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Seriously, Have Republicans Even Read The First Amendment?

Conservative talking points on free speech completely miss the mark.

Björn Jóhann
5 min readJul 26, 2020
Photo by visuals on Unsplash

The Right is Claiming To Be Censored

One look into the mainstream Republican media, or the words of their political leaders, and you’d think their free speech rights are being suppressed on a daily basis.

Parler, the conservative answer to Twitter, gained half a million new users last month, undoubtedly accelerated by Trump’s recent attacks on Twitter. Parler calls itself as a “free speech haven” and has a “lack of censorship”. It’s designed to be the antidote to liberal safe spaces — where “special snowflakes” suppress free speech.

Parler has handles from many prominent Republican leaders, including Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. After perusing the site, I was struck by how similar it was to Twitter. You can’t “retweet” but you can “echo”. You can’t “like” but you can “vote”. Beat-for-beat it’s just the blue birdy platform but with red elephants shouting from the rooftop.

Then, in a twist of fate, Parler, a supposed “free speech” paradise, immediately started censoring people.

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Björn Jóhann
Björn Jóhann

Written by Björn Jóhann

A queer, herbivorous, leftist Viking. I write about society, justice, and popular media. UChicago grad.

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