The Banal Evil of Bureaucrats and Censorship

Commentary

How do we recognize truth? In some ways, we know truth by comparing it to what isn’t truth. But what happens if the public square is suddenly void of truth, with all potential solutions carefully filtered out so that the only information you interact with is highly curated but far from honest? The result of such “purification” is stagnation, and stagnation brings with it death: death of ideas, curiosity, comedy, and truth. That’s the cost of censorship, and the price to be paid within a totalitarian regime.

The First Amendment prohibits the government from suppressing or restricting expression because of its message, ideas, subject matter, or content. The U.S. Supreme Court also firmly rejected the idea of judging speech by “balancing relative social costs and benefits.” Yet in our lawsuit Missouri and Louisiana v. Biden et al., we have uncovered a censorship enterprise so vast and entrenched that it spans almost every government institution, all working to control, manipulate, and deceive millions of social media users across the country.

Our citizens, scientists, and press have been shadow banned, suspended, deplatformed, and silenced—not because they used false speech but precisely because they spoke the truth at a time when the federal government found such speech inconvenient. As a result, major federal agencies, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, knowingly coerced, threatened, and colluded with social media companies in silencing American speech.

While such actions are shocking all on their own, it’s even more disturbing that federal employees actively engaged in these practices through a warped worldview with little concern for the consequences. Through their unquestioning devotion to political ideology, many bureaucrats censored disfavored views with the same regard as a logistical problem, showcasing the often “banal” evil seen in totalitarian power structures.

In order to remedy this unlawful conduct, the individuals who actively violated the freedom of speech and First Amendment rights of their fellow citizens must be held accountable for their actions. That’s why today I called upon Congress to do just that: create a legal framework through carefully crafted legislation that will achieve two ends.

First, we must make it clear that any federal employee or contractor who violates constitutional rights, as set forth in our lawsuit, will lose both their livelihood and their pension. Second, Congress must pave the way for civil liability against such actors, as well as expanded criminal penalties.

These egregious constitutional violations must not go unpunished, nor should they be allowed to continue. By suppressing speech in the name of guarding against “misinformation” and “disinformation,” the government and its agents actually made it more difficult to recognize truth, resulting in even greater confusion, distrust, and falsehood. That’s why we must respond in the only way a bureaucrat understands: end their career and stop their rewards.

If we don’t, such censorship activities will not stop. That’s why, in the spirit of the First Amendment, we are sharing our “satirical” pamphlet “Censorship Enterprise: The Future is Now,” (pdf) so that every American can read highlights from our lawsuit and experience our findings for themselves—through the lens of those who seek to censor your voice. By sharing this, we hope to shine a light on the activities of those who wish to deceive and finally tilt the scales back toward the truth.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.