Why Elon Musk’s Twitter fight could decide our president in 2024 and whether Americans have free speech online
Yes, midterm elections matter but as we look ahead to the 2024 presidential election, Elon Musk's Twitter purchase is even more important
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Forget the midterms, the fight for the 2024 election is on in the most unlikely of places — Twitter. Billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media site set off a battle for free speech online that could determine who wins the presidency in 2024 and set the agenda for daily news coverage.
The left and the media reacted to Musk’s purchase the way 6-year-old boys used to react if a girl entered their clubhouse. They threw a tantrum for the ages, screaming in impotence as their friends and allies were fired by the thousand.
Climate team axed! Waaah! (No rational person at Twitter apparently asked why they had a climate team.)
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Censors fired? Stompy feet.
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The press freaked out that they no longer control Twitter heading into the election. The Washington Post led its online front page with Twitter wars on Nov. 5. "Twitter layoffs gutted election information teams days before midterms." The story’s subhead warned, "political campaigns are gripped with anxiety."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}NBC and several other outlets took a similar strategy, "Days before the midterms, Twitter lays off employees who fight misinformation." Politico, D-DC, was less subtle, headlining its story with, "Elon Musk plunges Twitter into chaos ahead of midterms."
Even the Big Guy chimed in, "Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that spews lies all across the world," President Joe Biden said at an Illinois Democratic fundraiser. "There’s no editors anymore in America," he added.
And that’s the point. Team Biden no longer controls everything said on Twitter. It didn’t hurt that Biden attacked Musk after being fact-checked on Twitter.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Twitterati mob formed, desperate to destroy Musk. MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan whined that Musk interacted with posters Hasan didn’t like. "he always manages to seek out the worst of the worst rightwing accounts to reply to."
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk urged Musk that, "Twitter has a responsibility to avoid amplifying content that results in harm to other people’s rights." In other words, he wants censorship.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}ELON MUSK’S TWITTER TAKEOVER MAKES THE LEFT LOSE IT: ‘IT’S LIKE THE GATES OF HELL OPENED’
Atlantic staff writer David Frum claimed, "They are going to be teaching this completely self-inflicted fiasco in business schools for the next 100 years."
NBC "dystopia" reporter Ben Collins called the situation a "nightmare." He tweeted mocking Musk, "Cosmically stupid or historically malicious? It's the unanswered, constantly repeating question of our time."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Many on the left are sounding the alarm about Elon Musk’s potential Twitter takeover. (FOX)
The New York Times tweeted its own elitist outrage, angry the communication staff had been fired. "The communications team, which was almost entirely laid off, did not respond to a request for comment."
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Musk opponents targeted advertising on the site and also pushed to move to other platforms. Several far-left groups including the NAACP and Human Rights Watch urged companies not to advertise on Twitter and several firms froze advertising.
Musk responded to the pressure, warning, "Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}It all sounds silly except the stakes are too high. Not the $44 billion that Musk invested in the platform. What’s really at stake is the ability of leftist journalists to control the narrative for absolutely everything we read or see.
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This is how the press organized to attack President Donald Trump during his entire term. This is how journalists censored the Hunter Biden story in thousands of other Important pieces of political and cultural news.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}That’s why you see supposedly sane journalists tweeting like they are waiting to be evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk. This is how they see themselves.
In one of the final Slack messages during the layoffs, one employee used an image of "Hunger Games" heroine Katniss Everdeen flashing the movie’s famous three-fingered salute. The message ends simply: "For those who were part of the journey, hold your heads high! Go forth and continue this critical work." It was followed by 16 separate emoji hearts.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}America and much of the civilized world have been held in thrall of the modern version of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys and Girls, unwilling and unable to grow up. And determined to make the world around them into the safe space that they left in college.
And it worked. Since the woke crazies started asserting power on Twitter around 2014, they turned the site into the headquarters for where they could discuss -- and tell others how to discuss – every issue. The site overflowed with journalists, influencers (Eew!), politicians and pundits.
But when Trump won the 2016 election, Twitter and the other major tech and social media companies determined to never let it happen again. They banned Trump and an endless stream of conservative accounts.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Tell the world a man is not a woman and you were banned, as one Canadian liberal found out. Mock leftists unconcerned about ordinary people losing jobs and you were kicked off Twitter for saying "learn to code." Influential right-leaning accounts were suspended or banned like the Babylon Bee, a conservative satire site. The Bee was censored after naming transgender Biden HHS official Rachel Levine, "man of the year."
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But Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who has called for genocide against Israel and leads the world’s biggest exporter of terrorism, he’s OK. Under Khamenei, Iran killed more than 600 U.S. servicemen in Iraq and repeatedly tried to assassinate American officials. That’s the kind of good government person Twitter embraced.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Now, Twitter is controlled by Musk and the left has been unable to control him. They don’t dare allow that to continue. They will use regulation, advertising threats or simply go somewhere they can control the narrative again. Autocrats are never comfortable when people have freedom.