River News: Our View

This is perhaps one of the saddest times to be alive, at least politically. While life brings us many joys, it is nonetheless disheartening to witness what is happening before our eyes, like watching a suddenly swooning moon: the disappearance of free speech and with it the disappearance of self-governance and individuality.

Nothing gives agency to an individual more than that person’s free expression — the ability to voice dreams and opinions and love, the ability to climb the highest-possible mountain and scream to the top of one’s lungs: I am I, damn it, and all the world must respect it. I am I, damn it, and I believe …

No matter what they believe. Period.

In a globalist age, like in an Ayn Rand novel, the word “I” is more and more frowned upon, pushed to the verge of extinction, and increasingly outlawed. As Rand’s novel “Anthem” expresses, the inability to say what one thinks is to censor the most personal and individual human experience. It takes away our ‘I’ness.

Take, for example, what was going on in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention this week. Inside the huge amphitheater, the collectivists declared they would save democracy, but, outside, the Democratic goons who run the city were bashing democracy — and our ‘I’ness — with all their might.

As that fierce advocate for free speech, Jonathan Turley, reported this week, Chicago’s Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson, refused to grant a request for a permit to a pro-Israeli group that wanted to protest Hamas abuses. Instead, Turley reported, they were forced to assemble on a private lot far from the convention site.

This, as thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched with permits through the streets; secured a shout out from Joe Biden; refused to obey sanctioned parade routes; and tore through security fencing. All, as Turley reported, with no consequences. Away from the venue, Jews and their pro-Israeli allies were herded into a symbolic encampment where Democratic Party authorities could police them.

That is the opposite of free speech. In such a space no voice can be heard, no “I” can be yelled from the mountaintop, no dignity can be had, for these become not individual human beings but political prisoners.

Who says we don’t live in a police state? 

Tellingly, in this upside-down world in which we live, where progressives have dissociated completely from liberalism, we haven’t seen the ACLU out there advocating for these pro-Israeli protesters’ free speech rights. Long gone are the days when the ACLU stood for free speech no matter the content of that speech.

All this is chilling coming on the heels of the Biden-Harris administration’s massive censorship complex perfected during Covid, which continues to this day. And it’s not just that free speech is dimming in the United States, it is lights out across the western world, which is even more terrifying.

Just recently, Foreign Policy magazine — no right wing fount — examined rising censorship across Europe, which correlates with a rising bureaucratic collectivism that is akin to its fascist and communist cousins.

For example, the magazine cited the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), under which the European Commission sent letters to tech companies such as Meta, Google, TikTok, and X threatening significant fines for allowing unspecified hate speech  and “disinformation.”

“Meanwhile, the right to protest has been severely curtailed in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Foreign Policy wrote: “France and Germany have imposed broad bans on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, citing hate speech and public order concerns.”

It’s not just Palestinian or Israeli voices in the crosshairs. A new law in Ireland could criminalize offensive memes or gifs downloaded on mobile phones or laptops, the magazine reported, while the Danish government has re-introduced the crime of blasphemy, of all things, that is, it is “outlawing the ‘improper treatment’ of religious texts.” 

In South Korea, the National Assembly’s secretariat canceled an art exhibition in the parliament building due to its unflattering portrayal of the country’s president.

A report by the Future of Free Speech Project analyzing trends in 22 purported democracies from 2015 to 2022 found that 78 percent of significant developments in those countries led to increased speech restrictions. National security, national cohesion, and public safety were the most cited reasons for suppressing free expression, the magazine reported.

Meanwhile, Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Union, has launched an initiative she calls a “European Democracy Shield” that is designed, in her words, to inoculate Europe from online disinformation.

In other words, like a vaccine built from a fortified gain-of-function virus, the shield will ostensibly repel sickening speech before Europeans are ever exposed to it, with globalists like von der Leyen deciding what is sickening. 

It’s another example of saving democracy by killing it. Used to be, such preposterous outcomes existed only in dystopian fiction.

Just recently, too, the EU attempted to impose its censorship regime on — wait for it — Americans. The European Union’s internal market commissioner issued a stern warning to X’s Elon Musk that his interview with former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump could violate EU law. The commissioner cautioned Musk that he must guarantee that “all proportionate and effective mitigation measures are put in place regarding the amplification of harmful content in connection with relevant events, including live streaming, which, if unaddressed, might increase the risk profile of X and generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security.”

Well, that’s rich. Just how does a free-wheeling conversation with a leading presidential candidate harm public security? Answer: It can’t. But it could harm the political security of globalists in Brussels and Davos. The EU was implicitly threatening to de-platform X in Europe if his Trump interview angered the likes of  Bill Gates, von der Leyen, or Klaus Schwab. 

That’s how their democracy shield works. It will cut off every voice — from presidential candidates to average citizens on mass social media platforms — until but one voice is left, that of the globalist government.

There will be no more “I”; the remaining voice will be “them.”

As Turley reminded all Americans in a recent column, 80 years ago the U.S. government featured a painting by Norman Rockwell in a war bond campaign. The painting depicted “a man rising to speak his mind at a local council meeting in Vermont,” and, Turley wrote, the image coalesced the nation around what Louis Brandeis called America’s “indispensable right.”

The inspiration for Rockwell’s painting was a young selectman in Vermont named James “Buddy” Edgerton, Turley wrote. 

“The descendent of a Revolutionary War hero, Edgerton stood up as the lone dissenter to a plan to build a new schoolhouse over the lack of funding for such construction,” he wrote. “For Rockwell, the scene was a riveting example of how one man in this country can stand alone and be heard despite overwhelming opposition to his views. It was, for Rockwell (and for many of us), the quintessential American moment.”

Unfortunately, this week the quintessential moment for America was not a vocal citizen at a city council meeting—that might be met with an FBI raid upon the citizen’s house — but Jewish and pro-Israeli protesters herded into the symbolic equivalent of a concentration camp.

We must be reminded this day how important it is for these protesters—and for all protesters, which is today all citizens — to be given back their voice, to let them say the word “I” again, as in “I believe …”

No matter what they believe. Period. 

All of us must also recognize that the entire western woke culture was cooked in a dish that dilutes individuality in the name of a transcendent and collective gender identity built around a biological fiction. For when men can oppress women by invading and conquering their personal and public realms, such as locker rooms and sports, they have not just erased women as a gender but as individual human beings.

Indeed, Rand’s novel “Anthem” critically identified the subversive use of language as an indispensable tool in securing subservience. In the novel, in a chilling foreshadowing of actual culture today, citizens deprived of using the word “I” began to refer to themselves as “we,” just as many people refer to themselves today as “they/them,” which progressive media dutifully repeat. 

As one critic pointed out, “the use of the plural rather than the singular self-reference goes to the heart of the book’s meaning.” That is, the subversion of pronouns to extinguish the validity of individuality and individual liberty is one of the defining features of totalitarianism. Wokeism is censorship, and censorship these days must be called out in all its progressive forms. 

For this reality remains: For there ever to be a “we,” there must first be a strong and healthy “I.”

In Chicago this week, we root not for the voices of authoritarianism, but for those who dare to say “I believe …”

No matter what they believe. Period.