The radical right legal onslaught in defense of demagoguery

This is a complex area of legal attack that is heavily shrouded in sophisticated disinformation, misdirection, spin and lies. But as the attack proceeds into laws that are challenged in courts, some of the deceit and opacity are stripped away by court filings that are public documents. The Republican radicals attacking the right of private citizens to control speech are focused on the big social media platforms. 

What is going on right now is a fascinating attack on private platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Radical right Republicans have passed laws that prevent the platform from banning people like the ex-president for bad speech. Those laws are clearly unconstitutional, but this line of attack directly challenges what had been settled law, namely the right of a private entity to control or ban whatever speech it chose for any reason or no reason. 

To try to simplify and clarify what is going on, my analysis and opinion follows:

Radical Republican neo-fascists need unfettered access to big social media to maximize the impact of their divisive propaganda. That propaganda is necessary for success of their run for neo-fascist power and kleptocratic wealth. As discussed here before, most big neo-fascist Republican online sites instantly ban critics and inconvenient truth because it weakens the power of their lies and divisiveness. They demand that the really big sites carry their propaganda without interference. The misdirection here is that the really big sites are targeted, while leaving all the smaller ones free to censor dissent and inconvenient truth. If that analysis is basically correct, and I believe it is, the Republican calculation probably is that the neo-fascist cause will be helped more than hurt by doing what they are now trying to do. 

From what I can tell, Republicans rely on, and their rank and file responds to, demagoguery significantly more than Democrats and independents. The advantage is with authoritarian demagogues over the democrats and honest speech. That is something, arguably a fact, not an opinion, that has been known since at least Plato and Aristotle. 

One troubling factor here is that some liberal judges appear to be buying into this line of attack. Apparently, they cannot see the threat of demagoguery in the form of protected free speech. The radical right myth has always been, the more speech the better. That poison dart is false. But it quite effectively denies or deflects from the fact that dark free speech can be and now is being used to attack democracy. The attack of authoritarian demagogues is not just ongoing in America. It is being applied to all democracies everywhere. Simply put, it is not always true that more speech is better. In the hands of authoritarian demagogues, more speech is worse.

The New York Times writes:

Supreme Court Blocks Texas Law Regulating Social Media Platforms

The law, prompted by conservative complaints about censorship, prohibits big technology companies like Facebook and Twitter from removing posts based on the views they express. 

The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a Texas law that would ban large social media companies from removing posts based on the views they express.

The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. The order was not the last word in the case, which is pending before a federal appeals court and may return to the Supreme Court.

The vote was 5 to 4, with an unusual coalition in dissent. The court’s three most conservative members — Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch — filed a dissent saying they would have let stand, for now at least, an appeals court order that left the law in place while the case moved forward. Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, also said she would have let the order stand, though she did not join the dissent and gave no reasons of her own.

Justice Alito wrote that the issues were so novel and significant that the Supreme Court would have to consider them at some point.

“This application concerns issues of great importance that will plainly merit this court’s review,” he wrote. “Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news. At issue is a groundbreaking Texas law that addresses the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”

Justice Alito said he was skeptical of the argument that the social media companies have editorial discretion protected by the First Amendment like that enjoyed by newspapers and other traditional publishers.

“It is not at all obvious,” he wrote, “how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies.”  

The law’s supporters said the measure was an attempt to combat what they called Silicon Valley censorship, saying major platforms had removed posts expressing conservative views. The law was prompted in part by the decisions of some platforms to bar President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The law, H.B. 20, applies to social media platforms with more than 50 million active monthly users, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It does not appear to reach smaller platforms that appeal to conservatives, like Truth Social and Gettr, the law’s challengers told the Supreme Court.  

The law also does not cover sites that are devoted to news, sports, entertainment and other information that their users do not primarily generate. The covered sites are largely prohibited from removing posts based on the viewpoints they express, with exceptions for the sexual exploitation of children, incitement of criminal activity and some threats of violence.

Keeping in mind the advantage of demagoguery over honest speech, just consider (i) how the radical far right justice Alito frame this issue for authoritarian advantage, and (ii) how the Texas law was written for partisan advantage: “It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies.” He conveniently leaves out medium and small social media companies. He does not define the concept of large. 

In my opinion, what is in Alito’s mind is partisan advantage for the outnumbered neo-fascists. The six Republican Christian nationalists on the court can conveniently decide such lawsuits case by case. That allows maximum advantage to the demagogues who can (1) force big social media to accept their poisonous democracy killing demagoguery, and (2) which demagoguery sites remain free to reject inconvenient honest speech. Or the radicals can simply define large to maximize benefit to radical right demagoguery while blunting benefits to honest speech as much as possible. When one (i) frames the issue like this, and (ii) considers the differences in mindset between modern radical right conservatives and most everyone else, the possibilities for radical right partisan advantage start to come into view.

Does all of this sound cynical, hyper-partisan or shockingly hypocritical? Maybe, but the scope of objective political reality can include ice-cold political cynicism, foaming at the mouth, self-serving hyper-partisanship and ghastly hypocrisy. As far as I know, no law stands in the way of any of that, just like no law stands in the way of ~99.9% of political lies and deceit. 

Obviously, the demagogues will vehemently deny cynicism, partisanship and hypocrisy. They will demagogue this as just them valiantly trying to defend free speech for the benefit of all. That propaganda conveniently ignores and denies that their speech is poison to democracy, inconvenient truth and some other good things.