The Censors Are Malign Disinformation Superspreaders

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The July 4 ruling that the federal government must not demand censorship by social media companies is a major setback in the war on disinformation, reports the New York Times yesterday. The reason, says The Times, is that the Trump-appointed judge and other Republicans have fallen prey to a conspiracy theory that a Censorship Industrial Complex exists.

Most dangerously, reports the Times, “The judge’s preliminary injunction is already having an impact. A previously scheduled meeting on threat identification on Thursday between State Department officials and social media executives was abruptly canceled…”

In other words, there’s no Censorship Industrial Complex — no conspiracy by the US government and social media companies to censor disfavored speech. At the same time, it’s a tragedy that the US government isn’t able to meet secretly with Facebook to censor disfavored speech. Got that?

In London, on stage with Russell Brand and me, Matt Taibbi described this kind of pretzeling as “doublethink,” which comes from George Orwell’s “1984.” Taibbi gives the example of how the US government insisted for months that the Russians blew up their own natural gas pipeline, Nord Stream, and then abruptly blamed our allies, the Ukranians, without ever bothering to explain the switcheroo.

At least in that case, a few months had passed before the narrative shifted. In the case of the New York Times yesterday, the doublethink is occurring within the same article.