You know how our good friends on the left always talk about “common sense gun control,” as they attempt to weaken our Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms? “Oh, people don’t need an AR-15 to go hunting,” and that it was never meant to protect an individual’s right to own a firearm for self-defense.

Well, today’s left don’t think much our First Amendment rights, either. From Pirate Wires:

Musk: EU Wanted “Illegal Secret Deal” to “Quietly Censor Speech”

by Brandon Gorrell | Friday, July 12, 2024 | 4:40 PM EDT

The european commission wanted 𝕏 to hire a team of people in the eu that would unilaterally oversee the removal of ‘misinformation’ on the platform, a source with knowledge of the issue told us.

On Friday, @elonmusk said the European Commission (EC) “offered 𝕏 an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone,” they would not seek to issue daily fines related to 𝕏’s blue check verification system that could total 6% of the company’s annual revenue.

“The other platforms accepted that deal. 𝕏 did not,” his post says.

The European Commission has no legal authority over the United States, of course, but it also does not fall under our First Amendment, which prohibits Congress, and via the incorporation of the Amendment, to states and local governments as well, from laws abridging the Freedom of Speech and of the Press. But when it comes to the American left, and how the Biden Administration tried to create a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, and that very liberal hater of free speech, Nina Jankowicz.

On April 25, 2022, Miss Jankowicz told us exactly how she felt about our Freedom of Speech^[1]You may not be able to verify my reference; Miss Jankowicz now limits who can see her tweets.:

I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking control over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities .  .  . which are already shouldering .  .  . disproportionate amounts of this abuse.

Prior to its purchase by Mr Musk, Twitter did protect such “marginalized people”. One way was to prohibit “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” Simply put, if someone wanted to tweet something about William Thomas, the male swimmer who claims to be female and was on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team using the name “Lia,” that person would have to concede to Mr Thomas’ claim that he is a woman by using the feminine pronouns and his assumed name, not his real one. The New York Times laughably gave major OpEd space to Chad Malloy, a man male who claims to be a woman going by the name “Parker” to claim that Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech.

Clearly, the left wants to control the debate by controlling the language used in the debate.

The EC wanted 𝕏 to hire a team of people in the EU that could number in the hundreds to remove ‘misinformation’ from the platform, a person with knowledge of the issue told PW Editor-in-Chief @micsolana. 𝕏 would have no recourse in these removal decisions, the person said.

“The objective of the Digital Services Act is to ensure a safe and fair online environment for European citizens that is respectful of their rights, in particular freedom of expression,” EC spokesperson Thomas Regnier told Pirate Wires over email. “The DSA requires a fair and transparent complaint mechanism for users. If an account is suspended, the user has the right to contest the decision. This means that decisions must not be arbitrary, and users are empowered to protect their online presence… When an account is restricted, the user must be informed and has the right to appeal the decision.”

The European democracies all say that they support freedom of speech, but they’ve also imposed all sorts of restrictions on such. The Europeans ‘freedom’ of speech is subject to all sorts of limitations with which Americans are simply unfamiliar.

The left were aghast when Mr Musk bought Twitter, and the freedom of expression on the platform was greatly expanded, though it has not been without some restrictions. Can you imagine if the Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board had actually been put in place? The information, finally exposed during the late June debate that President Joe Biden was losing his marbles would have been completely banned from Twitter. Information about the side effects that some people have suffered from the COVID-19 vaccines would have been dumped. Riley Gaines Barker’s efforts to restrict women’s sports to real women would have been banned. That it took an immigrant from South Africa, rather than an American bred and born, to fight that kind of censorship is, in itself, disgusting. That Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and a native-born American citizen, would knuckle under to the European demands for censorship of speech — is repugnant.

The Biden Administration and the American left are, at least privately, rubbing their hands with glee, that the Europeans are trying to restrict the freedom of speech of Americans, to keep their own fingerprints off of it. As is the case with the Second Amendment, they really don’t support the rights of people with whom they disagree.