December 2, 2022 | Barron's
The Twitter Ban That Would Make Musk a Hero
December 2, 2022 | Barron's
The Twitter Ban That Would Make Musk a Hero
Excerpt
Left-wing influencers, activist groups and corporate executives are up in arms over Elon Musk’s announcement that Twitter has lifted its ban on former President Donald Trump. Musk argues he’s removing political bias and censorship from the platform while liberals decry the potential for Trump to spread disinformation or even incite violence. To defuse that criticism, there’s an obvious way for Musk to prove both he’s serious about freedom of expression and opposes hate speech: Ban Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader and censor-in-chief, from Twitter once and for all.
“The Western powers are a mafia… At the top of this mafia stand the prominent Zionist merchants, and the politicians obey them,” Khamenei tweeted this summer.
Richard Goldberg, a former National Security Council official, is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @rich_goldberg. Bryan E. Leib is the executive director of the Iranian Americans for Liberty and a former GOP congressional candidate. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.