Opinion

AVILA: The Social Media Witch Trial Of Trump — And America

(Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Martin Avila Contributor
Font Size:

Pursuant to the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy — which sounds like it could have only come straight out of either Hogwarts or the Politburo — Facebook’s “independent” Oversight Board has exiled Donald J. Trump from the realm of modern communication. Put another way, about 20 unelected former political leaders, journalists and human rights activists have suffocated the speech of a former president of the United States of America.

But hey, what do politicians, not to mention journalists or human rights activists, know about the universal right of freedom of expression these days, anyway?

So there you have it, America — the Bill of Rights is kaput — subsumed to relativism, faceless technocrats and an international oligarchy. “The 1st Amendment is merely a local law,” tweets CPI Policy Director Rachel Bovard. “Facebook is a citizen of the world and has the self-appointed, moral burden to play whack-a-mole with the speech of global leaders. How else will democracies survive?”

The question we all need to ask now is this: If an American who formerly held the highest public office in the land isn’t entitled to enjoy the fruits and protections of the First Amendment, then what hope do we possibly have as everyday citizens?

Let’s be clear: There’s nothing American about an “oversight board” that’s charged with censoring undesirables, let alone one ensconced deep within a behemoth corporation whose platform has the power to define the national conversation on a daily basis. That is terrifying. That is authoritarianism. That is democracy lost.

Facebook’s executives and their allies within the Beltway and beyond are bought-and-paid-for operatives. A number of them are nothing more than glorified lobbyists — think tank “scholars” at places like the Cato Institute, which masquerades under the banner of “libertarianism” but takes corporate money and pushes a globalist agenda that hollows out the Constitution and destroys the livelihood of the American middle class.

Perhaps even worse, some Facebook executives are non-U.S. citizens who essentially rule over U.S. citizens — and do so without any knowledge of the founding’s conceptions of tolerance and freedom of expression.

This latest shocking event is not just a precautionary tale, it’s a call to action. If this trend continues at this pace, we will very soon endure immeasurable changes to the core of our nation that will result in irreparable damage.

There will be no going back.

Specifically, Big Tech’s notion of “justice” is thoroughly at odds with America’s, as enshrined in the Constitution. The handful of multinational corporations that make up the Silicon Valley cartel serve as judge, jury and executioner. And on one vital score, their trials are even more tyrannical than those of Salem or the Soviet Union. Today, the accused isn’t even allowed to be present at the trial to make their case!

Corporations can summarily erase your rights in ways never before imagined. There is no recourse, either. Far from it, actually. These corporations have been infiltrated and captured by the radical progressive currents that now dominate all our country’s major institutions, from education to media. They’re all marching together in sync. Their loyalty is not to the immutable freedoms featured in America’s founding documents that have brought about unprecedented levels of human prosperity and flourishing.

Facebook — along with the other Big Techies — has unabashedly declared itself a world governing body, and proven that it has more influence in our daily lives than the United Nations (and in some respects, the U.S. government). And like the UN, it has changed your rights from being inalienable to those for which you, through behaving obediently, must seek permission to possess and maintain.

To the Oversight Board’s credit, it is correct about one thing: Facebook was inconsistent in its application of its rules to former President Trump. Still, that’s a lame and irrelevant consolation. Alas, this is what we signed up for — literally when we signed up using our email addresses and other personal information. The woke mob creates morality on the fly. Keep up or get bulldozed.

Less and less, American corporations care about American principles and ideals. That is why the defense of our nation’s founding — and, in particular, our rights that are true and eternal — could not be a more essential task. We have to stand up and voice our discontent. If we don’t, it’s only going to get much worse. Because make no mistake, what we’re witnessing is not just social media’s witch trial of President Trump, it’s of all of America.

Martin Avila is CEO at RightForge, a full-service technology infrastructure company dedicated to keeping America connected and free. Follow him on Twitter @martinavila.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel