Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced supposed American authoritarianism while speaking in a country that does pre-dawn raids over internet posts. She quite literally seemed to forget where she stood.
With the words “New World Order” prominently displayed behind her, Clinton referred to President Donald Trump as one of the world’s “autocrats” in a melodramatic March 18 speech warning of rising authoritarianism “at a time of such peril in our world.” At no point did Clinton acknowledge that The World Forum event on the Future Democracy, AI/Tech and Humankind, took place in Berlin, Germany — a country that punishes disfavored speech and insults with fines and the confiscation of laptops and phones. In the same breath, Clinton condemned supposed rising authoritarianism in the United States and bemoaned the lack of constraints on social media companies.
“[T]here’s no way to explain it away, autocracy is on the march and we now have a government in the United States that has thrown in its lot with the autocrats,” Clinton said, before—in an inexplicable and ironic twist—accusing the administration of warmongering.
She proceeded to bemoan supposedly unrestrained Big Tech platforms, “[W]ho have given enormous power to the men who control the information flow in our world, who have all pledged allegiance to the continuation of algorithms that not only addict us but poison us with hatred and fear. So moments like this which are too few and far between right now need to be underscored with urgency.”
Earlier this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his platforms were cutting ties with anti-free speech leftist fact-checkers and massively scaling back censorship on his platforms. Before her latest complaint, Clinton had criticized free speech on social media platforms, saying “[i]f they don’t moderate and monitor content, we lose total control.”
The autocrat is calling from within the house.
Clinton’s Tuesday remarks to the World Forum also ignored censorship that even the legacy media has been willing to cover.
CBS’s 60 Minutes spoke with German prosecutors who revealed their country’s massive social media surveillance apparatus and the draconian penalties for saying things online or in person that the German government disagrees with. 60 Minutes, filmed a pre-dawn raid that involved “six armed officers” who confiscated the electronics of a man who posted a meme. According to the report, this was such a common occurrence that 50 other raids were carried out simultaneously.
The episode also made clear that Germans were punished for insulting politicians and subject to massive fines. A single office (out of 16 total offices) devoted to policing the speech of Germans admitted that they had about 3,500 cases.
Additionally, Germany is also a member of the European Union, which uses its radical Digital Services Act (DSA) to push social media platforms towards censorship. When X-owner Elon Musk interviewed Alice Weidel, candidate for chancellor for the German party Alternative for Germany (AfD), no less than 150 EU enforcers listened in to monitor their speech. Beyond censoring speech, Germany also reportedly persecuted a Christian family for homeschooling until they took refuge in the United States.
But instead of calling out her hosts, Clinton called the duly elected U.S. president an “autocrat.”
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