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Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
@shellenberger
Oct 2 • 9 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
Tim Walz just spread misinformation in service of making the case for government censorship. He said it’s illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater. That’s a myth. The expression refers to a *nonbinding* claim in a 1919 Supreme Court opinion that was *overturned* in 1969.
Tim Walz had previously claimed that it was illegal to spread misinformation about elections. It’s not. How could it be? If you let the government to censor disfavored views on elections, how would we ever know if the government stole an election?
Walz, Harris, Bill Gates, John Kerry and the media are all effectively demanding that the government re-start an illegal censorship and election interference operation run by a “former” CIA operative.
We helped expose the illegal, unethical, and unAmerican censorship by Stanford Internet Observatory. Appropriately embarrassed, Stanford cut off funding for its censorship advocacy.
Some of the richest and most powerful people in the world are desperate to censor the whole Internet. We can’t let them.
Pro-censorship politicians like @Tim_Walz should be asked: do you want the government to censor you for your misinformation on everything from yelling fire in a crowded theater to you fighting in a war zone to you being in China during the Tiananmen Square?
@Tim_Walz Politicians and journalists who promote censorship without considering their own misinformation often suffer from a form of narcissism, which new psychological research finds is driven by Left-wing authoritarianism.
@Tim_Walz First Amendment scholar Jeff Kosseff got so tired of hearing people repeat the “liar in a crowded theater” myth that he wrote a whole book going through 100+ years of Supreme Court rulings. It’s as brilliant as its title: “Liar In A Crowded Theater.”

a.co/d/3bd7sQP
@Tim_Walz .@JMchangama wrote an equally brilliant book that makes a similar case. The First Amendment is incredibly strong. What constitutes “hate speech” is totally subjective and thus legal. So too is incitement of violence unless it’s “imminent.”

a.co/d/3cC5lKV

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More from @shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Oct 2
California's recent ban on election-related "misinformation," including political parody, is unconstitutional, a federal court has just ruled. Free speech, not censorship, is the solution to bad info. Wonderful repudiation of totalitarians @GavinNewsom @KamalaHarris & @Tim_Walz Image
Judge John A. Mendez of the United States District Court of California directly addresses the "Kamala Harris Campaign Ad PARODY, shared by @elonmusk , that led @GavinNewsom & California legislature to enact the unconstitutional censorship legislation.


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Judge Mendez has granted the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction, which prevents the California law from going into effect. The reason says Mendez is because "Kohls is likely to succeed in showing" that the California law is unconstitutional.
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Read 10 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Oct 1
It may seem like what's happening in Brazil has nothing to do with us, but it does. Brazil is a test case for the kind of censorship Kamala Harris wants to impose in the U.S. How do we know? Because we've caught her and Biden funding it. Image
Over the last two years, my colleagues and I have documented multiple illegal operations by United States government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

We documented how the CIA, its allies, and intermediaries created the Russia collusion hoax, ran tightly organized efforts to take control of censorship and content moderation at Twitter and other social media platforms, and interfered in the 2020 election by approving the publication of a letter from 51 former CIA and other Intelligence Community officials, which falsely claimed there was evidence that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.

We reported on the FBI’s persecution of employee whistleblowers, its inadequate investigation of an alleged pipe bomb on January 6, and its illegal interference in the 2020 elections by spreading disinformation about and encouraging censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Finally, we have documented how DHS, which Congress created after 9/11 to combat terrorism, ran multiple operations to spread disinformation, demand censorship, and interfere in elections. These efforts involved current or former members of the US Department of Defense, the British Ministry of Defense, and the CIA. We reported that DHS also created so-called “public-private partnerships” with censorship groups like the Stanford Internet Observatory.

Now, my colleagues and I have discovered that US government agencies, including the FBI and known intermediaries with the CIA, have been funding pro-censorship advocacy and advising the Brazilian government on how to engage in censorship.

This matters to me personally because the Brazilian government is currently persecuting me for exposing its illegal censorship and for denouncing its transformation into a dictatorship. The Federal Police wrote two reports about my alleged crime of publishing the Twitter Files - Brazil, which exposed illegal government censorship. President Lula’s Administration followed this up with a report by the Attorney General, recommending my prosecution.

But it should matter to all Americans because it is a gross abuse of power by the Kamala Harris-Joe Biden administration and further proof that the so-called Deep State agencies of the US government are pushing for illegal censorship and other totalitarian attacks on core American freedoms.

The good news is that many people are waking up. A few weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of people protested in Brazil in one of the largest free-speech gatherings in history.

And now, members of Congress are demanding an end to funding for censorship in Brazil. “The Biden-Harris Administration has weaponized U.S. foreign assistance programs and other means to promote censorship in Brazil and crack down on free speech that would be protected under our U.S. Constitution here at home,” said Rep. Chris Smith today. Smith is a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who chaired a congressional hearing to examine Brazil’s incipient totalitarianism last May.

Rep. @Jim_Jordan and @RepMariaSalazar co-sponsored the "No Funding or Enforcement of Censorship Abroad Act" (HR 9850). The Act would:

1.              Prohibit foreign assistance to entities that promote censorship of speech that would be protected speech in the United States;

2.              Prohibit foreign assistance to entities that back the Brazilian government’s censorship directives to U.S. internet companies;

3.              Prohibit U.S. law enforcement cooperation with foreign countries to “cause, facilitate, or promote online censorship” of political speech; and

4.              Prohibit U.S. law enforcement cooperation with Brazilian government censorship directives against internet companies headquartered in the United States.

“The House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have uncovered how the FBI under the Biden-Harris Administration facilitated a foreign government’s censorship requests against Americans,” said Rep. Jordan. “This bill is critical in stopping foreign government censors from using the DOJ or the FBI to silence disfavored views.”

“The United States needs to uphold the principles of its constitution and stand by its citizens whenever they face censorship abroad,” said Rep. Salazar....

Please subscribe now to support our defense of free speech, read the rest of the article, and watch the rest of the video!

I am grateful to Rep. Chris Smith, Rep. @Jim_Jordan and @RepMariaSalazar for this legislation in general, and for mentioning my persecution by the Brazilian government specifically.🙏❤️✊

chrissmith.house.gov/uploadedfiles/…Image
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Read 4 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Sep 21
Massive Free Speech Victory!

Ireland's government has abandoned its proposed hate speech law, which would have allowed the police to enter homes and search phones and computers for wrongthink

This is wonderful news that gives us momentum to beat back totalitarianism worldwide!Image
Big congratulations to @FreeSpeechIre and @griptmedia, which did so much to raise global awareness of this awful, totalitarian proposal

Big thanks to @elonmusk & @jordanbpeterson who raised the alarm early about the proposed Irish censorship law.

Had @elonmusk not bought X, and allowed for free speech on the platform, the world may never have learned about how terrible the bill was.
Read 13 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Sep 18
“The White House issued a rare rebuke of Brazil Tuesday for banning the country’s residents from accessing X in a free-speech struggle with the platform’s billionaire owner Elon Musk.”

Finally! Image
Yes, this is real

“When it comes to social media, we have been very clear that we think that folks should have access to social media. It’s a form of freedom of speech,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in response to a press-briefing question from reporter Raquel Krähenbühl of Brazil’s TV Globo.

nypost.com/2024/09/17/us-…
Also today, members of Congress introduced anti-censorship legislation aimed at Brazil. LFG!!!
Read 4 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Sep 16
Wow — massive free speech victory! Europe’s top censor has quit. This comes a few weeks after he got in trouble for sending an open letter to Elon Musk claiming his upcoming interview with Donald Trump might violate Europe’s censorship laws.
Here’s the backstory, including media coverage about how @ThierryBreton got in trouble with his colleagues in Brussels. I don’t know that he quit because of this but it may be that @vonderleyen and others felt he had become a liability in their crusade to censor the Internet:
@ThierryBreton @vonderleyen In his letter, @ThierryBreton says that @vonderleyen asked France to withdraw Breton’s name as a nominee to serve five more years for “personal reasons.” 🤔 Image
Read 4 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Sep 7
Brazilian President Lula and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes say they must block X to protect Brazil’s independence. X is a platform for dangerous, false, and hateful words, they say, and many of those words violate Brazil’s laws and Constitution.

But their censorship goes far beyond what Brazil’s constitution allows. The government demanded that X and other social media networks censor and ban individual people, including journalists and politicians. Such bans are immoral, illegal, and unconstitutional. They constitute election interference and undermine democracy by preventing candidates from getting the word out.

I agree that lying is wrong, hate speech is ugly, and there are limits to freedom of speech. We must not allow people to use words that directly result in physical violence.

But everybody lies, everybody engages in hate speech, and the limits to free speech must never include elections. Imagine what would happen if it were illegal to lie: everyone should go to prison starting with the journalists and politicians. As for hate speech, did Lula express hatred when he praised Adolf Hitler? Does he not express hatred every time he speaks of Elon Musk and Jair Bolsonaro?

People blame speech for the chaos of January 6 in the United States and January 8 in Brazil. But the events of those days resulted from inadequate security, not anything anyone said online. And if the government can censor disfavored election information, how would anyone ever know if the government stole an election? 

Democracy and secure elections depend on freedom of speech. The idea that we must censor speech to protect democracy ranks with other Orwellian ideas like “War is peace” and “Slavery is freedom.” For thousands of years, democracy and freedom walk hand in hand, as do censorship and dictatorship.

Everybody knows in their heart that censorship is wrong. We all know that we are imperfect and do not know everything. We know that we rely on others to discover the truth. Why, then, do so many people want censorship?Image
Please subscribe now to support our fight for free speech And to read the rest of the article!
The crowd was absolutely enormous. Without a doubt one of the largest free speech protests in history.
Read 7 tweets

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