The other day I pointed out that if Nazis and fascists and Marxists and other forms of gangster governments used the 18th century, Western libertarian conception of "free speech - free press" to gull a sufficient number so as to gain power and, once they had THEY would be the ones to limit "free speech - free press" and that they would do a lot more than just keep poeple from saying things and publishing things, THEY WOULD BE SLAUGHTERING PEOPLE IN THE WAY THOSE GANGSTER GOVERNMENTS ALWAYS DO.
The 18th century concepts so dangerously truncated into minor 18th century poetry in the Bill of Rights, especially in the first two amendments, may have been tolerable when "the press" meant hand presses that print a page at a time, not more than a page or two a minute, handset by hand, it might have been of limited danger when, at most, the speech of anyone could be heard by, at most, a few hundred listeners. It might have been tolerable among the propertied White Men who the Founders were really concerned for, themselves, and those of their class and those who they might do business with, the dangers that would come about from it were little to them, secure as they were in their positions.
They, of course, had no intention of suffering the danger to themselves or their fortunes by extending those and other listed rights to Black People, to Native Americans, to Women (those Women appertaining to the aristocrats who hoodwinked the plebs into the Constitution to be protected, or not, by their choice) and certainly not the unpropertied poor, as Federalists sometimes are indiscreet enough to mention when the right legal issues arise. They certainly reacted badly whenever unpropertied, white men of the laboring classes rebelled against the thieving by their betters, it was just such rebellions among the veterans of the Revolution that inspired the con of the Constitutional Convention, to start with.
We don't live in that world, those 18th century conditions those 18th century assumptions that their lofty words starting "Congress shall make no law . . . " were based in, the age of hand printing, unamplified voices, flint lock, single shot weapons, etc. all that is gone and will not return, no, not even some movie, cable sy-fi apocalypse will return us there. But the stupidity of modernism hasn't allowed us to understand that with the modern technologies, the modern ways of life that started in the century after the Constitution was written has made those founding assumptions not only unrealistic, when they forumlate the laws we live under in the current world, they are extremely dangerous, able to get scores and hundreds of thousands and millions killed.
The Bush II invasion of Iraq was a product of amplified lies told under unregulated cable TV and hate-talk radio under the First Amendment by thugs and gangsters, some of them working with PR firms, foreign as well as domestic and the slaughter from that is still ongoing. The pathetic "more speech" of even the massive demonstrations opposed to that invasion, in both the United States and Britain and elsewhere were entirely impotent to stop it. Of course, in the United States the presence of George W. Bush in office was a result of the Brooks Bros. putsch mounted by the Federalist-fascist class, aided and abetted by the media and given the post-pustch blessing of the New York Times as it lied about the actual results of the study a consortium of news organizations did of the ballots in Florida.
The Bush II invasion of Iraq was a product of the freedom to lie which was granted to the media by the Founders and by the oddly fundamentalist reading of the First Amendment by the reputedly liberal Warren Court and subsequent and increasingly fascistic courts dominated by Republican appointees.
But that was what might be considered the fruit of a cultivated, domesticated species of Free Speech, flowing out of the publicity industry on behalf of the millionaire-billionaire class that the Founders belonged to and empowered, refereed by "justices" who were the product of the most elite of law schools. When the quality mount an operation such as that one, they're really good at getting lots of people killed and we're so used to ignoring the actual facts and circumstances of it, trained to ignoring those facts, that what they do is considered not only acceptable, but respectable. George H. W. Bush, the father and, some might say godfather of his son's Iraq adventure (supposedly in retaliation for Saddam Hussein's plot to assassinate Daddy Bush) is spoken of with a reverence that is putrid to those of us who never bought into those lies and who will not ignore the mountains of dead being added to even today as he may be roasting in hell.
But there are the wild Free Speech species that are also the product of the Anglo-American Enlightenment, the beneficiaries of the 2nd Amendment style of gun ownership and formed by the discourse of the "more speech" that flourishes on the unregulated internet, which is producing one, two, many, many mass murders and there is beginning, just beginning to be a response to that by the semi-democratic governments.* In Australia, in the wake of the horrific mass murders in two Mosques in Christchurch New Zealand there is a proposed new law that attempts to begin to hold the internet companies that the murderer used to live-stream his murders from which millions of people from the merely sick to the criminally insane copied and re-streamed the video-game footage of him actually murdering Women, Children, Men for the entertainment and inspiration of those who certainly approved and that subset of those who, no doubt, would be inspired to copy if not outdo him. And, predictably, the internet companies are screaming about the infringement on "free speech - free press" in the attempt to stop that daisy chain of mass murder. You can read about it here, in detail, this post is getting long so I'll go straight to one of the points I want to make about it.
“This law would prevent that and criminalise that and offer the government an ability to respond where an organisation like Facebook let something livestream and play for a long time on their platform.”
Note that this law doesn't even call on these enormously wealthy corporations to prevent such use of their platforms, merely to take it down in a timely fasion.
The Digital Industry Group, which represents Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Verizon Media in Australia, has warned the bill was passed without meaningful consultation and threatens penalties against tech companies for content created by users.
Labor has promised to review the legislation if it is elected in May, adding to a list of national security laws it will have to revisit in government after supporting in opposition, including the encryption bill which it has promised to amend.
The group’s managing director, Sunita Bose, said members worked to take down abhorrent conduct “as quickly as possible”, but “with the vast volumes of content uploaded to the internet every second, this is a highly complex problem”.
“This ‘pass it now, change it later’ approach to legislation, such as we saw with the encryption law, creates immediate uncertainty for Australia’s technology industry,” she said.
“It threatens employees within any company that has user-generated content to be potentially jailed for the misuse of their services – even if they are unaware of it.
What the hell does Sunita Bose thinks happens when the next person inspired by the depravity those companies make money from streaming copies the Christchurch murderer? A lot more than being "potentially jailed" their victims will be very finally and definitely shot to pieces, some of them so badly that their bodies couldn't be identified by sight.
The whining about "pass it now, change it later" is more than matched by the "mount the platform, we won't change it no matter how many people it gets murdered" approach which is how not only "social media" but the free-press has followed when it was unregulated as to content starting in the post-war period. The mass media, especially since the advent of unregulated cable in places like the United States, and unregulated internet media has proven that their executives and owners and most of their users find it totally acceptable when the most openly violent voices, Nazis, White Supremacists, loser Incel boys and anyone who can get hold of weapons, automatic, semi-automatic or otherwise are streamed to the world, found by those attracted to their messaging, inspired by them (passing by all that free-speech industry asserted "more speech" which their browsers wouldn't pick up and which hardly ever gets on cable stations and hate-talk radio) go out and murder scores and more of innocent people.
And they are whining about the governments "lack of consultation" with the companies that make money off of this depravity. It makes you wonder which of them consulted anyone on the possible use by mass murdering Nazis, fascists, white supremacists, psychopaths, etc. of their services before they sprang them on the world. Only that's always different when it's a for-profit corporation instead of a mere democratically elected government.
We have been driven mad by making something we call "freedom" an idol, it is a symptom of the pathological potential of that idolatry that now it is the foremost enemies of equality and democracy who are those who are shouting "freedom of speech" and those making money off of their violence who shout "freedom of the press" the loudest. They expose the danger that freedom free to violate the rights of not only individuals but entire races of people is not freedom, it is sociopathic depravity, such depravity is the common mindset among those elites in the law and in governments that find it totally acceptable for such "free speech, free press" to produce the effects they certainly have. Their hirelings and allies in the pseudo-social-sciences and their claims of harmlessness disproved by their other work done on behalf of the very media and advertising companies which claims their ability to enhance the effect of what people hear and see in the media to get them to buy things.
I can predict that something is going to give and as this goes on it is going to be the lie of "free speech-free press" absolutism as well as 2nd Amendment arming of psychotics, fascists, Nazis, etc. and ad infintem. If nothing else, as soon as one of those gangster regimes really take root, they will silence and disarm their opponents, As someone pointed out the phony Russian "gun rights" group that the Putin crime organization floated to sucker Americans was a Potemkin false front as the Putin regime had no intention of allowing free access to guns to their possible opponents, no more than they would allow them to really be effective in the media. If Western style democracies don't accept their responsibilities to make those distinctions and to really, effectively crush the opponents of equality and democracy, that's what awaits us. The same social media companies have no problem doing business with gangsters and dictators, the only freedom they care about is the freedom to make money.
* I don't think it's at all an accident that the most common form of that which is found acceptable enough to not cut off its roots is mass killing and terror by racist, fascistic, men who are in line with the very concept of the slave patrols which were the actual inspiration for the 2nd Amendment, as the slave-owning majority of the Founders wanted to be able to violently keep the basis of their wealth under control by like-thinking working class men and aristocratic boys with a taste for organized violence.
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