MICK HUME: How far should free speech go?

This was news that lifted the heart of every freedom darling. ‘The bird has been freed’ Elon Musk announced after the world’s richest man completed his £38 billion takeover of Twitter last week.

As a lifelong advocate of unfettered freedom of expression, I couldn’t have been happier seeing the social media platform bought by the unstoppable Tesla billionaire.

Musk is a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” who has stated that his takeover of the company stemmed from a desire to restore free speech on Twitter.

He is determined to end the platform’s use of “content moderation” tools to promote a progressive liberal agenda and censor views that don’t coincide with his wakeful philosophy.

Not convinced? Just look at the shocked reaction of the left-wing culture fighters to the takeover.

When it was first brought forward in April, senior Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren warned it was “dangerous to democracy”, while London Mayor Sadiq Khan said “freedom of speech cannot mean a license to hate” .

The European Commission’s response to Musk’s acquisition – ‘In Europe, the bird flies by our rules’ – confirmed that the fight against politically correct censorship is not limited to Silicon Valley.

The truth is, left-wing elites — along with the other California-based Big Tech platforms Facebook and YouTube — have long regarded Twitter as their home battleground in a crusade to control what the rest of us are allowed to say, hear, or think.

Anyone who dared to step outside the narrow-minded groupthink of the Twitterati could be banned from the influential social platform.

On the one hand, Twitter canceled some feminists for insulting the trans lobby by insisting that biological sex is a fact.

On the other hand, it banned former US President Donald Trump after he was accused of instigating the January 6 Capitol riot. (Trump was actually still in the White House when he was kicked off Twitter, having won the votes of 74 million Americans in the 2020 presidential election.)

Now, in the name of free speech, that is likely to change. Like I said, I’ve hated the takeover of Musk, but when it wasn’t complete, he went about doing something incredibly stupid for someone with such a brilliant mind: a tweet who did himself and his standing up for the free speech wreak havoc – and given its left-wing critics ammunition to argue that they were right after all.

This weekend, he retweeted completely baseless allegations surrounding Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of leading Democratic party politician Nancy Pelosi, who was brutally attacked by a man with a hammer in his home.

After the incident — and in a move as predictable as it was mistaken — Hillary Clinton had taken to Twitter directly to blame the attack on Republican Party “mouthpieces” who were spreading “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” after learning that the attacker extreme right views. Musk responded to Clinton by appearing…well, to endorse the conspiracy theory.

He tweeted: ‘There’s a slim chance there’s more to this story than meets the eye’ and shared a link to a dubious ‘news’ source who claimed, without proof, that a drunken Paul Pelosi had a male prostitute picked up who later attacked him at home.

Was Musk right when he sent his tweet? In my opinion, freedom of speech means you should have the right to rant and tweet as you see fit.

It means the right to insult people within the limits of the defamation law; just like anyone protected under the US First Amendment. However, you lose that legal protection if you incite violence or ‘imminent lawless action’.

These things are never quite clear. But what is clear is that Musk’s tweet about Nancy Pelosi’s husband was doing the maverick billionaire absolutely no favors. It has just fueled its enemies.

Never mind that he deleted the tweet within hours. Nor has he told Twitter advertisers that the platform “obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said without consequences!”

The harm is done. The Left is once again in full swing at how unfit he is to run Twitter.

Robert Reich, a former cabinet member of Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the tweet proved the “crazy” Musk unfit to run “one of the most influential media outlets in the world.”

Reich concluded that Musk “should give up Twitter. If he doesn’t, we’ll all have to jump off his stinking ship.”

The battle for Twitter has thus become a new front in the culture war between Republicans and Democrats on the eve of the pivotal US midterm elections. Musk naturally takes shape in making inappropriate and abusive comments.

You may recall how in 2018 he launched an extraordinary and completely unfounded attack on a British diver who was working to rescue 12 boys trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand, unjustifiably calling him a “pedo” on Twitter.

The tech billionaire had offered to help the rescue mission by providing a mini-submarine, but his offer was turned down.

So Musk lashed out, saying he would make a video to prove his “mini-sub” would have been successful, adding, “Sorry pedo-man, you actually asked for it.”

It’s like he can’t help but play out the caricature to his left like some kind of crazy cannon. I believe Elon Musk has the right to say what he wants, within the bounds of the law. Sometimes, though, it would be wiser for him to keep his thoughts to himself.

There is nothing more frustrating than seeing him reinforce his critics’ opinion of him.

He is one of the outstanding achievers of our time; the greatest entrepreneur of our time; a brilliant engineer and buccaneer capitalist who has made billions by turning his mind to the very latest futuristic problems, from driverless cars to reusable space rockets.

So why does he seem to find it hard to tweet 280 characters without looking silly at times? Perhaps it is an inescapable part of his genius.

Be that as it may, with his brash libertarian politics, vast wealth and disregard for the rules, Musk is well on his way to becoming the favorite hate figure of the left.

Given the hysteria over his plans, you might think that his attempt to open Twitter was the modern version of opening Pandora’s box and unleashing Trumpism, fascism, and countless evil plagues on the world.

Twitter under Musk, screeching the culture warriors cancel, would inevitably be “a soapbox for hate speech,” or worse, “a cesspool of hate speech and misinformation.”

Read for “hate speech” opinions they find offensive. For “misinformation” read statements that they and their Big Tech “fact-checkers” don’t want us to hear and judge for ourselves.

A venerable left-wing US publication even suggests that if Musk’s new regime allows Trump and other maverick voices back on Twitter, that means “the fascists will take over.”

To these illiberal liberals, more freedom of speech seems to literally equate to fascism.

Since these people are always insisting that they are “on the right side of history,” they seem remarkably ignorant of the history of fascism, which has generally consisted of the burning of books and the incarceration of dissidents rather than to stand up for freedom of expression and encourage open debate.

Musk has very succinctly explained what he wants from Twitter. He says it is “important for the future of civilization to have a common digital city square, where a wide range of beliefs can be discussed in a healthy way, without resorting to violence.”

Twitter as a digital city square, where people can freely express their opinion, disagree and debate from all points of view?

That sounds like an updated reformulation of an age-old liberal belief in free speech. We should all heartily applaud it – because it’s the exact opposite of what wakery stands for.

“At its core, being awake is divisive and resentful,” Musk says.

“It gives mean people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored with false virtue.”

But as much as we’d like him to free the Twitter bird from his waking cage, Musk needs to realize that his sometimes rambunctious tweets allow the despicable enemies of free speech to pose on the moral high ground.

Mick Hume is the author of Trigger Warning: Is The Fear Of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?