Biden-Big Tech COVID Censorship Collusion Is Tip of Ruling Class' Spear | Opinion

As America witnesses with shock the Biden administration's open and unabashed collusion with Big Tech to censor those engaging in COVID speech it deems problematic, the administration's allies promising the same with respect to SMS carriers and a threatened door-to-door vaccination campaign, C.S. Lewis' old saw that "a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive" comes to mind.

The issue at play here is manifestly not coronavirus vaccine efficacy, vaccination rates or public policy messaging, but the deeper question of who gets to determine the content of speech and the contours of our public discourse: A free, sovereign people or an insular Ruling Class?

It's not about whether a Ministry of Truth that lies and obscures all the time can be a competent arbiter of the quality of information, but whether there should be a Ministry of Truth at all.

And if we are still America, the answer is clear: There shouldn't be.

Free peoples begin their descent to unfreedom when they permit their leaders to grab powers in violation of their natural rights on grounds of public health and national security. Typically, this process begins with seemingly minor interventions in the most seemingly unobjectionable areas, so as to generate the least resistance.

But just as "15 days to slow the spread" metastasized into assaults on speech, religion, commerce, justice, election law and every other aspect of American life, so too will "fighting COVID misinformation" by blacklisting a dozen social media accounts metastasize into an attempted monopolization of the entire information sphere by our Ruling Class.

Already-tyrannical powers justify their depredations the same, only with a nod and a wink, and to greater effect. The same goes for China's ruling Communist Party vis-à-vis Hong Kong and for America's China-kowtowing elites vis-à-vis everyday citizens they presume to lord over.

Our Ruling Class' effort to control the information sphere—to monopolize The Narrative—has been underway for years. This was most recently and notably evinced in the cases of social media suppression of speech on the coronavirus' origins, Hunter Biden's laptop and election integrity—suppression the political establishment regulating Big Tech no doubt looked upon favorably.

What has fundamentally changed is that it is now official public policy for relevant state and private-sector power centers to jointly eliminate ideas that do not comport with the Ruling Class' agenda—ideas that might threaten its ability to rule.

And as the Biden administration has made clear, the pretext is public health and national security.

The combating of coronavirus misinformation actually represents the intersection of the two. Some dot-connecting is in order here.

The final pillar of the Biden administration's first-of-its-kind National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism calls for confronting long-term contributors to domestic terrorism. This includes:

enhancing faith in government and addressing the extreme polarization, fueled by a crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social media platforms, which can tear Americans apart and lead some to violence... We will work toward finding ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories that can provide a gateway to terrorist violence.

Note here the disturbing underlying premise that skepticism of government is not only unhealthy, but a cause of domestic terror. Note too that the administration believes the response to such "disinformation and misinformation" and "dangerous conspiracy theories"—as it sees them—must be to "counter" their "influence and impact." The administration would seem to have dismissed the idea that "faith in government" must be earned; that a government can only gain the public's trust by being transparent and accountable, and through demonstrated performance.

As for particulars, what kinds of ideas does the Biden administration-led national security apparatus deem dangerous?

Among others, those concerning COVID and election integrity.

A January 2021 National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security warning of a heightened domestic threat environment detailed: "Threats of violence against critical infrastructure, including the electric, telecommunications and healthcare sectors, increased in 2020 with violent extremists citing misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 for their actions." (Emphasis mine.)

So the administration's combating of COVID speech has a national security component to it.

The perpetuation of the dubious narrative that it is white supremacism fueled by the coronavirus—and the Trump administration's attribution of its ravages to Communist China—that is responsible for the reported surge in anti-Asian hate in America should be seen in this context.

As for election integrity, in March 2021, the intelligence community assessed that "narratives of fraud in the recent general election...will almost certainly spur some [domestic violent extremists] to try to engage in violence this year."

The Biden administration ties such narratives, via its countering domestic terrorism strategy, to racism. Racism, it argues, is a "long-term contributor to domestic terrorism" and the primary animating belief of the "most persistent and lethal threat": America's "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (principally those who promote the superiority of the white race)."

President Biden casts the spate of election integrity reforms being considered by Republican legislatures across the country, rooted in concerns about election integrity in the 2020 election, as a "21st-century Jim Crow assault," "election subversion" and the "most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War." He presents the "insurrectionists" of January 6 as on par with, if not worse than, the Confederates, who "never breached the Capitol."

Likewise, his Justice Department challenges election audits and election integrity reforms on grounds of racism. It classifies the Capitol Riot, in which the sole person who died was a protester, as an act of domestic terrorism; treats defendants often with no criminal records like terrorists; and has argued that their skeptical views on the legitimacy of the 2020 election make them a danger sufficient to keep them imprisoned.

The Biden administration's message is clear: Having the wrong political views may well render you a bigot, and possibly a terrorist.

How does it plan to fight all of the dangerous Wrongthink proliferating in America?

The National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism calls for government to "collaborate on addressing terrorist content online with partner governments similarly committed to freedom of expression as well as with technology companies and civil society organizations." (Emphasis mine.)

As noted in a February Newsweek column highlighting the threat of the then-developing national strategy, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted that the Biden administration had "spoken to...the need for social media platforms to continue to take steps to reduce hate speech."

Joshua Geltzer, one of the architects of the Biden administration's domestic terror strategy, testified during a September 2019 House Oversight Subcommittee hearing on "countering violent white supremacy"—again, the greatest domestic terror threat of all—that tech companies should be "policing their platforms to remove not just incitement to violence, but also the ideological foundations that spawn such violence." (Emphasis mine.)

Naturally, Biden administration policy flows directly from this view.

The administration litters its counterterror strategy with boilerplate language—and national security and law enforcement officials also pay lip service in statements and testimony—to their concern for protecting constitutional rights while pursuing threats.

But the clear assault on the First Amendment by Big Tech proxy; the pursuit and prosecution, if not persecution, of January 6 defendants—archetypes of the administration's domestic counterterrorism strategy—particularly in contrast with the disparate treatment of last summer's 1619 Rioters; and the broader weaponization and politicization of the Deep State as exposed from Russiagate/Spygate, to the recent revelations about the FBI's reported involvement from start to finish in the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, announced a month out from Election Day 2020, gives lie to the idea that our president, and the Deep State at his disposal, is concerned with either liberty or justice.

Wrongthinkers must be treated as a danger in Joe Biden's America because Wrongthinkers threaten the power and privilege of the Ruling Class for which he serves as a figurehead.

All such Wrongthinkers must be neutralized—up to and including the use of the full force of the federal government and its private sector adjuncts to crush them where necessary.

Those who called President Trump an authoritarian and a fascist ought to look in the mirror.

Ben Weingarten is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, fellow at the Claremont Institute and senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party (Bombardier, 2020). Ben is the founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media LLC, a media consulting and production company. Subscribe to his newsletter at bit.ly/bhwnews, and follow him on Twitter: @bhweingarten.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.