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Glenn Greenwald Profile picture
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10 Jan, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Whoever utters the cliché about "screaming fire in a crowded movie theater" to justify censorship of political speech instantly reveals profound and bottomless ignorance about the First Amendment. Here's @Popehat explaining the idiocy of this platitude:

popehat.com/2012/09/19/thr…
And if that Popehat article isn't enough, here's @TrevorTimm in @TheAtlantic explaining why only those who know nothing invoke the "fire in a crowded movie theater" cliché to justify censorship:

theatlantic.com/national/archi…
For years, I heard it's invalid to object to political censorship by FB & Twitter because, if you don't like it, you can just create a competing social media platform.

Parler tried. And in 24 hours, Google, Apple & Amazon united to destroy it.

That's what monopoly power means.
Far more violence has been planned on Facebook than on Parler, including at the Capitol & many other violent protests as well. Google-owned YouTube has long algorithmically promoted right-wing extremism.

Now they're feigning offense to destroy Parler:

nytimes.com/2019/08/11/wor…

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Glenn Greenwald Profile picture
12 Jan
How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler

greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-…
In the last three months, tech giants have censored political speech and journalism to manipulate U.S. politics -- banning reporting on the Bidens, removing the President, destroying a new competitor -- while US liberals, with virtual unanimity, have cheered.
The ACLU said the unity of Silicon Valley monopoly power to destroy Parler was deeply troubling. Leaders from Germany, France and Mexico protested. Only US liberals support it, because the dominant strain of US liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism.
Read 9 tweets
Glenn Greenwald Profile picture
12 Jan
Look at what this liberal NYT columnist is saying.

She's saying she's "disturbed" at how "dangerous" it is "to have a handful of callow young tech titans in charge of who has a megaphone," but as long as they use that power to censor her adversaries, not her allies, she's happy:
That is the authoritarian mindset in its purest expression, right there:☝️

As long as Silicon Valley monopoly power is harnessed to silence those who think differently than I, I support it.

Not a single major USN left-liberal politician has objected to this. Many have cheered.
For those who didn't see, leaders of democracies around the world -- Germany, France, Mexico -- are warning that this Silicon Valley censorship poses a grave threat to democracy. They oppose monopoly power over politics.

Only US liberals support this:

Read 4 tweets
Glenn Greenwald Profile picture
11 Jan
"German Chancellor Angela Merkel blasted Twitter’s decision to ban U.S. President Donald Trump.

'The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance,' Steffen Seibert, Merkel’s chief spokesman, told reporters in Berlin on Monday."
What makes Merkel's comments particularly striking -- apart from her well-reported acrimony with Trump -- is, as @AliceFromQueens noted, Europe generally and Germany specifically have far less permissive free speech traditions than the US. Yet even Merkel finds this alarming.
A related reminder: during the Snowden reporting in 2013, Merkel called Obama, furious when it was revealed that the NSA had spied on her personal calls, and reminded him that she grew up in East Germany and explicitly compared NSA spying to the Stasi:

theguardian.com/world/2013/dec…
Read 8 tweets
Glenn Greenwald Profile picture
11 Jan
In any other moment, it would not be hard to understand why it's incredibly menacing to have elected officials supported by Silicon Valley publicly demanding that those mega-corporations use their monopoly power to silence adversaries. But as was true after 9/11, anything goes:
The way @FreedomofPress began was when Sen. Joe Lieberman abused his power as Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee to demand that banks & credit card companies terminate WikiLeaks' accounts. We created FPF to collect for WL & destroy that blockade:

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Having elected officials with power over tech companies direct those companies to censor those with different ideologies is despotic: a merger of state and corporate/monopolistic power.

But the 9/11 framework is in play: if you dissent from any of this, you're pro-Terrorist.
Read 6 tweets
Glenn Greenwald Profile picture
11 Jan
The ACLU in NYT on why the union of Silicon Valley monopolies -- Apple, Google and Amazon -- to remove Parler from the internet is so problematic. While ACLU is largely just a liberal pressure group now, they still have some real civil liberties lawyers:

nytimes.com/2021/01/10/tec… Image
Tech monopolies -- FB, Google, Apple, Amazon -- have more concentrated wealth & power than any in history. They have used brute force 3 times in 3 months to manipulate US politics: censoring NY Post, banning Trump, destroying Parler.

And liberals are overwhelmingly supportive.
That these Silicon Valley monopolies are grave menaces to political freedom & economic well-being is *not* a right-wing view.

The most comprehensive report warning of these dangers was issued 3 months ago by a Democratic House Sub-Committee. Read this:

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
Read 9 tweets
Glenn Greenwald Profile picture
10 Jan
This accurately describes the overarching political reality in the United States:
I wouldn't be surprised if one of the first acts of the new Dem Congress is a Resolution of Gratitude to Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook & Google execs for their patriotic censorship of Trump, Parler & other Terrorists, with encouragement to continue the anti-Terror fight.
Ever since FB & Twitter's censorship orgy, all we heard is it's no big deal. Liberals invoked the libertarian mantra that private corporations can do what they want, you can just build a competitor if you don't like it. But you can't: they're monopolies.

Read 8 tweets

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