Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The 1st Amendment to the Constitution protects United States citizens from the government abridging our freedom of speech. It also protects the freedom of the privately-owned press from the same threat. But now Republicans in Texas want to prevent us from exercising this fundamental freedom.
Part of our protection from the kind of government control that Texans are trying to institute is our right to control and curate the content of the work we produce. As a private citizen, the government can’t abridge my right to voice my opinion in a book that I write or to curate the message for a company I own. A fascist cabal of government officials in Texas currently can’t force me to let neo-nazis have their say in a magazine article condemning neo-nazis that I might author. This freedom is on the edge though.
Because make no mistake, the moment that our government has the right to tell Twitter or Facebook what it can or cannot curate or edit on their corporate-owned property… That’s the moment the 1st Amendment is finished. The moment our most fascist government actors force private citizens to use our personal property to spread their message… it’s done.
Without the freedom to not say what we want, we don’t actually have the freedom to say what we want. When we lose that, it’s how we know we’re in a dictatorship.
Conservatives don’t care. They want to steal from others the intellectual property and other digital creations and services that have become so popular: unique, extremely valuable properties that they know they can’t imitate successfully. Like Nazis of the past, if they can’t build it or craft it, they’ll just steal it. I’m not a fan of Twitter or Facebook, personally. But if the government of Texas wants to moderate Twitter, then they need to pay for Twitter and buy it. If Elon Musk can afford it, then so can the state of Texas, if it wants to make its citizens fork over the tax revenue. But the idea that the government of Texas, led by an undemocratic and lawless group of vulgarians, would be dictating to citizens of Silicon Valley (for example) that they have to let Texas neo-nazis scrawl their grunts on our websites… well, it’s terrifying to say the least. But it could very well happen, with the dominionist Supreme Court now in power. They want to take our creations for their own and use them to spread Goebbels’ message.
As we all know, it’s not just women’s basic rights to privacy and bodily autonomy that these fascists want to take. They want everything we own. All of it.
That’s what fascists do. Be warned. Don’t think it can’t happen here because it already is, right now.