Thread by @shellenberger

Elites ignore the Twitter Files, saying they reveal nothing, but the public disagrees, strongly supporting an investigation. Now, @mgurri shows how the authoritarian Woke mob threatens our freedom, and why we must stand up to it.

public.substack.com/p/twitter-file…

THE FOLLOWING IS WRITTEN BY @mgurri

Only yesterday, Elon Musk was a hero to progressives. He had made the electric car sexy and organized a migration to Mars to save humanity from the coming ecological apocalypse. Musk voted for Barack Obama twice and for Biden once.

When @elonmusk offered to purchase Twitter on April 14 of last year, he clearly believed he was reconnecting progressivism to its liberal roots: “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”

But elites took that for a declaration of war and changed their tightly synchronized minds about the man.

Twitter in the hands of Musk was “dangerous to our democracy,” said Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren.

“If Musk purchases Twitter, it could result in World War 3,” wrote David Leavitt.

The White House expressed newfound concern about “the power of large social media platforms … over our everyday lives … tech platforms must be held accountable for the harm they cause.”

Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter had stated, “We do not shadow ban [i.e., secretly block users]. And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”

Thanks to Twitter’s internal emails and messages released by Musk, we now know both claims were false.

“Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” wrote @BariWeiss.

The targets were offenders against elite orthodoxy.

In December, Musk invited Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger to examine the company’s internal Slack messages and emails. Taibbi and Weiss are fierce critics of establishment media; Shellenberger is a strong anti-establishment voice on energy and homeless policy.

All are, in Weiss’ phrase, “politically homeless,” neither right nor left, but tend to write about aspects of the struggle between the elites and the public.

Musk could have bought himself a passel of hired hacks who would have churned out whatever spin he wished. With these three authors, he gave up control over the Twitter Files output in exchange for their ironclad credibility.

Defenders of pre-Musk Twitter argue that the company is a private entity and can do as it wishes: First Amendment protection of free speech applies only to government censorship.

Although technically correct, this argument collapses when it becomes clear that the federal government has been acting the part of a grand inquisitor and pushing content decisions on its “private sector partners.”

Why is that? How did we arrive at a place where the U.S. government would work with social media companies to censor disfavored views — and disfavored citizens? To answer those questions, please read the full piece at Public, a Substack publication!

public.substack.com/p/twitter-file…

Sources on public support for investigation:

We are grateful to Discourse Magazine at Mercatus, which let us excerpt @mgurri !

discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-so…