This is obviously untrue for two reasons. Anyone that listened to the transcripts or watched coverage of Trump's speeches and then heard media reports could see the effort to normalize. This required editing to give coherence where none existed and ignoring the crazy bits.
When the media did take Trump's statements literally & seriously (e.g. content analysis of his COVID briefings) it looked awful for Trump because his rhetoric was genuinely awful. But it also looked bad for media b/c there was no both sides to it. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
My sense is that the cases where the media did straight reporting of Trump's words - e.g. the type of Daniel Dale factcheck - were dwarfed by the coverage described below where they worked to make Trump appear better than he was.
Macron investigating academics for wrong speak shows that the basis for these anti-university attacks is to appease the far right (in his case, Le Pen voters).
Just to confirm this point: the WSJ editorial page applauds it as a defense of liberalism, invoking Orwell.
Abuse of Orwell is standard practice of course, to the point that when Josh Hawley lost a book contract for encouraging the Capitol Insurrection, he described it as Orwellian. nytimes.com/2021/01/13/boo…
It does seem to odd to invoke Orwell, who worried about government regimes targeting and silencing dissent, as someone who would support a government targeting academics who hold dissenting views from the French political class.
But that's the WSJ editorial page!
One way of reading this story is that someone who took place in the Brooks Brothers riot in 2000 has used his position at Facebook to maintain the influence of people who took part in the Capitol Insurrection buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…
The people who took place in the Brooks Brothere riot - trying to stop vote counting in Florida to ensure their candidate won - are emblematic of how the right set of connections protects you from any professional penalty.
Of course, the design of Facebook ensures that Zuckerberg has final say on all decisions. Instead of insulating himself from political decisions, he personally intervenes, overturning internal Facebook processes and principles to protect figures like Alex Jones.
Scott Walker oversaw the worst gerrymander in the country. His "election integrity" proposals are aimed at solving the same problem: undermining the political participation of people who disagree with him.
Here are things we know: there are almost no cases of voter impersonation. Efforts to prevent these non-problems with voter ID and signature verification end up falling heavier on younger and minority voters. The problem Walker et al want to solve is not fraud, but turnout.
Q: What do the mob who attacked the Capitol and state legislators launching voter suppression bills have in common?
A: Both are participating in an extraordinary backlash against *democracy* itself, fueled by the Big Lie. brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…
The most dangerous threat to campus speech over the past few years is authoritarian and far right governments shutting down dissent. In Philippines, Duterte has empowered the army to arrest students in one of the few spaces free speech was allowed. nytimes.com/2021/02/14/wor…
While not authoritarian, the French government is pivoting right to pick up votes away from Le Pen supporters. Their strategy for doing so? announce an inquiry into the speech of faculty. So much for academic freedom.
The UK under Boris Johnson has gone down the road of policing campus speech, including fining protests they disagree with. They oppose regulation, except in the marketplace of ideas. theguardian.com/education/2021…
Speech on campus is messy and attacks on free speech are bad. But academics have managed it for hundreds of years with pretty decent outcomes. Having govt police campus speech and protest is a hallmark of authoritarian countries.
BTW, this proposal to give a right to sue protestors and universities for financial liability was adopted first in US universities like WIsconsin, the brainchild of a Arizona libertarian think tank. Is this where the Johnson govt is getting its ideas?
Well, well, well: a series of armed insurrections in US *state* capitols in 2020 *an entirely different year* from a more extreme version of the same tactic in 2021 at the *federal* level. washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
Recap:
*people were murdered, 140 Capitol Police officers assaulted
*members of Congress could easily have been captured
*majority of GOP believes the election was stolen, remain committed to anti-democratic action in the future.