‘Free Speech Gangsterism’: My Latest ‘Unmusked’ Report in Byline Supplement
An excerpt from my third investigation in my ‘Unmusked’ series for Byline Supplement reports on whether or not the EU and Britain can stop Musk from using his platform to aid authoritarians
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Today, Byline Supplement published my third ‘Unmusked’ investigation: Free Speech Gangsterism.
The third report in my Unmusked series focuses on whether or not Musk can be stopped from aiding and abetting global authoritarians and inciting violence on his social media platform by the EU or Britain, which have new, stronger digital regulations.
Before I post an excerpt, here is the first report from 2022:
And here is an excerpt from the second report, which was published last week:
Here is an excerpt from today’s third report in the series — this one focuses on how Musk and his collaborators gangster free speech in their fascist project and how the EU and Britain may be poised to stop him:
Unmusked: Free Speech Gangsterism
In the latest in her 'Unmusked' series, Heidi Siegmund Cuda investigates whether online regulations in Britain and the EU can stop Elon Musk from using 'X' to aid authoritarians
“If you use speech to conspire, aid, abet or plan a crime, then you're engaged in a criminal act. It doesn't matter if the fist or the tongue does it. Most crimes involve speech acts — hence the value of oaths, witnesses, and cross-examination. This free speech absolutism is silly.”—Peter Jukes, co-founder and publisher, Byline Times
“Go fash, lose cash!”—X/Twitter rallying cry
When Elon Musk told advertisers to “go fuck yourself” he was exercizing freedom of speech.
Advertisers had announced a boycott of his social media platform, X/Twitter, due to his own racist and anti-semitic posts and the site's overall Nazi problem. The advertisers, too, enjoy the freedoms that are their rights in a democratic society and when 100 brands halted their ads last year, it was to send a very loud message that they didn’t want their companies associated with Musk’s fascist brand.
“I hope they stop. Don’t advertise,” Musk told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook conference. “If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.” He then directed a comment to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who said he didn’t want Disney to be affiliated with Musk.
Anyone who has spent time on the platform since Musk took the helm in 2022 has seen him turn it into a hellscape.
“Wait! You mean to tell me strolling into a building with an actual sink, firing 80% of the workers, turning the website into a Nazi three-ring-circus, and acting like a 4chan incel who overdosed on Adderall and ketamine is not good for business? NFW!” tweeted out extremism researcher Jim Stewartson, in response to a Bloomberg article about Failing Social Network Syndrome.
Musk has called himself a free speech absolutist, but he has consistently sued his critics and used the power of his platform to spread hate speech, which is not free speech.
Stewartson told Byline Supplement: “Free speech absolutism is just as dangerous as gun rights absolutism. Society doesn’t work that way.”
Last week, Musk sued the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies CVC, Orsted, Unilever and Mars in Texas. The lawsuit claimed brands conspired against X to deprive the company of advertising revenue. Musk’s X/Twitter also sued the watchdog group, Media Matters, for reporting that white nationalist content was posted next to advertisers on his platform. The judge on both cases recused himself after NPR reported his investment in Tesla.
But among the fallout of this lawfare, which is comparable to Musk’s PayPal Mafia colleague Peter Thiel nuking Gawker by funding the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that bankrupted the site, is the closure of the brand safety initiative, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).
GARM is aligned with the World Federation of Advertisers and in a statement the group said that Musk’s lawfare “significantly drained its resources and finances”. The alliance formed in response to the livestreaming of the Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre. The goal was to form a collective for advertisers to be able to protest violent, extremist content.
Brent Allpress, an OSInt investigative researcher points out that “Elon Musk’s ‘go fuck yourself’ comment to advertisers should weaken X’s lawsuit against them. If Musk is publicly rejecting advertisers, it may be hard to argue that their boycott is anticompetitive when they’re simply taking him at his word.”
This type of lawfare is designed to intimidate anyone from speaking out against Musk and his collaborators such as CEO Linda Yaccarino, who uses her Twitter feed to reputation wash for Musk and the platform.
To read her feed is to imagine a world where everything is peachy keen, obfuscating for a much darker truth — the fact that accounts of formerly banned insurrectionists and extremists such as Donald Trump, Alex Jones, Michael Flynn, and Tommy Robinson have been reinstated.
It’s less free speech absolutism, and more free speech gangsterism, and the tactics appear to be escalating as the US election approaches…
It’s clear that something much deeper is going on: Musk is one of a gang of billionaires attempting to sabotage democracy by any memes necessary…
As with any lawless despot, one way to get Musk’s attention is with handcuffs.
As a former Twitter executive Bruce Daisley wrote in the Guardian: “If he keeps stirring unrest, get an arrest warrant.”
… The EU’s tech regulations and the UK’s new online digital safety law may signal the beginning of the end of tech bro domination if the respective laws are enforced…
The European Commission has already opened an investigation into X.
The Commission is concerned about Russia influencing elections this year through X, with Musk accused of transmitting messages for Putin. And since the passing of sweeping online content legislation, the EU can take on tech honchos in a way they couldn’t in the past.
Last week, European Commissioner Thierry Breton posted on X/Twitter an official letter sent to Musk, ccing Linda Yaccarino, where he puts Musk on notice…
Twitter’s CEO Yaccarino responded:
“This is an unprecedented attempt to stretch a law intended to apply in Europe to political activities in the US. It also patronizes European citizens, suggesting they are incapable of listening to a conversation and drawing their own conclusions.”
Echoes of QAnon’s “do your own research” in her statement, which doesn’t address the stochastic terrorism on the platform she is allegedly overseeing or the fact that Musk has been trolling the UK’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer. She also ignores the fact that tech pollution has no borders.
Again, she is engaging in free speech gangsterism — a manipulative mob-like reading of rights which implies “free speech for ‘me’ but not for ‘thee’”.
Italy-based geopolitical analyst and Kremlin File podcast co-host Monique Camarra said she has faith the EU can put a stop to free speech gangsterism.
“If you want to do business in the EU, you need to conform to regulations set in law,” Camarra told Byline Supplement. “We have the same laws in Italy against incitement of violence and it's enforced when someone makes a formal complaint to the postal police. It works. If Musk doesn't want to conform or respect EU laws, that's not a problem: he can't do business here. He should ask Google what happened, about the $2.7 billion-dollar settlement that they had to pay.”
“We have a history going back to Greek and Roman law and 2000 years of negotiation, strategy, and tactics in political warfare,” she said. “He shouldn't underestimate what the EU can achieve collectively. There is more to business than Musk's smoke and mirror show.”
Dr. Charles Kriel, the London-based director of the documentary, Data and Disinformation: Investigating Cambridge Analytica, said we need to see X/Twitter as a weapon of war.
“They can hit Musk’s pocketbook, but given his wealth, it’s a rounding error,” Kriel told Byline Supplement. “Like Facebook, he’ll threaten to pull out, but I don’t think he sees X as a profit-making venture. It’s a political tool. If Musk pulled X out of the UK or Europe, he’d be doing us a favour. So he won’t.
"Musk looks like what happens when you buy your Bond villain at Walmart, but in this case, he really is dangerous to democracy. He's undermined the communications channel of journalists and the left. He's watered down the effectiveness of government communications with the citizenry. And he's single-handedly destroyed Ukraine's most effective means of communication with the world."
He’s also just plain creepy.
“Musk feels like one of those meme dogs barking at bigger dogs through a glass door,” said Kriel. “The door opens and he shuts up. Musk is full of swagger and hate — and anti-government propaganda — but in the very likely case the US is drawn into a broader war, that door will swing wide. I don't fancy his or his contracts' chances."
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/18/inciting-rioters-in-britain-was-a-test-run-for-elon-musk-just-see-what-he-plans-for-america
Was just reading this Guardian article, Musk has been stoking violence in Britain, as a test of what is to come here, if trump is not elected.