MR. TAIBBI GOES TO WASHINGTON:

Yesterday Matt Taibbi gave his opening statement at the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the “censorship-industrial complex.” He posted the text of his remarks here (with links) at his Racket News site and added a brief note on the hearing as well. I have posted video below. This is the text.

Two years ago, when Michael [Shellenberger] and I first testified before your Weaponization of Government Subcommittee, Democratic members called us “so-called journalists,” suggested we were bought-off “scribes,” and questioned our ethics and loyalties. When we tried to answer, we were told to shut up, take off our tinfoil hats, and remember two things: one, there is no digital censorship, two, if there is digital censorship, it’s for our own good.

I was shocked. I thought the whole thing had to be a mistake. No way the party I gave votes to all my life was now pro-censorship. Then last year I listened to John Kerry, whom I voted for, talk to the World Economic Forum. Speaking about disinformation, he said “our First Amendment stands as a major block” to our ability to “hammer it out of existence.”

He complained that “it’s really hard to govern” because “people self-select where they go for their news,” which makes it “much harder to build consensus…”

I defended Kerry when people said he “looks French,” but Marie Antoinette would have been embarrassed by this speech. He was essentially complaining that the peasants are “self-selecting” their own media. What’s next, letting them make up their own minds?

These days, the establishment left may actually hate the First Amendment more than they hate the Second: NPR boss Katherine Maher once called the First Amendment a ‘challenge’ and ‘reverence for the truth’ a distraction.