November 2020: The Push to Muzzle Social Media Intensifies

An entire issue of the Times Sunday Magazine—flagship of the “mainstream” media—was devoted to the danger of social media despotism.

You may have spotted the recent trial balloon: An entire issue of the Times Sunday Magazine—flagship of the “mainstream” media—was devoted to the danger of social media “despotism” and targeted Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. The magazine’s prefatory article clearly reaffirmed a No.1 priority of left-liberals preparatory to the 2020 election: to leash and muzzle the social media’s “sway over cultural and political discourse.”

The idea was born in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election. In March 2017, in an article titled “Social Media Freedom in the Crosshairs,” I described those beginnings.

November 2016

The narrative of the 2016 election was how a typical contemporary politico, Hillary Clinton, riding on the initial accident of marriage to a popular president, building a political career on that foundation (senator, secretary of state), ran against a seemingly out-of-nowhere upstart with zero experience in public office. (Donald Trump was not quite out-of-nowhere in politics. Mostly beneath the public radar, he had maneuvered in both Democratic and Republican politics.)

Here was Mr. Trump’s sudden, decisive breakout into the highest-stakes race. His press conference to declare himself in the race for the Republican nomination, held in Trump Tower in New York City, appalled the left-liberal media from the start with his talk about the national threat of illegal immigration over the southern border.

Fast forward, the contest for the nomination became an astonishing Trump sweep of the field of 15 or so Republican presidential aspirants. But the election became less between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton and far more a contest between Mr. Trump and the mainstream media.

After socialist candidate Bernard Sanders was out of the race, the mainstream media got behind Hillary Clinton 100 percent. But, again, they did so by setting out to scuttle the Trump candidacy. The cudgel picked up by the media was “identity politics.” Race, ethnicity, sex, xenophobia, and disabilities: The media found in every possible issue of “identity” a bloody (or often a semen-stained) shirt to wave—most often based on a single incident, comment, or allegation.

The pages of the press—and the evening news, talk shows, comedy hours—became nonstop incitement of distrust, dislike, and fear of Donald Trump. Ultimately, it was incitement fear of Trump as a kind of horror and an object of hatred that has been kept alive ever since.

Single-handedly, the media turned the 2016 race into a test of political correctness for the American electorate, a shaming of “bigotry,” and an attempt to make politics equivalent to “identity politics.” Mr. Trump is male, white, rich, and appears supremely confident—anything but “politically correct” as defined these days.

To promote national Trump trauma, the mainstream media progressively tossed aside neutrality, reportorial objectivity, the distinction between news and editorial, perspective, mere fairness, and, finally, even decency.

To promote national Trump trauma, the mainstream media progressively tossed aside neutrality, reportorial objectivity, the distinction between news and editorial, perspective, mere fairness, and, finally, even decency. The New York Times and all the lesser lights, CNN and most other networks, the New Yorker and Atlantic and their less famous imitators: All made the same bet. To discredit and defeat Trump, they sacrificed any readership outside of the mostly bicoastal, mostly Left, mostly Democratic cadres of the politically correct. (I do not cite chapter and verse, for this. I devoted an entire book, Donald Trump and His Enemies: How the Media Put Trump in Office (2017). to dissecting every major media attempt to shame, frame, and defame Mr. Trump.

The “catastrophe” and the resistance

And then, on an astonishing November 8 evening, awaiting the Clinton victory in a mood of celebration and congratulation—the assembled media generals and troops observed a “red” tide of Republican voting arise in Florida—the first “unbelievable” overturning of media predictions—and watched that tide go rolling west. It surged even to the supposedly secure Clinton “blue” fortresses of Michigan and Wisconsin. And then jumped back to claim the late-reporting North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

The talking heads struggled to keep talking, as though confronted with the upset of the century (actually, only the upset of their polls and predictions). By bedtime, except for reporters and celebrating politicians, the map of America was a side of great red beef, brindled here and there with blue patches. Trump won by 64 electoral votes. The popular vote was very close, however, “proving” to left-liberals that the Electoral College, included in the U.S. Constitution, was no good and had to go.

The next morning, the New York Times conceded that something had been wrong with its predictions and prognostications. Perhaps the Times had not been listening to the country? Maybe it could try harder?

That spasm of humility and reflection lasted perhaps a week. The media and the Democratic Party were busy warning that Donald Trump must not be accepted as president. All the momentarily deflated, flagging energy of opposition must now fuel defeating his policies—whatever they were. His “crimes” during the election and before it must be exposed, the case made for impeachment, conviction, and eviction from the White House.

Social media screwed up everything

(Breitbart News and Fox) and millions of self-appointed lay reporters and commentators on Facebook and in other social media, had trumpeted the Republican cause, trumpeted Trump.

The media explained that these “right-wing” (or, more often, “extreme-right” and “alt-right”) had spread falsehoods! Yes, actual untruths! Had made illegitimate claims to report news (but actually “fake news’) and were excessively “partisan!”

Yes! And Facebook and other social media had made this possible. Had given “a platform” to people whose ideas were not professionally credentialled, edited, reviewed, and fact-checked as were claims and opinions in the mainstream media.

The mature power of a media that had guided Americans through so many elections had been undercut, ultimately defeated.

And anyway, wasn’t Facebook just a gigantic for-profit corporation spun out of nowhere by some Silicon Valley entrepreneur who wasn’t even a reporter? And the result was that the factual, objective, carefully reviewed reporting and opinions of the mainstream media had been overwhelmed. The mature power of a media that had guided Americans through so many elections had been undercut, ultimately defeated. Defeated by a candidate out of nowhere, supported by a new alternative media out of nowhere. And had risen on a mighty tide of voices out of nowhere, broadcast around the world by a “social media” company out of nowhere.

“Social media” was supposed to be social. How did it become the world’s largest totally unregulated forum for philosophical, cultural, and political discourse? And who would go into the corral and bust this bronco to the bridle?

Thus, even before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in January as president, the campaign for 2020 began. Always with the caveat that every effort, daily, for as long as it took, must be made to expel now-President Trump from office before 2020. It called itself the “resistance” after the underground movements in WWII France and throughout Europe committed to resisting German Nazi occupation. President Trump was so bad, in the opinion of the mainstream media and “resistance,” that every opportunity was sought to compare him with Hitler—the symbol of political evil of the 20^th Century.

The score three years into term No.1

Three years into the presidency of Donald Trump, the score above the battlefield is hard to discern through the smoke. But every line of attack initiated in early 2017 has continued. The media now looks ahead to November 2020, the rematch, and compares its conditioning for combat with that of its opponents.

Attempts to “resist” the Trump presidency continue but have enjoyed no signal success. The biggest bet of all, the Mueller investigation of President Trump for more than two years, yielded nothing usable to bring down the president. Despite the crushing disappointment of that exercise by former FBI head Robert Mueller and a battalion of anti-Trump lawyers, Democrats in Congress have gone ahead with an impeachment investigation.

“Deep state” resistance, daily media assaults, resignation from the Trump White House by staff who then make grandstanding declarations to the media—and much, much more—do not seem to have had the intended effect on the energy, determination, and self-confidence of President Trump or on his goals in office. It is to me almost inconceivable that any individual could withstand the uncertainty, threats, endless smears, name-calling opprobrium, and crude disrespect aimed at President Trump daily.

What will decide 2020?

Apart from “time and chance,” which “happens to us all” (Mr. Trump’s physical stamina), what will shape November 2020? To start with, there are a few general, enduring influences:

“For example, statistically, chances strongly favor any White House incumbent. But far, far more arresting is the astonishingly consistent correlation between the health of the U.S. economy and the reelection of the incumbent. The historical record is that the incumbent approaching reelection with a strong economy is almost invulnerable to defeat. “Since 1900, there have been 19 presidents who ran for reelection and only four have lost: George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover and William Taft. (Gerald Ford didn’t technically lose his reelection since he was never officially elected president.)

“Since the mid-20th century, every time an incumbent lost his reelection it could be attributed to an intervening economic recession or downturn.”

Things change, but one year before November 2020, the U.S. economy remains an engine of employment and profits. In employment, especially, new 40- or 50-year records continue to be made. Considering that when Trump was elected, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Paul Krugman, predicted in the Times a “more or less permanent worldwide depression,” Mr. Trump has done okay.

The secret? He has launched not one new economic “initiative” except to lower taxes early in his term. He has done nothing “positive.” He has reduced regulation, ended some restrictions on oil and gas exploration, and appalled left-liberals by abandoning or ignoring all initiative on climate change. And for three years, defying predictions virtually daily, the economy and the stock market have traced an unswerving upward trajectory. If this trend should persist into 2020, Trump, on that asset alone, is the runaway favorite for reelection. Just the way it is.

Get ready for 2020: muzzle social media

The mainstream media, their political authority over American public opinion nullified in 2016, and their self-abasing sacrifice of all standards to “save America” a flop, have found a scapegoat.

Why were their utmost exertions not enough? Was it a lack of objectivity, blatant partisanship, and utter confusion of opinion for reporting that proved self-defeating, and in the end backfired?

Absolutely not. No way! The problem was obvious: unfair competition from “alternative media,” from “social media,” from “platforms” for irresponsible, uncontrolled, unregulated opinion.

Unquestionably, the mainstream media would like to rein in the powerhouses of “alternative media” (Why “alternative”? To what?) such as Breitbart News and Fox and one-man radio/tv shows like Hannity. But that is tricky. Those definitely are “media” and it is tough to challenge their right to First Amendment protection without undercutting your own.

But social media are another matter. They are not “media,” after all, just ordinary Americans, mostly “Know-Nothings” with no standards of truth or even good intentions. And big corporations are making a profit on their expressions of their ideas, so how is there any morality in that?

The entire Sunday New York Times Magazine (November 18, 2019) was devoted to the internet. The title: “So the Internet Didn’t Turn Out the Way We Hoped.” And the cover illustration the most bedraggled, feral, snarling, attack-ready, wet white kitten you or anyone ever has seen. Not subtle. But the Times isn’t subtle. The internet represents the untamed, out-of-control, the feral ersatz “media.”

It is all attack, emotion, anger. And, well … as juvenile as a wet kitten.

It is all attack, emotion, anger. And, well … as juvenile as a wet kitten. And so the magazine, objective as ever, would attempt to “see the internet’s future from as many angles as possible.

“But … just to kind of orient the reader … the introductory article established the following context:

Over the course of just five or so years, and accelerating significantly in November 2016 with the election of Donald Trump, there had been a sea change in how Americans, especially liberal Americans, regarded Facebook.”

Silicon Valley and Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook “and its fellow internet giants had become too large—their market power too great, their sway over political and cultural discourse too absolute … Now there were calls among prominent Democratic politicians for tough regulations, even for  “breaking up” the company. One of the most vocal among them, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts …” had surged to a lead in the 2020 Democratic nomination race.

And then comes the disposition of Zuckerberg and his October 17 speech at Georgetown University and his “reminders of the First Amendment and the American tradition of free speech more broadly …”

The Times assures us that “Afterwards, observers analyzing the speech were unimpressed, seeing it as at best a reiteration of Facebook’s perennial self-serving argument …” And how Wired had written: “Zuckerberg doubles down on free speech …”

And now, says the Times, the Zuckerberg speech has been “filed away” as merely “Zuckerberg’s continuing charm offensive toward the political class …”

Let’s see, then: Zuckerberg defended free speech. The First Amendment. Against calls by left-liberal politicians and the mainstream media to regulate and control speech and thought on the internet. Because the social media are not “real” media.

And this defense of freedom of speech by Zuckerberg was “self-serving,” and a mere “doubling down,” and a “charm offensive,” and “unimpressive.

Shall we feed all that through the translator? The New York Times, premier newspaper in the United States and a world model of the “free press,” wants freedom of speech and free expression on Facebook—and the internet generally—to be exempted from the First Amendment. The internet is the wet, feral, uncontrolled, aggressive newborn beast in the media. It needs to be caged.

What dangers does the Times see in social media to justify government regulation of the expression of opinion on the vast, worldwide channel for individual expression and ideas? That is, the only major outlet for non- left liberal opinion.

Mr. Zuckerberg in his “unimpressive,” “self-serving” speech stated quite simply what the Times sees as the danger. He said “people no longer have to rely on the traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voice heard …”

But, the Times then adds: “Facebook now had to concede that there was no foolproof way to stop those voices from saying things that were unfactual or malevolent, or to stop their friends or followers from believing them.”

So, the “problem” for the Times and others, then, is that Facebook does not control free speech to eliminate the “unfactual and malevolent”? So, free speech is a right guaranteed only to those who speak and write only what is true and benevolent?  And that would benefit the New York Times and CNN, right?

Forgive the incredulity, but, who writes this nonsense?

And in his speech, Mr. Zuckerberg made another rather “unimpressive” and “self-serving” argument. “While I certainly worry about the erosion of truth, I don’t think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100 percent true.” And Zuckerberg brought up briefly the burgeoning internet in the People’s Republic of China as an example of decidedly not-free expression.

The Times saw right through all of Zuckerberg’s corporate, executive justifying! Here is the verdict: “It wasn’t hard to glimpse [um, for exactly who to glimpse?], lurking behind the strained smiles [you could see that?], and flag-draping of the Georgetown speech [a prominent Congressman had died], the death throes of the Facebook dream. … you could even see the contours of Zuckerberg’s nightmare … with the gravitational pull of Facebook reversing, spinning its billions of users and their monetizable conversations out of his platform and inexorably toward China, toward despotism, toward dystopia: a tik-tok of a boot stamping the human face forever.”

Did you follow that?  Facebook a despotism, dystopia, its boot … Follow the logic? Most readers probably most took in the phrase in the paragraph’s “stress position”: “a boot stamping the human face forever.”

Facebook permits free speech and expression. Facebook makes a profit from advertising. It has billions of users … and [do you get the connection?] they are going to spin out of the Facebook platform toward … um … China … and become “a boot stamping the human face forever.”

Now, are you clear on that?

May I offer an interpretation? The left-liberal mainstream media took a terrible beating in 2016. For the first time, it did not essentially control public opinion as in the good old days when, if the media backed a certain outcome with enough unanimity, and pulled out all the stops, their views would prevail. You know, liked when the Times and Washington Post lead the media posse that hung Richard Nixon?

And their loss of power is the direct result of the unregulated, “unfactual,” “malevolent” social media, where no one can ensure, as at the Times, that only the true and well-intentioned—the benevolent—is expressed. And along with certain “prominent Democratic politicians,” like Elizabeth Warren, the Times wishes to prepare for 2020 by getting Facebook firmly under control—regulated, the feral newborn caged.

Looking at 2020

The outcome of this concerted push for regulation of social media will have much to do with 2020 outcomes. It seems obvious, now, that Donald Trump, his advisors, and his supporters had no idea, when the Trump candidacy began, how far the “legacy” media would go to perpetuate the left-liberal direction of the Obama administration. Trump, as I see it, got the picture—and soon.

One of his pivotal responses was to exploit the unlimited possibilities of social media, in this case, Twitter, to reach his supporters directly, immediately, and without the media as “gatekeeper.” Followers of his Tweets are now in the tens of millions. No longer must a U.S. president count upon and try to manipulate the press, news channels, magazine reporters, and others to attempt to get his undistorted words to his supporters. Trump bypasses that entirely with Twitter. You can’t have failed to observe the daily scorn, lamentation, contempt, and ridicule directed toward Mr. Trump’s brilliant exploitation of Tweets. Social media!

Nothing, no respect for objectivity, no credo of truth, would deter even slightly the media’s impassioned crusade against the Trump candidacy.

Mr. Trump’s supporters in 2016, as far as my personal observations go, immediately saw that the media was the opposition. Nothing, no respect for objectivity, no credo of truth, would deter even slightly the media’s impassioned crusade against the Trump candidacy.

One consequence of this, I observed daily for the months leading up to and after the 2016 election, was a spontaneous uprising on Facebook. The candidates and their positions were debated tirelessly. It was far from one-sided. Facebook “friends” “unfriended” their friends over views on Mr. Trump. There were long “threads” debating everything about Mr. Trump. Among them were the sustained, vehement controversies that occurred in the Republican, conservative, and libertarian camps. The reality of candidate Trump’s record of support for free enterprise, the libertarian problems with his immigration policy, were debated with passion.

Intentions of the mainstream media toward social media seem clear. But I don’t see how, with just a year left, and Trump and Republicans firmly in charge of government, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media can be brought to heel by the 2020 election. Would successful impeachment and conviction of President Trump clear the way for legislation to shut-up social media dissent? I don’t see how. But if, whether running against still-not-impeached President Trump or another Republican candidate, the Democratic candidate—say, Elizabeth Warren—won, then the job might get done.

Even at that, it would be admirably quick work for mainstream media. Facebook began in 2004 on campus at Harvard but did not gain its first billion members until 2012. Twitter had its beginnings in 2006. Thus, it would have taken a decade for the mainstream media and left-liberal forces to suppress the revolution against the media “gatekeepers” of mass communication of cultural and political opinion.

I wonder if, after a decade of experiencing easy access to an audience, of gaining competence in interpreting and conveying opinions, and sensing the power to shape the future, Americans could be driven back to their newsstands, magazine racks, and seats in front of evening television? And to their desks to write “letters to the editor”? And then, kept there for good.

I wonder if they would tell their children and grandchildren that “Once, for a few years, we were actually free to …”

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway contributes to Savvy Street on political economy, science, and trends in fiction, film, and culture. Walter Donway’s most recent book is Donald Trump and His Enemies: How the Media Put Trump in Office (Romantic Revolution Books: New York, September 2017). His Amazon profile can be found here