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 The global clamor to shut people up has been growing for a while, and we are now entering the full Third Reich phase of the censorship regime. 

No, I am not referring to Nazis working to silence people–we aren’t QUITE there yet. Instead, I am referring to Robert Reich’s suggestion in his opinion piece: a call for all good and decent governments around the world to threaten Elon Musk with jail if he doesn’t agree to shut up himself and silence all people who disagree with Robert Reich.

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On what planet is it true that “free-speech rights under the First Amendment don’t take precedence over [vague assertions of what’s in] the public interest”?

This is incredibly disturbing and also happens to be the dominant view on speech on the left.

It’s also on-brand for progressives.

There are many clarifying arguments in Robert Reich’s opinion piece in The Guardian, but the unintentional irony of how it was structured makes it perfect. A man named “Reich” writes an essay in which the third point stands out as especially tyrannical is totally perfect. 

What was Reich’s 3rd suggestion to “rein in Musk?” 


3. Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.

Global regulators may be on the way to doing this, as evidenced by the 24 August arrest in France of Pavel Durov, who founded the online communications tool Telegram, which French authorities have found complicit in hate crimes and disinformation. Like Musk, Durov has styled himself as a free speech absolutist.

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The Third Reich. Perfect. 

Reich isn’t saying anything out of the mainstream of progressive thought these days. In fact, his argument mirrors not just progressives but nearly everyone in the transnational elite, who are on a tear threatening everyone who says or does things they dislike. 

In France, Telegram’s Founder and CEO was arrested for not cooperating with the authorities by giving them a backdoor to his encrypted app, thereby facilitating speech they disliked. 

They claim to object to Telegram because it facilitates illegal activity (it does, as does every platform unwittingly–look at Instagram, which is home to extensive child sexual abuse material and actually promotes it), but their real objective is that people can say what they want without being censored. 

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In Brazil, an insanely authoritarian judge has banned Twitter/X for not banning users who criticize him, and has seized Starlink’s assets because X and Starlink are both owned by Musk. 

The EU has threatened to ban Twitter/X for allowing free speech, and it literally threatened the company for allowing Elon Musk to have a conversation with Donald Trump on the platform. Think about that: Russians spent a few hundred thousand dollars on ads in 2016 and our politics were dominated for years over the controversy. The European Union threatened to shut down an entire platform because it allowed the former and future President of the United States to speak at all. 

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Every mainstream media outlet seems thrilled about using the power of the state to suppress the speech of others. All “right thinking” person seems hell-bent on shutting others up. 

The Third Reich is totally appropriate to describe this tyrannical impulse, and I thank both The Guardian and Robert Reich for making that clear.