The Trumpification of Elon Musk

[berryberry]

The relentless attacks on Elon Musk since he purchased Twitter should be familiar to most Americans. It’s exactly what Democrats and their media and corporate allies did to demonize Donald Trump.

The McCarthyite formula is simple: Claim you are defending high-minded principles (Democracy! The rule of law! Civil discourse!) to justify efforts to delegitimize someone you’ve identified as a political opponent.

Democrats denied Trump’s presidency from day one; Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden themselves declared for years that he had stolen the 2016 election. In the name of election integrity, Democrats turned a bogus conspiracy theory cooked up by Clinton’s campaign about Russian collusion into years of official investigations that undermined and tainted Trump. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller proved that a lie, Democrats immediately seized on a few innocuous sentences in a Trump phone call with a foreign leader to launch just the third presidential impeachment in U.S. history.

Those events are well-known, but ponder them for a moment. This was a soft coup, a nonviolent version of Jan. 6 that was far more dangerous than the Capitol riot. The effort to remove a lawfully elected president was planned and orchestrated by officials at the highest level of government and the media. While Jan. 6 was a one-off eruption of crazed anger, the false attacks on Trump edged our political discourse toward Orwellian Newspeak by presenting lies and smears as ringing defenses of sacred constitutional values.

The ongoing attacks against Musk are following the same playbook. The man once hailed by liberals as a genius for developing electric vehicles is now Public Enemy No. 1 because he says Twitter should allow more free speech. Ponder that as well: Musk’s enemies are casting him as a threat to the country because of his commitment to one of America’s most cherished freedoms.

Progressives have abandoned their longstanding anti-corporate stance to argue that an unelected, unaccountable company must aggressively censor the vox populi. We saw the same dizzying turnabout in Russiagate, where the left abandoned its historic defense of Russia to cast dealings with that nation as un-American (making Joe McCarthy their new “Uncle Joe”).

Yes, Musk has restored Donald Trump’s Twitter account which the company’s previous leaders had disabled when he was president. But there is zilch, zero, nada evidence at this point that Twitter has become a toxic cesspool of hate. Nevertheless, that is the bogus claim being advanced by thought leaders including Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia University’s journalism school.

Ponder the argument here that a corporation should have the power to remove the president of the United States from communicating through one of the nation’s prime networks. The same people who cheered that decision also thought it was appropriate for Twitter to help swing the 2020 election by prohibiting users from sharing blockbuster reports about Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings, recorded on his laptop.

If one needs any more proof that principle has no part in the attacks on Musk, consider that while Apple has joined many other major companies in pulling its advertising from Twitter, it issued an update only for its Chinese users limiting a function commonly used by protestors as discontent was percolating against that country’s extreme COVID restrictions.

The attacks on Musk shed light on a darker mystery of American life: Why did the left attack Trump so savagely? Yes, Trump is a coarse, combative man who has the same relationship with truth as a used-car salesman. But that hardly makes him an outlier in our coarse, combative culture where, the left has long argued, truth and almost everything else we used to define as reality are just social constructs.

At bottom, they saw Trump – and now Musk – as a threat to their power and privilege. For all their talk of democracy and the will of the people, the left has always embraced a top-down approach in which a benighted few control society. Trump was the first president without political or military experience. He was not just an outsider; he also promised to expose the hypocrisy and self-dealing of the ruling class, both Democrats and Republicans (hence the rise of “Never Trump” Republicans).

The fact that this man with no political experience accomplished so much – including helping the economy hum, brokering a peace deal in the Middle East, calling out China’s ruthlessness, and creating conditions for the development of a COVID vaccine in record time – exposed the failures of our best and brightest. He wasn’t a threat to the nation, but to their authority.

The left sees Musk as a similar threat. For decades they have largely controlled the flow of information in prestige publications and network news divisions. The rise of social media gave them new mechanisms for defining national narratives, and for silencing those who disagreed with them through cancel culture and outright censorship. They see Musk’s promise to restore free speech on Twitter as a threat to this power. Whoopi Goldberg stated this baldly when she counseled liberals to walk away from Twitter until they figure out how to “get the control you need” of the platform.

Hence the effort to Trumpify Musk.

Ponder for a moment the ubiquity and ferocity of attacks on this one man and the outrageous effort to cast calls for censorship as ringing defenses of liberty. Consider too that this, like the treatment accorded Trump, has not just been normalized, but valorized.

When authorities lose the power to convince, they coerce. That is what is going on now as they tell us to shut up and submit.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...and_trump.html

[HDGristle]

I dislike both for giant, fake assholes and opportunists whom are unworthy of my allegiance or admiration.

That basically sums it up.

[berryberry]

The always enlightening Jonathon Turley:

We have seen an unprecedented and full mobilization of government, corporate, and media interests against Musk. The threat is not only the restoration of free speech protections but the release of material exposing the company's notorious censorship system.

Washington goes to war Against Twitter and Free Speech

Below is my column this week on the campaign to coerce Elon Musk to restore the censorship system at Twitter. The campaign against Twitter now involves the full allied forces of the anti-free speech movement: the government, corporations, Democratic politicians, the media, and, of course, celebrities. However, it is an alliance that has proven overwhelming in the past but this unstoppable force has met an immovable object in Musk. It is total war in the beltway but Musk has yet to fully deploy his greatest weapon: free speech.

Here is the column:

Washington this week is in full wartime footing. No, it’s not over the Russian invasion of Ukraine or North Korean missiles or even Chinese expansionism. It is about Twitter and the threat of Elon Musk to restore free speech protections to social media.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has emerged as the bellicose general rallying others to the “censor or die” pressure campaign against Twitter.

The problem is that citizens are flocking to Twitter and signing up in record numbers. They want more, not less, free speech. The over two million new sign-ups per day represent a 66% increase over the same period last year, according to figures released by Musk.

A reporter this week was so alarmed that she asked the White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the concern that millions are still signing up at Twitter and demanded to know who is “keeping an eye on this” for possible federal action.

Unable to convince users to embrace censorship, Clinton and others are pressuring corporations and foreign governments to deter Musk from restoring free speech. Since users are embracing the new Twitter, the campaign has focused on preventing them from signing up by removing the app from the Apple and Google stores. In the meantime, Apple is joining the boycott by withholding advertising revenue to coerce Musk to reverse his free-speech pledge.

Musk, however, is sitting on the ultimate weapon to bring this war to an end: free speech itself. However, it will require more than rhetorical recriminations like Musk asking why Apple executives “hate free speech in America?”

The fact is that these media and political figures are becoming more and more alarmed as Musk threatens to release files on the past censorship of stories like the Hunter Biden laptop.

Musk has reason to wonder why Apple CEO Tim Cook would join this anti-free speech campaign. The reason is as obvious as it is craven. These boycotts are not about corporations or shareholders. If anything, they are more likely to diminish profits. It is about the executives themselves. Many are allies of figures like Clinton. Others are yielding to these demands to avoid being attacked or tagged by the left.

Cook is betting that, while the public wants more free speech, enough will also want Apple watches. Moreover, Apple has acquired the market power of a true monopoly. It does not have a serious competitor and, as shown with such attacks on sites like Parler, it can literally strangle the life out of competing or disfavored products.

The real question is why the political, business, and media establishment is ramping up this campaign. The answer is power. With President Biden and Democratic senators supporting investigations, the message could not be clearer: proceed at your own peril. That message was brought home by Politico’s Sam Stein when he warned Musk that it is “[a]lways risky to attack members of congress. Especially risky with Dems assured of Senate power.”

For years, Democratic politicians and their allies have exercised an enormous degree of control over political discourse through allies in the media and social media.

The problem is that censorship only works if it is complete. If there are alternative sources for information, free speech is like water . . . it finds a way out. That is why Democratic members pressured cable carriers to drop Fox News, the most popular cable news network on television. (For the record, I appear as a Fox News legal analyst). Having an echo chamber on every other news channel means little if alternative views or stories are just a click away.

The same is true for print media. With the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and a few other newspapers, the effort to kill stories like the Hunter Biden laptop could not be completely successful. The truth found a way out and now the same outlets that peddled the false “Russian disinformation” claim are admitting that the laptop is authentic.

The threat is an even greater on social media, the area of greatest success for those seeking to control political discourse. If Musk carries through on his pledge, the public will have a free speech alternative and they are already speaking loudly by signing up with the company in record numbers. Despite a creepy Facebook advertising campaign to convince the public to embrace censorship, it has not worked.

The public is not buying. They are buying Free Twitter.

So, the only way to regain control is to prevent people from getting the app or threaten to force Twitter into insolvency. The problem is Musk, an eccentric billionaire who is not easy to intimidate.

Musk now stands against a massive alliance of governments, corporations, celebrities, and politicians. He has only the public and free speech on his side.

He needs to use both.

Musk cannot remain on defense and just take political and economic hits. The campaign is growing because the risk is growing for these various interests.

The way to end this is simple: release everything related to the company’s massive censorship operation. This is an effort to force Musk not only to resume censorship but to protect the censors. So, open the files. Allow the public to see not just communications on censorship (including subjects beyond Hunter Biden) but how Twitter may have used verification, throttling, algorithms, or other methods to control speech. The company does not have to release codes or potentially damaging information to reveal the back channel communications, deliberations, and targeting choices.

By embracing total transparency, Musk can force Apple and other companies to face the ugly realities of censorship. The anti-free speech alliance has declared total war on Twitter. It is time for Twitter to get into this fight and realize that free speech is not just its guiding principle but its greatest weapon.

When Musk threatened to restore free speech protections, Hillary Clinton and others went public to “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

So be it.

The Musk purchase has forced people to pick sides in this fight for free speech. However, Musk can leave the dogs at home and just unleash the truth.

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/11/3...d-free-speech/

[eyecu2]

I see copy and paste are still working well.

I stopped at the point where the claim Mueller's report was proof of a lie.....

More absurdity

[berryberry]

Originally Posted by eyecu2

I see copy and paste are still working well.

I stopped at the point where the claim Mueller's report was proof of a lie.....

Yes, you have shown us all that you are allergic to the truth and the real facts

To bad, these were two excellent articles by two different sources - one of whom, Jonathon Turley, is a Democrat. But again, you shy away from articles that would enlighten you with the truth

[chizzy]

Russian collusion was a fabricated bullshit story eye and u know it.
If it wasn't, shit would have rained down like never before

[The_Waco_Kid]

not all that surprising that people are signing up on twitter. many people stayed away from the platform for various reasons including its obvious bias against anything conservative and the staff at the time clearly using their power to enforce "wokeness". or more to the point punish anyone who questioned "wokeness".



it remains to be seen if the platform can generate ad revenue. if not then this venture may very well fail. but consider that if musk and twitter sees a large and continued increase in users joining up it's going to be hard for advertisers to ignore the platform.

Originally Posted by eyecu2

I see copy and paste are still working well.

I stopped at the point where the claim Mueller's report was proof of a lie.....

More absurdity

the Mueller report was proof that it was a lie there was collusion with Trump's campaign and Russia.

Originally Posted by chizzy

Russian collusion was a fabricated bullshit story eye and u know it.
If it wasn't, shit would have rained down like never before

it served it's purpose. many people remain convinced that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win in 2016. see proof above.

[swpa1706]

Musk has always been a fucking weirdo, I’m not surprised at all by his latest antics.

Trump demonized himself, no one had to do that for him.

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by swpa1706

Musk has always been a fucking weirdo, I’m not surprised at all by his latest antics.

Trump demonized himself, no one had to do that for him.

what antics? firing a bunch of woke dufus geeks at a company losing money? confirming what everyone knew already with documents to prove it that twitter did indeed suppress negative stories about Biden and his son? did indeed try to sway the election? exposing all this but more importantly ending this is antics? sounds like we need more weirdos and antics to me.

[berryberry]

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

not all that surprising that people are signing up on twitter. many people stayed away from the platform for various reasons including its obvious bias against anything conservative and the staff at the time clearly using their power to enforce "wokeness". or more to the point punish anyone who questioned "wokeness".

it remains to be seen if the platform can generate ad revenue. if not then this venture may very well fail. but consider that if musk and twitter sees a large and continued increase in users joining up it's going to be hard for advertisers to ignore the platform.

New users are signing up to Twitter in record numbers. I know Eye won't believe it but here is Jonathon Turley stating as much:

Jonathan Turley - 9h
...With a record number users signing up with the new Twitter, Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton have called upon European countries to force Musk to censor American citizens.

As to revenue, advertisers are already returning. Apple, which was the largest advertiser, is back. And once Twitter Blue launches with a lot of added features, that will generate a subscription revenue stream of $8 a month for those who subscribe for the added features

The world's richest man did not get that way by not knowing how to run a business