Early Sunday morning, Elon Musk teased that the Twitter files related to censorship of COVID-19 information are coming “big time” and then tweeted that his pronouns are “Prosecute/Fauci.” As Bonchie wrote, what’s been released so far regarding election interference, January 6, and unequal application of Twitter’s policies (and execs making them up on the fly sometimes) are interesting and eye-opening, but:

Twitter’s ruthless, Orwellian censorship of COVID-19 information, which occurred right up until Musk bought the company, was not only its most wide-ranging bit of malfeasance, but it was also the most damaging.

The many ways in which truth was silenced and harmful information was promoted by Twitter obviously had the effect of influencing the 2020 election, but the most damaging effects won’t fully be known for years. Unlike many of the things the left claims lead to death, Twitter’s actions did lead to death.

Musk’s tweet about his pronouns, predictably, led to a backlash from super upset liberals like Scott Kelly, who replied that Musk was promoting hate and that, by the way, “Dr. Fauci is a dedicated public servant whose sole motivation was saving lives.”

.@elonmusk Elon, please don’t mock and promote hate toward already marginalized and at-risk-of-violence members of the #LGBTQ+ community. They are real people with real feelings. Furthermore, Dr Fauci is a dedicated public servant whose sole motivation was saving lives. https://t.co/Vgu04XMGeZ

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) December 12, 2022

If Kelly had read even a fraction of the things Twitter censored regarding Fauci, he would not be singing that tune. In Musk’s reply, he hit back at the ostracization of those who don’t play along with the pronoun game, then dropped his strongest opinion to date on Fauci and his culpability in the COVID pandemic.

I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone.

As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022

The words are so beautiful, I want to see them again.

As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo.

Until mid-2021, a news site could get its stories demonetized, and even a domain-level strike against it at places like Facebook and Google, for posting anything suggesting that gain-of-function research (virus weaponization) was even happening, let alone paid for by the United States or that it could have led to SARS-CoV-2. When Scott Hounsell published a series of stories at RedState starting in May, 2021, we did so knowing that there would likely be consequences from the “fact checkers” since we’d been forced to add an “Editor’s Note and Correction” to a September 2020 story about a Chinese scientist who claimed that the COVID pandemic was the result of a lab leak “or else.” At the time, we chose to add the Editor’s Note rather than tell the fact checkers to bugger off so we could keep the dozens of families whose livelihoods depend on income from RedState from facing the financial consequences.

While it’s thrilling to see Musk saying these things, knowing he has the ability to withstand what the left throws at him, it’s a sobering reminder of everything that was lost over the last three years.