Elon Musk apparently only champions free speech when it comes to right-wing propaganda and misinformation.
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Elon Musk loves to muse about the importance of free speech and how much he supports it. And his lamentations about censorship seem genuine… as long as the speech in question is right-wing propaganda and misinformation.
However, he seems to be less of a First Amendment advocate when it comes to speech that may be harmful to candidates and causes he supports.
On Thursday, for example, X suspended the account of journalist Ken Klippenstein after he had posted a link to a website that contained the leaked dossier that the Trump campaign had compiled on JD Vance ahead of making the Ohio senator the Republican vice presidential nominee.
Klippenstein wrote on his substack that his account was suspended for violating X’s “rules against posting private information.”
However, he argues that this seems like a specious reason because he did not post private information on the social media site but rather pointed out where his followers could find that information.
“I never published any private information on X,” the journalist explained on his substack. “I linked to an article I wrote here, linking to a document of controversial provenance, one that I didn’t want to alter for that very reason.”
X reportedly suspended the account because the dossier includes Vance’s home address as well as parts of his social security number.
However, Klippenstein believes that he is in the right.
“I know that it is general practice to delete ‘private’ information from leaks and classified documents, but in this case, not only is Vance an elected official and Vice Presidential candidate, but the information is readily available for anyone to buy,” he stated.
The dossier in question has sparked quite a bit of controversy (as well as an FBI investigation).
A while back, an anonymous entity leaked the document to various media organizations, all of which declined to publish it.
As we noted at the time, this was a complete reversal from 2016, when major new outlets were falling all over themselves to publish hacked documents from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Back then, Russia appears to have worked in concert with WikiLeaks to cause as much damage to Clinton’s campaign as possible.
This time around, Trump was once again the beneficiary after the same media outlets refused to publish what appeared to be an internal document from his campaign.
Once again, a foreign government, this time Iran, is alleged to have been involved in the hack that produced this document, as well as others that were offered to the campaign of President Joe Biden, which triggered a recent FBI investigation.
While the Vance dossier does not seem to include any particularly salacious information, having it covered in great detail (like the Clinton emails) would probably generate quite a bit of bad press for the Trump campaign.
Now Musk is doing his part to make sure this doesn’t happen.
Ultimately, this censorship might be the biggest news coming out of this hack, and everybody should keep in mind that, when he waxes about the importance of free speech, Musk is probably referring to discourse that supports his political viewpoint.
