New York Times calls for 'reality czar' to fight 'disinformation'
Mark Steyn warns against overt move to censor conservative speech on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'
Author and columinst Mark Steyn sounded off on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Wednesday after The New York Times published a column recommending President Biden establish a "reality czar" to combat "disinformation."
Times technology columnist Kevin Roose sounded the alarm Tuesday about the popularity of right-wing QAnon conspiracy theorists, the unsubstantiated election fraud claims President Trump pushed ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, and what he called "the baseless theory that COVID-19 was manufactured in a Chinese lab."
Steyn told host Tucker Carlson that he has fought his own battles against censorship and claimed that the idea of free speech is now mocked on the left as a "right-wing fetish."
"On the other side, they regard an ever-expanding range of topics as there being a correct view ... whether it's climate change or Islam or same-sex marriage or transgender participation in sports, there is a settled view and once we have settled it we need no longer need to debate," he explained.
"The problem is there are an ever-expanding range of issues that are added to the list ... [like] in United States, where disagreeing with the official state position on, for example, a new coronavirus that nobody heard of a year ago and nobody knows anything about -- just disagreeing with officialdom now is forbidden.
"That is why the weasel phrase 'disinformation' -- what is the information you are dissing? It's official information. Ministry of Information information."
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Carlson noted Steyn's fight to champion free speech in Canada, with his guest noting that he was able to get an anti--speech law repealed in his home nation.
"A back bencher [in Canada's Parliament] and I managed to get the hate speech law repealed," Steyn recalled. "I don't think we could do it today."
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