Reports have surfaced that Donald Trump has gotten a news story suppressed on X/Twitter after speaking with Elon Musk.
If there was ever a particularly consistent rule about far right extremists, it’s that every accusation is a confession. It’s a rule that works with such regularity, it’s almost uncanny.
One of the accusations we’ve seen over the years from far right extremists is that social media is somehow magically out to get them. This because social media is part of some sort of global conspiracy to censor “conservative” voices. Obviously, nothing about this is true. If anything, social media suffers from pro conservative bias where they are permitted to get away with far more than those who commit similar rule violations of any other political persuasion.
Now, there are some nuances to this as well. It is also true that far right voices do statistically get moderated more often, but research has concluded it’s because they well and truly are simply breaking the rules more often. In short, if they are upset at having their posts removed, maybe break the rules less often? Just saying.
Another accusation we’ve seen get tossed around a lot by the far right is that social media is actively suppressing content published by the far right. Specifically, as the conspiracy theory goes, the government is in cahoots with social media platforms to suppress content posted by the far right. This accusation reached a peak last year when Elon Musk, shortly after taking over Twitter, promised to release the so-called “Twitter files” that supposedly proved that the government has been working closely with Twitter before Musk’s arrival to suppress “conservative” voices and Musk was getting ready to prove it with the Twitter files. Well, those files got released and… it was a giant nothing burger. At most, the government sent a message to Twitter occasionally suggesting that certain posts be removed. A good portion of those posts ended up remaining anyway despite the concerns from officials about potential criminal activity. As a result, the conspiracy wound up being a giant swing and a miss.
Obviously, far right wing extremists have long been at war with reality and no amount of reality is going to deter the thinking that the government and the Biden administration is out to get them personally. It didn’t matter what the Twitter files ended up actually saying, for them, it was irrefutable proof of government suppressing their speech and that’s all that matters. Nothing about this is particularly surprising and has long been a reality for observers like us.
The thing is, when it comes to censorship, the far right certainly has a lot of ambition. For them, things like age verification laws are little more than a stepping stone to ban pornography completely. This while reclassifying LGBTQ+ content as “dangerous” or “explicit” content so that such material can be suppressed online. So much for the far right being long standing stalwart defenders of “free speech”. If anything, it has long been known that the real push is to remove the consequences of their speech while suppressing any speech they happen to not like. The thinly veiled agenda of age verification laws, not to mention Project 2025, are great examples of this.
Another great example of the suppression of speech the far right happens to not like recently hit. Apparently, there was a major dossier leak of JD Vance, current running mate of Donald Trump. It has surfaced that the Trump campaign contacted Elon Musk to have the dossier not only suppressed on X/Twitter, but also to have reporters banned for publishing it in the first place. From TechDirt:
Still, if just a month ago Trump was claiming that any effort to ask Twitter to limit access is proof of an election being “rigged,” you’d have to imagine that he’s furious that [checks notes] his own campaign reached out directly to Elon Musk to get him to remove any link to the hacked-and-leaked internal Trump campaign dossier on JD Vance.
You will recall, of course, that hackers from Iran supposedly social engineered their way into the Trump campaign system and have been trying to get the media to share the docs. They finally found a rando Substacker willing to do so, and then he was quickly banned, as were all links to the document on ExTwitter. As we noted at the time, basically everyone seemed to switch their positions on whether or not this was okay.
Supporters of Elon and Trump insisted that this banning and blocking was absolutely aboveboard and necessary. Supporters of Harris insisted that this was awful, terrible censorship and election interference. Neither seemed willing to recognize that the scenario was effectively identical to four years ago.
Except, it was even more extreme. The NY Times reported late last week that — unlike four years ago — the Trump campaign actually did call Elon to get the content removed.
The relationship has proved significant in other ways. After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.
It’s for reasons like this that I’m highly skeptical that far right politicians really give a flying f*ck about free speech in general. What’s closer to the truth is that, for them, censorship is only OK when they do it. The far right have plenty of targets when it comes to who they think should be actively censored or, even worse, locked away for their beliefs in various aspects of reality. This includes the reality of global climate change, health information for women, reproductive health in general, LGBTQ+ material, and more. As the censorship and collusion on X/Twitter shows, the far right are by no means afraid to swing the censorship hammer any anything and everything.
