Richard Stengel, new ‘team lead‘ for Joe Biden’s Agency for Global Media, wrote an op-ed last year arguing for free speech restrictions.
Stengel, a former MSNBC political analyst until he was named to Biden’s transition team, argued that the First Amendment needed redefining and that “hate speech” should be a crime.
“All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails,” he wrote. “I’m all for protecting ‘thought that we hate,’ but not speech that incites hate.”
‘Speech that incites hate’ was defined in Stengel’s op-ed by two examples – Burning the Quran, and “false narratives” spread by Russia during the 2016 election.
“Russian agents,” he wrote, “assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives and spread lies on Twitter and Facebook, all protected by the First Amendment.”
4 MSNBC contributors are leaving the network to join @JoeBiden administration
Health expert Ezekiel Emanuel
Legal analyst Barbara McQuade
Political analyst Richard Stengel &
Historian Jon Meacham.
All will be invited back as unpaid guests. https://t.co/l4HqlUiLlU
— ProfHelen (@Helenhs) November 12, 2020
RELATED: Sources Claim Trump Will Start Media Company To ‘Wreck’ Fox News
Biden’s Global Media Guy Argues Against Free Speech, FOR Propaganda
The argument that Russian disinformation is an example of speech needing to be curbed is a pretty remarkable argument considering we have since learned that the worst of Russian disinformation was spread by the American media and the Democrat Party.
It gets worse.
A video of Stengel went viral in 2018 after he claimed he is “not against” propaganda, felt it is necessary for government, and joked that he once served as the State Department’s “chief propagandist.”
“Basically, every country creates their own narrative story and, you know, my old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the ‘chief propagandist’ job,” he told a panel at the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) thinktank.
“We haven’t talked about propaganda,” he continued. “I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population, and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”
One is Richard Stengel, self described former “Chief Propagandist” and supporter of domestic US propaganda pic.twitter.com/pNv1opsKBK https://t.co/LyZCxZaADi
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) November 11, 2020
Further, you might be asking, “what the heck is the U.S. Agency for Global Media?”
Here is what they claim to be: “The U.S. Agency for Global Media is an independent federal agency overseeing public service media networks that provide unbiased news and information in countries where the press is restricted.”
I can hardly imagine anything more Orwellian than that, when our own country’s media is so heavily biased, and where speech is restricted on social media.
More Examples That the Left Wants to Curtail Free Speech
New York Times Magazine ran a column last month which argues that free speech and the First Amendment are outdated in an “age of disinformation.”
The extensive column argued that “disinformation” is dangerous – perhaps even more dangerous than “authoritarian regimes” – and used global warming as an example.
Do you see the theme here? ‘Disinformation’ is speech that doesn’t align with the left’s narrative.
Is the American First Amendment the best way to protect free speech? For @NYTMag, I argue that the answer is … maybe not. At least, we should consider how democracies in Europe & Canada etc do it, by balancing free speech w *other* pro-democratic values.https://t.co/6LgM9fUKAf
— Emily Bazelon (@emilybazelon) October 14, 2020
Nowhere in either op-ed can one find mention of false Russia collusion stories pushed by the Times and the Washington Post.
In reality, the First Amendment is what sets America apart.
It is the first freedom for a reason. We don’t need permission from the Biden transition team or the media outlets from whence they came before we speak.
We never will.
