Online censorship will only make matters worse

The ban on X in Brazil is just the latest stage of a sinister global trend.

We are rapidly moving into a new era of state censorship. Governments across the globe are seemingly convinced that all societal ills could be cured if only the speech of citizens was more carefully regulated. In Brazil, this has been taken to chilling extremes. The decision of the supreme court justice to block X is an incredible affront to the freedom of its citizens. And those who attempt to access X via a VPN can be fined thousands of pounds.

This is the kind of action one would expect from a police state. Other countries that have banned X include China, North Korea and Iran. Surely this is not a gang that one should yearn to be joining. In his recent piece on Spiked, Fraser Myers identified the key problem:

“The Brazilian elites loathe X for precisely the same reason as the elites across the rest of the democratic world do – they blame it for the spread of so-called disinformation, particularly since it was taken over by Musk and its content-moderation policies were relaxed.”

One suspects that other countries are itching to follow suit. Over the past few weeks the Guardian has repeatedly called for restrictions to X or even the intervention of the police. In a piece written by Robert Reich, a former labour secretary under the Clinton administration, we had the following: “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.” And Jonathan Freedland wrote a piece entitled “You know who else should be on trial for the UK’s far-right riots? Elon Musk”. When a mainstream newspaper is cheerleading for state authoritarianism, you know there’s a major problem.

Might the Labour Party go so far as to ban social media platforms? After the riots, it would have been prudent for Keir Starmer to condemn the violence while acknowledging that there may be legitimate underlying concerns. I have absolutely no doubt that had the public been able to engage openly and honestly about the potential problems of mass migration, the two-tier policing that led to the grooming gangs scandals, and the challenges of multiculturalism, we would not have seen violence on the streets. But rather than opening up the conversation, our leaders evidently believe that further censorship is the answer. Instead of treating the cancer in society, the government has chosen to give the carcinogens a boost.