Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sounds like he lives in a fantasy world in which conservatives are somehow the real victims in the wake of a violent mob attack on the U.S. Capitol building by Trump supporters that culminated in, among other travesties, the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who was struck by a fire extinguisher and died. In the aftermath of this deadly violence, companies like Twitter and Facebook have taken basic steps to try and help curtail the usage of their platforms to incite violence, but rather than acknowledging the fact that a mob of Trump’s own supporters murdered a police officer, Hawley insists that isolated consequences for right-wing inciters of violence represent some kind of nefarious conspiracy to “censor all dissent.”
It’s worth noting — while whining that conservatives are supposedly being “censored” and silenced or whatever, Hawley was speaking on national television. He shared a clip of his remarks on Twitter — the very platform that he claims is systematically silencing conservatives! The presence of his own remarks on Fox News and Twitter undercuts his own point.
Hawley belligerently ranted as follows:
‘Now we’ve got Big Tech and the big corporations, Sean, in league with the Left, and what they’re basically saying is: Listen, if you don’t hold the right opinions, then you’re not gonna be able to be on social media. You’re not gonna be able to get a job maybe. You’re not gonna be able to communicate. If you have a small business, you’re gonna get boycotted. It is an unbelievable attempt by big business, Big Tech, and the Left to try to censor all dissent, to try and shut down all opposition, and to try to silence half of America. And while the Democrats talk about unity in Washington, they don’t want unity — what they want is total control, and these big corporations are right there with them trying to achieve it, and Sean, we’ve got to stand up and say: We will not bow down to the mob.’
Check out his remarks below:
Democrats in DC say they want unity. They don’t want unity. They want total control. Control of what we say, what we think, and who we support. And they are working in lockstep with Big Tech and Big corporations to silence us. pic.twitter.com/WsY4qKkdoN
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 26, 2021
Hawley’s pompously self-important insistence that the right will “not bow down the mob” is ridiculous. Trump’s own supporters recently formed a mob and attacked the Capitol building, putting Hawley’s own colleagues in serious and possibly even mortal danger! Following this incident, what’s Hawley’s main concern? Apparently, he’s most worried about those who are facing basic consequences for their role in actively inciting the deadly violence. The consequences aren’t remotely as far-reaching as he petulantly insisted — conservatives can definitely still “communicate.”
