Elon Musk’s argument with Australia is based on fake news spread by mad people on his own platform | David Penberthy
Elon Musk’s fight with the PM and the eSafety Commissioner has unleashed a surge of mad American conspiracy theories, writes David Penberthy.
Elon Musk is confused.
He seems to think that he is John Stuart Mill or Voltaire, a free speech pioneer whose brave stand will benefit us all.
There is no lofty matter of principle here. Let’s look at exactly what it is Musk wants to publish.
It is raw unedited video of a person being stabbed.
This isn’t an idea. It isn’t an opinion. It isn’t a seminal historic moment such as a girl burned with napalm, or a pile of bodies at a concentration camp, or a tank hitting a student in Tiananmen Square.
It’s an act of violence with the capacity to do two things – disturb the viewer and incite copycat attacks.
Musk is a lot of things but a beacon of free speech he ain’t.
He’s a phenomenal inventor, but as a publisher, he is a long way from Mill and Voltaire, and much closer to those creeps on the dark web who peddle genuine footage of people being killed and maimed from wars and crime scenes.
Arguments over freedom of speech are always edgy and contested. One of the best examples comes from Larry Flynt, a genuinely repellent bloke who made millions as a pornographer.
Flynt billed himself as a freedom of speech hero as publisher of Hustler magazine.
From what I know about Hustler, there wasn’t a whole lot of “speaking” going on inside its pages. It wasn’t a magazine devoted to the contest of ideas; more just lurid posing, much of it no doubt involving young, naïve women desperate for dough who came to regret their decision at a later stage.
Flynt played an important role affirming the free speech tradition of the United States. His Supreme Court victory over the televangelist Jerry Falwell – the subject of a Hustler magazine satire accusing the pastor all sorts of aberrant sexual practices – was a bedrock moment for the First Amendment, that is, the right to say what you like.
The moral majority wanted Flynt shut down, but they picked the wrong battle by targeting him over a satirical piece which, as putrid as it was, was a demonstration of how the filthiest form of ridicule and mockery could be used against a political figure in Jerry Falwell.
It was an important victory, for had Flynt lost, the Court would have been creating or inviting a set of rules as to how speech should be “properly” exercised.
As Flynt himself put it: “Freedom of speech doesn’t protect speech you like; it protects speech you don’t like.”
Freedom of speech is one thing. The “right” to publish images of people being stabbed is another. Musk isn’t fighting for the right to publish words or arguments. He’s fighting for the right to publish borderline snuff footage, in so far as the unedited video of the Sydney church terror attack could be described as such, the real-time account of one man’s attempt to kill another.
It is worth examining the process by which Musk has found himself dying on this stupid hill. It is a Frankenstein’s monster scenario.
Like Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook and Instagram, Musk claims as the owner of X (formerly Twitter) that he has a bedrock commitment to the elimination of fake news.
The truth in this case is that he is acting on the basis of fake news, spread mainly by mad people on his own platform.
His Federal Court battle and his juvenile Twitter exchanges with our PM are based on the fake news that Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is trying to shut down free discussion around the Sydney attack.
This was total nonsense.
The only thing Commissioner Grant wanted taken down was the raw and unedited video footage of the stabbing attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel.
The rollcall of people on X who are lining up to attack our eSafety Commissioner says a bit about the nature of this warped crusade.
Some of them are free speech hardliners, many just seem to be barking mad, the spear carriers from the world of Bitcoin, anti-vax, QAnon, all that crap which proliferates in Musk’s world of freedom.
One post I saw cheering him on was followed by another warning people that the Government was secretly infecting our milk with bird flu.
To those Australians who find themselves barracking for Musk in this stand-off, I would ask them to take a deep breath and reflect on what they are actually barracking for. It has nothing to do with unfettered debate or provocative speech.
It is purely about Elon Musk’s apparent right to screen real physical violence. Violence which has the capacity to cause two things – enduring psychological distress, and copycat or reprisal violence.
It’s actually a less palatable form of publishing than that practised by Larry Flynt. Flynt might have been a card-carrying pervert and accomplished peddler of filth, but at least no-one was getting killed.
The Musk case is a reminder that for all their similarities, the US and Australia are mercifully different societies in fundamental ways.
During the recent Taylor Swift concerts in Australian, American libertarians lost their minds when footage emerged of the “Report Offensive Behaviour” signs at the MCG. Images were plastered across social media by American users declaring the signs a chilling example of uncontrolled state power in Australia, linking it to our strict Covid lockdowns and gun control laws.
The reality of course is that any reasonable-minded Australian has no issue with the signs, regarding them as an effective way to make sure your night at the footy isn’t ruined by someone screaming the “n” word or “c” word during the game.
In much the same way as we don’t want us or our kids to spend time online watching people stabbing one another.
Originally published as Elon Musk’s argument with Australia is based on fake news spread by mad people on his own platform | David Penberthy
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