We Should Stop Believing Elon Musk Is Committed To Free Speech At Twitter
Many on the right heralded Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter as a major victory in the culture war. But that celebration appears premature. On June 1, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing wrote that Twitter had scuttled a deal for the conservative multimedia outlet to screen its massively popular documentary “What Is A Woman?” on the social media site.
After initially agreeing to show the film, Boreing says he was told Twitter “would no longer provide us any support and would actually limit the reach of the film and label it as ‘hateful conduct’ because of ‘misgendering.’” The news was surprising because after Musk purchased Twitter, the site supposedly eliminated previous policies on punishing users for so-called “misgendering” to affirm Musk’s commitment to free speech.
After being called out on his own website over the episode, Musk claimed he overrode the decision of his employees and called the incident “a mistake by many people at Twitter.” However, that evening when the Daily Wire posted the documentary to its Twitter account, it was slapped with a label that said, “This Tweet may violate Twitter’s rules against hateful conduct,” and users were not allowed to share the film.
If the only way for free speech to prevail on Twitter is to make an appeal to the site’s easily distracted owner, and even he still can’t prevail over the decision of his employees, it prompts an obvious question: Who is really running Twitter? People who care about free speech aren’t going to like the answer. Musk’s recent selection of wokeist Linda Yaccarino for CEO raises all kinds of alarms.
Twitter’s much-publicized advertiser drought must be weighing heavily on Musk, who likely overpaid for the social networking platform, which is struggling to turn a profit. Viewed in this light, Musk’s selection of Yaccarino makes sense. She is the former chair of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, where she led a 2,000-member team that generated over $100 billion in ad sales while managing the company’s digital portfolio. Yaccarino appears to be genuinely competent — not some mediocre diversity hire.
The problem is that Yaccarino appears to have been thoroughly consumed by the woke mind virus. Since her selection by Musk, concerning videos from her recent past have resurfaced. In one of them, a PSA for Penn State, Yaccarino recites with nauseating enthusiasm the party line on Covid, telling students among other things to “mask up or pack up.” Her performance makes plain that she is a member of the herd, a tool of the regime who is unlikely to oppose its worst impulses — something that her collaboration with the Biden White House in the creation of its unprecedented, intrusive coronavirus vaccination campaign shows beyond doubt.
In another video, Yaccarino praises Larry Fink and BlackRock, two of the driving forces behind the destructive environmental, social, and corporate governance, or ESG, movement, for calling on CEOs across the country “to fulfill a gap in society that it was once assumed that the government would provide for people … we [corporations] have a responsibility to impact culture for the good, and the bottom line is that when you have those priorities and values as a company, it’s good for business.”
Her enthusiasm for ESG should not come as a surprise; she is, after all, an executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab’s far-left cabal of globalist technocrats and the originators of the Great Reset. If this doesn’t set off alarm bells, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Even more concerning is Yaccarino’s conception of “the good.” In yet another video, she touts NBCUniversal’s $100 million commitment “to fight for social justice and equality” in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots. That commitment included $75 million in cash for radical organizations such as the Equal Justice Initiative, National Urban League, Community Justice Action Fund, Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, and the NAACP, an official partner of BLM.
It also includes contributions to unspecified groups fighting for injustice against any so-called gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, etc., “to create a more equitable, just, and inclusive society.” The remaining $25 million was earmarked for media supporting these causes. The company’s monetary contributions were accompanied by new DEI programs, including discriminatory quotas to remake the largest news division in the country to be “50% women and 50% people of color.”
According to Yaccarino, these are all “exciting steps of progress.” If that isn’t a damning indictment of her, then nothing is. It’s also, by extension, a damning indictment of Musk.
Sadly, Musk’s hiring of Yaccarino is not the only sign of his recent poor judgment. In April, Musk made it known that he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. And in a May 16 CNBC interview, Musk said he does not believe the 2020 election was rigged. That he still holds this opinion after the censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story (on Twitter, no less) and the release of the Durham report is truly incomprehensible, as both are clearly demonstrative of the regime’s willingness to interfere in elections. This is to say nothing of Musk’s moral failings, such as his problems with women, tacit support of abortion, and transhumanistic ambitions.
Why, then, do so many on the right continue to idolize Musk? Unfortunately, many likely do so for no other reason than his provocative tweets. Regardless, if the right is serious in its extolling of virtue, it must do better than to put individuals like Musk on pedestals. Giving lip service to free speech while empowering woke censors isn’t worthy of our trust.
Jack Weir is the pseudonym of a writer and researcher in Washington, D.C.
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