Yesterday, President Michael D. Higgins became the latest member of Official Ireland to express their abject horror at Elon Musk’s Twitter buy-out.
Speaking on RTÉ News, the President said:
“Is it a great success that a multi-billionaire would now be deciding what is appropriate for people to exchange by way of discourse? I think it can hardly be described as anything other than a manifestation of an incredible and dangerous narcissism.”
President Michael D Higgins has described the purchase of Twitter by tech billionaire Elon Musk as a 'manifestation of an incredible and dangerous narcissism' | Read more: https://t.co/UcW55R2V7G pic.twitter.com/5b9CZCjL3E
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) May 5, 2022
Now, I’m not exactly sure how it’s “narcissism” to spend your own money on a company and promise to restore free speech for ordinary users. How exactly one could interpret that as self-centred or a kind of entitlement, I have no idea.
Regardless, the most amusing part of all this is Higgins’ assertion that multi-billionaires will “now” be deciding what people can say online – as if this is some brand new phenomenon, and not the status quo for the past decade or more.
For starters, when Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter just last year, he was worth $12 billion dollars according to Bloomberg. That is to say, Twitter was owned by a multi-billionaire for years until a few months ago. This, apparently, posed no problem whatsoever to Higgins, as he never once raised it as an issue before now.
Moreover, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook are owned by Mark Zuckerberg, who is worth $75.8 billion dollars. Again, this is clearly no problem to Higgins – we’ve never heard a squeak out of him objecting to this.
Snapchat is owned by Evan Spiegel, who is worth $13 billion. TikTok’s owner is worth $59.4 billion.
Many streaming services and online shopping websites are owned by Jeff Bezos ($150.1 billion) and he even owns media outlets like the Washington Post. Etcetera, etcetera.
Once again: Higgins never had a problem with any of this. Nor did he have a problem with many these sites censoring people for expressing vaguely conservative opinions (or even just views that aren’t radically far-left).
But suddenly, out of the blue, when one billionaire claims he’s going to restore free speech to Twitter, we’re apparently to believe this is an “incredibly dangerous” development where billionaires will be able to control what we say and think.
Because, at the end of the day, that’s all Musk is claiming. Whether you love or hate the guy, he’s not said he’s going to start censoring this or that person, or controlling speech online. Quite the opposite – he says he bought Twitter to prevent that from happening.
Musk calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” saying that “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”
He later added: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
There is absolutely zero indication that Musk intends to begin a reign of terror, blocking and censoring people left and right. Rather, that’s what his Big Tech billionaires peers do, which Higgins appears to be fine with.
Higgins didn’t care when the Babylon Bee was banned for “misgendering” someone in a joke. He didn’t care when the democratically-elected president of the United States was collectively purged by a handful of mega corporations. He didn’t care when the HSE was directing Twitter to censor posts as “misinformation” which were not false in any sense. All of that was perfectly fine and acceptable.
But letting everyone speak and express their opinions on topical issues? Well, that’s when Michael D. starts panicking apparently.
At the end of the day, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that a man who praised ruthless Communist dictator Fidel Castro seems appalled by the very notion of free expression.
President Michael D Higgins: “Fidel Castro will be remembered as a giant among global leaders” https://t.co/d4Jt8hxNJD
— JOE.ie (@JOEdotie) November 26, 2016
The selective, fake outrage around this story from the entire woke Irish establishment demonstrates clearly just how far down their list of priorities free speech for ordinary people really is.