DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Real Clear Politics’ Samizdat Prize, Behind The Scenes Stories Of Censorship: Matt Taibbi, Jay Bhattacharya, And Miranda Devine.

MATT TAIBBI: I grew up as a traditional ACLU liberal type. I remember the day after the first Twitter Files story came out, the Washington Post described me as a “conservative journalist.” That’s where we are, in this bizarre realignment. When I grew up, I didn’t know anybody who was for censorship. There was nobody among the liberals I knew… who had any feelings in that direction. I think as recently as ten years ago, 95% of journalists would have been in agreement on this issue. We saw this after Glenn Greenwald broke the Snowden story., In the last ten years or so, there has been this dramatic realignment where suddenly free speech is coded as a right-wing issue. I think that is basically a strategy to try to delegitimize the issue and to try to scare a certain demographic into not paying attention to what this story is all about.

If you actually pay attention to Missouri v. Biden or the Twitter Files, it is not a partisan story. It is more about the exercise of government power and the decision to make sure the government has the ability to place leverage wherever it wants at a moment’s notice. That doesn’t have anything to do with politics, it is big vs. small and government vs. ordinary people.

Remember when Trump first took office, and the left displayed a newfound interest in Orwell’s 1984? In 2024, we can see the efforts of those who read it as an instruction manual.