Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee this weekend went on MSNBC’s “Last Word” and called for the arrest of Elon Musk for “undermining” the federal government by sharing his opinions on X.
McNamee is the latest denizen of the global elite to call for criminalizing speech to silence those with opposing views.McNamee is the founding partner of Elevation Partners and has a colorful history as a band member, a volunteer for Eugene McCarthy and a protester against Vietnam.
As discussed in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage”, he is like many liberal baby boomers now joining the anti-free speech movement. They have decided that free speech, once the defining right for the left, is now an existential threat.
McNamee’s rationale for criminalizing speech is chillingly shallow and irrational. He declared that somehow Musk’s political views made him a danger as the head of companies of major importance to the United States. It does not bother him when CEOs adopt far left views, just Musk opposing some of those views:
“You have somebody who runs a really strategic defense and aerospace projects for the federal government who’s actively undermining the government that’s paying him. And somewhere in that is a legal case that needs to be prosecuted.”
Perish the thought that a CEO might undermine the government.
McNamee is using the government contracts with SpaceX as a reason to censor Musk’s political and social views.
“The critical element in thinking about Elon Musk is that, like any American, he has a right to his own opinion, and he has a right to express his opinion. However, that right is not unlimited. He is under some special limitations that would not apply to normal people because his company, specifically Starlink and SpaceX are government contractors and, as such, he has obligations to the government that would, for any normal person, and should for him, require him to moderate his speech in the interest of national security.”
So, according to McNamee, if your company makes something that the government wants (including rescuing the currently stranded astronauts in space), he must give up his right to express political views, including against censorship.
McNamee embraces the power of the government to dictate viewpoints or at least silence certain views as a matter of national security. It is no accident that the overriding objective is to “get Musk.” Musk has proven the single greatest barrier to the global anti-free speech movement.
As with the effort in Brazil to block X entirely for refusing to censor political opponents of the government, McNamee’s call for state-driven censorship is where the movement is going next.
Notably, after Musk purchased Twitter, Hillary Clinton called upon European officials to force him to censor American citizens under the infamous Digital Services Act (DSA). Recently, Democratic leaders like Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison praised Brazil for its action to prevent citizens from having access to unfettered news sources.
What is most striking about these efforts is that they occurred after the failure of Plan A: to get Americans to embrace censorship. Facebook even ran a creepy campaign to try to get young people to accept censorship, or “content moderation.”
The commercials show people like “Joshan” who says that he “grew up with the internet.” Joshan mocks how much computers have changed and then objects how privacy and censorship have not evolved as much as our technology. As Joshan calls for “the blending of the real world and the internet world,” content moderation is presented as part of this not-so-brave new world.
Joshan and his equally eager colleagues Chava and Adam were presented by Facebook as the shiny happy faces of young people longing to be content modified. They were all born in 1996 — the sweet spot for censors who saw young people as allies to reduce free speech.
It did not work. Despite some erosion of free speech among young people, it takes a great deal to get a free people to give up their freedoms. Plan B is now to accomplish this objective of speech controls through national and global regulation. Figures like McNamee and Bill Gates are ready to support this brave new world of speech regulation by global censors.
While claiming unprecedented threats from “disinformation,” these are the same voices and rationales discussed in my book that have been used for centuries to limit the speech of others. They are selling the same defective product with the promise that less freedom will lead to a better life.
For global elites like McNamee, free speech is not just dispensable but distracting. Only fools would listen to these voices in trading away our indispensable right.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
In related news, the Chinese government has arrested a woman for “defaming” the national table tennis team. Reuters, August 7, 2024. It is not clear if a death sentence is being sought.
Last time I checked a free citizen does not have an obligation to moderate his speech namely for the government.
And what exactly is Musk saying that is such a threat to national security? He endorsed Trump?
I might read what Musk says, but I still have free will to decide if will agree with him or not. Rather have my free will to make my own decisions then have it taken away by the government.
Hear, hear!
The best way to deal with incessant right wing lies is not to try to silence them but rather to just openly mock the liars, real time, in their interactions with the press.
Hey Turls, you make $ from the most recent Russian bot scandal? Do behind the scenes work on project 2025?
Forgot to mention, since I have a right wing cyber stalker on this blog, what his key words are…, let’s just say them now to preempt his lack of creativity and delusional reading of reality. Here’s the list: booger, cooking sherry, drunkard. Maybe we should play a drinking game when he says them?
Clutch those pearls. Face it, without a stalker or negative feedback you get from the smarter, better informed and educated people here, your life would have far less meaning. Here’s another serotonin hit for ya.
Well look at that…, it seems pointing out the clichéd attacks of right wing trolls before they happen is an effective tactic. Thanks for proving my thesis, right wing troll!
Lawn Boy, the booger eating drunktard, thought he would avoid be singled out for his excesssive stupidity by what? Preempting it??? LMAO such a pathetic little soul.
I have predicted every day for months that you will be along to say something stupid. thanks for proving me right every day.
“Maybe we should play a drinking game when he says them?”
Bet you’d love that, ya day drinking spastic. Have another sip f that cooking sherry.
“rather to just openly mock the liars”
Says the low IQ dunce who never sees the irony in his own words, as he complains about being incessantly mocked for his lies and idiotic rants.
Cant make this up. Bwahahahahahahahahahaha
It is ? The onlyh thing that you succeeded in doing is proving that you are clueless.
You are anonymous you CAN NOT be cyber stalked.
You have no reputation to be damaged.
You are ranting because you have been emotionally damaged because someone has insulted the anonymous straw man of your own creation.
You have no right to claim defamation, libel, slander, cyber stalking emotional distress when you post an anonymous.
You have chosen to post without identity. Doing so comes at the cost of credibility.
You do not seem to grasp the trivial logical truth that if you post without identityu – then you have no identity.
You have no repuation to be sullied. You have nothing at stake and Zero foundation for offense.
Johnnie. You cray, bud.
Burn ointment aisle 9, tampons in the men’s room.
Ok ☺
* Ha! You said them 3x.
Cooking sherry, over the teeth, down the gums wat….water…….stom..
Hiccup.
Forgot to mention, since I have a right wing cyber stalker on this blog, what his key words are…
A raging radical far left neo-communist serial liar cyber stalking Professor Turley here, enraged he gets whacked for lying.
Same raging radical far left neo-communist serial liar who spent FIVE YEARS pitching the Democrats’ Russia Dossier, illegally paying a team of Russian and British spies to write the lies in the Russia Dossier, is flipflopping in rage that he gets whacked every time he tries to cosplay that it’s actually Republicans who lie to win elections. NOT Democrats like Obama, Clinton, Biden, Schumer, Pelosi, Harris etc that pushed their “Dossier” as being factual verified information.
It got worse for this serial liar cyber stalking Turley’s column when the FBI had to finally admit that they had known that the Biden Bribery Laptop being “just Russian election disinformation” was indeed Biden’s laptop long before the Democrats and President Biden lied during the 2020 campaign that it didn’t belong to the drug addled corrupt son.
Got anything better, radical far left cyber stalker sent to plague Professor Turley? So far, my grandmother’s afternoon tea has more strength and character than what you’ve presented so far.
Your anonymous – you can not be stalked – cyber or otherwise.
It would be my advice to judge everyone’s posts by the words in them – do those posting make arguments – or is the post entirely OT and ad hominem – such as yours.
Does the poster make absurd claims – such as that an anonymous poster is being cyber stalked ?
Cyber stalking is causing emotional dsistress by unjustifiably attacking anothers reputation
Your posting as anonymous – You COSE not to establish a reputation. You can not further damage the reputation of an anonymous poster.
Is you ego and emotions so fragile that you break down when your anonymous posts are insulted ?
Logic eludes you.
Same standards for all – right and left.
Hurling baseless accusations under cover of anonymity – how very Leftist of you. YOU are part of the problem.
Glad we’re agreed on the anti democratic forces behind project 2025 and that they’re not worthy of being aligned with. That puts you a cut above Turley in that respect.
Then again, chances you’re just an intern at fox news churning responses on the Turley/Fox blog project.
Why don’t you tell us what specifically about Project 25 are you against? I bet you know nothing about its specific policy recommendations or actual text language, but rely on WaPo and CNN for your opinion. I challenge you to tell us what is “anti-democratic” contained in Project 2025? Your non-specific or non-response will prove what others are saying about your comments.
Well, honestly, the very premise of project 2025 is anti democratic. The idea put forward throughout the document that a new administration seeks to flood the zone with decisions immediately such that it bypasses congress and leaves total power in individual positions is undemocratic.
Being a forex and grain trader myself, one area where this would be glaringly undemocratic would be to vest total regulatory power with an SEC chairman. This overrides regulatory boards, which is an obvious proposition, but is explained in detail in the document itself. I’ve had project 2025 on my laptop for months, going over it slowly because the writing is quite obtuse.. Can’t cut and paste it for your functionally damaged and obnoxiously mind though since my laptop is banned here. Not doing it from my phone because you’re not a rational and good faith discussion partner.
In fact, if you’d read any of project 2025, you’d realize just the idea to write such a document about how to completely skirt established regulatory practice is the definition of being undemocratic.
Pick the topic though…, abortion, financial regs, environmental regs…, the goal of the doc is to take power from the many and give it to a few. Exponentially making worse the fact singularly powerful entities already control the game and everyday is a fight to not make it worse.
Well, honestly, I do not see where you got the idea that total regulatory power would be vested in an SEC Chairman.
Attached is a copy of Project 2025 and its proposals. Please identify by page number where you got that notion.
Contrary to your claim, the project proposes multiple changes that involve the SEC working with Congress to clean up and simplify regulatory drag, especially for small businesses.
https://media.snopes.com/2024/06/2025_mandate_for_leadership_compressed.pdf
Read the Financial Regs chapter. In my case, the portion on th CFTC is of particular interest. It’s in the page 830 neighborhood.
P 2025 wants to immediately demolish the capacity of reg boards to establish consumer protections and put that reg capacity in the hands of a select few. Want to not be victim to the ‘slippage’ of the old days? Want the clearing houses to be able to change margin requirements in the middle of the night and bounce you from a profitable trade just because the market is going against them? P 2025 is your thing then. If you have the money to influence those select few, you may be okay, maybe not. If you’re a lone investor, you’re SOL.
But you’re not even going to know what I’m talking about.
I AM familiar with the FinancialRegs section. It says no such thing as you purport. In fact, it says NONE of the things you purport.
Well, honestly, the very premise of project 2025 is anti democratic.
But you weren’t posting honestly when you opened with that lie.
Then again, chances you’re just an intern at fox news churning responses on the Turley/Fox blog project.
CNN’s personal raging far left cyber stalker assigned to Professor Turley has spoken. About four times in a row so far… must get a few bucks for every hit posted.
So proud of your opinion that you sign your work as Anonymous. How brave you are.
The best way to deal with incessant right wing lies is not to try to silence them but rather to just openly mock the liars,
Openly mock liars! I love it! Let me start: I think this sophomoric channeling of lying is another version of when Americans were Grubered by the Democrats’ more more skilled liars like Professor Gruber to deceive Americans over Obamacare.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/11/10/aca-architect-the-stupidity-of-the-american-voter-led-us-to-hide-obamacares-tax-hikes-and-subsidies-from-the-public/
Can we mock the incessant cowardly Anonymous neo-commie Democrats who are STILL pushing their “Russia Dossier” dossier written and pushed through felonies? Are you one of the Russkie apparatchiks that pocketed some of the $6 million Obama/Clinton/Biden/the DNC paid towards having Putin’s FSB spy write that dossier?
Can we mock these same serial liars who eagerly censored the real news, while lying that the Biden Bribery Laptop was “just Russian election disinformation”?
How about mocking these serial liars who were serial liars LONG before Trump?
Obama, Clinton, Biden, Pelosi, Harris, Schumer, etc, who WITHOUT EXCEPTION told Americans “if you like your healthcare plan you can keep your healthcare plan – and the average American family is going to save $2,500 a year”.
You will probably have more success attempting these desperate double standards over on CNN where the Soviet Democrat Memory Hole has all their viewers and commentators under it’s power.
You as cray as John say.
More left wing nut “Russia, Russia, Russia” nonsense.
The worst possible interference in an election is ALWAYS the interferenace of those already in power – government seeking to retain that power.
Short of actual interrference with counting the ballots or stuffing ballot boxes – while we can be offended by the efforts of forign nations, or foreigners to have a voice in US elections – we have limited ability to stop them, further they actually do no harm.
There is no difference between Putin convincing you to vote for Harris – Putin has actually endorsed Harris publicly, and Joe Scarborough convincing you to vote for Harris.
Each and every person on the planet is free to speak their mind to try to persuade each of us with regard to how we vote.
Election fraud would be SILENCING people who wish to speak – even Russians, or The guardian, or the BBC or various foreign ambassadors and prime ministers and presidents. But especially silencing citizens.
Election fraud would be allowing people who are not citizens to vote. Whether illegal aliens, or Chinese citizens or dead people, or mickey mouse and Ronald Reagan.
Election fraud would be counting any ballots that did not come from citizens.
Election fraud would be allowing people to vote multiple times.
Johnnie Say: wondering when one of you ass clowns will realize your hero is the one who tried to tamper with the ’20 election. ’16 as well.
* It’s not new. The agendas right and left are subject to advertisement. Americans have been sold all kinds of things by using persuasive speech.
Programs like “The View” are just campaign advertisements for the progressive agenda. There’s no truth in them. Many get their history lessons from movies like “Dances with Wolves” or “Last of the Mohicans “. James Fenimore Cooper isn’t read anymore. How many people repeatedly cute the novel “1984”?
The age is the selling of politics or the selling of governments. Mifepristone will soon be advertised and will those ads show girls dancing as in Jardiance commercials?
Everyone is programmed by AI now. It’s replaced television and radio, telephones with land lines, newspapers and magazines and it can all be instantly altered with a switch. It’s lies and bunk.
What happened to truth? It was sold. It’ll cost Musk 5 million to buy off 5 judges in Brazil. What happened to justice? It’s was sold. What happened to the American way? Commerce.
Twin Towers is gone. Now its just “acceptable” and standards are finished. Unless the hearts of men are changed AI is dangerous and powerful than a speeding bullet.
Train young people via media as jihadists. That’s what they’ll be. Just so naive to think cultures worldwide are similar. They aren’t and it’s naive to the point of ignorant.
The true single racist issue of this age is anti-semitism, Barack HUSSAIN Obama. Not this time.
I notice that ALL, not most, but ALL the calls to trash the First Amendment and deny us freedom of speech are coming from the Left. Totalitarianism has seldom paraded so nakedly in this country for all to see as it is sashaying around now, unleashed by the cover provided by a complicit and forbearing media. Democrats are becoming very undemocratic.
Manipulation and control of the masses is the evil of elites. It dates back thousands of years. The names change, but the agenda of obedience remains.
Tell me again how I have to fear the bad orange man daddy.
There exists a Freedom from Religion Foundation. McNamee, Gates, and Blair should show their real colors by organizing a “Freedom from Free Speech Foundation”, and publish its members and donors.
Mc Namee another Left Wing Radical Silicon Valley Wealthy Marxist? Elite. Wonder if he has pledge, like many other Elites to leave the country if Trump is elected. Hope so
“Wonder if he has pledge”
Like Baldwin and Streisand have pledged for several elections that Republicans have won? What happened? Both are still around, and Baldwin even managed to kill a prop manager here while filming an underfunded, shabbily planned, movie. None of those “elite” clowns will ever follow through on such a pledge, they are nothing but sleazy, lying, hypocrites.
A man ahead of his time… Where’s Senator Joseph McCarthy when you need him?
You have to admit that Sen McCarthy was right…If only we had listened to him instead of the communists already ensconced within our society at large…
The impetus for the Vietnam war was, in the words of so many elected officials; to fight the Communists over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here.
It would appear they had that a bit backwards.
It would appear they had that a bit backwards.
I would suggest that was the first “endless war”, where politicians took the authority to run the war from professional soldiers to run it for political purposes, and rather than fighting to win that war, once it no longer had political value surrendered that war.
And all while doing so, let the communist infiltration of colleges at home go unopposed.
“Black Critical Race Theory” is just a re-write of the 1960’s communist political scientist Herbert Marcuse’s “Critical Marxist Theory” he brought to America while fleeing his fellow communists in Europe. Substitute Marx’s economic proletariat and bourgeois for the skin colors of black and white, and you have “Black Critical Race Theory” so popular with Obama, Biden, Harris et al. Marxism by another subterfuge. Just as Black Liars & Marxists are Marxists intent on destroying the country.
BTW, a great book on how politicians pushing professional soldiers aside after sending them off to war in order to run the wars themselves is Colonel Jack Broughton’s book. A war that should have ended in months as the Gulf War later did, by severing the communists’ logistic supply lines went on for years with hundreds of thousands dead and all of Vietnam turned over to the communists.
Going Downtown: The War Against Hanoi and Washington
https://www.amazon.com/Going-Downtown-Against-Hanoi-Washington/dp/0671678620
You have to admit that Sen McCarthy was right…If only we had listened to him instead of the communists already ensconced
McCarthy was right about many – but went evil and attempted to run up his score by attempting to destroy people he knew were innocent. I would argue that ultimately, McCarthy did more damage by doing communists who hated America a favor by Americans being left with an impression that they were being unfairly targeted. They’ve been hiding under that cover ever since.
Now if McCarthy had the same media coverage and adulation that FBI Director Comey, Mueller, etc had pushing the Democrats’ fraudulent “Russia Dossier”, illegally written by a team of Russian and British spies, then the “J6 Commission”… McCarthy would have been destroying the lives of innocent Americans until the day he died or his last day in office.
You were just lied to and believed it, and you’re still too thick to know it.
Shakdi, you think there weren’t communists in the government? The FBI had a list and and the Venona project revealed again that he was right.
Amazing how they are in your face telling you how they feel and what they will do to you given the chance if you don’t do as they say. Arrest, possibly internment and re-education, what is going on in America??
“…what is going on in America??”
The Democrats were, so they said, elected. It’s just business as usual.
What is going on is that the scumbags have determined that it is easier to carry-out their pro-war, big AG/Pharma/Tech policies that crush the middle class by appealing to moronic suburban white women’s trivial wants
My only concern is what to do about so many who have been infected with degenerative progressive (I know – an oxymoron) mind disease. And if there is no cure – like mad cow disease – what next?
Anybody of you commenters on drugs this morning?
Yet the millions of dollars in dark money and diverted tax dollars to Marxist Socialist parties mean nothing. Both Soros and Zuckerboig need to be held accountable. Communists remain communists and totalitarianism is what they think they want, as long as they’re pary members of standing. Musk is a hero and champion for free speech!
Musk doesn’t hide behind the curtain like the two wizards of darkness you mentioned. He has courage of his convictions and it doesn’t hurt that he has beaucoup bucks to hire lawyers to protect him. He sure has been an interesting addition to the anti-woke team. Yay!
Dear Mr. Turley, folks like Mr. McNamee need to realize how precious this country is. No other country can compare itself to us. He also needs a huge lesson in history regarding people like himself who want to arrest political rivals. It may work for a short term but it never lasts long. We need the free expressions of ideas! Without this right, we are doomed as a people.
You are totally correct – but how do we “re-educate” these prog/left zombies? It’s not just their improbable rehab, but then what do we do with all those living within our borders who rely on welfare, government mandates etc. to survive – we are in a deep hole, my friend, from which I see no easy way out.
1930s Germany is calling us.
And don’t forget 1917 Russia – does Pravda come to mind?
How could I forget? But the parallels between 1930s Germany and the prelude to global conflict between January 30, 1933 and September 1, 1939, are growing more and more evident with each passing day. I never thought I would be living my parents’ lives of their youth. Thank God I’m close to sunset.
1930s Germany is calling us.
It is happening
German Politician Threatens X, Telegram With Bans
the wheels are now in motion: according to a senior member of parliament from the country’s Green Party – a mutant combination of socialists, frothing environmentalists and rabid progressives – just said that Germany must act to stop the dissemination of “extremist content” online and block major social media platforms if necessary.
MP Anton Hofreiter, the chairman of the Bundestag’s European policy committee, called for tighter control over social media, up to the outright blocking of certain platforms. He made the remarks on Saturday while speaking to reporters from Funke Media Group
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/german-politician-threatens-x-telegram-bans
No surprise really.
The universe tends towards entropy. Christianity brought order to Western Civilization starting in the 4th Century AD with Emperor Constantine. The 20th Century saw more murders under atheist dictators than all previous centuries combined. Now that Christianity is no longer the framework of the Western world, everything that we are seeing was predictable.
St. Augustine of Hippo taught that free will and choice are part and parcel of living. See St. Augustine’s classic On Grace and Free Will. Cleary people have chosen, since the 20th Century, disastrous trajectories. It took centuries to Christianize the Western World and overcome the paganism that ruled under the Roman Empire – which, according to St. Augustine, was one of the reasons why the Roman Empire fell. We are there once again in the Western World and there is no turning back, at least not in the immediate.
Choices are like that.
“St. Augustine of Hippo taught that free will . . .”
Except for the part where he said to deny your will and accept God’s.
“It took centuries to Christianize the Western World . . .”
And what was life like during those centuries (aka the Dark/Middle Ages)?
Oh, that’s right. We’re not supposed to mention those barbaric centuries.
If one doesn’t think, believe, talk, write, act or fail to act, as do the likes of McNamee, Mrs. Bill Clinton or Keith Ellison … one is no longer uniformed, mistaken, bad, non-DEI, racist, sexist, homophobe, etc etc. … one is no a criminal. The greatest threat from the far left progressives is their threat to free speech; they are evil and dangerous.
It seems that those who scream the loudest about “the end of democracy” are the first one’s that want to jail everyone with an differing point of view. I feel like these folks would have no problem marching us all off to the gas chambers…all in the name of freedom. Musk should surround himself with the best security detail he can, it seems like he’s one of the few standing up to these fascists.
It’s because they have a different definition of “democracy”.
we need a Nuremberg like trial to arrest all the democrats fascists for their MANY CRIMES and jail them!
Judges, Congress, DOJ, media(yes they can commit Conspiracy), etc
Else the USA is going to be LOST!
Reduce Centralized Power but 50% of Federal Spending! Outlaw public unions as they basically bribe Democrats.
Democrats are FASCISTS…
The Democrat Party is fighting a Civil War…their 2nd
Abolish the Democrat Party
Also DEFUND IT…end federal aid to cities, states, non-profits and colleges
let them fund themselves
Sounds like Roger McNamee is a Domestic Enemy of the Constitution! In our constitutional republic, the constitution is pre-eminent, not the government.