Vivek Ramaswamy, one of several candidates for the GOP nomination for president in 2024, is warning about the dangers of censorship from a coalition of government and corporate interests, after his LinkedIn account was shut down over his opinions on Joe Biden and climate change.
The Washington Examiner later reported a LinkIn official said the account was “restricted in error” and was restored.
But the candidate said the situation is a warning to Americans.
He explains he was told by LinkedIn that his account was restricted for “sharing content that contains misleading or inaccurate information.”
Cited by LinkedIn were his opinions about climate change, China and Joe Biden.
One comment was that “China has weaponized the woke pandemic to stay one step ahead and it’s working.”
Another was that the “CCP is playing the Biden administration like a Chinese mandolin.”
All a bit confrontational, but clearly opinion, which is protected by the First Amendment.
“This is staggering,” Ramaswamy said, because LinkedIn cited its bans on “hate speech,” “misinformation” and “violence.”
“If they can do it to me, they can really do it to anybody,” he warned.
He noted that Microsoft owns LinkedIn and as a corporation is “doing the work of the government through the back door” to censor opinions that the Biden administration opposes.
He said it is “corporate power and state power doing what neither one could do on their own.”
It’s a symptom of “how deep this cancer has run in our country.”
In fact, WND previously has reported on government influencing private corporations to censor unwanted opinions, and even facts. During recent elections it has used a pathway that leads from various government offices through various foundations to lobby social media companies for censorship.
A prime example is the FBI’s lobbying social media companies to suppress accurate reporting during the 2020 election about evidence, documented as real, about the Biden family’s scandalous international business dealings contained in a laptop computer abandoned by Hunter Biden at a repair shop.
That situation has escalated by now to open accusations from whistleblowers that Biden took bribes from foreign interests, accepting a purported $5 million while vice president in exchange for policy decisions beneficial to the foreign interest.
The Examiner report said, “Ramaswamy called on Satya Nadella, CEO and chairman of Microsoft, to make a statement that would ‘publicly condemn’ LinkedIn for restricting his account ‘or else this is just the beginning of 2024 election interference.’”
In a statement to supporters, Ramaswamy said, “Big Tech election interference has begun. LinkedIn locked my account and censored me this week for posting videos where I expressed fact-based views as a presidential candidate about climate policy and Biden’s relationships with China. They said it violated their policies relating to ‘misinformation, hate speech, and violence.’”
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.