (by their whims) and evolving. Rep Higgins is the poster child for what conservatives used to despise – an authoritarian who will use every trick and all his wiles to circumvent the Constitution and the principles upon which America was built. Higgins’ voters should BAN HIM from Congress but that will never happen due to partisan groupthink and gerrymandering.
Unfortunately Higgins seems to be in the mainstream of current GOP party politics. While Charlie Kirk was debating students on campus about Gaza, the Trump administration he was loath to criticize sought to block money from colleges (which they should never have gotten in the first place) if they allowed forbidden speech and deport students who were legally here if they engaged in forbidden speech.
Many of us who said this was just the beginning have now been proven right. Rep Brian Mast (R-FL) has introduced a bill to revoke the passports of American citizens if the government doesn’t like you for whatever reason.
As far as the TikTok-er, Elly May, who pleads (as a 3 time Trump supporter) with Trump to bring back the Smith-Mundt Act. She has no idea what it was about. She begins by focusing on media demanding they be severely punished for not labeling content as opinion but by the end of the video she wants to apply censorship to everyone. It never takes long for authoritarian ideas to metastasize, in this case only about 2 minutes. She says it doesn’t stop at the press but should apply to “content creators who spread lies and half-truths”. Like her? Who gets to be the arbiter of “half-truths”? The Smith-Mundt Act is not what she imagines in her lies and half-truths about it. It was one of many different things created post World War 2 that laid the foundation for the National Security state (like the NSA, CIA and the idea that we should be the world’s policeman). NatSec needed propaganda but they wanted to assure people that like the NSA and CIA, the Voice of America would only be used abroad, only lie to foreigners. They keep making promises with their fingers crossed. When Frank Church’s hearings showed that NSA & CIA were spying on Americans, they promised to stop with the FISA Act and then used it to give them legal cover as they continued. BTW, Tucker Carlson’s dad didn’t just work for VoA, he was the Director. When Obama wanted to remove the formal prohibition against government propagandizing Americans (they were already constantly doing it in myriad ways such as Operation Mockingbird and NPR to name a few), many of us saw a Rubicon being crossed. They no longer felt the need to hide. Elly was likely in grade school when Obama amended it in 2013. She has no idea what it was about. After all who studies history today?
Propaganda is the flip side of censorship. The people promoting censorship, whether Rubio, Trump, GOP congressmen, or a TikTok influencer wannabe, can’t handle the truth. Their propaganda doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Unlike Charlie Kirk’s respectful manner and his respect for debate & free speech, many on the right have now become raging reactionaries, demanding to burn down what characterized both America and Kirk. Rather than conserve free speech and the Constitution, they are more like the radical left Jacobins that he debated at the universities. PROVE ME WRONG.