The slippery slope
“The reality is that we’re now in a political environment,” progressive podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen says at the end of his YouTube videos, “where this administration can lean on any of the social media platforms to suppress certain voices if they don’t like critical coverage. That means my longevity here is in the hands of a few tech billionaires who are already making it clear they’re willing to cater to this White House.” Brian then suggests you sign up to his newsletter against that eventuality.
It is a grim possibility that Brian is right. He is, however, employing a slippery slope argument. Slippery slope arguments are normally discussed as a form of fallacy. But we now live in a reality where the slopes are slippery indeed. Not only have we watched Republicans become more and more radically Trumpist, we have seen people supposedly on our own side “bend the knee” to Trump the Terrible.
For example, the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP recently offered Donald Trump 40 million dollars in free pro bono work if he would agree to rescind an executive order suspending their security clearances. Trump agreed.
For example, ABC shelled out millions to the “president” since Election Day to settle an easily winnable lawsuit. No one is fooled. This was a bribe to keep Donald Trump from using his power to hurt them.
For example, in obeisance to his CNN overlords, Jake Tapper recently and unapologetically referred to “the Gulf of America” instead of using its proper and correct name, the Gulf of Mexico. Again, this was done, of course, to please emperor Trump. CNN has signaled they are willing to do anything to stay in his good graces. Trump will demand more than that. Anything short of CNN becoming another Fox News will never be enough.
Now, back to Brian Tyler Cohen’s original warning. Could tech billionaires really make it impossible for progressives to offer content on YouTube, Facebook and other social media? Yes they can. YouTube is owned by Google which is controlled by its founder, Moscow-born Sergey Brin, the 7th richest man in the world.
We already know that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is a notorious Trump suck up. Zuck recently removed fact checking from Facebook, to the delight of fascists, racists and conspiracy theorists everywhere.
Elon Musk hasn’t stopped all free speech on Twitter, he’s done something far more sinister. He’s changed the algorithm. In the days before Musk my tweets would routinely get thousands of “likes.” These days I’m lucky if I get twenty. Musk fiddled and VOILA, Twitter burned. Ninety percent of Adam Schiff’s tweets are replied to by vile and rage-filled MAGA morons, telling him he belongs in prison, or is a traitor, or other things I can’t (and wouldn’t want to) mention here.
Of course, at first the far right will cloak their lethal chokehold on the First Amendment with niceties and bullshit. In the end it won’t matter. They can even tell the truth about it. MAGA will automatically agree and we will have no platform from which to disagree, which amounts to the same thing.
The good news is the internet is not owned by any one person. That’s why the American judiciary still works, because judges of both parties aren’t necessarily owned by any monolithic entity. The internet is owned by millions of individuals spread across the world. While it is true that the American government could eventually block internet traffic, in the manner of North Korea, there are ways around it. In the final analysis, there is always email.
Whatever the fascists dream up to gag us, we will find a way around it. That is how the resistance in any tyranny works. Are we really headed for this particular slippery slope? Maybe. But it doesn’t hurt to be forewarned and prepared.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.