Repercussions
Lawmakers trying to make corporations defy the legal process.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) have warned telecommunications companies against sharing information with the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.
McCarthy and Greene on Tuesday both suggested that the companies would face repercussions for complying with the committee’s request for data once Republicans are in control of the government. The committee asked 35 telecommunications and social media companies to supply it with the records on Monday.
They didn’t “suggest” it, they said it.
“This is leading us into waters that we’ve never been in in America,” Greene said during an appearance on Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson Tonight. “America was never meant to be a Communist country. But these are the tactics that Democrats are wanting to use.”
“These cell phone companies, these telecommunications companies, they better not play with these Democrats,” added Greene. “Because Republicans are coming back into the majority in 2022 and we will take this very serious… if they go along with this, they will be shut down. And that’s a promise.”
See? Not a suggestion, a promise – a promised threat.
She uses that word “Communist” a lot. I do not think it means what she thinks it means. If they shut down private companies assuming they win the House in 2022 (which doesn’t really mean that they will have the means to do any shutting down, but just going along wtih her premise) then shutting down private companies would be a communist thing to do.Totalitarian, at the least, but it would be a matter of the state exercising a means of control of the means of production on one industry.
This is part of the reason that I fear for the future of this democracy, The authoritarians are winning, even though they are ignorant of how they are winning.
I hear righties talk about Democrats having a socialist agenda pretty often, but Greene usually takes it a step further. I doubt she knows (or cares) what Communism really is any further than a rhetorical device. She doesn’t seem to know what being unAmerican is either for the same reasons. It’s the divisive us-vs.-them mentality of the Trump types. Of course, threatening free speech outlets and public communication infrastructure is pretty hypocritical for flag waving patriotism promoters who don’t know what the Constitution says or is about. State controlled media and telecommunications is VERY Communist. Dumbasses.
Communism is *DEAD*, capitalism won hard and China is proof positive of that. Now, what didn’t happen (sorry Thomas Paine) is capitalism created a peaceful, more just, less authoritarian world. Information Age capitalism is perfectly (perhaps ideally) compatible with an authoritarian government.
So MJT, STFU!
There seems to be a segment of the population that doesn’t know or doesn’t care what words like communism actually mean. The way it works to them is it’s just a bad thing to be, so people they don’t like must be that thing. It’s like an inability to process on any level beyond an extremely basic ‘good/bad’ dichotomy. Everything on the ‘good’ side is simultaneously Patriotic American Constitutional Capitalist Christian Republican while everything on the ‘bad’ side is simultaneously Communist UnAmerican Unconstitutional Godless Muslim LGBTQ Democrat. Trying to argue or correct them on the accuracy of any of those accusations is shouting into the void, because none of those words actually mean anything to them except as a shorthand for Us or Them.
^^ ‘shorthand’ probably not the right word there, more like ‘stand in’
I suppose “fascism” is used in much the same way…