The ‘War On Terror’ Comes Home

by Ron Paul Last week’s massive social media purges – starting with PresidentTrump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets – was shockingand chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and thefree exchange of ideas. The justifications given for the silencing of wide swathsof public opinion made no sense and the process was anything but transparent.Nowhere in President Trump’s two “offending” Tweets, for example,was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classicexample of sentence first, verdict later. Many Americans viewed this assault on social media accounts as a liberal orDemocrat attack on conservatives and Republicans, but they are missing the point.The narrowing of allowable opinion in the virtual public square is no conspiracyagainst conservatives. As progressives like Glenn Greenwald have pointed out,this is a wider assault on any opinion that veers from the acceptable parametersof the mainstream elite, which is made up of both Democrats and Republicans. Yes, this is partly an attempt to erase the Trump movement from the pages ofhistory, but it is also an attempt to silence any criticism of the emergingpolitical consensus in the coming Biden era that may come from progressive orantiwar circles. After all, a look at Biden’s incoming “experts” shows that theywill be the same failed neoconservative interventionists who gave us weeklykill lists, endless drone attacks and coups overseas, and even US governmentkilling of American citizens abroad. Progressives who complain about this “backto the future” foreign policy are also sure to find their voices silenced. Those who continue to argue that the social media companies are purely privateventures acting independent of US government interests are ignoring reality.The corporatist merger of “private” US social media companies withUS government foreign policy goals has a long history and is deeply steepedin the hyper-interventionism of the Obama/Biden era. “Big Tech” long ago partnered with the Obama/Biden/Clinton StateDepartment to lend their tools to US “soft power” goals overseas.Whether it was ongoing regime change attempts against Iran, the 2009 coup inHonduras, the disastrous US-led coup in Ukraine, “Arab Spring,” thedestruction of Syria and Libya, and so many more, the big US tech firms werehappy to partner up with the State Department and US intelligence to providethe tools to empower those the US wanted to seize power and to silence thoseout of favor. In short, US government elites have been partnering with “Big Tech” overseas for years to decide who has the right to speak and who must be silenced.What has changed now is that this deployment of “soft power” in theservice of Washington’s hard power has come home to roost. So what is to be done? Even pro-free speech alternative social media outletsare under attack from the Big Tech/government Leviathan. There are no easy solutions.But we must think back to the dissidents in the era of Soviet tyranny. Theyhad no Internet. They had no social media. They had no ability to communicatewith thousands and millions of like-minded, freedom lovers. Yet they used incrediblecreativity in the face of incredible adversity to continue pushing their ideas.Because no army – not even Big Tech partnered with Big Government – canstop an idea whose time has come. And Liberty is that idea. We must move forwardwith creativity and confidence! Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institutefor Peace & Prosperity.