Be aware of major attacks on free speech from Democrats
Article by Andrea Widburg in The American Thinker
Be aware of major attacks on free speech from Democrats
Democrats own Washington D.C. and should be in hog heaven. But as Shakespeare wrote, “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Certainly, the Democrats know that, as the country and the world lurch from bad to worse under their aegis, their hold on the country is weakening. What especially worries them is conservative media’s popularity. Now, Dan Pfeiffer, a former “senior advisor” to Obama, has said it out loud: Alternative viewpoints are a “problem for democracy.” Expect the Democrats to act to counter that “problem.”
Here are three representative news stories showing the Democrats’ collapsing control over the political narrative:
First, Biden is frantically angry that his popularity has dropped below Trump’s—which is impressive when you think back to the Russia hoax coup against Trump and the media’s unrelenting hostility to him and compare that with the media’s slavish loyalty to Biden. You must be an exceptionally disastrous president to have your ratings collapse despite the propaganda.
Second, when it comes to cable news, Fox rules. Tucker Carlson is the most popular cable host, by a huge margin, followed by Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Greg Gutfeld, and a host of other Fox News shows. CNN first shows up as number 19 on the list (Wolf Blitzer) and MSNBC appears at 24 (Joy Reid).
That’s nice but what’s really newsworthy is who is watching Tucker Carlson and the other Fox folks. Tucker is the top cable news show for adults in the 25-54 range. That’s bad for Democrats. What’s worse is that Tucker’s dominance doesn’t stop there. He and Fox News are drawing in the largest number of Democrat viewers within that coveted age group:
Of those demo-aged viewers surveyed who identified as Democrats, 39% chose Fox News, 31% chose MSNBC and 30% chose CNN for programming from 8 p.m. ET to 11 p.m. ET. In total-day viewership, Fox News grabbed 42% of Democrats aged 25-54, CNN nabbed 33% and MSNBC got 25%.
And third, Democrats cannot console themselves by saying that television is a dinosaur in the new media age and that the real place to check out audience favorites is on the internet. It turns out that conservative media is also dominating on the internet, something that even caught NPR’s attention:
In 2021, Ben Shapiro rules Facebook.
The conservative podcast host and author's personal Facebook page has more followers than The Washington Post, and he drives an engagement machine unparalleled by anything else on the world's biggest social networking site.
An NPR analysis of social media data found that over the past year, stories published by the site Shapiro founded, The Daily Wire, received more likes, shares and comments on Facebook than any other news publisher by a wide margin.
Even legacy news organizations that have broken major stories or produced groundbreaking investigative work don't come anywhere close.
(Speaking of Daily Wire, although I hate to direct potential subscription money away from American Thinker, I highly recommend Matt Walsh’s What Is A Woman?, which requires a Daily Wire subscription to view. That same subscription, though, helps support Daily Wire as it seeks to build a conservative media empire that’s an alternative to Hollywood.)
Because Democrats are all about the narrative (it’s how they attack their opponents, get into office, and retain power when all their policies fail), the public’s declining interest in their media outlets is a disaster. I’m not guessing. Just listen to the frantic sound of Dan Pfeiffer, the old Obama hand, bemoaning the growth of conservative media and especially Daily Wire’s engagement factor:
Pfeiffer: "If you go to Facebook on a daily basis, the posts with the most engagement are from @benshapiro, @dbongino, @RealCandaceO … it should scare us the most that Ben Shapiro’s @realDailyWire has more followers than the NYT or CNN. That is a problem for democracy." pic.twitter.com/wuYLluaWLm
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 6, 2022
In true totalitarian fashion, having identified the enemy, Pfeiffer has a plan: Make laws to destroy it. That’s because, for a Democrat, a “democracy” is not a system in which the people are the master and the government their servant. Instead, it’s a system that—like an aristocracy, theocracy, or any other despotic system—makes sure that the only voice the people hear is the government’s. When that voice is being overridden by the sound of freedom, “democracy” has failed and the government gets to jackboot its way in to “correct” the situation.
The Democrats still have, at minimum, another six months of total control over federal politics. While Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are still bravely holding the line, Democrats may figure out either the carrots or sticks that will finally get them to go along with the Democrats’ plan to end the filibuster, giving them the opportunity to pass a host of extremist laws packing the Supreme Court, ending the Second Amendment, and blocking free speech on television and the internet. Be vigilant and do not, under any circumstances, miss voting in your state’s primaries or in the November election.
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