Biden on investigating Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition
President Biden reacts to Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition.
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald had strong words for liberals who shamed Elon Musk for criticizing a Democratic senator on the social media platform.
The Twitter CEO had sent a snappy reply to Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., for complaining the company's new rules on Twitter verification were too lax.
The senator in turn threatened Musk to comply or face punishment from Congress. But Musk's flippant response to the senator spurred leftists on Twitter to echo Markey's words.
Greenwald was appalled by the warnings, tweeting, "These people are such f---ing authoritarians: you speak to Democratic Senators with respect or else!"
Elon Musk traded barbs with Democratic Sen. Ed Markey. (Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images | Samuel Corum/Bloomberg Getty Images)
Greenwald slammed the left's response as emblematic of the control Democrats had on social media companies.
"This has been the most overlooked part of the debate over Big Tech censorship from the start. This is not, as liberal censorship defenders claim, a case of private companies deciding to censor. They're doing it under explicit punishment threats from Dems," he noted in a follow-up tweet.
Greenwald called out the senator for being "one of the Democrats most explicit" in demanding censorship from tech giants under threat of punishment.
"And @SenMarkey in particular has been one of the Democrats most explicit in telling Big Tech executives: you either ‘take down’ the posts we regard as dangerous, or you will face legal and regulatory punishment," he said.
Sen. Ed Markey threatened Elon Musk after teaming up with the Washington Post on story about a Twitter verified-account hoaxes. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
"This is a core Democratic Party threat," he added, with a video of Markey saying there wasn't enough censorship on social media.
ELON MUSK TELLS DEMOCRATIC SENATOR HIS TWITTER ACCOUNT SOUNDS LIKE A ‘PARODY’
Greenwald continued to rail against the Democrat, calling his threats a "grave and dangerous abuse of power" that was a "classic hallmark of fascism."
"It goes without saying that a Senator using his power to punish private companies for mocking him -- or, worse, for refusing to obey his censorship orders -- is a grave and dangerous abuse of power. That so many left-liberals cheer this tells you who they are and how they think. A classic hallmark of "fascism" is uniting corporate and state power to control the population, particularly by dictating what they can and can't say. This is exactly what Dems have been doing with the internet, as the very people claiming to be "anti-fascism" warriors cheer," he tweeted.
Billionaire industrialist Elon Musk took over Twitter and immediately fired several top executives. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto | Carina Johansen/NTB/AFP via Getty Images – Photo illustration)
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The billionaire tech entrepreneur's takeover of Twitter at the end of October prompted several liberal media meltdowns, including one from a Washington Post journalist who declared, "It’s like the gates of hell opened on this site tonight."
Greenwald is an outspoken critic of censorship and has accused the Democratic Party of working with government security officials and Big Tech to enact a "regime of censorship" on the internet.
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