On December 2, Twitter CEO Elon Musk released a trove of emails that showed how employees of the social media platform complied with multiple requests to remove or restrict certain articles and comments. Independent journalist Matt Taibbi was Musk’s chosen conduit for the proof of what conservatives had long suspected; that Twitter has been censoring posts that are politically damaging to Democratic Party politicians, particularly Joe Biden. The resulting tantrum thrown by left-wing journalists and commentators was as coordinated as it was predictable.
The published communications did more than just confirm that Twitter had engaged in politically motivated censorship, though; they showed that the Democratic National Committee and Mr. Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign had pressured the social media giant to suppress one story in particular. That story was, of course, the Hunter Biden laptop. Subsequent surveys have indicated that, had the news about the infamous laptop – first published by the New York Post – not been kept from the public, the 2020 presidential election may have produced a different result.
Elon Musk Faces Organized Political Attack Machine
The establishment media has largely tried to ignore Twittergate, but, when the scandal has been addressed, the spin machine throws out a stunning narrative that goes something like this: The folks at Twitter had acquitted themselves well, acting strictly in accordance with the company’s community standards to keep harmful disinformation out of the public discourse. This is how content moderation is supposed to work, the pro-Democrat talking heads are saying. All’s right with the world, so long as the gatekeepers of truth and justice are ensuring that the public sees only approved news and opinion. As MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski once said, it is the media’s job to “control what people think.”
NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny perfectly captured this curious narrative when she told MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle:
“We got to see how content moderation works. We got to see how when a group of people with different political ideas and ideologies and views, gets together in the spirit of making a platform safe and healthy, right before an election, right when we knew we had just learned of the hack and leaks and Wikileaks and all the stuff that that did to hurt and to affect … the 2016 election. In 2020, they were heightened. People were trying to do the right thing and inside Twitter.”
Yes, that’s right. Zadrozny thinks there were a bunch of conservative Twitter employees whole-heartedly agreeing with their left-leaning colleagues that Democrat requests to quash a major scandal involving Joe Biden should be acted on to protect the public.
Meanwhile, Mediaite compiled a fabulous list of 27 tweeted responses to Taibbi’s disclosing of the Hunter Biden laptop suppression efforts. Here’s where the coordination becomes very evident. Almost every one of the 27 indignant tweeters was a left-wing journalist and all of them used a practically identical line of attack against Taibbi. The phrase “doing PR for the richest person in the world,” or some very close facsimile of it, appears in almost every one of these tweets. One is almost tempted to think that perhaps these alleged journalists all got their talking points from the very same source. That couldn’t possibly be the case, though. These are independent thinkers who would never put out some approved political propaganda and pass it off as their own thoughts. Maybe, then, it was some phenomenon of mass telepathy. Groupthink, one might call it. One thing is for sure: This is a pattern of behavior that invites sarcasm. That these media types take themselves seriously is more than a little amusing.
Elon Musk has promised another document dump, though it is already overdue, going by the billionaire’s original pledge. There is little doubt, however, that the richest person in the world and the newest thorn in the side of the political left has more to show. It is fair to say that only a little smoke has been seen thus far, but not the gun from which it came. If and when this analogous firearm is produced, the hysteria and outrage from the left’s leading chatterboxes will no doubt hit new and more wondrous peaks.
