In a recent interview on The National Podcast of Texas, Senator Ted Cruz said that he’s concerned about the way most of the major big tech companies deplatformed Infowars host Alex Jones last year and that, while he’s “not an Alex Jones fan,” free speech should protect everyone.
During the interview, Cruz discussed how Jones had been scrubbed from these big tech platforms and said that although he’s not personally very fond of of the claims Jones has made on air about his father being in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), he should still have the right to speak.
Cruz went on to say: “I was disappointed that I didn’t see anybody left of center defending his free speech rights and that’s a shift that I think is troubling, is that liberals don’t tend to defend free speech the way 10, 20, 30 years ago they did.”
Cruz also pushed back against claims that he’s attempting to curry favor with Jones’s listening audience in preparation for a future presidential run and said: “The reason I defended his rights is precisely because he’s been a nasty nut to me to show this isn’t about people I like, this is about that free speech protects everyone.”
Since 2018, Jones has been one of the most censored personalities online. He and his Infowars brand have been removed from Apple’s App Store and podcast directory, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, YouTube, and many other big tech platforms – often without being given any specific examples of how Jones or Infowars have violated these platforms’ rules. Facebook has also started to prohibit sharing and linking to Infowars content unless the post is explicitly condemning the content which means users that attempt to share this content are also censored.
Cruz has been one of the most vocal senators when it comes to calling out big tech censorship. Earlier today, he and Senators Josh Hawley, Mike Braun, and Kevin Cramer sent a letter to Facebook demanding that it corrects the censorship of pro-life non-profit Live Action.
Last month, Cruz was part of a multimillion-dollar Twitter ads boycott after Twitter locked the campaign account of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He also slammed YouTube for demonetizing comedian Steven Crowder saying that it was “ridiculous” and “will not end well.”
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