Now NPR trashes free speech: Are the ruling elites looking to move in for the kill?
By Monica Showalter

National Public Radio, a government-funded outlet, is now shilling against free speech.

According to Matt Taibbi, who is himself on the left, via Substack:

The guests for NPR's just-released On The Media episode about the dangers of free speech included Andrew Marantz, author of an article called, "Free Speech is Killing Us"; P.E. Moskowitz, author of "The Case Against Free Speech"; Susan Benesch, director of the "Dangerous Speech Project"; and Berkeley professor John Powell, whose contribution was to rip John Stuart Mill's defense of free speech in On Liberty as "wrong."

That's about right for NPR, which for years now has regularly congratulated itself for being a beacon of diversity while expunging every conceivable alternative point of view.

The pampered princelings of the outlet featured no voices in defense of the First Amendment.

America’s “Tough Love” moment

It's as if the First Amendment, which NPR's patron purportedly represents and defends, has now become an outdated, vexatious nuisance for the current ruling class. Free speech is now a hoary notion from dead people they'd like to see stuffed down the memory hole.

Taibbi notes:

The show was a compendium of every neo-authoritarian argument for speech control one finds on Twitter, beginning with the blanket labeling of censorship critics as "speech absolutists" (most are not) and continuing with shameless revisions of the history of episodes like the ACLU's mid-seventies defense of Nazi marchers at Skokie, Illinois.

And here's a detail showing how sleazy they are:

Because, they say, we now know that people can be harmed by something other than physical violence, Mill (whose thoughts NPR overlaid with harpsichord music, so we could be reminded how antiquated they are) was wrong, and we have to recalibrate our understanding of speech rights accordingly.'

Eeew. What a low blow, abusing harpsichord music like that.

Taibbi points out that essentially, these people at NPR badmouthing free speech are far from the modernists they claim to be with a hot, hip new idea. As NPR plays its harpsichord music as its "subtle" means of belittling Mill as outdated, it's actually they who are the jurassics, not Mill:

Mill ironically pointed out that "princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects." Sound familiar?

So now they want to censor and regulate free speech on the logic that some people get their feelings hurt, elevating the whole idea to a matter of saving mental health.

It's garbage, of course. It's actually not very different from the leftist bid to use physical health as a means of extending government control over vaccine and mask skeptics, as well as alternative treatment advocates...because COVID.

And the problem magnifies itself as leftists seek to use the levers of Big Tech to engage in the censorship they can't otherwise do based on the First Amendment roadblock.

Number one, it capriciously censored and shut down the man they hated more than anyone out there: President Trump. They let the Taliban and the violence-laced rhetoric of Iran's mullahs flourish on social media, but they shut down the president of the United States. These Big Tech companies did it in unison, all at the same time, all claiming the same thing, which points to cartel activity badly in need of an anti-trust investigation as well as likely Deep State government collusion. Big Tech is useful, as it can call itself a private enterprise, but we already know that the relationship between Big Tech and the U.S. government Deep State is deep and intertwined.

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