Ben Shapiro: Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover reveals the left for what it is

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

This week, in one of the most shocking business moves in recent memory, Twitter reversed itself and decided to sell itself after all to Elon Musk, who paid some $44 billion for the privilege. The move was made, at least in part, for ideological reasons; Musk has been vocally critical of Twitter’s management of information flow. Immediately upon the news of the buyout breaking, Musk tweeted, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functional democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”

All of these seem like worthwhile and anodyne goals. More speech, not less. More transparency, not less.

And yet the political Left went utterly insane. Charles Blow of The New York Times vowed to leave the service; in fact, #LeavingTwitter trended on the service. The American Civil Liberties Union, while noting that Musk is a card-carrying member, fretted, “there’s a lot of danger having so much power in the hands of any one individual.” Meanwhile, powerful individual with consolidated power Jeff Bezos worried over the possibility of Chinese influence on Twitter: “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren called the deal “dangerous for our democracy.” MSNBC’s Ari Melber hilariously agonized, “You could secretly ban one party’s candidate, or all of its candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it until after the elections.”

Yes, Ari, we know. That was the concern for tens of millions of us when social media decided to silence the Hunter Biden story, lock accounts of prominent Trump-associated officials who shared the story, and then finally to throw former President Donald Trump off of all services simultaneously following Jan. 6. That was one of Musk’s concerns, presumably, in purchasing the service. 

The Left’s outsized panic over Musk’s takeover is revealing for two reasons. First, it shows that the Left always understood Twitter to be a key part of its ecosystem, a Left-biased platform designed to obscure its own leanings while propagandistically pushing a particular political agenda. For years, the Left claimed that conservative concerns about Twitter bias were simple paranoia. Now, upon Musk’s takeover, the Left has broken into spasms of apoplexy. That wouldn’t happen if they thought Twitter wasn’t their sole property.

Then there’s the bigger problem: the Left despises both transparency and free speech in the political realm. The Left would prefer secret algorithms that conceal “shadow-banning” and bottlenecking; the Left prefers “equity” in speech to freedom of speech. To the Left, the potential “harm” of allowing free speech outweighs the value in open debate. Better to ban The Babylon Bee for stating that Lia Thomas is a man than to allow such content to be passed around Twitter — and better never to let anyone know the algorithms behind such bans. After all, with transparency comes accountability. And the power is the point.

This is why Musk’s first moves at Twitter must be to release information about the prior practices of Twitter — a sort of truth and reconciliation commission; to make any new algorithms far more transparent; and to fire employees who object to such practices, of whom there are many. Musk may be just the man to help restore institutional trust to social media. But that will require him to bulldoze those who helped undermine that trust in the first place.

Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers “How To Destroy America In Three Easy Steps,” “The Right Side Of History,” and “Bullies.” To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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15 thoughts on “Ben Shapiro: Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover reveals the left for what it is

  1. The democrats are worried Musk will use the Twit the same way they did: to censors one side and highlight the other. No need to worry though. We are not tough enough to do that. That’s why we are losing.

  2. This is hilarious ~ The Left is worried that a “Free Speechified” Twitter will kill democracy… They’re concerned that the platform with new “management” will sell America’s interests to the communists… Why would they think that? Could it be because that’s what they were doing all along? It would explain how they know it could be done!

  3. I guess I just don’t understand. It is easy to see and understand why the left hated Trump. He was against everything they were doing and did to America. But why did the conservative party start a throwdown on Trump? Was it because he was going to expose them for the closet Democrats that they really were.
    Even now the is so much anti sentiment for Trump that those who hate can’t see the tree s for all the forest that surrounds. I was not the biggest fan of his tweets. Most times I jus t preferred he leave his cell phone a t home and turned off. But he did shed light on the corruption of Twitter and other media sources which we are still fighting to day. If this country does not do something to reverse the direction the left has pushed us into then there truleu is little hope

    1. Don’t be so naive. The republican elite didn’t like Trump because they could not control him. The dems and repubs have divvied up the spoils that comes with power and corruption for a long long time. And any threat to that power is an enemy.That’s why Mitch McConnell is such a Trump hater.

      1. You are so right, the Turtle and his wife are in the pot with China up to their eyeballs.

  4. Let’s see how politicized the SEC is now,Biden just installed a radical there. Could they possibly stop it from going private? They are already probing Tesla. My fingers are crossed it will happen, but it’ll be later this year, perhaps even stalled until after mid-terms?

    1. Since Musk is not consolidating two companies in the same line of business, it would not seem that the SEC would have any jurisdiction. Of course, that has never stopped a government agency when it decided to do something.

  5. Message to the staff form Elon…”.Going forward, any member of the staff caught deleting a tweet that doesn’t agree with their view of the world, will be terminated immediately”. These snowflakes don’t believe in freedom of speech or the protections provided by The Constitution. You will be seeing a bunch of weak kneed, spoiled, little Marxists, whimpering while gathering their things. DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU IN THE AASSS ON THE WAY OUT!

  6. It’s funny how Elon taking over Twitter is a “threat to our democracy”. But Pocahontas, lying about her Native American heritage, then using it to get a job that lead to her political career is just fine. Once again Trump was correct and the Left crucified him for it.

    I know one thing, if he runs in 24 he will have plenty of ammunition to go after the swamp creatures and this time a LOT more people will be listening, especially on Twitter!

  7. Make no mistake my fellow Americans. Elon’s buy out of Twitter may confirm what the left is all about but I for one already knew their agenda. They are the communist party of America. They are cruel and evil criminals for which there is no hope.

    1. There’s one hope, but it’s very slim, the voters see the Democrats for what they are and start voting them out. The further we get from the 2020 election, the more it shows Trump was basically right about EVERYTHING!

      Let’s go Brandon and the Democratic Party!

      1. Agree totally, but I hope if Trump decides to run, De Santis will man up and do the right thing by backing out and supporting Trump. We don’t need another Ross Perot event. If we don’t get this right this time, it’s over.

        1. I don’t believe DeSantis will run against Trump. Of course, Trump could move out of Florida (Pres & VP cannot be from the same state) and then pick DeSantis as VP.

    2. The Communist Party is once again establishing chapters on college campuses. I’ve read about three of them just in the past 24 hours. And just think, they will never have to worry about their meetings being disrupted by the mob. One would think that the Democrat Party is “progressive” enough for the Bolsheviks.

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