News/Commentary

Biden’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ gets lesson on the First Amendment, courtesy of federal court

July 19, 2023 | | Print Article

A Louisiana court recently ruled against President Biden’s modern-day “Ministry of Truth,” upholding the First Amendment right to free speech, ruling in the landmark decision that the White House colluding with Big Tech to silence Americans is a no-no.

(Video Credit: Fox News)

Judge Terry Doughty commented that the case, Missouri v. Biden, “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

An op-ed by Hans A. von Spakovsky and Abby Carr at Fox News recounted, “Judge Doughty issued a preliminary injunction forbidding numerous federal agencies, including the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as many individuals within the executive branch like White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, from communicating or meeting with: ‘[S]ocial-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.'”

The injunction prohibits the federal government from working with groups such as the Stanford Internet Observatory that work hand-and-glove with social-media companies to suppress and delete “protected free speech.” It also bans the government from “notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (‘BOLO’) for postings containing protected free speech.”

“Missouri and Louisiana, alongside five individual plaintiffs, including Jim Hoft who runs The Gateway Pundit and two infectious disease epidemiologists, challenged the alleged collusion of the Biden administration with social-media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They claimed the administration was suppressing dissenting voices and controlling the narrative on numerous issues including elections; the effectiveness of masks and the COVID vaccine as well as the COVID lab-leak theory; the Hunter Biden laptop story; parodies that targeted the defendants; and negative posts about the economy and President Joe Biden,” the Fox News post noted.

The ruling is cause for celebration among constitutionalists. It safeguards our First Amendment right to free speech and freedom of expression which the Biden administration has been squelching for years now with the aid of Big Tech. The federal government has reportedly worked with Big Tech to silence opinions that do not agree with those of the current administration, branding them as “misinformation.” An issue that is anathema to American principles and far more resembles those of communist China.

According to the piece at Fox News, “Judge Doughty’s 155-page opinion has page after page after page detailing the extensive meetings, emails, and other communications between government officials badgering and threatening social-media executives to censor and close accounts. Platforms like Facebook were actually providing their government handlers with reports on how they were carrying out the government’s directed censorship.”

“The FBI’s continued claim that it was only concerned with ‘disinformation’ by foreign countries is directly contradicted by the evidence in the case. Judge Doughty concluded that the ‘FBI made no attempt to distinguish whether those reports of election disinformation were American or foreign.’ And it is obvious from the facts that the many government officials and agencies involved were only concerned with censoring any views, opinions, and claims – foreign or domestic – that disagreed with, or criticized their (and the government’s) political, social, and medical orthodoxy on multiple issues,” the op-ed asserted.

“They were engaging in viewpoint discrimination, a direct and blatant violation of the First Amendment, and according to Doughty, ‘virtually all of the free speech suppressed was ‘conservative’ free speech.’ While the First Amendment normally only applies to the government and not private parties like Twitter and Facebook, these social-media platforms essentially became agents of the government. Through them, the government used its “coercive power or exercised such significant encouragement that the private parties’ choice [to censor] must be deemed to be that of the government,” they contended.

(Video Credit: Forbes Breaking News)

The conclusion by the authors was that this resulted in the suppression of “millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.”

The judge ruled that there was “substantial evidence” of the government’s extensive, widespread, coercive behavior that “depicts an almost dystopian scenario” in which the “United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

The op-ed authors astutely pointed out, “Or perhaps similar to the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.”

“The fact that the Biden administration has appealed this decision should enrage the American public. The injunction against the government only applies to First Amendment-protected speech. Doughty very specifically makes exceptions for a host of other communications between the government and social media platforms, including criminal activity and conspiracies; national security and public safety threats; criminal efforts to suppress voting or provide illegal campaign contributions; cyber-attacks; and foreign attempts to influence elections,” they wrote.

The Biden administration has screamed bloody murder over the injunction and is demanding it be overturned so it can “promote responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security.” That translates into the continued censorship of divergent opinions on social media.

The op-ed authors pointed to the history of abuses by the federal government with special emphasis on the FBI.

“A refresher on the sordid history of the federal government’s free speech abuses, and specifically the FBI’s, is in order. The FBI engaged in a nefarious campaign against Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders of civil rights organizations that included illegal wiretaps and informants. Why?” they asked.

“Because the FBI pinned them as radicals whose activities and misinformation were a security threat, with J. Edgar Hoover labeling King as the ‘most notorious liar in the country,'” they continued.

Then the op-ed writers noted that surely given the chance if the internet had existed back in the early 1960s, the FBI would have used social media against the civil rights movement in the same way it is being utilized against Americans currently.

“Government bureaucracies and the Biden administration cannot be trusted, and the courts should keep this injunction in place. The administration has chosen to defend unconstitutional actions mirroring that of an Orwellian dystopia to censor lawful speech in the name of ‘public health, safety, and security,'” the writers concluded. “But only as they determine what is the ‘truth.’ That is the road to tyranny.”

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