Cancel Culture imperils America's very existence as a free nation

It’s been a big week for cancel culture. Six books by Dr. Seuss fell victim, as well as Mr. Potato Head (not sure about Mrs. Potato Head). Two members of Congress wrote a letter asking cable companies to cancel One American News Network, Newsmax and FOX news.

Do we really want our politicians sanctioning news? Deciding which news is acceptable and which should be banned? Do we want to cancel everyone who is questioning or dissenting government and their actions?

People are asking, “When was the last time the group advocating for the burning of books and banning free speech were the good guys?” Really, it’s a great question. Can you think of anyone that has done that who we now believe, in hindsight, were the “good guys?”

And it’s not just the conservatives or the Republicans who are sounding the alarm. Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Democrat Constitutional attorney encouraged all Americans last week to fight cancel culture.

“I hope all Americans wake up to this,” Dershowitz told Newsmax on Thursday.

In referencing the letter from Democrat Congress Members to the cable companies, he pointed out how the conservatives are the victims of cancel culture right now but during McCarthyism it was the left who were the victims.

He reiterated, “we need both the right, the left, and also the center to stand united against censorship, against cancel culture, and in favor of the marketplace of ideas.” That is constitutional.

He continued, “We have the right to flip the channel if we don’t like what’s on Newsmax. Change the channel, but don’t tell the carriers, the satellite carriers, and the cable carriers, to deny us the right to watch Newsmax. That is wrong,” he remarked.

News networks are self-censoring right now and beeping out the words “fraud” with the word “election” while reporting their stories so that they won’t be canceled or banned from social media.

It’s a brazen assault on free speech when social media companies under the guise of “misinformation” cancel everyone that doesn’t support a certain narrative. It’s even more dangerous when the mainstream media, politicians and social media giants all collaborate together to cancel people or groups who don’t support their narrative, whatever it is.

President Trump’s social media accounts were canceled the same day from Twitter and Facebook and a few days later his official account was cancelled from Youtube. Then it was several Republican senators and congressmen, and then independent voices in media, medicine, and it’s working its way down the line, canceling everyone who has a dissenting voice.

As you would expect in America, several alternative platforms started popping up. Trump was considering his options and Parler thought he would switch to their platform. They were a likely candidate with 15 million users, and they were growing by one million users a day, when Amazon shut down their servers. Parler claimed in a lawsuit against Amazon that they were trying to block Trump by forcing Parler offline. I think they were also just killing competition.

At the same time, Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores. They said it was because of failure to deal with content moderation related to the Jan. 6 Capitol violence, however, a study of the social platforms actually showed that Facebook was the preferred platform, as well as with previous protests and riots throughout the “Summer of Love” last year.

We can’t shut down all dissenting voices. We have a longstanding remedy for “disinformation” and “misinformation” and it doesn’t include censoring everyone who doesn’t think like you do – it’s through the court system.

Last week, two Democratic members of Congress sent letters to the presidents of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, Dish, and other cable and satellite companies implying that they should either stop carrying FOX News, One America News Network and Newsmax or pressure them to change their coverage.

According to the lawmakers, these conservative channels are responsible for promoting misinformation and political violence. They asked in the letter, “Why are you letting news channels say these things?”

How scary is that?

Do these lawmakers not understand that the First Amendment prohibits them from infringing on free speech? Including the right of cable companies to provide diverse channels on their platform? Or is it just pure intimidation? Or could it be that they are so entrenched in collusion with the media and social media in shutting down any dissent or diversion from their accepted narrative that they just got sloppy?

The New York Times reported that "The committee members also sent the letter to Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google and Hulu, digital companies that distribute cable programming.”

There may be lawsuits that follow against these two congress members. I hope so because while I don’t want to shut down their free speech, I don’t want them to continue in their unconstitutional bad behavior. Politicians are not in charge of setting the standard for acceptable news on the internet and television. In a free society, that responsibility belongs to individual companies and their viewers.

There is probably some false information at times as reporters aren’t perfect, but there is a healthy amount of misinformation that appears on mainstream media and in the New York Times and Washington Post as well.

Reference three years of Russia collusion that we now know the FBI knew early on was debunked and paid opposition research with no credibility from the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. No one is asking for the New York Times to be censored, although they have lost editors from within because of their severe bias.

Another cancel culture “misinformation” victim was the New York Post (besides the American people) who reported on the stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the election with emails about deals he was making everywhere his father had diplomatic ties and how he had to share the profits with his dad.

Surveys after the election showed that a good percentage of people who voted for President Biden, if they had that information before the election, wouldn’t have voted for him.

So what is the answer with tech companies who are moderating information on politics, culture, COVID-19 and its origins, history, vaccinations, etc.? Is it to try and regulate or cancel them altogether? I don’t think so. As a publisher, I believe the best thing we can do is to remove their Section 230 protections and allow people to sue them if there is libel or defamation.

They do have a moral obligation, if not a legal responsibility to moderate against calls to violence, pedophilia, etc., so we can’t say we want them to not moderate completely. We just don’t want them canceling free speech and everyone who has a differing opinion on political, health, history and other issues.

We certainly don’t want them banning news channels that are credible news sources with millions of followers. And we clearly don’t want them acting in collusion with politicians to either censor free speech or compel free speech (that’s a whole other topic).

As I’ve written before, it’s important that we have contentious, highly partisan, disputed conversations so we can work out our issues. If we aren’t allowed to have uncomfortable conversations, how will we ever learn from each other, reach true consensus, agreement or the ability to agree to disagree and move forward? Do we really want one side to have the power to just shut down the other “side?”

The First Amendment's protections are vigorous, and the government may not criminalize the dissemination of information that they consider merely wrong, uninformed or critical of the government. Such moves imperil America’s very existence as a free nation.

Again, I want to ask, “When was the last time the group burning books and controlling free speech were the good guys?”

Julie Reeder can be reached by email at [email protected].