Silicon Valley did it because it knew it could get away with it.
As Twitter and Facebook, and Google and Apple, moved hard to limit conservative messages on social media, they felt comfortable taking their oppressive and monopolistic actions because they knew no one would hold them accountable.
With the United States Senate falling under Democratic Party control, they knew there would be no congressional committee calling them to account, and they knew the incoming presidential administration would leave them alone.
Why?
Because they calculated that the Democrats would put partisan advantage above principle.
Big Tech understood that the Democrats would overlook the draconian silencing of political speech for almost half of Americans because the silencing would be targeted at those who oppose the Democrats and their progressive agenda.
Given the choice between defending the American cultural value of free speech and dissent, or denying their opponents the opportunity to voice disagreement, Big Tech knew that the Democrats would choose their own self-interest.
Further, they knew that publicly demonstrating their allegiance to the progressive cause would probably buy them protection against a Democratic Party that, at least at Bernie Sanders rallies, seems to dislike massive corporations – such as Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple.
In order to curry favor with the new Washington bosses, Big Tech decided to be first in line to kick the opposition in the head.
The social media and Internet platform companies also knew that their actions would be neither scrutinized nor criticized by the American news media. That’s because the media depends on these companies for access to audience, and because the media, the PR arm of the progressive movement, hates conservatives as much as the Democrats, the political arm of the progressive movement.
And they knew that there would be little pushback because the first person erased from the public sphere would be Donald Trump. A pariah even among some members of his own party, Donald Trump, in the days after the assault on the U.S. Capitol, is loathed by many. Making him disappear would be – and turned out to be – publicly applauded.
But what Trump was was a precedent.
He was the establishing of the corporate power and prerogative to target a person because of politics and remove them from the public square, to delete them from the social media environment which is the Main Street of contemporary America.
Like something out of Orwell, the Soviet Union or China, Trump was disappeared.
And so were a growing number of others, all political conservatives.
And online access was denied to Parler, a company in the marketplace that offered not just another platform for speech, but also a competitive challenge to Twitter.
But it, like Trump, was shut down.
And America is silent.
The organs of the progressive establishment – religion, education, media, entertainment, the bureaucracy – haven’t said a word. The grand crusaders for “civil rights” have decided to take a pass on this one. When they’ve said anything at all, it has been in celebration. The socialists have said this is no concern of government, it is the marketplace, and corporations being good corporate comrades.
But they are wrong.
This the dumbing down of liberty by companies that routinely screw Chinese citizens in order to placate and facilitate their communist masters. This is the extinguishing of free speech in a society which has forgotten how to use the non-digital voices of earlier days. This is the empowering of corporate masters in corrupt partnership with craven politicians.
This is the philosophical genocide of opinions contrary to progressive orthodoxy. This is the digital destruction of people and ideas hated and ridiculed by every Democrat from Joe Biden to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
This is the death knell that ought to alarm every American.
Because today it’s Donald Trump, but tomorrow it’s you.
Today it is conservatives, people whose views have been declared dangerous. But tomorrow it will be others. Others who obstruct or disagree with the assertive power of the progressive-corporate confederacy.
Orwell said that totalitarians curtail speech because they want to curtail thought. If you cannot express dissent, eventually you can’t formulate dissent. Sheep don’t speak, and neither do the pawns of oppressors.
And speech isn’t free if that freedom doesn’t protect speech that offends or disagrees. Pretty words need no protection. America’s legal and cultural commitment to free speech has always been most relevant and most earnestly protected on the fringes.
You don’t have to like Trump. But you do need to love freedom.
Big Tech and its progressive partners hope America will sacrifice the latter to penalize the former.
And the sad thing is, it might be right. It’s certain the machinery of the Democratic Party and the progressive movement has its back.
This isn’t about Trump. This about you.
Our invisible masters have decided that he will be silenced.
And soon they might decide the same thing about you.