Former President Barack Obama has a twisted plan for what he believes should happen regarding speech online.
While speaking with historian and author Heather Cox Richardson at The Connecticut Forum, Obama argued that the government should be empowered to develop “restraints” over what can and cannot be posted online to prevent the spread of “disinformation” and “misinformation.”
“I’ve said this before, but I always repeat it. You and I can have an opinion about this little side table. You know, you might not like the design, you might not like the color or how it’s finished, but we can have that discussion,” Obama said.
“If I say to you this is a lawnmower, you’ll think I’m crazy. And if I really believe it, I’ll think you’re crazy. And we’re now in a situation in which we are having these just basic factual arguments,” Obama added.
“And that further undermines trust. And those in power, those with money, exploit that space in which nobody knows what’s true. Vladimir Putin and the KGB had a saying that was then adopted proudly by Steve Bannon, which was if you want propaganda to be effective, you don’t have to convince people that what you are saying is true,” Obama continued as he attempted to make his draconian case.
“You just have to flood the zone with so much poop. They use a different word. But you have to flood the zone with so much untruth, constantly, that at some point people don’t believe anything,” noted Obama.
“So it doesn’t matter if a candidate running for office just is constantly, just hypothetically, saying untrue things, or if an elected president claims that he won when he lost and that the system was rigged, but then when he wins, then it isn’t rigged, because he won,” he continued in what appeared to be an obvious reference to President Donald Trump.
“It doesn’t matter if everybody believes it. It just matters if everybody starts kind of throwing up their hands and saying, well, I guess it doesn’t matter,” he said.
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“And that’s what’s happened. That’s what’s happened in one of our major political parties. You have a whole bunch of people who know that’s not true, but we will pretend like it is. And that is dangerous. But part of what we’re going to have to do is to start experimenting with new forms of journalism and how do we use social media in ways that reaffirm facts, separate facts from opinion,” said Obama.
“We want diversity of opinion. We don’t want diversity of facts. And how do we train and teach our kids to distinguish between those things?” Obama asked.
“That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media. By the way, it will require some government, I believe, some government regulatory constraints around some of these business models in a way that’s consistent with the First Amendment, but that also says, look, there is a difference between these platforms letting all voices be heard versus a business model that elevates the most hateful voices or the most polarizing voices or the most dangerous, in the sense of inciting violence, voices. And that, I think, is going to be a big challenge for all of us that we’re going to have to undertake,” he said.
A video of a confrontation between two Secret Service officers has surfaced a week after a report said there had been a scuffle among agents outside of Obama’s Washington, D.C., residence.
The video was obtained by RealClearPolitics national correspondent Susan Crabtree, who broke the original story of the fight between the two female agents.
Crabtree noted on the X platform that she had “obtained video of the fight between two women Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers outside former President Obama’s residence last week after one officer called a supervisor to come before ‘I whoop this girl’s a*s.'”
“I need a supervisor out here… immediately before I whoop this girl’s ass,” one of the women said into the radio last week.
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
