(Video: MSNBC)
MSNBC’s Joy Reid once again demonstrated her exceptional mediocrity in political and cultural analysis as she attempted to make the case that entrepreneur Elon Musk’s objective in buying Twitter was not about his proclaimed goal of preserving free speech, but rather represents a thinly-veiled effort toward social media apartheid since, she believes, “he misses the old South Africa in the 80s.”
During Tuesday’s episode of “The Reid Out,” political scientist Jason Johnson joined Reid to talk about how she believes Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is detrimental to society. In the conversation, Reid not only trashed the billionaire as having racist objectives, but she presented the case that every proponent of free speech was potentially a racist, misogynistic, antisemitic reprobate out to commit violence against anyone who did not fit into a cookie-cutter world.
“And the bottom line is as you said, they don’t want to just be in the club…They have been described as being on the outside of the culture looking in through the glass, but they don’t want to just come in,” Reid argued of those who’ve remained censored on the social media platform. “They want to come in and be able to punch people in the face and walk around and laugh about it and not have anyone be able to stop them.”
“The thing is, the enjoyment they get out of being in this ‘town square’ is being able to harass people; being able to attack people,” she declared without citing any evidence. “There was a time when people had the double hashtags around their names because they were Jewish, and right-wingers were saying ‘get in the oven’ anytime you made any benign comment on Twitter. They attacked women. You know the misogyny was crazy on Twitter for a while.”
This led to her ultimate conclusion that, by wanting to allow these supposed ends, “Elon Musk, I guess he, you know, he misses the old South Africa in the 80s. He wants, he wants that back.”
Reid’s display falls precisely into what Musk described as the “extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech.”
By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
Musk has made clear that his objective is to maintain an environment that is in accordance with what is permissible in society based on law. That didn’t stop Reid’s guest, Johnson, from joining in, suggesting that free speech was a ploy for digital gentrification.
“We all know Elon Musk wants to control Twitter. We know why the right wants to control Twitter,” he argued. “They don’t want to go with their own club. They don’t want to hang out at the honky-tonk. They want to go to the club where the cool people are. And so they know they can’t go in unless they buy the entire block.”
Reid had previously stated similar views of Musk in the midst of his takeover attempt, saying, “Fear not right-wingers, another bro-fascist, is waiting in the wings to defend your right to spew bile online in the name of free speech,” before her guest opined, “[Musk] is building in Tesla a documentedly [sic] racist company that perhaps reminds him, gives him nostalgic memories of apartheid South Africa.”
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Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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