If our government tried to march all dissenters to jail — or hang them all — it probably couldn't get away with it. Too many Americans still have enough sense of fair play and concern for individual rights to make such ugly expedients untenable.
Also, the First Amendment hasn't been repealed yet. Oh, no! So the non-crime of uttering "misinformation," "disinformation," "hate speech" — that is, uttering disagreement — can only be thwarted indirectly.
One way is for government officials to get chummy with compliant social media companies and point them to utterances (posted comments, videos) to censor.
Another is to fund organizations with missions of defunding wrongthinkers.
The Washington Examiner's Gabe Kaminsky reports on the taxpayer-bankrolled conspiracy.
Congress funds the State Department and "two State Department-backed entities," including National Endowment for Democracy; which has in turn been funding a British organization called the Global Disinformation; which has a group called the AN Foundation that is also called Disinformation Index Foundation; which is sending blacklists of websites that supposedly purvey disinformation to American ad companies like Microsoft-owned Xandr.
The State Department, not constitutionally authorized to censor our speech, gave over $300 million (three tenths of a billion) to the Endowment in 2021.
Websites to be deprived — and that probably have already been deprived — of advertising dollars as ad distributors seek to avoid "risks that arise from funding disinformation" include the New York Post, Reason, Newsmax, The Federalist, American Spectator.
No commie egalitarians; no woke websites.
All very roundabout and mostly under the radar. As intended.
This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
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