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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n Richard Stengel, the point man on state-owned media for Joe \nBiden’s transition team, has said protection of hateful speech that can \nprovoke violence is a “design flaw” in the Constitution and should be \nfixed with “new guardrails.”\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stengel, a former MSNBC \ncontributor, is transition team leader for the US Agency for Global \nMedia, which includes broadcasters Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, \nRadio Liberty and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. He’s likely to \nhead the agency if Biden becomes president in January. Ironically, that \nmeans Washington’s foreign propaganda outlets, which traditionally have \npromoted America’s founding principles, would be overseen by a man with \nrestrictive views on the most fundamental of those tenets \u2013 freedom of \nspeech.\n \n \n Also on rt.com\n Under Biden, Big Tech\u2019s censorship goons will make conservatives nostalgic for the days of relatively free speech in Obama era\n \n \n \n<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
“All speech is not equal,”<\/em> Stengel wrote last year in an op-ed published by the Washington Post<\/a>. “And\n where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails. I’m all \nfor protecting thought that we hate, but not speech that incites hate.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stengel gave the example of “sophisticated Arab diplomats”<\/em> who had questioned why constitutional rights would allow a US citizen to burn a copy of the Koran. “It’s a fair question,”<\/em> he said. “Yes,\n the First Amendment protects the thought that we hate, but it should \nnot protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against \nanother. In an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a \ndesign flaw.”<\/em>\n Read more\n \n \n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \u2018Censorship Rubicon\u2019? Big Tech burying Biden-Ukraine story either wakes up Republicans or drives nail in their political coffin\n <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another example that Stengel cited was alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. “Our foremost liberty protects any bad actors who hide behind it to weaken our society,”<\/em> he wrote. “Russian\n agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives and spread\n lies on Twitter and Facebook \u2013 all protected by the First Amendment.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stengel\n added that it’s time to consider hate-speech laws, like those enacted \nby other countries to discourage incitement of racial and religious \ntensions after World War II. He argued that mass shooters Dylann Roof \nand Omar Mateen were consumers of hate speech, which created a climate \nthat made their heinous crimes more likely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stengel, formerly \neditor of Time magazine, was a US State Department undersecretary for \npublic diplomacy and public affairs in the Obama-Biden administration. \nHe referred to his former State Department role as “chief propagandist.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I’m not against propaganda<\/a>,”<\/em> Stengel reportedly told the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018. “Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think that’s awful.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
That\n Biden would choose a media chief who calls for restrictions on free \nspeech came as little surprise to Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe, who \ntweeted: “Of course he does.”<\/em> Another Twitter commenter took \nissue with Stengel’s free-speech curtailments being based on the \noffended party’s propensity for violence: “They are 100 percent advocating differential speech<\/a> protections based on decibel level of complaints.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n=550px”><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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