Time Is Running Out To Speak Freely About Free Speech In America

The Censorship Complex, which is induced by Big Tech censorship resulting from actions by the government, media, and media-rating businesses, is a severe threat to the future of free speech in the United States. It is critical for Americans to talk about speech and the government’s intent to deceive the public to understand how and why. 

Let us consider a few hypothetical scenarios to frame this discussion:

• Two American soldiers who were training Ukrainian soldiers in Poland cross into the war zone and ambush and kill five Russian soldiers. A Ukrainian soldier, unbeknown to the Americans, films the incident and provides the footage to an independent journalist who writes an article on Substack, including a link to the video. 
• Russia, using its intelligence service and “bots,” floods social media with claims that the Ukrainians are wasting or corruptly usurping 90% of American tax dollars. However, an independent journalist learns that only 40% of American tax dollars are being wasted or corruptly usurped when a government source leaks a Department of Defense report that details the misappropriation of funds sent to Ukraine.
• One-third of Americans disagree with the continued funding of the war in Ukraine, and #NoMoreMoola starts trending organically. After the organic hashtag trend starts, Russian operatives amplify the hashtag, and the Russian-run state media outlet, Russia Today, reports the hashtag trend. 
• Following the Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, the Chinese communist government creates a false narrative that ten named financial institutions are on the verge of collapsing using social media. Although only Bank A1 is financially troubled, a run on any of the ten banks could lead to their collapse.

In each of these scenarios, the government or some elements within the government have a motive to deceive the country. If the voluntary censorship of speech continues, as part of a larger effort by the Censorship Complex, it will become difficult for Americans to learn the truth.

From the founding of America, a free press served as a check on a government seeking to bury the truth or promote its self-interest, sometimes for legitimate reasons, such as national security, the economy, or public health. Even after the legacy media outlets took a left-leaning slant, new media provided a check and a way for Americans to learn the facts. However, Big Tech and legacy media outlets have embraced the government’s definition of “truth,” and the Censorship Complex emerged, attempting to silence those who challenge it, including new media, individual Americans, and even experts, with support from for-profit and non-profit organizations and academic institutions. 

The Censorship Complex has deprived Americans of valuable information necessary for self-governance, but a group of muckrakers persisted and exposed several official directives as lies, such as whether the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, whether Covid escaped from a Wuhan lab, and whether Trump colluded with Putin.

However, if the Censorship Complex gets its way, and the remaining few journalists and outlets questioning the government are silenced, Americans will not have the means to learn the truth anymore.

It is necessary to discuss speech before the Censorship Complex makes it impossible. We need to talk about the circumstances under which the government should notify journalists and media outlets of supposed foreign disinformation and how it should be done. We must also discuss the circumstances under which Big Tech should censor speech.

Americans need to have this debate now before the window of free speech closes forever.