Free speech is free expression, and the parameters with which you design your expression become the parameters with which you are able to think. Lately, in the Western world, hushed whispers of ‘you can’t say that’ accompany almost any public discussion. People have begun to self-censor to such a degree that people I once considered intelligent now accept the established norm as the only available option. The very tenets of free speech are deliberately enshrined as one of the most important rights of free people for this very reason. There can be no progress without intelligent discourse. Without freedom, there can, perhaps, be no civilisation at all.

Twitter had become a ridiculous cesspool of one-sided nonsense, hard left people preaching to other incredibly hard left people, endlessly echoing one another’s opinion. It was rotten with fake accounts, generally echoing the same political bias to reinforce the beliefs of the easily swayed. If you were brave or foolhardy enough to post something counter to the accepted narrative, then you would very likely have a “fact check” opinion appended to your post and get banned, most likely as it transpires by a man in a wig. 

Elon Musk planned to change all that. He suggested that the platform would become a free and unbiased forum where all sides of an argument would be given equal space. He said that there would need to be a cull in terms of the staff, and that things would likely change quite quickly. 

The deal stalled and it looked like Musk had been playing a game, working only to expose the corruption that big tech was beset with, all mirroring the same increasingly extreme left-wing bias. But then, against all the odds, the deal went through and Elon Musk shocked us all when a billionaire actually kept their word; even more so when that billionaire was the very same Elon Musk. 

Musk has been called a vapour-ware salesman for his repeated unfulfilled claims, and the title certainly has merit. His promised AI robot was first represented by a dancer wearing a spandex costume and then a laughably antiquated piece of animatronics that looked like it had been fished out of the dustbins round the back of a Boston Dynamics’ workshop.

Overall, his wealth far exceeded his reputation. Having said that, he has a huge and incredibly loyal fanbase, probably because he comes across as a very likeable person who actually is in touch with the basic humanity of the average consumer. That is not to say that he markets to them. 

Weeks later and Twitter most certainly has changed. There does seem to be a very noticeable shift towards balance. There is now a more equal tone to the feeds, the deceptive fact-checking seems to have vanished, along with the bulk of the staff, and there’s an overall tone of fun and optimism to many of the postings. 

What’s most concerning is the backlash against it. The left is incensed by the loss of their private platform. They claim that they can’t allow free speech or it will destroy their democracy. Have people really lost the ability to discern very basic ideas? Democracy is supposedly founded on the guaranteed freedom to choose, albeit from a limited number of wealthy individuals who will then have absolute control over your life. But how can you choose without knowing both sides of a given argument?

The left, of course, cannot support its arguments in the face of facts. Their logic is so skewed that they contradict themselves continually, wrapping themselves up in strawman arguments that make little or no sense. They have screamed racist, Nazi, homophobe and hate-crime until their throats are raw and the ears of everyone else have tuned them out. In an even forum, they are drowned out by reason. 

Those who know they are right welcome debate. Those who hide behind lies fear it. 

In any sane society, the vast majority of the population are essentially centrists, capable of recognising the relative merits and demerits of both sides, without being drawn to the extreme elements of either. Such people are tired of listening to the left wingers drone on and eventually learned it was easier just not to provoke their lop-sided wrath. Those people are slowly creeping back, and slowly beginning to voice their opinions again. 

Some of those opinions are still too radical for the average person to appreciate. Kanye West (if that is his real name…) has been embarking on a series of rants about his newly acquired philosophy. People are laughing, or suggesting he seek medical help, but what nobody is doing is listening to what he has to say. 

In his own unique way, his ideas are coming out horribly jumbled, but there is fire behind these clouds of acrid smoke. By making positive mentions of Hitler, he is being vilified by all sides,  but this is exactly the point of a free speech forum. We need to shed the idea of contemporary moral standards and accept that at its core, the truth is neither good or bad. It remains simply what it is. There can be no conversation without an open mind, and all we do by jumping to conclusions is to condemn ourselves to allow the worst of history to repeat itself. Indeed, it’s movies like Downfall that portrayed Hitler and the Nazi war machine in a neutral light—as regular people under extraordinary circumstances—that open people’s eyes to the fact that in the same circumstances, maybe they’d act no differently.

Kanye’s discussions of the Holocaust is cut off by the fact that in many countries, questioning it is illegal, just as Germany is now passing laws to ban questioning of other historic ‘war crimes.’ This means that you can no longer openly wonder if the situation in Ukraine is being misrepresented, even though it’s now a matter of public record that the aid money sent from America was partly laundered and sent back to the Democrat party through the FTX crypto-currency exchange. 

But you can’t talk about that.

These things need frank, honest and open discussion. 

The other worrying thing is how the EU is trying to close down freedom of expression. They have threatened to ban Twitter if they don’t control the ‘misinformation.’ It is now beyond question that COVID was horribly misrepresented by the media and world’s governments. The vaccine is causing widespread health issues and people are dying in excess numbers that have now surpassed the COVID death claims, even though those have also admittedly been misrepresented. Once more we come down to the question of who decides what is and isn’t the truth? The only people who should be able to decide that is the individual. 

But, what the Left-leaning activists have really done is reveal their hand. Their collective panic at the loss of ‘their’ platform is extremely telling. Members of the US government are voicing their concerns at how Musk is ‘simply letting anyone say whatever they want when that is patently not the case. It demonstrates a clear intention to control what people are saying. When the EU is demanding he cracks down on misinformation, they are again making it very obvious that they’re trying to maintain control of a narrative that isn’t entirely honest, or in the interest of the population. Be wary: the powers that be are literally afraid of ordinary people being allowed to talk to each other. 

But what of the future of Twitter?