When Mark Meckler appeared on Mike Huckabee's show in October 2021, he warned that “the Democratic Party and Big Tech… [are] absolutely wed so that they can control what you and I can say.”
In the two years since then, Mark’s message has proven to be terrifyingly astute. Of course, we all knew that Big Tech and the federal government were in cahoots; but the lengths to which they would go to suppress free speech were shocking even to the most cynical among us. The argument that “social media companies are private companies; therefore, they’re free to run their businesses however they want” is totally destroyed when those very same companies are pressured by top government officials to censor anything contrary to the far left’s authoritarian agenda.
Last year alone, for example, reports broke that:
- Prior to the 2020 presidential election, the FBI asked Facebook to be “vigilant” in guarding against “Russian propaganda” before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, leading the social media platform to suppress that crucial story, which, after the election, was confirmed.
- In 2021, the White House pressured Twitter to permanently suspend vaccine skeptic Alex Berenson, dubbed by “Vanity Fair” and “The Atlantic” the “King of the COVID-19 Contrarians” and “the pandemic’s wrongest man.” To his 340,000 followers, Berenson raised questions about the COVID-19 vaccine’s efficacy at the same time that Mr. Biden used “every available coercive means” to force the jab. Conveniently, the administration had him silenced.
- In 2022, the White House emailed Instagram, requesting that the Meta-owned platform take down an account mocking Dr. Anthony Fauci. “Yep, on it,” Instagram responded in less than a minute.
- The Google Play Store snubbed former President Donald Trump’s alternative social media platform, “Truth Social,” due to its alleged failure to impose content moderation. Ironically, at the same time, Google also hosted other apps with violent content that went uncensored.
These reports confirm a clear connection between Big Tech censorship and government coercion. Mr. Biden’s team and the FBI have a direct line to some of the biggest, most influential companies in the world, and there’s no telling how they might abuse that privilege again in the future.
Big Tech is dangerous enough. But working as the puppet of an out-of-control federal government, spearheaded by a president who openly demonizes the half of the country that didn’t vote for him, it has become more of a political weapon than ever before.
Thankfully, the states are fighting back, with several states suing the federal government over “open collusion with social media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social-media [sic] platforms.”
But more than this, we need all states to act in a coordinated effort to crack down on would-be authoritarianism in one fell swoop. With an Article V convention, all 50 states can lock shields against federal overreach and break the unconstitutional, anti-First Amendment bond between D.C. and Big Tech.
To join Convention of States in the fight to put the federal government back inside its box, sign the COS petition below!
