Won’t someone save democracy from the people?

Free speech on the internet endangers democracy, Barack Obama told Stanford University.

The widely hailed speech at Big Tech’s favorite university claimed that autocrats are “subverting democracy” and that democracies have “grown dangerously complacent.” In the slow parade of teleprompter clichés he even  warned that “too often we’ve taken freedom for granted.”

To Obama, the threat to democracy doesn’t come from government power, but the lack of it.

“You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage. You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe. Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of truth, the game’s won,” he summed up.

Like every Obama speech, “Challenges to Democracy in the Digital Information Realm” didn’t offer anything new, just a distillation of familiar talking points and misplaced assumptions.

The assumption at the heart of Obama’s speech and that of the range of arguments depicting free speech as a cultural and national threat is that the purpose of discourse is state power.

Obama, like many post-liberal lefty critics of free speech, reduces speech to its social impact and its social impact to its political impact. This holistic integration is so fundamental to Marxists and many lefties that they don’t even think twice about the idea that everything we do is reducible to a move on the great abacus of social justice. The food you eat, the car you buy, and the words you say have the potential to either save or damn the planet and humanity.

This quasi-religious conception of mass social mobilization pervades American society. It’s the precondition for wokeness because the only possible moral justification for terrorizing random people on social media is the conviction that governance isn’t political, it’s social, and that the only way to avert climate change and social inequality is by controlling what everyone believes.

Wokeness collapses the distinction between the private and public spheres, and between government and individuals. In a national social crisis, the only conceptual framework through which the Left ever really governs, there’s no time for such liberal niceties as private spheres.

Obama’s speech neatly illustrates the fascism at the heart of this panopticon political project.

Introduce disagreement and you “raise enough questions” that people “no longer know what to believe” and then “lose trust in their leaders”, “mainstream media” and even “truth”. Stripped of all the Brookings Institute globalist prose, what Obama is really saying is that individual disagreement undermines the state. And that truth is dependent on public faith in the state.

This is a value system utterly at odds with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, one which envisions an intimate link between individual speech and state authority that would have horrified King George III, but absolutely delighted Hitler or Stalin.

It assumes that there can be no other legitimate points of view other than the official one and that there should be no leaders except those who share them. Limiting the range of opinions is necessary to protect state power because there is no distinction between them and the state.

Or as a certain Austrian artist once put it, “One people, One state, One leader”.

When he was promoting his last book two years ago, Obama made the same arguments. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work.”

The assumption that the democratic process leads to truth rather than choice, absolute rightness rather than people power, is an undemocratic paradigm. Its inevitable conclusion becomes that of Obama, that democracy must be protected by controlling the people.

Not only elections, but ideas, are too important to be left to the public.

Obama doesn’t want a marketplace of ideas because people might get the wrong idea and vote him and his political allies out of office. The explicit goal of internet censorship is to control election outcomes by filtering what information the public is able to access.

Like the provenance of a certain Delaware artist’s laptop.

Narrowing the range of acceptable information in order to narrow the range of acceptable opinions, candidates and political systems is the first fundamental trick of tyrannies. It takes a certain chutzpah and a stock of Orwellian buzzwords to redefine that as protecting democracy.

Obama complains, “China’s built a great firewall around the Internet, turning it into a vehicle for domestic indoctrination” and proposes a democratic firewall around the internet under a “regulatory structure” to be designed with “communities of color” to slow “the spread of harmful content.” The democratic people of color firewall will be so much better than China’s firewall.

Pro-censorship elites have the same assumptions as China about the interaction between speech, society, and the state which is why they, like Obama, arrive at the same conclusions. They can dress up those conclusions in buzzwords about “democracy” and “people of color”, but those are differences of style, not substance. The trains all end up at the same station.

Obama speaks about “bugs” in the Constitution. While he is always happy to critique America, the particular totalitarian bug here is deeply embedded into the leftist worldview which denies that people have individual agency, insists that everyone is a prisoner of their social context, and contends that the purpose of the society and the state is an enlightened intertwining. The bug, which is really more of a feature, directly leads to the same outcome as in China or Stanford.

A free society requires healthy breathing spaces between politics and life. The difference between a politicized society and a tyranny is only time. The question at the heart of this debate is “What is discourse for” which is really the question of, “What are people here for?” To believe, as the Left does, that people primarily exist as vehicles for political change is to enslave them.

That’s why every leftist revolution invariably slides toward tyranny along the same worn tracks.

The Founding Fathers believed that people would self-define their purposes. That was why America’s revolution uniquely led to freedom and why leftist revolutions lead to tyranny.

America defined freedom as individual power while lefties define it by the power of the state.

Obama is simply replaying what happens when liberation is treated as a collective enterprise, a journey toward rather than from, that can only be achieved collectively, through the exercise of state power rather than individually through personal choices. The internet, once individualistic, has become collective, and social media, the ultimate embodiment of that collectivism, has become the battleground between individualist expressers and collectivist censors.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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Democrats, after spending the last decade sneering that Republicans believe “corporations are people”, have found a new group of oppressed victims to shelter, protect, and fight for.

Corporations.

Not since a bunch of men decided that they want to shower with teenage girls and join their swim teams, have lefties turned around their core beliefs faster than hotel bed sheets.

Biden ranted that the “far right has taken over the party” because, “Christ, they’re going after Mickey Mouse.” Of the two, you know which one Joe Biden believes in. Disney employees have directed over $1 million in cash to the Biden campaign. That’s something Biden can bow to.

The rest of the party and the movement is just as outraged that Gov. DeSantis stood up to a multinational corporation on behalf of the voters and parents of Florida.

“The Real Reason Today’s Republican Party Hates Corporations Like Disney,” wailed Will Bunch: the Philly Inquirer’s pet clickbait troll. Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado accused Gov. DeSantis of “authoritarian socialist attacks on the private sector”. A Washington Post op-ed even charged Rep. Lauren Boebert with wanting to “cancel Mickey Mouse.”

All of these social justice energies are being expended to argue that a major multinational corporation should have a 39 square mile self-governing district with its own zoning laws, police and fire departments.

Forget corporations being people, Democrats want them to be governments.

Lefties used to be the biggest critics of special interest scams like the Reedy Creek Improvement District. A few years ago the media would have dug into the lies that were used to secure the territory on which Disney was going to build the homes of tomorrow, only to instead construct the tawdry resorts of yesterday where alligators can eat as many toddlers as they want and Silicon Valley types can spend $5K on the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser hotel.

Now the media awkwardly pivots to declaring that corporations should have their own cities. Lefties loudly shout that only far-right extremists like Gov. DeSantis would ever question the idea that corporations should be able to make their own laws and have their own police forces.

Truly, those whom DeSantis would destroy, he first drives mad.

All of this started because Disney came out in opposition to a parental rights law that the majority of Republicans, Independents, and even Democrats supported. But Disney execs decided that kindergarteners need to be indoctrinated on sex no matter what Mom and Dad say.

Disney and the Democrats were pretty confident that Gov. DeSantis and Republicans would bow. Corporate and sports league pressure had shut down religious freedom laws and protections for women and girls from Indiana to Utah. Republican governors, when faced with threats of corporate boycotts, have repeatedly sold out their voters and bowed to the buck.

Gov. DeSantis not only refused to bow, he took away Disney’s state-within a state. The message is clear. Disney doesn’t rule in Florida, only the voters do. But Democrats want elected officials to listen to corporations. And they want those corporations to govern all of us.

They want Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech companies to decide what we should be able to say and read. They want banks and credit card companies to stop us from donating to conservative causes or buying guns. And they want the corporations that employ us to be able to fire us the moment we express an unguarded thought they don’t like.

Corporate governance now means a monopolistic woke cartel using its wide scope of authority over national services, communications, and employment to suppress political dissent.

The Bill of Rights still occasionally keeps governments from doing some things, at least until they declare a political emergency due to a pandemic, a disputed election, or the day of the week, while nothing restrains the power of Google or Amazon to erase you from the internet while its stock price goes up another few billion thanks to the adultatory media coverage.

And since the same corps and leagues that give marching orders to cowardly GOP governors also take orders from Communist China, that means we’re really answering to Xi’s lackeys.

Like Disney.

But to the wokes, corporations have joined the totem pole of the oppressed, somewhere below suicide bombers in burkas, giant junkies who overdose while grappling with cops, tribal casino owners whiter than Elizabeth Warren, and bearded inmates of female correctional facilities.

You might say that what’s good for Disney is good for Democrats.

Should Disney have its own state within Florida? Mouseketeers, lefties want Disney to run the whole state. Much as they want the NCAA to run Indiana and Google the rest of the planet.

Gov. DeSantis refused to let his state become a Mickey Mouse operation. Some other governors, including Gov. Abbott in Texas, are joining him in declaring independence, not from the country, but from the cartel of woke corporations being used to set state policy.

Corporations, like governments, can be perfectly good and useful things. Like governments, they become a toxic assault on our rights and freedoms when they start telling us what to do.

And then they’re no different than any other form of tyranny.

Disney could have been perfectly happy churning out new Captain America and other superhero projects that had been signed off on by Chinese Communist censors while peddling $10 sodas and access to two hour lines in order to ride their politically correct roller coasters.

Instead, Disney execs decided to throw around their power beyond the confines of their self-governing banana republic and its endless collection of ramshackle ripoff resorts, and tried to rule over a state instead of just their unfortunate employees and customers.

Now, Disney is paying the price for its totalitarian hubris.

Some conservatives argue that this is “viewpoint discrimination”. And they might have a point if all Disney did was express an opinion. Corporate execs are entitled to their opinions like everyone else and corporations are free to express their concerns about what affects them. What they are not entitled to do is usurp the power of the government, its officials and its voters.

When corporations don’t limit their areas of interest to their business affairs and instead demand that states, cities, and communities must comply with every single leftist agenda item or face their wrath, then they become the real governments while the people are rendered powerless.

And nobody, or almost nobody except a few Florida Democrats, wants to be ruled by Disney.

After generations of class warfare populism, the new woke gentry want corporations to crush the peasant parents who think that they, not Disney, have the right to raise their children.

That’s not just an abandonment of their entire political movement and worldview going back two centuries, it’s an act of political suicide akin to electing Biden and Kamala during a crisis.

If lefties want to champion corporations as our new governments, they should run on that.

Surely Florida voters, not to mention Americans from all states, races, genders, creeds, and levels of drunkenness will happily embrace this brave new proposal for corporate governance.

After Disney is appointed to run Florida and consigns political opponents to cleaning the vomit out of Space Mountain, Facebook can take over California, filling the cities with golden statues of Zuckerberg, while Amazon rules over the Northwest with gulags of warehouses.

Nobody wants that dystopian insanity except the Left, which used to hate corporations, but now wants them to tell us what we can say, what we are allowed to think, and how we should live.

This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREEN FIELD

Daniel Greenfield is a  Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Daniel’s journalistic beat includes Front Page Magazine, its blog, The Point, and his own blog, Sultan Knish, which covers everything from Islamic terrorism in Argentina to leftist politics in America.

©Daniel Greenfield. All rights reserved.

Despite a low turnout (28% abstention), French President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected on April 24, 2022, beating second-round competitor Marine Le Pen by a margin of 58.6% to 41.4 %. Macron’s victory was the first re-election [without prior cohabitation] of a French president in two decades. In 2017, the dark horse Macron won a major victory over Marine Le Pen.

During his first term, Macron reduced unemployment, well questioned for his competent handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. and was praised for his diplomatic efforts in the current crisis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He met Russian President Putin in Moscow and was in constant telephone contact with Ukrainian President Zelensky. French voters appear to support efforts by the NATO alliance to arm Ukraine to repel unprovoked attacks on a sovereign nation aspiring to EU membership. Macron is the current rotating president of the European Union.

Le Pen had tried to airbrush her “extremist” positions and distance herself from her anti-Semitic father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front. She changed the name of her custom party to Rassemblement National (NR). Le Pen, like populists Eric Zemmour on the far right and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the far left, have agreed to step down as commander of NATO’s joint force. The outgoing president accused Le Pen of promoting a disguised Frexit and maintaining a close alliance with Putin’s Russia. The NR owes more than 9 million euros to a Russian-Hungarian bank. We’ll ask our Parisian colleague what she thinks of the claim by some British and American media that Le Pen actually won a victory while losing.

Macron has another “campaign” ahead, as he seeks a majority for the La République En Marche party in the June legislative elections. The trio of populist contenders, Le Pen and Zemmour on the far right and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the far left, will try to take control of the National Assembly and thwart Macron’s second term agenda.

Macron now has the politically daunting task of appealing to a wide range of French regional voters who are likely to support populist agendas.

In this context, we held our seventh in a series of discussions with an American expat in Paris, contributor to  New English Review  , which provides English-language media resumes for  Tribune Juive  . We explore the implications of the French presidential election, the populist stance on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s need to turn a blind eye to Russia in Syria, Russia’s gas blackmail, and even more…

Jerry Gordon:  I’m Jerry Gordon, editor of  The New English Review  . And here we are with Nidra Poller reporting an interesting development with the second round of the French presidential elections. Nidra, what were the preliminary results of the second round?

Nidra Poller:  The results reported tonight are approximately: Macron 58%, Le Pen 42%. That might change slightly when the final results come in for major cities.

Jerry Gordon:  How does this compare to the 2017 election?

Nidra Poller: The difference was greater. It’s basically because Marine Le Pen, after losing miserably in 2017, did some sort of political Botox. She smoothed over her real agenda, her real intentions, and walked around with a big smile. By the end of the campaign, she was selling herself as “the mother of the nation.” This blunted the previous backlash that the far right should not be allowed to win. But, as you know, what I mean is that it would have been better if the commentators had shown it populist and explained populism. In any case, I am proud that France did not elect a populist. That’s the first thing. I wasn’t particularly impressed with Macron before, but he’s the president now, and that’s where I live, and I want him to succeed.

Interestingly, the losers did not give decent Democratic kudos. Well, I call them losers. Marine Le Pen lost to Macron. She phoned, as it should, to congratulate him. And then gave a speech that was a short version of his campaign, with insults and accusations, and blaming this and that, they didn’t treat her well, they won’t treat the French right, and so on. And then the candidates who didn’t even make it to the second round also had to put their face in front of us. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose bright new idea is that he should be elected Prime Minister, (I will explain later), and Zemmour, who says he will unite the right. It was really very sad. They just rehearsed…mumbling…just rehearsed their campaign pitches.

When candidates lose, they claim to love the country and the people. It’s sad to see them making a speech, basically saying that what the French want is what they had proposed. But the French have just voted, right? If people didn’t vote for them, stayed home saying how wonderful they are, the fact is they didn’t vote for them. You know, that’s the focus of my thinking right now: what we’re going through now is an uphill battle between democracy and tyranny. This is being played out in Ukraine with horrific brutality and suffering. And that is played out in our democracies, with elections and, sometimes, this refusal to accept the verdict. I have a lot of hope. I believe that the courage of Ukrainians in the defense of democracy will play an important role in strengthening democracy in what we called the free world. So, as I said,

But the idea that any intelligent and serious person can vote for Marine Le Pen, while the tyrant of tyrants is on the run in Europe, and we are witnessing unprecedented violence since the end of the Second World War. This violence has global repercussions. The idea that you could put a thoughtless, incompetent person, who walks around saying, “I’ve changed. I changed”… It looks like an alcoholic! “I’ve changed, I won’t do that again.” You cannot have a person without stature as President of France! France is very important in Europe. You know better than anyone that France is the strongest military power in Europe.

Jerry Gordon:  Yes.

Nidra Poller:  With Britain, right?

Jerry Gordon:  Yes.

Nidra Poller:  At a time when suddenly we know we have to defend ourselves, we can’t have… I mean, it would have been a terrible disaster for Europe if she had been elected. And I hope that Americans will wake up and pay tribute to us, as Europeans, for this choice.

Jerry Gordon:  I have to tell you that if you read the American press as the second round approached, it was: Oh, please, dire consequences, inflation will rise, NATO and the problems in Ukraine. And this result just confirms what you just talked about. This is, of course, a reaction against a rather reprehensible type of populism.

Nidra Poller:  Yes. And when you have a country as powerful as the United States that elects an incompetent populist president who has no sense of international relations… When Marine Le Pen spoke of international relations, it was laughable… if not tragic . It’s time people got serious. You cannot elect incompetent people on a whim. So, as I said, this is a lesson for the free world. And I think that’s a relief. I didn’t have time to read the  New York Times article  you sent me, “Marine Le Pen Has Already Wo”. … Isn’t this a magnificent victory? When losers say they’ve won. Well, I’m glad they lost, because their sense of reality isn’t very strong.

Jerry Gordon:  What was curious to me was that the author of that  New York Times article  was Rachel Donadio, a Parisian contributor to  The Atlantic  and former Rome bureau chief and European culture correspondent for  the New York Times  .

Nidra Poller:  What strikes me when I read about French politics in the American or Anglophone press is the lack of precise information given there. Sometimes, when I submitted articles to the American media, they said that there were too many details, the readers could not find their way. But if you don’t give specific details, there’s no way to figure out what’s at play here. What are we trying to do in our monthly conversation  , right  ?

Jerry Gordon:  Does this send another message to people similar to Marine Le Pen who had become Putin’s ally in the EU? And I’m talking about Victor Orban, who has just been re-elected in Hungary.

Nidra Poller:  Yes. As you see with their previous statements… In the past, when people lied, it was not easy to find proof of what they said. Today they lie, and two seconds later the video appears and the truth is out. Marine Le Pen was tripping over herself to say the invasion was terrible, and she doesn’t approve. But she had previously printed campaign posters showing herself shaking hands with Putin. So she had to throw them away. But everyone knows.

Jerry Gordon:  Do the French people, domestic concerns notwithstanding, be it inflation or some other excuse, support Macron’s position on the defense of Ukraine?

Nidra Poller: Yes, and they do it the French way. For example, the idea that the French can talk to everyone, and that it was good that Macron could talk to Putin. And they appreciate his refusal to use the term “genocide”. This pleases the French. But another point we will keep an eye on is that the legislative elections are approaching in June. And my prediction is that Macron’s party will get the majority. Tonight, the sore losers immediately put on their combat gear and took an aggressive stance: “Well, he won the election, but we’re going to give it to him, because we’ll win the parliamentary election.” I do not think so. Then, as the president says, he will have to consider all votes against him, right and left. This is what is expected of a president. Bad losers rack their brains saying how much they love France, and love the French. But when it comes to defending Europe against Putin’s aggression, we realize that these are empty words. Because they wouldn’t dare stand up to a dictator attacking us. What he does in Ukraine, he would do anywhere else. And, deep down, they won’t resist.

Jerry Gordon:  Where does that place Mr. Zemmour, whom some in the American press had said was the wind behind Marine Le Pen’s sails?

Nidra Poller: Yes and no. He acted so badly that she got to do that Botox. At first he said she couldn’t win. It inspired her to prove she could. This way he made her look good. On the other hand, if you do the arithmetic, you might figure out that he stopped her from winning. After the first round, they did polls to see where his voters would go in the second. They went massively to Marine Le Pen. So, if they agree with Marine Le Pen, why didn’t they vote for her in the first round? She would have had a much better result. Fortunately, they didn’t. This evening, there were the three grumpy ones, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Zemmour. They did not have the dignity to say that Macron won, he is our President, we will continue to express our positions, but he is our President and we want him to succeed. Zemmour gave a speech, he looked dejected and he said he was going to unite the right. It’s funny.

Jerry Gordon:  Nidra, you wrote an incisive article – and I mean incisive in a positive sense – for  Tribune Juive  , dealing effectively with the whole problem of populism. What was the reaction of those who read it in France?

Nidra Poller:  I have to talk to my editor to find out how people react to what I write, because TJ is not a site that attracts dozens and dozens of comments. Which is good, because most of the time they are not very enlightened and often they are quite cruel. Only one person has posted a reaction to this text. She ignored all the arguments I had given to show that populism is no more for the people than communism is for the sharing of wealth. She just made the same populist arguments: Macron is for the elite; ordinary people are ignored. And they’re fed up with it all. She said she was going to vote for Marine Le Pen because of my article. I hope, by the end of the year, to publish a collection of these chronicles that I write for Tribune Juive , because there is another dimension when you read them one after the other and see how they are linked. That’s what I did in the early 2000s. And maybe I’ll try to do an English version of those essays. In the column to which you refer, I said that they are populists and false nationalists. Populists never keep what they promise. Why do people believe them? They never deliver what they promise. They cling to a big social problem that no one can solve: immigration, drug trafficking, violence against women, and… What else…

Jerry Gordon:  Inflation?

Nidra Poller: Yes, the cost of living. And Islamic jihad in all its ramifications. Populists click on really problematic things that no one can fix. Their line is this: you elected one government after another and none of them solved these problems. I will do it. In fact, they have no experience to be judged. You remember: “We are going to build this wall and Mexico will pay for it. What they offer is a pie in the sky. I am proud and relieved that French voters did not get caught. If Putin’s Russia had not invaded Ukraine, the dangers we face would have remained theoretical. Russia has been getting a pass for 20 years. But the danger has now materialized, and it is obvious that we must have good leadership and responsible citizens. We don’t play on social media. Its a question of life or death.

Jerry Gordon:  Nidra, did the Franco-Jewish organization support Macron.

Nidra Poller:  No. That’s not what happened.

Jerry Gordon:  None?

Nidra Poller:  No. It was very controversial. Leaders of several organizations issued a warning: “Do not vote for the extremists, Zemmour, Le Pen or Mélenchon. For many Jews, people I respect, it was the unacceptable mixture of religion and politics. French Jews vote as French citizens. They shouldn’t be told how to vote.

Jerry Gordon:  Okay.

Nidra Poller:  But I see this warning as similar to what I wrote in the Tribune Juive article  you referred to. I find it appropriate that Jewish leaders speak out and educate Jews about the dangers of populism. And don’t forget, Marine Le Pen seriously intended, if elected, to ban kosher slaughter.

Jerry Gordon:  Right.

Nidra Poller:  I have to leave you now, because I’m going to listen to Emmanuel Macron’s speech at the Champ de Mars.

Jerry Gordon:  And I want to thank you for your comments on what seemed like a resounding victory for President Macron.

Nidra Poller:  Well, Marine Le Pen thinks it was a resounding victory for herself, but it was a resounding victory for democracy. And, as I said in that article you mentioned, now everything remains to be done.

Jerry Gordon:  So if I had to have a lead for this discussion, is it Macron’s victory over populism?

Nidra Poller:  I think it’s the victory of French voters against populism. Now Macron has to pull through. He’s very smart, he knows it’s not a resounding victory for him. It is a victory against the danger of electing an incompetent and dishonest person to the presidency of France in one of the most dangerous periods of modern times. People on the right are going to be angry when he does things to please voters on the left and vice versa. But that’s what he must do, rule. So we’ll follow it from there.

Jerry Gordon:  Nidra, following Macron’s victory, the French Jewish community organization CRIF applauded the result, but expressed concerns about the populist minority vote. What does this tell us about the fact that divisions in France are a threat to democracy?

©Jerry Gordon and Nidra Poller. All rights reserved.