A nasty virus that appeared to be gradually receding from its peak in 2020, when it had infected about half the population of the United States, is back with a vengeance. It’s not COVID-19, though. Trump Derangement Syndrome has once again swept through the ranks of Democrats and progressives, fueled by Elon Musk’s pronouncement that the 45th president’s permanent ban from the social media platform Twitter was “morally wrong and flat-out stupid.” The billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX said that if his bid to take over Twitter goes through, he would reverse that ban. Predictably, left-wing heads immediately began to explode – because, of course, nobody on that side of the political divide has ever posted anything to social media that is remotely as offensive as, well, everything Trump has ever said.
Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, long reviled by conservatives for the blatant double standard of political censorship practiced by the social media company, agrees with Musk. Dorsey asserts that permanent bans do not work, but Musk got more specific regarding Trump’s ban. He observed that kicking the former president off the platform alienated half the country and did not take away Trump’s voice – which, of course, was the intent.
The double standard is still very evident today. Though many left-leaning Americans – and even some on the right – were emotionally damaged by Trump’s “mean tweets,” he did not, at any time, definitively incite political violence. Yet there are countless examples of progressives clearly calling for violence on Twitter; the latest coming from Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, who on May 9 tweeted, “To my friends in the LGBTQ+ community – the Supreme Court is coming for us next. This moment has to be a call to arms.”
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
It is only fair to say that Lightfoot was speaking figuratively, but it cannot be denied that if Mr. Trump – or any elected Republican – publicly said, “This moment has to be a call to arms,” they would have been accused, by the left, of inciting violence. As of this writing, the Chicago mayor has not been suspended – even temporarily – from Twitter. And that, in itself, is all the proof one needs that Democrats can get away with saying things for which Republicans would be excoriated.
The reaction to Musk’s comment about Trump’s ban can only be described as laughable. Dean Obeidallah, an MSNBC contributor, shrieked, “Of course Elon Musk would allow Donald Trump back on Twitter despite Trump using Twitter to plot his Jan 6 terrorist attack. Musk does not care about the USA. He is South African. He then moved to Canada. The US is just a place for him to use to make $ until he returns home.” The obvious xenophobia aside, Obeidallah’s tweet was outrageously disingenuous. If anything Trump posted on the platform after the 2020 presidential election could possibly described as planning a “terrorist attack,” then surely Lightfoot’s tweet should be similarly viewed – especially since it was posted a day after the office of a Wisconsin anti-abortion group was firebombed and a message spray-painted on the building by the perpetrators read, “if abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either.”
Several other reactions from left-wing commentators whose opinions are hardly worthy of attention followed a similar vein. Suffice it to say Musk has trolled the left perhaps as effectively as Trump himself ever did – merely by continuing to assert that freedom of speech is vital to a free society.
Perhaps the panic is not about Trump himself – because he has already said he will not return to Twitter – but the prospect that leftists will lose one of the only social media platforms upon which they had a stranglehold. Twitter has been their favorite public echo chamber. If Musk’s takeover is finalized, they will have nowhere to go that is safe from contrary opinions. The sheer terror of having to compete in a marketplace of ideas and opinions – which is what original liberal thought was all about – must be traumatic for people who have become comfortable with the suppression of any speech they do not favor.
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