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~Sixty-six days from America's uniquely unique peaceful transfer of power, the winning side is having a grand old time watching Trump troll a discredited and impotent not-so-mainstream media. The central criticism of every appointment - that this guy is not part of the club, not from the ranks of the uniparty ruling class - is, in fact, the minimum entry qualification if you're serious about pulling the US back from the looming cliff edge. If Merrick Garland and Lloyd Austin are what it means to be a sober respectable "public servant", Trump might as well hand out Cabinet positions from the drive-thru window: Do you want the Department of the Interior with that?
Nevertheless, it seems clear that without Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter it would have been all but impossible for Trump to win the election. It is only because of Musk that analysts can assert "the Internet has replaced TV as a source of information". Sans Musk, the Internet and mainstream media are one and the same: last time round, both "Sixty Minutes" and NPR, on the one hand, and Facebook and Google, on the other, were agreed that Hunter Biden's laptop was not a story, and they had the muscle to prevent it becoming one.
Speaking as someone who found himself almost two decades back cast in a role he would never consciously have sought, I have to say that it is rather unusual for the world's richest man to be a planet-bestriding "free speech warrior". In my experience, the billionaire class are among the least reliable on the subject - as, indeed, Trump was a decade ago. Billionaires, after all, shove a lot of dough into the pockets of defamation lawyers - on the grounds that, when everything else in your life is swell, why put up with some snippy dweeb running his mouth off on his laptop? I would cite, from my own experience, billionaire cockwomble Cary Katz, whose "senior vice president" Alena Charles testified at trial that his media company CRTV's "primary value" was its commitment to free speech. At the very end of his final decision, the judge had some sport with that one (page 45 here):
The bedrock guarantee of our society is that people should be able to speak and write freely in public. US Const Amend I; NY Const, art I, § 8. CRTV purports to stand for that principle as its 'primary value'. See Tr. at p.1202 II. 9-15 (Alena Charles, Senior VP Marketing Blaze Media, Tr. p.1160 11020-23.) Yet, when push came to shove, CRTV sought to constrain that guarantee in a dispute with one of Its former talents... Steyn and MSE [Mark Steyn Enterprises], therefore, prevail in total on every Statement at issue.
In fairness to the Cockwomble, he was a very typical billionaire in that respect. So Elon Musk's embrace of the free-speech cause puts him at odds with almost all of his peers. He would not get a sympathetic hearing in the after-hours bar at Davos.
Can one man save freedom of expression when everyone else who matters is determined to scuttle it? Here is a bloke called Rob Bauer, who happens to be "Chair of the Nato military committee":
NEW: NATO Military Chief Rob Bauer attacks @elonmusk and 𝕏 for allowing too much free speech:
"I'm very much in favor of freedom of speech, but I'm not necessarily convinced that what Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk is doing on X is the right approach."
"There is a lot of things on... pic.twitter.com/SW7l73HLzF
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) November 13, 2024
Mijnheer Bauer is an admiral with the Royal Netherlands Navy. Unlike American admirals, he does not appear to be obviously transgender, so there's that. Nevertheless, he is a but boy: "I'm very much in favour of freedom of speech, but..." As I learned from all those Canadian "liberals" infesting the CBC pundit panels way back in 2006, when you say "but" you're not "in favour of freedom of speech" at all.
This guy Bauer is a bigtime honcho of a military alliance of the wealthiest nations in human history that spends twenty years nancying around the Hindu Kush only to lose to goatherds with fertiliser. So you may be wondering why Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter is a priority for him. Well, listen to the boundlessness of his argument: Free speech is a threat to global security. Why, any old Russian bot can just plug in his smartphone and open up a Twitter account. We're going to have to do something about that...
Mr Musk took the trouble to respond to the Dutch git:
Make Orwell Fiction Again!
But that's not the direction they're minded to go. Once they have concluded that without X Trump would have found it almost impossible to break through the Big Social/legacy media alliance throttling free speech, then getting rid of Musk becomes an imperative. It is all part of the Criminalisation of Opposition. For example, did you know that, in a major western nation, state prosecutors want the opposition leader tossed in gaol and ruled ineligible to run for election?
I know what you're saying: oh, come on, Steyn, you did that story back in the summer. But no, it's not America this time. It's another G7 country, and member of the P5 on the UN Security Council:
BREAKING:
French prosecutors ask the judge to sentence Marine Le Pen to 5 years in prison for alleged embezzlement of EU funds.
The prosecutors also want her barred from being able to run for president in 2027. She's currently the front-runner in the race pic.twitter.com/mV3lbJzCkz
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 13, 2024
Viktor Orbán rose to the defence of Mme Le Pen:
I could not believe yesterday's news about @MLP_officiel. Marine, please remember we are with you in this battle! And don't forget: being harassed by the judiciary was a crucial step towards victory for President @realDonaldTrump.
— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) November 14, 2024
Maybe. But, as I again know from my own experience, for anyone who's not Trump, 24/7 litigation without end can be fatally distracting. And it's important to keep an eye on that Big Picture: the criminalisation of opposition. America... France... Oh, lookee, here's another G7 member: Germany. So that makes three-sevenths of the G7. As you know, Berlin's uniparty coalition collapsed the other day, so elections will be held in February. The "respectable" parties' priority right now? To get the opposition AfD - Alternative für Deutschland - banned before their Musk-moronised citizens get suckered into voting for them:
A motion to ban the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, signed by 112 MPs, has been handed to Bundestag President Bärbel Bas of the far-left Social Democrats (SPD), according to reports from German state media ARD and ZDF.
If the motion passes, the Bundestag will initial proceedings that will head to the top court of Germany, the Constitutional Court, to determine whether the AfD can be banned. There are 733 seats in the Bundestag. The motion only needs a simple majority to pass.
The AfD is the second most popular party in the country, and it is increasingly so popular that it is making it very difficult for the ruling parties to form coalitions without it. As it grows, the establishment parties are rallying together to remove this rival from the democratic process. Many of the top proponents of a ban, such as CDU MP Marco Wanderwitz — who lost his local election to an AfD politician — operate under the motto that they are "saving democracy."
By the way, when I referred above to "morons", I think you can still just about use that word with respect to the citizenry and other despised groups. What you can't do is call a member of the government a "moron":
Weil er Habeck "Schwachkopf" nannte: Hausdurchsuchung im Morgengrauen wegen Volksverhetzung
Which means:
Because he called [German Economics Minister] Habeck a 'moron': House search at dawn for incitement to hatred
That's right. Stefan Niehoff retweeted an image of Robert Habeck over the words "Schwachkopf Professional" - or "Professional Moron", a play on the advertising slogan of the hair and beauty products company Schwarzkopf.
So Germany's Tweetstapo made a dawn raid on the Niehoff household and confiscated his computer devices on the grounds that, per the warrant, the retweet of Herr Habeck's face over the word "moron" "ihm sein Wirken als Mitglied der Bundesregierung zu erschweren" - or "made his work as a member of the federal government more difficult."
And we can't have that, can we?
Has Elon Musk weighed in on that yet? He can't weigh in on everything, and he's already weighed in on my former colleague Allison Pearson's visit from the Brit Wanker Coppers, as we discussed on this week's Clubland Q&A. The investigation into my fellow Telegraph columnist has involved (so far) three different constabularies - over a year-old Tweet - and this in a land where the solving of actual crimes is now (per my friend from the Yard Parm Sandhu) down to approx 1.4 per cent.
But there's a reason why Dutch Nato leaders, French prosecutors, German Tweetstapo and Brit Starmtroopers are exercised over Tweets and not over Facebook posts or YouTube videos - because the rest of social media are already in sync with the uniparty. Don't worry: Zuckerberg and the rest of the gang are all "very much in favour of freedom of speech - but..."
Can one man hold the line for freedom of speech across the entire planet?
That's an heroic effort. I hope he has a better security detail than Trump does...
~In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and are still eager to be here as we cruise on (with the above-mentioned Allison Pearson now among our shipmates) towards our first decade. We thank you all. For more information on the Club, see here.
