MyPillow CEO, former settler of business fraud, and promoter of COVID-19 snake oil Mike Lindell has a new product to sell the MAGA people. It seems to be some kind of social media platformed named Frank Speech, but Lindell has also told microphones that it will be named VOCL (pronounced vocal). According to Business Insider, the tagline for the platform is, "The voice of free speech." But what people like Lindell consider “free speech” is … very Bible-y.
Lindell went on Eric Metaxas’ radio show to promote the launch of his new platform. Metaxas is a faux-intellectual author-turned-MAGA Christian Right personality. Metaxas’ radio show is one of the best places to go for right-wingers who are interested in incriminating themselves on tape about all things Donald Trump coup d’etat-related. Like Lindell, Metaxas’ morality seems to go about as deep as the superficial use of bad words. Lindell first gave a predictably WWE promotional-sounding rundown of how his social media platform defines “free speech” in a “Judeao-Christian” way. Then Lindell proceeded to tell Metaxas all of the speech that cannot be used on the platform.
“You’re not going to be able to swear. There will be four words for sure you can’t say: You can’t say the C-word, the N-word, the F-word, and you can’t use God’s name in vain. What a concept. Right?” It’s not cancel culture if it’s Christian. To understand how this works and is American and is also Christian, you just have to understand that in Lindell’s estimation, the Founding Fathers believed exactly the same thing Lindell believes now, which is a great coincidence and potentially very profitable for Mikey!
”Get this: This Judeo-Christian platform we’re gonna have here, they go by biblical principals. You know, to get to the Supreme Court you have the Ten Commandments.” I don’t know exactly what that is supposed to mean. Lindell, Trump, and other hucksters of limited vocabulary and articulation tend to elide the most important connections between buzzwords. It’s sort of like doing a paper on early American fiction and saying the phrase “cult of domesticity and stuff.”
Here is, verbatim, what he says next: “You’ll see, our definement [sic] there, so in other words, you can’t, you’re not going to have porn up there, you’re not going have these sites, or sites that contain material that go against our Constitution, go against what our Founding Fathers put in there.” I don’t know, but I do know the words porn, Founding Fathers, and Constitution. Maybe Lindell’s site will be mostly erotica about the Founding Fathers writing the Constitution? Metaxas loves it, saying it’s “really puritanical,” which he believes to be a positive.
Lindell has had a rough go of it of late what with losing retailers for his pillow business, meaning a vacuum of tens of millions of dollars. While Lindell assures everyone he is investigating why Fox News doesn’t want Dominion voting lawsuits,* he has made his fringe right-wing appearances, telling audiences all kinds of wackadoo things—like that Donald Trump will be some kind of White House dictator/leader by August of this year. In fact, while writing this story, Lindell announced that big box store Costco has slowly stopped selling his merchandise.
Things that Lindell believes are true are what seems to be what he defines as “free speech,” like that the election was stolen, our border crisis was created by Joe Biden, everybody supporting Trump is good, and everyone else is lying. Lindell is explaining that anyone attacking people like Metaxas—or Lindell, for that matter—will be protected from other people’s free speech because the Ninth Commandment says one shall not bear false witness. It’s totally sound stuff in the Constitution according to Lindell.
*It’s because Fox News executives understand their on-air personalities can’t help but slander Dominion in the presence of Lindell.