Not long after its plans for a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) disinformation board fell into embarrassing disarray and became a public-relations train wreck – leading to their being shelved – the White House is once again targeting free speech on the Internet, reports The Hill.
The excuse this time is harassment, hate, abuse and misogyny voiced or written online, which does not cause and never has caused physical harm to anyone’s person or property.
Nonetheless a new White House task force aimed at combating online harassment and abuse held its first meeting June 16, hoping to securely link alarmism about online nastiness to actual physical harm and gender-based violence, including self-harm by gays when people say things that hurt their feelings.
The task force provides yet another chance for Vice President Kamala Harris to prove she is capable of something, and will be co-chaired by the “Gender Policy Council” and the National Security Council, White House press spokesmen announced.
Per The New York Post, at the June 16 meeting Harris nonsensically declared: “all people deserve to use the Internet free from fear,” as if preventing “fear” were actually the serious and proper domain of government.
A White House news release on the new project promises to do what government does best: “expand,” “enhance,” “improve,” “develop” and “strengthen” various research and government services, with each verb no doubt costing hundreds of millions more dollars.
In its attempt to set up speech as something like physical harm, the effort also appears to be an attempt to ride the crisis-coattails of recent mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas by a political party, the Democrats, whose unofficial motto might well be “never let a crisis go to waste.” That is, use every occasion of fear and horror to restrict yet another Constitutional freedom.
In both shooting cases, the killers were reported to have posted hateful content and plans for their attacks online before the shootings.
Within 180 days, the task force will provide service recommendations for how the federal government, private sector and civil society can better combat online harassment and abuse by spending titanic amounts of money, employing thousands more bureaucrats and trying to criminalize speech.
