OPINION:
Trying to put right-wing news sites, social blogging and video platforms out of business is paramount to the left’s drive for complete control.
That’s why activist groups, funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros and other oligarchs, have joined forces with government activists such as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to stamp out dissent. So-called fact-check or anti-hate groups target websites they disagree with by influencing weakling corporatists to cut off advertising money.
It’s not so much a matter of accuracy as a simple disagreement over what is news, which is what the First Amendment is all about.
When conservatives in 2020 wrote of the Wuhan lab in China as a likely source of COVID-19 (because it was a sloppy place experimenting with bat blood viruses in the city where the sickness emerged), the left burst to the communists’ defense by ridiculing “conspiracy theorists.”
China has too much money to jeopardize the corporate media’s deep ties to Beijing. And anyway, it’s all former President Donald Trump’s fault. No need for journalistic debate or investigation. Who cares that China orchestrated a police-state cover-up?
The FBI ultimately concluded that the Wuhan lab was the likely source of the coronavirus. This vindicated conservative media, which has been correct on a number of key issues, such as the Hillary Clinton campaign dossier, corrupt lawyer Michael Avenatti, Alfa Bank and Hunter Biden.
Today, there is a power shift.
Elected Republicans, attorneys general and House GOP committees are investigating, calling witnesses, exposing bogus fact-checkers and issuing reports. They are filing lawsuits against the liberal oppressor “watchdogs.” There are four so far.
Investigative journalists have gained access to social media’s inner workings and government documents to tell the story of the alliance between the state and tech billionaires who mostly back the Democratic Party. Exposing state-sponsored censorship is now a standard reporters’ beat.
On this front, two independent journalists, Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, have emerged as pathfinders. They draw thousands of followers on social media platforms such as X for their findings and have testified on Capitol Hill.
Elon Musk invited them to investigate in-house his newly acquired microblogging site. The two’s “Twitter Files” history disclosed an anti-conservative FBI censorship campaign.
Mr. Musk’s bold move prompted President Biden’s Federal Trade Commission to investigate the journalists. If we have learned anything about Mr. Biden’s neo-Stalinism, it’s that his federal agency surrogates punish his political adversaries by putting them under investigation.
Mr. Taibbi this month took on a former Time magazine editor and Obama appointee, Richard Stengel, who asserted on X that crime is down, not up.
I checked. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that both violent crime and car theft (carjackings) increased in 2022. Carjackings in the District of Columbia have doubled, the city says. Shoplifters are forcing merchants across the country to close their doors. When looters clean out a store and no one is arrested, how is that reported in crime statistics? One theft? Perhaps no theft. Some retailers say they no longer call the police.
Mr. Taibbi replied to Mr. Stengel’s post. “You live in a bubble and have no idea what life is like for people outside your tax bracket. That you were once in charge of a ‘counter-disinformation’ agency is absolute proof of how bankrupt that concept is.”
Meanwhile, there are four lawsuits filed by right-leaning news and commentary platforms against left-wing groups that are trying to destroy them.
First, Consortium News, a site often at odds with Mr. Biden, in October filed a defamation lawsuit against NewsGuard. Conservatives say the for-profit left-wing group has a flawed scoring system designed to intimidate advertisers. It gives its highest marks to Biden-friendly publications.
In late November, Rumble Inc., a conservative counter to liberal, Google-run YouTube, filed a defamation suit against Claire Atkin and Nandini Jammi, co-founders of Check My Ads. Rumble says the two are trying to silence the platform using bogus information.
Elon Musk, who just completed his first year as owner of X, filed a defamation lawsuit against the right’s most hated critic, Media Matters. Mr. Musk alleges that Media Matters issued a bogus report on X that chased away advertisers.
Most recently, The Federalist and The Daily Wire joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a lawsuit against the State Department.
They say Biden activists took the Global Engagement Center, which was supposed to single out foreign fake news, and turned it on American conservatives. The lawsuit says the State Department office is “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.”
The leader of this new revolution was then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt. He sued Mr. Biden to stop federal agencies such as the FBI from contacting social media to censor political content.
Judges sided with Mr. Schmitt, now a U.S. senator, and the Supreme Court has decided to take the First Amendment case. His successor, Republican Andrew Bailey, announced on Dec. 11 that he had opened an investigation of Media Matters to determine if its allegations against Mr. Musk and X amount to fraud.
In November, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a report on how allegations of foreign influence in the 2016 election fueled the left-wing censorship industry that then pivoted against Americans.
To me, the real motive is that liberals, long the dominant information gatekeepers, do not want to share journalism with those it dismisses as unkempt right-wingers. The right has the nerve to think these are news: Drug cartels are taking over our southern border, China’s Wuhan lab poisoned the world, the Biden family sells access and is corrupt, and organized theft is putting retailers out of business.
You see, America must look as good as possible to get President Biden reelected.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with the Washington Times.
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