Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday that “press censorship” in America is at an all-time high — and tragically, he doesn’t see the situation improving any time soon.
Speaking on his self-titled Fox program, Carlson said Tuesday that efforts to suppress conservative voices can be seen “all around you.”
“Never in American history has there been press censorship on this scale,” he said, according to a transcript from Breitbart. “As we noted at the top, Fox News is the last significant media organization remaining in this country that allows its employees to tell obvious truths in public.
“The rest of them have been muzzled or shut down completely,” Carlson added.
“Its own chapter”
Carlson particularly focused his attention on a relatively new social media platform known as Parler. According to the Fox host, Parler “was created as a free-speech alternative to the Silicon Valley monopolies like Twitter and Facebook.”
But “a few weeks ago, those very same monopolies pulled it right off the internet. Parler no longer exists,” Carlson said, referring to a move by Amazon Web Services to force the platform offline.
“When the history of this period is written, the destruction of Parler will get its own chapter, and so will these people. The mindless corporate shills who applauded its destruction,” Carlson said Tuesday, according to Breitbart.
“Believe what they tell you to”
Indeed, one commentator highlighted by Carlson complained that “Parler has zero moderation. The whole point is that this is a completely free community that you can say what you want,” they reportedly said, calling content on the platform “remarkable garbage.”
To Carlson, it was just further evidence that Big Tech and others on the left want to silence conservative voices at any cost. “Equity and inclusion means that you will believe what they tell you to believe. Period,” he charged Tuesday, according to Breitbart.
The Fox host’s remarks invoked a sentiment that has echoed across the right since Parler was first targeted in the wake of an attack on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month — namely, that the riot, though egregious, shouldn’t be used as an excuse to stifle free speech.
“When you start suppressing speech, first of all, it’s dictatorial,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) said earlier this month, according to Fox. “Second, it violates our constitutional right. But the third thing I would say is it causes people to go underground, and as people go underground…you get more conspiracy type theories involved.”
Biggs went on: “The way they’re doing this, they’re going to prevent discussions that make us all progress and solve issues. Instead, they’re going to foment more problems, more discord by doing this. My opinion, they’re trying to create a single party system, and that’s wrong.”