Editor:
I appreciated Susan Lefever’s asking Amy Gustin to supply specifics regarding her allegation that the Biden/Harris admin is censoring free speech (Mailbox, Oct. 3). I hope Amy responds; I, too, wanted to respond.
I have accumulated a lot of data about this; here are just two examples: 1) In answering to a House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally admitted, in an effort to cover himself, that the Biden-Harris administration put relentless pressure on him to censor truthful and critical information from the public. In a letter addressed to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg openly admitted that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, was subjected to relentless pressure by the Biden administration to censor content related to COVID-19, even when the content was satirical or humorous, as well as the infamous Hunter Biden laptop.
2) Michael Shellenberger researches the censorship by the “government/censorship-industrial complex”, and he writes, in a New York Post article “… government officials have now been caught repeatedly 1) demanding censorship by social-media platforms of disfavored users and content, 2) often while threatening the legal basis for the companies’ existence, Section 230 and 3) financing others to do the same on their behalf.” He quotes: “If government officials are directing or facilitating such censorship,” notes George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, “it raises serious First Amendment questions. It is axiomatic that the government cannot do indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly.”
Susan, thousands of individuals have been greatly harmed by this draconian censorship of information, by their not being given access to other than government-approved sources and by having their attention and knowledge being directed only to where the government wanted it.
Jean Damon, McKinleyville
This article appears in Combating the Barred Owl Invasion.