Barack Obama took America far into the shady territories of the left when he was president, taking over the nation’s health care system, lashing out at Christians as those who “cling” to their Bibles, and stating for the world America no longer was a Christian nation.
He’s also promoted himself as supporting free speech, calling himself a near-absolutist on the First Amendment.
“Absolute nonsense,” charges Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has testified many times before Congress on constitutional issues.
He’s even represented members of Congress in court fights.
“While claiming to be a First Amendment [near] absolutist, Obama has supported massive censorship on social media and called for the media to frame news to better educate citizens and shape public opinion,” Turley explained in a column. “For those of us in the free speech community, those positions make Obama’s recurring claim nothing short of absolute nonsense.”
He explained, “In an interview with The Verge Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel, former President Barack Obama once again claimed that he is virtually a ‘First Amendment absolutist’ despite supporting censorship for years, including United Nations efforts to criminalize criticism of religion on a global scale. There are aspects of the Obama terms that I have praised, but his record on free speech is not one of them.”
Obama, in fact, supported a movement at the U.N. that would have criminalized – worldwide – anything that Muslims would consider a derogatory statement about Muhammad.
At the time, multiple proposals were made to make a criminal out of a Christian should that person say that Muhammad is not a prophet of Allah, or something similar.
The general movement failed, although those prosecutions still take place today in Muslim-majority nations.
Obama claimed he doesn’t believe even offensive speech should be regulated by the government.
“That is virtually identical to prior statements that ‘I’m pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist’ as he was arguing for social media censorship. Notably, Obama avoids calling himself a ‘near free speech absolutist.’ The distinction is key for Obama and others in supporting massive censorship while virtue signaling that they are tolerant of opposing views,” Turley said.
“The First Amendment is not synonymous with free speech. It is only a restriction on government action. As emphasized by groups like the ACLU, censorship by private companies is also an attack on free speech. As I discuss in my new book, The Indispensable Right, the greatest threat today to free speech is the alliance of government, academic, and business interests in censoring speech.”
He charged that Obama is fully aware of the nuances.
Obama, in fact, has said, “The First Amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies like Facebook or Twitter, any more than it applies to editorial decisions made by the New York Times or Fox News. Never has. Social media companies already make choices about what is or is not allowed on their platforms and how that content appears. Both explicitly through content moderation and implicitly through algorithms.”
But actually, Turley warned, Obama “has been no friend to the free speech community.”
“The effort to evade or obfuscate on the issue is common in the current anti-free speech period. However, as I testified before Congress, the level of government involvement and support for these corporate censorship programs could well violate even the First Amendment by creating a ‘censorship by surrogate’ approach,” he said. “Later, that is precisely what a federal court found in issuing an injunction against the administration. Chief U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty found that the evidence overwhelmingly shows systematic violation of the First Amendment by the Biden administration.”
He noted Doughty’s conclusion that government assumed “a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.'”
IMPORTANT NOTE TO WND READERS: Shortly after Hamas terrorists fired over 5,000 rockets from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7 and then proceeded to attack the Jewish state by land, sea and air – torturing, burning, beheading and murdering well over a thousand people, including women, children and infants, and wounding and abducting hundreds more – world reaction was, in its own way, almost equally shocking.
For after the biggest one-day mass slaughter of Jews since the Nazi Holocaust, what followed was an outpouring of celebratory demonstrations, unbridled Jew-hatred, deliriously gleeful support for Hamas and bitter condemnation of the nation of Israel. Not just in the Arab-Muslim world, but throughout the Western world as well, including all across America.
Why? What is behind the explosion of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, pro-terror sentiment in the United States, where Israel has long been one of America’s closest friends and allies? Why are hordes of young “woke” LGBT demonstrators marching in support of Hamas – when Hamas wouldn’t think twice about binding and blindfolding them and throwing them off the roof of a tall building – as they routinely do in the Muslim world?
It turns out there’s one area of agreement that is so powerful, deep-seated and all-consuming that the vast differences between the deranged left and the murderous jihadists melt away into Kumbaya harmony.
All of this and much more is completely exposed in November’s issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled ISRAEL VS. GLOBAL JIHAD: How Jew-hatred, radical Islam and Leftism are pushing us toward World War III. Beyond a deeply insightful dive into why leftists are surging toward radical Islam – which hates and dreams of raping and butchering them – this Whistleblower issue includes fantastic articles by everyone from top Israeli analyst (and former Israel Defense Forces officer) Caroline Glick to Harvest Christian Fellowship’s Pastor Greg Laurie on the current war in Israel and biblical prophecies regarding the End Times … which he says are now upon us.
WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
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