Expect Silicon Valley Censorship To Ramp Up with ‘Civic Integrity Policy’

Opinion

United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- With the news that Twitter is bringing back its “Civic Integrity Policy,” Second Amendment supporters need to be ready for censorship to ramp up. This is something that has been building up for a long time.

Of course, this is just one possible avenue of attack. There have been other revelations about censorship – at least on Twitter’s part – that Second Amendment supporters should take note of. If anything, these revelations, at a bare minimum, will need some serious oversight by Congress, and some serious corrective actions will be needed.

Those actions will require substantial Congressional majorities and, alongside efforts to halt financial de-platforming, are probably the most important battles for Second Amendment supporters to win – more important than constitutional carry or other legislative fights. Don’t take my word for it – look at what Google did with regard to crisis pregnancy centers after a push from Letitia James.

Yes, the same Letitia James who sought the NRA’s dissolution. Regardless of how you feel about abortion, this is a bad sign.

Silicon Valley’s actions will force many Second Amendment activists to confront a very hard question:

How do we reconcile using the power of government when we ourselves have expressed suspicion – if not opposition – to increasing the size and scope of government? Because at this point, it looks increasingly likely that we will need to use government power to protect our First Amendment rights on at least a short-term basis, and it probably may be for the long haul.

Some of it will be using Congress to check the executive branch – in essence, invoking Constitutional powers – to rein in efforts by various agencies to get social media companies to censor based on such pretexts as “medical misinformation” or even just “misinformation” in general. That is not going to be the big issue.

The big issue will be addressing the fact that these companies also act independently, and their censorship decisions didn’t just come from the government. How much was government influence? That is currently unknown, but perhaps the litigation by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana will change that.

As private entities, they have the same freedom to associate – or not associate – as we do, to a large extent. How much of the censorship is their own doing? We don’t really know. Could the Elon Musk saga change things on Twitter? That is an unknown, as well.

That will require answers. Some will come from the litigation, some from the Congressional hearings. Some, we may not know for sure. How much will the litigation reduce the censorship (we shouldn’t presume it will end all of it)? Again, we don’t – in fact, we can’t – know.

One thing is certain: Second Amendment supporters will have a lot of work to do to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists via the ballot box at the federal, state, and local levels this coming November and the November two years from now. Get out the vote!

About Harold Hutchison

Writer Harold Hutchison has over a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics, and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.