Intentionally shutting down the speech of American citizens cost vast sums of money and caused distrust of government, whose corrosive effect is incalculable. Other than that, things were totally cool under the Deep State Censorship regime.
Free speech isn't free. And that's because we have to keep fighting the government for our rights to say what we want. But now we're getting a look at the cost of running that censorship operation against the American public, and it's way beyond a buck oh five.
Try $300 million on for size. And because we've become so desensitized to large numbers under the Biden administration, that number even sounds low.
Since 2021, the Biden administration has spent those millions to shut us up, according to Open the Books, which says that money was spent on research grants containing the word "misinformation."
NEW: Mollie Hemingway rips the Biden administration for spending nearly $300 million to suppress speech.
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) December 11, 2024
"The Biden administration collectively spent $267 million to combat misinformation."
"Look at the increase in spending from 2017, when just $316,000 was spent on it. It… pic.twitter.com/YvkDpQxUGH
These costs don't take into consideration the millions of man-hours used to fight this censorship in court, congress, hearings, and the like or the hours spent chasing down the story of the Censorship Industrial Complex. They don't take into consideration the devastation that Americans suffered for being pilloried, coerced, and bullied for saying the "wrong" thing.
Or dying.
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One of the doctors most censored during the COVID outbreak was Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who's been named as Donald Trump's National Institutes of Health nominee. He says that this censorship cost lives during COVID.
But the line between promoting public health and suppressing scientific discussion should have been a bright red line that should never have been crossed. Government agencies essentially decided to treat scientific debate on COVID policy as if it were akin to international terrorism. They treated dissidents, who were on the side opposing government policy, as if they were akin to those international terrorists. In some sense, they believed it was acceptable to suppress those kinds of people and those kinds of ideas. As an American citizen, I don't believe it's right for the American government to wield that kind of power.
...As a result, so many people who were harmed might not have been, vaccine mandates might not have been enforced, people might not have lost their jobs or careers over them, schools could have opened earlier, and the panic-mongering could have been addressed, potentially reducing the levels of anxiety, depression, and economic devastation from lockdown policies.
...The conclusion I draw from this is that this censorship activity killed people. ...However, the reality is that if the First Amendment had been truly upheld during the pandemic, it would have saved lives, led to less damage, less destruction, and fewer deaths."
Here is a snippet of an interview from 2023 with the Stanford medical professor.
THE FIRST AMMENDMENT WOULD HAVE SAVED LIVES. @DrJBhattacharya: "Censorship activity k*lled people"
— Humanspective (@Humanspective) November 27, 2024
NEW NIH DIRECTOR for Donald J Trump, Dr Jay Bhattacharya, talked here in 2023 about censorship and collusion between the White house and Social Media platforms:
"The conclusion I… pic.twitter.com/WLv6Hg4du0
Congress issued a report on the form this censorship takes, according to Open the Books.
In February the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a scathing report against the National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding grants supporting tools and processes that censor online speech.
The House Judiciary Committee issued findings about how social media was used to do the government's dirty work through social media and even Amazon.
Here's one of the committee's infographics showing the through-line between government leaning on Facebook to shut down individuals and news outlets such as PJ Media.
This graphic covers only 2021!
The government leveraged its muscle against not only Facebook but also YouTube, Twitter, and Amazon.
[T]he Biden White House [coerced] large companies, namely Meta (parent company of Facebook), Alphabet (parent company of YouTube), and Amazon, to censor books, videos, posts, and other content online. By the end of 2021, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon changed their content moderation policies in ways that were directly responsive to criticism from the Biden Administration. While the Biden White House’s pressure campaign largely succeeded, its effects were devastating.
By suppressing free speech and intentionally distorting public debate in the modern town square, ideas and policies were no longer fairly tested and debated on their merits. Instead, policymakers implemented a series of public health measures that proved to be disastrous for the country.
It's hard to believe that the Supreme Court did not find that this activity violated the First Amendment.
Open the Books reports that the Biden Administration even spent $200,000 on a program to specifically censor Donald Trump.
In one particularly brazen instance, $200,000 was spent slandering President-elect Trump himself. The grant resulted in a paper suggesting populist leaders and movements in various countries kept people from coming together in “solidarity” and public officials need to have the “main say” on health guidance next time.
The cost to shut down free speech started in 2017 at the State Department with $316,000. By the time the Biden administration came in, it was a full mis/dis/mal-information operation costing nearly $76 million per year. And that's only the money we can see. No-governmental agencies also carry out censorship operations, so it's likely that the $300 million total is probably much higher.
Indeed, Open the Books says its research didn't catch "all grants given to combat misinformation, because transaction descriptions may not include this keyword, but the trend in spending illustrates a sudden explosion of interest in misinformation starting in 2021."
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