When on November 6, 2020, 3 days after the election, CNBC journalist Shepard Smith, known for his antipathy for Donald Trump interrupted the broadcast of the then president's speech like a censor, Onet's (Onet is popular in POland web service) editor-in-chief Bartosz Węglarczyk crowed with delight and commented on Twitter: "What a great moment of journalism". Oh yes, indeed the moment was great – the fight against the freedom of speech was reaching its next, upper level.

“Live” censorship was soon followed by further steps – records like in the Central Office of Press, Publications and Performances Control in the times of the Polish People's Republic, when officials – party censors – decided whether someone could publish anything, present anything, or should completely disappear from the media space. To disappear for their audience. And so the accounts of the still-in-office president were completely blocked by Facebook and Twitter. Thus Donald Trump cannot publish anything on social media to this day but the Taliban, radicals from Antifa, ISIS and propagandists of the Kremlin regime can do it. So decided the rulers of the collective consciousness – media and internet corporations.

A lie for a good cause

But why the Taliban and Russian liars CAN and Trump CAN NOT? It only seems to be a mystery, the answer is simple. Taliban and the Kremlin's propagandists threaten these liberal orders less than someone like Trump, Salvini or Le Pen. Americans will not become Taliban supporters, they will not support Russian crimes in Ukraine, but they could become trumpists, and that mustn’t be allowed to happen, and that will be under control of CNN, CNBC, Ringer Axel Springer and all those who believe that they have a monopoly on the truth and lie. Not even for the truth, but for a vision, because, as the idol of the young world left, the American Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says you may not know the facts, you can even lie if you do in the righteous case of equality and progress.
< br> In such a manner, Facebook or Twitter could suspend the accounts of the US New York Post, which had existed for over 220 years, just for having published the story of the laptop belonging to Hunter Biden', son of the then candidate, now incumbent president Joe Biden, before the elections. The computer contained records of Biden Jr.'s drug excesses, fun with Russian prostitutes, escapades on brothels, but also information about his deals (made, among others, with Chinese and Russians) that his father knew of.

But after all, it was a higher good that Joe Biden would become president than the truth, so the big corporations did their best to keep the story from getting through to the voters. Everything that referenced New York Post articles about Hunter Biden was cut out on Twitter. At the same time, “Politico” claimed (as it turned out, unreasonably) that it was “Russian disinformation”. Today, Twitter’s founder and former boss Jack Dorsey claims that the New York Post accounts were instantly restored. Wasn’t true, but no one will suspend its account for these fake news.

Facebook has also blocked New York Post articles about Hunter Biden. In October 2020, one month before the election, the platform said it needed to independently verify the facts. Anna Makanju, a former Joe Biden employee who was hired by Facebook just before the election was responsible for the blocking. After the election day, the verification did not matter anymore.

Concerning the censorship of the then incumbent and now former president, there is one aspect that has been completely overlooked and neglected. It is not Donald Trump who is being offended by the censorship-inducing media, or at least not only him, but more than seventy million of his voters, another millions in the United States and all over the world that have followed him. Media and Internet corporations such as Twitter, Facebook, Warner Media, which includes, among others CNN, Ringer Axel Springer and its Polish branch Onet believe they have the right to decide what citizens shall read and watch.

If Twitter was bought by Soros…

Censorship is becoming more and more common in Poland as well. More than 2 years ago Facebook blocked the account of Janusz Korwin Mikke and a few months ago, the one Konfederacja. For 30 years of free Poland, Korwin-Mikke could feel free to tell whatever he wanted: stupidly, wisely or even complete nonsense, and free people with their own judgments could live with it and decide whether to listen and believe it or not. Until the American corporation came and banned Korwin. It was done by some censors no one knows anything about who manage its Polish department on behalf of the company that watches over the global order. It was done anonymously nad with complete impunity.

Now there has been a panic among the police of the mind. Behold an eccentric, having political correctness in contempt, world’s richest man: – Elon Musk who bought Twitter for $ 44 billion and who will establish the principles therein, and perhaps (which would be terrible for progressive leftist circles), prohibit censorship of right-wing or politically incorrect content. How then one may win the elections?

For the time being, progressive orthodoxy is being watched by "political officers" introduced under the rule of Dorsey, but Musk announces big changes and an "opening" of Twitter. And yet, as Mika Brzeziński, sister of the Ambassador Marek Brzezinski and MSNBC journalist said commenting on Trump's speeches in 2017, the point is not to let the president, but the media control the message that reaches people.

Perhaps it was just an awkward wording, or perhaps an inadvertently opened mentality, but a fragment of the “Morning Joe” program in which these words about the media controlling what people think were spoken are again, thanks to Musk, invoked. The media and politicians point out that now only one single person (the owner) can have a huge impact on the great platform such as Twitter for exchanging ideas. They hypocritically explain that "Chirp" was a public company which had a dispersed owner represented by shareholders, so supposedly they were watching over fair and transparent rules for publishing on the platform.

In fact, the point is that neither progressive enough nor politically correct enough billionaire has become the owner of Twitter. It would be different if George Soros had bought the platform. Then the progressive world would be happy enough and talk about great hopes for further victories in the fight against hate speech and fake news.

Washington's Department of Truth

Joe Biden administration reacted nervously to the transaction. Of course, no one will confirm this, but it’s due to the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk that on April 27, 2022, the Disinformation Governance Board was quickly created within the Department of Homeland Security structures. The extreme left-wing political scientist Nina Jankowicz, who, to put it mildly, has already managed to shine with not quite thoughtful performances, has become head of the unit that is to fight against lies and watch the truth in the public space.

Back in October 2020, as an expert, she argued in Congress that the federal government in no way should fight combat disinformation on the Internet, that "this is not its business." Well, the president at that time was Donald Trump. It was then that she publicly stated that the aforementioned story with Hunter Biden's laptop was an invention of the president's people for the purposes of the election campaign. Jankowicz, as an expert on online disinformation, also appeared before British Parliament committees with theses that taunting women is a threat to democracy, because it may discourage them from applying for posts, and that proclaiming vice president Kamala Harris to have had slept her political way to the top was a threat for the US security.

Republican politicians protest against the establishment of a censorship institution, calling the Disinformation Control Council the Ministry of Truth, as in Orwell's “1984”. – There cannot be a Ministry of Truth in this country. We will not let Biden get away with it and we will fight, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis said at a press conference. – When you are not doing well, you have two options: you can try to do better, and you can also try to silence your critics. Biden does the latter.

Privileged Facebook users

The state of Florida is investigating Facebook's discriminatory practices. It turns out that some users, especially politicians, government officials, journalists, celebrities are not bound by the regulations established by the platform. Facebook had a list of such “better” people who were allowed to do more. A special program called “XCheck” made it possible for a person of better sort from such a list to write, post whatever they pleased, and no one would censor or harass him for that reason. There are separate rules for commoners: you can remove, block, make someone “disappear”, do whatever you want.

The investigation in Florida was the result of Wall Street Journal articles that found internal Facebook documents and exposed the Internet giant's practices. State Secretary of State Laurel M. Lee is to check if Facebook was not influencing the Florida elections by cutting out ones and allowing others to write and post whatever they wanted. “There is no secret that Big Tech censors have long used their own rules freely”, said Governor Ron DeSantis. – If the reports prove to be true, it will mean Facebook broke Florida law and influenced our state and local elections. Secret manipulation of elections is an insult to the fundamental rights of our republic. We, the nation, have the right to choose our representatives regardless of whether they are liked by the Silicon Valley or not.

Censorship for the good of citizens

Before the election, the French President Emmanuel Macron announced an increased control on Internet publications. In one of his speeches, the president referred to the report “Enlightenment in the digital age”, prepared for the purpose of the election campaign. He said that those spreaders of fake news who violate order and the principles of public debate should be called to account and brought to trial. This is to be made possible by the new regulations, including those currently being worked on by the European Union.

Not only the authors of the entries would be punished, but also the online platforms publishing them (there is already a good example from Germany: media and online platforms will be fined up to €50 million for distributing information that will be considered lies). For a year now, a special agency has been operating in France that deals with “combating disinformation”, also published by foreign media. Macron threatened them as well and said: “The same rules must apply to foreign media that have been allowed to operate in France. We must learn to protect against foreign interference”.

Let’s imagine the establishment of a similar institution in Poland and similar statements by president Andrzej Duda (or better not to imagine it).

The sociologist Gerard Bronner working for the Macron administration said that it was all for the good of citizens, because censorship regulations “must limit only those types of content that threaten democracy, must deter and sanction harmful behaviour”. Censorship is always impsoed for the good of citizens, for democracy. Nobody expects the rulers of thought and opinion to declare that they are introducing censorship because they want to control the behaviour of their subjects – their voters.

Algorithms are supposed to wipe off the incorrect

When, in the time of Jaruzelski's junta, a provision about “spreading false information that could cause social unrest” was introduced to the penal regulations, it was also done for the good of the public. Who would possibly have said that we censored the press, blocked Radio Free Europe, so that citizens didn’t support the opposition, learn the truth about the Polish People's Republic, about the freedom of conscience, beliefs, statements, because they could possibly miss them, and then it would be much more difficult to keep the society under the thumb.

Censorship today is not state-run and it is not centralized as in the former communist countries. It is dispersed, used by individual media and internet corporations but there are also, functioning as censors, self-proclaimed truth verifiers, such as the Demagog portal in Poland, financed, among others, by American and Norwegian government funds. There is something taunting and degrading us in the fact that having money from foreign governments, someone decides what is true in Poland and what can and cannot be published.

The Demagog website is part of a censorship “International” that was very unsatisfied with the way the company headed by Ms Susan Wojcicki, or YouTube, works, so in the autumn 2021 they turned to her with a threat. “YouTube is one of the major online disinformation channels worldwide. This is a major concern for our global community of fact-checkers. We do not see any significant efforts from YouTube to implement policies that would solve this issue. On the contrary: YouTube allows unscrupulous entities to use its platform to manipulate and exploit people, and to organize and raise funds”, representatives from 80 organizations around the world wrote.

The International gave examples of fake news, incl. written in Greek, Arabic, in the Philippines or Taiwan, etc. And it made demands. The point is that, in the cases indicated by censors, YouTube should provide comments and content provided by these organizations on what it publishes, because then the recipients will find out what is true and what is not.

The International does not demand that the platform acts in such a primitive way as Facebook does and completely removes someone else's feeds, but proposes that it uses algorithms and ensure that the content coming from wrong authors is rarely displayed. On the same occasion, YouTube has to pay organizations that track fake news to judge what is true and what is not, and what to share and hide so that no one can see it.

The problem of the constant restriction of the freedom of speech is one of the most important challenges the societies are facing today. From the freedom of thought and belief, and, further on, from the freedom to proclaim them all other liberties proceed; it is also where science, arts, traditions – everything that makes up our culture and civilization – come from. Freedom of speech is the pillar of democracy. Today, for the sake of the fight against disinformation and the so-called hate speech we have widespread censorship.

–Dariusz Matuszak

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

–Translated by Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki