OPINION:
White House officials during the coronavirus years pressed Facebook-slash-Meta censors to strip away memes that poked fun of COVID-19 shots, according to the platform’s internal documents.
This White House hates the First Amendment.
When Americans can’t even crack jokes without having the powers of the federal bureaucracy — the executive, no less — coming down hard to shut them up, then it’s obvious, the idea of free speech has become little more than a service of the lip.
In July 2021, Facebook workers told members of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s team that they were trying to downplay posts that put out untruths about the coronavirus — and more than that, to sideline or demote even those posts that put a “negative” spin on the government’s COVID-tied narratives.
For instance, even “posts questioning whether you should get a vaccine under a mandate, whether it’s government overreach — we demote those,” Facebook employees assured the surgeon general’s office, according to documents just made public about the call, Fox News reported. “That’s not false information, but it leads to a vaccine negative environment.”
In other words: That leads people to ask questions that government would rather not have asked.
But shutting down questions about COVID topics apparently wasn’t good enough. This White House had to stifle the jokesters as well.
“In an email,” Fox News wrote, “Facebook’s then-VP of Global Affairs Nick Clegg discussed with his team a call he had with Andy Slavitt, President Biden’s White House senior adviser for the COVID response. Clegg said of Slavic, ‘He was outraged’ ‘that we did not remove this post’ ” about a meme that poked fun of the shots’ side effects. The meme played on television commercials that are widely and frequently aired around the nation to drum up class-action litigants and that specifically used the familiar words, “You may be entitled …”
Funny. Not funny. The point is the White House hated it, and wanted it gone.
Clegg said he told Slavitt “that removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the U.S., but he replied that the post was directly comparing COVID vaccines to asbestos poisoning in a way which demonstrably inhibits confidence in COVID vaccines amongst those that the Biden administration is trying to reach.”
The Facebook Files are so illuminating.
They show just how detestable this administration thinks the First Amendment — and really, more to truth, the American people. After all, a White House that despises the idea of a social media platform that allows the free exchange of ideas and the uninhibited questioning of government narratives is a White House that arrogantly thinks the public it supposedly serves is too stupid to handle freedom.
Get a load of this question, from Biden’s digital director, Rob Flaherty: “Since it’s a global pandemic,” he asked, according to Facebook’s internal communications, Fox found, “can we give agencies access to targeting parameters that they normally wouldn’t be able to?”
That’s like suggesting, ‘Since it’s an emergency, can we just suspend the Constitution?” — something this White House did with alarming frequency during the COVID years, anyway. Think dictates to shut down churches; think mandates to wear face masks; think orders to close down businesses, stay home and stay obedient to government while awaiting the stimulus check in the mail. Nary a duly passed law in sight — all orders, all executive dictates, all bureaucratic decrees.
All arrogance, all the time.
“If someone in rural Arkansas sees something on FB, it’s the truth,” said Biden’s head of communications for COVID-19 response, Fox found, citing documents from a separate White House-Facebook call dated April 5. “What we need is help pushing back on the myths.”
That’s code for government censorship.
Now fast-foward to today, and it’s the same elitist attitudes that are driving the left’s utter disregard for basic, civil, constitutional right — God-given rights, actually. Free speech is not something government has in its power to take or grant.
“Trump lawyer blasts indictment as attack on free speech,” Politico wrote, about the latest — 3rd? 4th? 34th? — allegation from special counsel Jack Smith against former President Donald Trump. Against private citizen Donald Trump. Against presidential candidate Donald Trump. Against clear-cut poll leader for 2024 Donald Trump.
“This is an attack on free speech and political advocacy,” said John Lauro, after reviewing the indictment that accuses Trump of trying to escalate Jan. 6, 2021, violence so as to keep hold of his presidency, Politico reported.
“[T]here’s nothing that’s more protected under the First Amendment than political speech,” Lauro went on, during an appearance on CNN. “Our defense is going to be focusing on the fact that what we have now is an administration that has criminalized the free speech and advocacy of a prior administration during the time that there’s a political election going on. That’s unprecedented.”
Yes. It is. But this White House has had a lot of practice attacking the First Amendment in general, and free speech specifically.
They’ve scored wins; no doubt they believe another one is coming through this latest indictment.
But an attack on one’s free speech is an attack on all free speech. And as this latest indictment shows, free speech attackers, once emboldened, only dig in deeper to seize even more freedoms and censor even more expressions.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
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