No wonder the Left are in uproar over Twitter’s takeover. They think that free speech only applies to THEIR views

Who’s afraid of free speech? The answer, if it wasn’t already abundantly clear, is all of the painfully woke liberal elite and cancelculture obsessives who treat Twitter as their private echo chamber.

That was, at least, until earlier this week when Elon Musk secured a deal to buy the social network for £35 billion and pledged to open up the site to permit more freedom of speech.

Now these keyboard warriors have gone into meltdown.

Left-wing pundits, academics and right-on celebrities have declared themselves terrified that the richest man in the world might dare to do the unthinkable: allow those with even a slightly different opinion from their own to exercise freedom of expression online.

Frightened

A few days ago, one particularly exercised journalism professor from New York University went so far as to warn: ‘Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany.’

A quivering Washington Post columnist declared himself ‘frightened’ because Musk ‘seems to believe that on social media, anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.’ (For ‘content moderation’ read ‘PC censorship’.)

But amid all this wailing from snowflakes, I can’t help but raise a smile because, for any of us who believe in the inalienable and unfettered right to free speech, this takeover is surely something to celebrate with at least two cheers.

The truth is the hysterical warnings of a descent into unregulated ‘fascism’ are certain to prove baseless. Musk, who describes himself as a ‘free speech absolutist’, has merely committed himself to overhauling Twitter’s controversial content-moderation policies and allowing a broader spread of opinion.

There’s no suggestion whatsoever that incitements to commit violent atrocities or other such dangerous content won’t continue to be regulated in the appropriate manner.

To the ‘Twitterati’, though, such clarifications don’t matter — to them, the walls of their citadel are falling in and Musk, as the driver of such change, represents an abhorrent threat to their world view.

Indeed, for too long a loud minority have treated real freedom of speech with contempt, championing Left-wing views almost to the complete exclusion of other beliefs.

Egging each other on in their cossetted Twitter bubble — fuelled by powerful digital algorithms that feed users a continual steam of similar content — they’ve deluded themselves that different views held by countless others are akin to ‘hate crimes’, that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is tantamount to being an enemy of the people, deserving of social ‘cancellation’.

Twitter’s silicon Valleybased overlords, meanwhile, have tightened their regulatory grip in recent years on what they deem to be acceptable content.

‘Free expression is a human right — we believe that everyone has a voice, and the right to use it,’ Twitter’s ‘hateful Conduct Policy’ proudly states.

But it strikes me that, back at Twitter hQ, it would be difficult to find much commitment to such a belief.

For there in sunny California, one of the bastions of the fashionably Left-wing, free speech has morphed into something quite foreign — no longer a universal right, but a privilege to be granted only to those who express the correct opinion.

Left-biased programming slaps any non-conformist tweet — almost always of a more Right-wing sentiment — with warning labels about ‘abuse’ or ‘misinformation’ and even blocks users from the site as a last resort.

Most famously, in January 2021 the site banned Donald Trump — then the sitting President of the United states — following the violent Capitol riots that he was accused of inciting.

Many might think that Trump should be banned from Twitter, but I disagree — you have to remember that more than 74 million Americans had recently voted for him.

But so ingrained has this groupthink become that Musk’s critics can’t see the irony of their opposition to his takeover.

Their claim that Musk’s ownership will cause Twitter to descend into facism is the deepest irony.

Because it is only through the free speech Musk espouses that democracy can flourish — if in doubt, just take a look at the censorship of social media that Vladimir Putin has imposed to whitewash his barbaric and criminal activities in Ukraine.

In truth, those on the Left are up in arms about the takeover because they risk losing control of the global conversation on Twitter, perhaps the most powerfully vocal social media outlet in the world.

The Twitterati are always astonished and outraged whenever the actual public don’t agree with their opinions. For them, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2019 General Election are glaring examples of the ‘wrong’ sort of democracy in action.

Pushback

But now someone has dared to challenge all that.

Yet, far from being a hard-Right monster, in reality Musk is a complex political character: part green, part libertarian.

At his core he is an engineer — and a shrewd businessman, having made billions from his Tesla electric cars and his spacecraft manufacturer, spaceX.

The acquisition of Twitter represents another commercial venture, but it seems he also wants to use it to enhance the global conversation.

‘Twitter has become a sort of de facto town square,’ he said recently, ‘so it’s really important that people have both the reality and perception that they are able to speak freely, in the bounds of the law.’

Not much sign of fascism there, if you ask me. Just simple common-sense — and good business-sense, too.

Indeed, Musk’s takeover comes at a time when there is a possible pushback against the woke domination of social discourse. Last year’s launch of Right-wing GB News, and this week TalkTV, attests to that.

of course, there are caveats we should bear in mind.

It really should not be up to any single billionaire-controlled Big Tech company to decide what we are and are not allowed to say, hear and see — whether that’s Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook or Elon Musk’s Twitter.

Hopeful

But at least on face value, Musk’s promises of increased ‘transparency’ at the top of the social network seem genuine.

Legitimate questions should also be raised about his corporate relationship with Communist China and how that might skew his attitude to free speech.

China is the world’s second biggest market for Tesla cars after the U.s. It is also where the cars’ batteries are made.

Time will tell if Musk can remain impervious to the influence of the Red Dragon. But let’s judge him on what he does, not just what he says — or what others might say about him.

For what it’s worth, as a fellow free-speech fundamentalist, I for one am hopeful. In the end, the hard truth about free speech is that not everybody who chooses to post, pontificate, rant or rage on Twitter will share the same views as you. But that should never mean that their rights to freedom of expression are any less.

our democracy and liberties rely on that — and that’s something Elon Musk seems to get.

Mick HuMe is author of Trigger Warning: is The Fear Of Being Offensive killing Free Speech? published by William collins.