Banning folks from social media’s a bad idea, even when it’s Alex Jones

By David McElroy · August 12, 2018

Alex Jones is a nutcase — and that comparison is an insult to every other nutcase in the world.

I have no idea whether Jones believes the insane things he says or if he’s just playing to an audience of gullible misfits in order to make money. I halfway suspect he believes much of what he says, but that he plays up certain stories because they attract attention.

So if I had to make a guess, I’d say he’s equal parts madman and showman.

Jones is a slimy opportunist with more than a few screws loose, but I have a serious problem with any social media platform that bans his rants because of “hate content.” (What exactly is hate these days?) Over the last week or so, we have seen Apple, Spotify, Facebook and YouTube kick Jones off of their services.

These companies have no problem with nasty, hateful and vulgar content in their music catalogs or other posts. What makes the rantings of a madman so different that these media companies have decided to ban him? This is “virtue signaling,” not something which is going to “stop hate” or any such nonsense.

I’m saddened by the moves of these companies, not because I support Jones or want anyone to listen to him, but because banning people we disagree with just plays into the paranoid conspiracy fantasies of their followers. It allows Jones to say, “See? They’re so afraid of what I have to say that they’re trying to shut me up.”

The progressive left used to loudly advocate for open and unfettered speech, but many on the left have been begging for people such as Jones to be banned. In a tweet last Monday, for instance, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said, “Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.”

Really? The survival of democracy depends on shutting up someone you (and I) disagree with? Is his beloved system of government so weak that it can’t resist the rantings of an madman who’s basically a nobody? Do you realize the implications of what he’s saying?

Even if you couldn’t care less about the free flow of ideas you disagree with and even if you couldn’t care less about being fair to your enemies, there’s a pragmatic reason to be disturbed by what’s going on. The day is coming — and it might be soon — when the sane and reasonable ideas that you believe in are branded as hate speech and you will not be allowed to make the case for your ideas.

If that doesn’t frighten you — if you’re too busy gloating that Alex Jones is getting his comeuppance — you’re not thinking clearly or reasonably. The same principles being applied to someone who I agree is loathsome and insane will one day be used against you.

Can you even tell me who Jones and Co. hate? Or have you just accepted someone else’s word that what he says is “hate speech”? Do you have any idea?

Banning “hate” is always a very subjective thing, anyway.

Many who talk loudly today about “saying no to hate” are among the most hateful people I know when others disagree with them. It’s as though they’ve redefined what hate means. Hate means disagreeing with them, but when they hate people who disagree with them, well, that’s different.

The real threat to individual freedom actually comes from the people who are eager to shut down those who disagree with them, not from people whose own words make them look like fools. I’m far more concerned about Sen. Murphy and his fellow politicians than I am of Alex Jones. Although they both rant plenty of nonsense, at least Jones doesn’t claim the power to force me to obey him.

The biggest danger to the freedom of individuals has always been from those who want to impose their will on others by force. Those power-hungry people once called themselves kings and emperors and nobles. We don’t have kings today, but we still have rulers who steal our money and force us to obey. Some people still impose their will on others — by force and threat of force — but we teach everyone to accept this subservience by calling it “democracy.”

When a man is ruled by a dictator, it matters little to him whether it’s a dictatorship of the minority or a dictatorship of a majority. If you cannot decline to obey, you are not free, no matter what your ruler is called.

The companies which kicked Alex Jones off their platforms have every legal and moral right to do what they’ve done. They’re private companies and I wouldn’t be arrogant enough to tell them how they must run their businesses, as politicians are constantly doing.

But if they care about the open exchange of ideas, they’ve made a mistake. If they care about individuals making up their own minds about what to believe, they’ve made a mistake. Even if they hate Alex Jones, they’ve made a mistake — because they’re simply proving that he’s been right when he’s claimed that people were out to shut him up.

I wish nobody would ever listen to Alex Jones. I wish he would have to get honest work as a door greeter at Walmart or something similar which he might be qualified to do. But I’d like for individuals to make up their own minds about whether to listen to him or whether to take him seriously — not have that decision made by governments or social media companies.

If Alex Jones can be shut up, anybody can be shut up when political and social forces decide to put pressure on companies to silence them. Next time, it could be you or it could be me. I find that terrifying.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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