Austin: The Left's New Strategy for Assaulting Free Speech Is Claiming Conservatives 'Incite Violence'
If those on the far left don’t like something you say, they don’t simply agree to disagree.
Instead, they claim your speech constitutes “violence” or an “incitement of violence.”
On Jan. 8, in a move that shocked many across the political spectrum, Twitter announced it had permanently banned the account of President Donald Trump from its platform following the chaos of the Capitol incursion.
Twitter’s illogical reasoning for Trump’s ban — namely, that his rhetoric constituted “incitement of violence” — has set a dangerous precedent — and now the far left is looking to capitalize on it.
In the blog post explaining the suspension of Trump’s account, Twitter offered two examples of the president supposedly issuing an “incitement of violence” on their platform.
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” Trump wrote on Jan. 8.
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” the president added later that day.
Twitter’s argument for how these two innocuous statements qualified as “incitement of violence” involved illogical assumptions and incredibly circuitous reasoning.
“Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks,” Twitter wrote.
Since then, other liberals have adopted similarly ridiculous rationalizations when arguing for the silencing of various conservative voices.
This is violent rhetoric.
It is objectively false and meant to incite others to commit crimes against clinics, patients, and health care providers.
This is what domestic terrorism looks like. https://t.co/aVBebVkKGc
— Leah Torres, MD (@LeahNTorres) January 7, 2021
According to a Jan. 7 tweet from Leah Torres, a left-wing physician with a substantial social media following, asserting the pro-life belief that “abortion is violence” is “violent rhetoric” meant to “incite others to commit crimes against clinics patients, and health care providers.”
The rhetoric used by Torres here is startling but should be expected.
Twitter’s argument for why Trump’s above comments “incite violence” can be extrapolated to almost any political opinion, including the pro-life position, because of how roundabout and far-reaching the argument was constructed.
For example, using this logic, defending the sanctity of traditional marriage is inciting violence against homosexuals, arguing for stricter immigration policies incites violence against illegal immigrants, making the case for school choice incites violence against public school teachers, and so on.
Silencing and deplatforming Trump was only the beginning.
The far left will never be satisfied until all conservative voices are silenced.
For quite some time, the anti-free-speech radical left has tightened its stranglehold over the Democratic Party along with the vast majority of America’s most prominent cultural institutions.
Following the 2020 election, with the full power of the federal government at the Democrats’ disposal as well, they may be able to achieve their goal:
Silencing all of us who allegedly “incite violence.”
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