View From the Ramparts: Davos
World's self-proclaimed elites gather to wage war against free speech
"Neither irony, humor nor self-knowledge penetrate that carapace of self-satisfaction.”
So wrote lexicographer Jonathon Green in his 1996 history of dictionaries, "Chasing the Sun." He was referring to the politically correct language police who petition publishers to strike certain words from their dictionaries — but he could just as easily be describing the earnestly smug attendees of the annual World Economic Forum.
Better know as the Davos gathering for the Swiss town where it is held each January, the World Economic Forum is an invite-only conference of the globe’s supposed elites.
It’s mostly billionaires and their bought-and-paid-for government cronies, and this year’s edition once again featured the world’s plutocrats gathering in decadent surroundings to lecture the rest of the world about the need to accept lower standards of living in order to “save the planet.”
The irony of more than 150 private jets being flow to a conference where the biggest topic was how to stop global warming (generally by forcing the rest of us to give up our cars) mostly escapes the self-satisfied Davos crowd, who are nothing if not certain of their superiority to the rest of humanity.
It is this arrogance that leads the world’s 1/1,000th of 1 percent to absolutely bristle at the fact that the rest of us do not immediately acclaim their every pronouncement with teary-eyed gratitude that they deigned to share their rarified wisdom with us.
That we dare to disagree with them.
On second thought, what truly frosts them is that we are even allowed to disagree with them, to examine the facts behind their pronouncements, to compare over time the efficacy of their proposals that are adopted to see if they perform as promised.
That there are still scientists and journalists who insist on pointing out the continuing failure of computer models to accurately predict the specific effects of climate change is nothing more than “misinformation,” they huffed.
That others continue to point out the failures of government COVID lockdowns and whether they were effective is to them unforgivable. (The research is painfully clear that lockdowns weren’t at all effective at slowing infection rates — they were, on the other hand, tremendously effective at hurting the educational progress of low-income, mostly minority school children, as well as greatly reducing the number of minority-owned retail businesses.)
And so much of this year’s Davos agenda was given over to demands that the United States set aside its pesky First Amendment and start cracking down on all these crazy conspiracy theories (of which far too many keep turning out to be true).
Because to the Davos crowd, what matters is not whether an argument is grounded in reality, or whether it can be verified through observation and testing; what matters is whether an argument advances the objectives of the Davos crowd (more on that below).
Sadly, we had American elected officials, sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution, agreeing with their European counterparts that free speech is not necessarily a good thing.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., responding to a demand from Věra Jourová of the European Commission that the U.S. adopt EU-styled bans on “hate speech,” could have robustly defended free speech. Instead, he said, “This concept of preserving public safety, even under the banner of free speech, is actually something that we’ve accepted for a long time. We get taught in grade school the concept of ‘yes, you’re allowed free speech but not crying fire in a crowded theater.’ ”
(As Nadine Strossen, former head of the ACLU back when that group still defended civil liberties, points out, you can, of course, shout “fire” in a crowded theater if there is, in fact, a fire, or you reasonably believe there is one.)
It was CNN’s own talking head Brian Stelter who hosted this panel on “The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation.”
The publisher of the New York Times was on that panel as well, and he argued that “disinformation” is the greatest danger to democracy. This was a truly interesting perspective from a man whose family-owned “newspaper of record” spent the last four years promoting the provably false conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election — and has refused to correct most of their disproven stories.
Mind you, this is the same New York Times that nominated itself for and accepted a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for its knowingly false reporting on the Soviets’ intentional creation of a famine in Ukraine that killed millions.
The Times has yet to repudiate that coverage, or return the Pulitzer. Nor has it ever explained its curious coverage of the Holocaust, in which it downplayed allegations of Jewish extermination by the Nazis.
So having the Times’ publisher condemning “misinformation” and suggesting that Facebook, Twitter, et al, should give greater weight to the Times’ reporting over that of other outlets may not have quite the effect the Davos organizers hoped.
(And what the hell is a newspaper publisher even doing participating on a panel at a conference of government officials and industrial leaders, anyway? How about covering the story without becoming part of it.)
Let’s get down to brass tacks here: Nobody spreads disinformation like governments or big corporations. Having them demand that the rest of us be muzzled because the gazillionaires and the politicians they help get elected don’t like to be questioned is the very reason the founders of the United States put free speech (and freedom of religion) in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
The reason that giving the government or big business the power to police “disinformation,” “misinformation” or “hate speech” is such a bad idea comes down to this: Who gets to decide which ideas are to be banned?
It’s always going to be those in power — as the Twitter files have illustrated.
While some liberal ideas were banned, blocked or given limited distribution on Twitter (such as, say, the fact that the Clinton campaign conspired with CNN and the Democratic National Committee to give candidate Hillary Clinton advance notice of debate questions that her opponent Bernie Sanders didn’t get), the vast majority of tweets and people who were banned were right of center, reflecting the overall corporate political environment at Twitter.
And while the Trump administration asked Twitter to block or take down some posts regarding COVID, it was primarily Democratic officials who wanted conservative viewpoints labeled “disinformation” and removed — and Twitter staff was far more accommodating when the request came from their political party of choice.
What all this illustrates is that the old maxim to “follow the money” still holds true.
Davos demands for censorship have nothing to do with “promoting democracy” or “avoiding autocracy.” Good grief, these people are the living embodiment of autocracy! The kind of people who will fly halfway around the world in a private jet for a private retreat about fighting pollution are not the sort of people who are overly concerned with majority opinion.
This is about money, power and influence. It has been widely reported that the billionaires at Davos are all heavily invested in so-called “green energy” — their portfolios are basically built around betting on petroleum alternatives. Their future profits rely on a steady drumbeat of apocalyptic coverage regarding “climate change” — with none of the back and forth examination of evidence and facing up to all the details we simply don’t know that defines how actual science works.
Left of center politicians want to keep their fancy offices, their obsequious staffs, and the feeling of importance that comes from being a member of government. (Right of center politicians formerly worked hand in glove with big business — but that has flipped the last 15 years, with the billionaire class now firmly in the Democratic camp.) The same applies to the career bureaucrats who increasingly drive the public agenda.
The national and global media editors and reporters are horrified at the rapid decentralization of information dissemination that the Internet has wrought, and desperately want to regain their previous role as designated gatekeepers with all the influence, perks and sense of importance that brings.
Money. Power. Influence.
All three are threatened by the free exchange of ideas. All of those who currently enjoy money, power and influence are absolutely terrified of the common citizen willing to stand up and say “The emperor has no clothes.”
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I enjoyed the whole column. I did not know that about the New York Times. So so much gets swept under the rug of history, it's sickening.
Good column Jim.
You're right on about the hypocrisy of those one-world-order elitist snobs.
Well done sir.
Thank you.