09/18/2018
Welcome to VDARE Radio, Iâm your host Virginia Dare.
Today, I want to talk about how the conservative movement needs to grow up when it comes to considering questions of power. Conservatives know they are supposed to oppose âbig government,â although the details on that are pretty vague. For instance, see their various interpretations on government expansion as a result of foreign wars. But more importantly, conservatives are blinkered when it comes to how private concentrations of power have major public consequences.
Sometimes, itâs hard to draw the line between where the quote, âstateâ ends and the quote, âprivateâ sector begins. And that is especially true when it comes to technology companies.
Letâs start with a historical truth â the Internet was at least partially created through government action. Just like you canât realistically âbuild another highway systemâ or âbury another network of pipelines,â you canât just âcreate a new Internetâ to introduce competition. There are certain platforms that by their very nature become common carriers or natural monopolies. There is a strong case to be made that major web services such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter should be treated this way.
A column appearing, of all places, National Review conceded this point. Jeremy Carl of the Hoover Institution wrote, quote:
We need to make sure that these monopolies and platforms â which have been shielded with their privileges, such as the Safe Harbor provisions of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act â respect the free speech of all Americans, not just those who agree with themâŚ
Facebook, Google, and their ilk are indeed utilities, utilities that deliver public benefits and not just private ones. Itâs time for Congress and the Trump administration to start treating them that way.
[How to break Silicon Valleyâs Anti-Free Speech Monopoly, August 15, 2017]
Some people have tried to build competition to even the playing field. But they get shut down from companies even higher on the food chain. Gab, for example, is the free speech competitor to Twitter. Yet Gab was threatened with being shut down altogether by their host service, Microsoft. Needless to say, most media outlets, which seem to really hate free speech, cheered this, with one article entitled, Microsoft threatened to stop hosting the alt-rightâs favorite social network. [by Simone Stolzoff, Quartz, August 10, 2018]
And even if a competitor secured their own domain hosting, well, then theyâll shut down its ability to process credit cards. Thatâs what happened to both David Horowitz and Robert Spencer, and though their ban was eventually reversed, itâs likely to get worse before it gets better. There is an active campaign to get Stripe and other payment processors to stop working with patriotic groups altogether. What then, start an independent bank?
There are even digital book burnings now. Amazon recently purged several books by Roosh Valizadeh, again because of active lobbying by media, in this case, the Huffington Post, which duly bragged about their triumph [Exclusive: Amazon Removes 9 Books by Notorious Rape Apologist âRooshâ by Sebastian Murdock and Jesselyn Cook, September 10, 2018]. Itâs not that we need to defend Roosh, itâs that a horrible precedent has been set. Thereâs content far more objectionable than Roosh on Amazon. Why isnât all that banned?
Iâve said it before â without journalists, weâd probably have more free speech, not less.
We are reaching critical mass of censorship here. Life in America is rapidly approaching a corporate dictatorship. What makes this all the more infuriating is that the same companies using oppression as a virtue signal treat their workers terribly. [Tucker Carlson to Amazon, Walmart CEOs: At a certain point, youâve made enough money, by Becket Adams, Washington Examiner, August 31, 2018] Itâs the worst of both worlds.
Conservatives need to start mobilizing. We need start taking on corporate tyranny, rather than apologizing for it â ESPECIALLY instead of just giving our oppressors another tax cut. If we donât, for all intents and purposes real free speech wonât exist in this country, and the First Amendment will be meaningless.
Iâm Virginia Dare and we will talk again soon.