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After years of Big Tech censoring conservatives, enforcing Chinese and Biden administration COVID-19 lies, and colluding with the Biden administration to advance other leftist narratives, Big Tech lobbyist Carl Szabo published a recent op-ed criticizing the federal government for censoring conservatives. Szabo’s op-ed is even more hypocritical given that this is not the first time that Big Tech has tried to gaslight Americans on its far-reaching censorship agenda.

In his op-ed, Szabo claimed the federal government “coerced” Twitter executives to censor content – as if Twitter didn’t wholeheartedly jump into bed with the Biden administration to do so.

“Because of the Twitter files,” Szabo wrote, “we’ve learned that agencies we trust like the FBI and the FDA, as well as the White House, blocked discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop, promoted the Russia collusion hoax and blacklisted a Stanford doctor for warning that COVID lockdowns would harm children. Such actions have serious consequences on individuals and society as a whole.”

Really? Big Tech never suppressed, censored, and blocked elected officials, university professors, medical doctors, and major media entities on their platforms independent of government coercion?

It wasn’t the FBI or anybody else who de-platformed such experts and blocked political speech – it was Big Tech itself. The Twitter Files exposed Big Tech’s multifaceted unilateral action to censor conservatives long before – and in many cases, independent of – any assistance by the federal government. Now that Big Tech has been caught red-handed, its corporate lobbyists are trying to gaslight us into thinking Big Tech was simply a victim of the federal government strong-arming them. They want us to believe they never had any intention to censor conservative speech or any other speech. That notion is counterfactual and preposterous.

We now have two co-conspirators – Big Tech and the federal government – seeking to avoid culpability by blaming each other for their mutual transgressions. The federal government cannot lawfully abridge free speech, so it claims it merely “suggested” particular censorship actions that Big Tech later decided to pursue. Big Tech claims it never had any desire to censor conservatives but did so only because the federal government strong-armed them to. Both are lying. Big Tech was already censoring conservative speech on a regular basis before the Biden administration came to power, and the Biden administration subsequently and doggedly used a willing and eager Big Tech to become the censorship arm of the federal government.

For Big Tech, this is far from the first time it has spoken out of both sides of its mouth regarding its censorship of conservatives. Dozens of times during the past two years, Big Tech lobbyists testified vehemently in legislative hearings that Big Tech had never targeted conservatives, and legislators had no reason or right to regulate or otherwise limit Big Tech’s censorship activities. Big Tech’s corporate lobbyists stooped so low as to smear citizens who showed up at public hearings to convey their personal stories of being censored. For example, on July 12, 2021, a senior citizen testified in a Texas legislative hearing that Facebook suppressed her post opposing a wind power project in a Texas nature preserve. Just two days later, a Big Tech lobbyist smeared the senior citizen in a public forum, stating that she and the other Texans who had spoken up against Facebook censorship in that hearing were “antivaxxers who wanted to be sure they could force Facebook, Twitter, and Google to carry lots of information about the dangers of vaccines.” Neither the senior citizen nor any other Texan who testified in that hearing even mentioned vaccines. But the public slander stands un-rescinded.

After fervently opposing in legislative hearings government action to define and protect online free speech rights, Big Tech engaged in another gaslighting scam. Last year, Big Tech launched a series of public ads telling the public not to blame them for their censorship activity because censoring decisions are hard, that Big Tech is begging for more government regulations to set parameters for them, but the government won’t enact such regulations on them. Apparently, Big Tech would like us to believe their repeated impassioned testimony in Texas and elsewhere against censorship regulations never occurred.

In yet another gaslighting doozy, Szabo argued that conservatives have every reason to fear government involvement in speech platforms. “Revelations that our government worked to suppress speech it didn’t like should horrify all Americans,” wrote Szabo, yet he and his boss have repeatedly argued that conservatives should ask and trust the Biden administration to create and moderate any online free speech sites.

Big Tech may be trying to save itself after being caught censoring Americans’ speech, but its own words and actions incriminate them.

James Taylor ([email protected]) is president of The Heartland Institute.