Obama Demands A Ministry Of Truth

Former President Barack Obama is doubling down on his push to curb free speech in America, urging the federal government to tighten its grip on what citizens can say online.

„We want diversity of opinion. We don’t want diversity of facts,” claimed during an interview this week with historian and author Heather Cox Richardson. „That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media.”

Obama then flat out called for government regulation of social media platforms to curb the amplification of of what he described as “hateful” and “polarizing” public figures, while respecting First Amendment rights, claiming that censorship is essential to addressing business models that purportedly erode public trust.

„By the way, it will require some government, I believe, some government regulatory constraints around some of these business models in a way that’s consistent with the First Amendment, but that also says, look, there is a difference between these platforms letting all voices be heard versus a business model that elevates the most hateful voices or the most polarizing voices or the most dangerous, in the sense of inciting violence, voices,” the president said. „And that, I think, is going to be a big challenge for all of us that we’re going to have to undertake.”

Obama then went on to bizarrely compare Russian President Vladimir Putin to former Trump White House aide Steve Bannon, claiming that there common goal is not to convince people of a specific truth but to overwhelm them with so much misinformation—”flood the zone with poop”—that they become cynical and stop believing in anything.

“You have to flood the zone with so much untruth, constantly, that at some point people don’t believe anything,” Obama said. „So it doesn’t matter if a candidate running for office just is constantly, just hypothetically, saying untrue things, or if an elected president claims that he won when he lost and that the system was rigged, but then when he wins, then it isn’t rigged, because he won. It doesn’t matter if everybody believes it. It just matters if everybody starts kind of throwing up their hands and saying, well, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

„That’s what’s happened in one of our major political parties. You have a whole bunch of people who know that’s not true, but we will pretend like it is,” the president added.
Obama first called for censorship during a high-profile speech at Stanford University in 2022—where the now-defunct Stanford Internet Observatory’s Election Integrity Partnership operated—arguing that misinformation poses a threat to democracy. Obama called for a reassessment of Section 230, a 1996 provision within the Communications Decency Act that generally protects online platforms from liability for user-posted content.

Obama told attendees, “These platforms are not like the old phone company.” The president further noted, “In some cases, industry standards may replace or substitute for regulation, but regulation has to be part of the answer.”

President Donald Trump has taken the opposite approach to Obama by emphasizing free speech in his second term, issuing a January executive order to safeguard Americans’ right to express themselves.

In April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the closure of the Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit infamous for its role in suppressing Americans’ free speech.

In a Federalist op-ed, Rubio referenced a 2020 GEC report that labeled speculation about COVID-19’s origins, including a Wuhan lab theory, as part of a “Russian disinformation” campaign.

Rubio wrote, “Finally, as we recommit this country to its core constitutional free speech principles at home, we will remain vigilant abroad — not just against threats from adversaries such as Communist China but also from less expected countries where authoritarian censorship is gradually strangling true freedom of speech. We are not afraid. At her birth, America was a lone beacon of freedom to the world. If necessary, we will happily be that lone beacon once again.”