Can you imagine a politician forbidding your children from reading books and censoring the ones you read?

A characteristic of all authoritarian politicians is treating adults as incapable of raising their children and lacking the judgment to make decisions.

Pedro Sánchez attacks the right to privacy and compares using a social network with buying a gun
Why so much interest in regulating social media and not tributes to terrorists?

According to these politicians, they are the ones who should decide how you educate your children and what you should read. Some believe that this way of thinking belongs to the past, but nothing could be further from the truth. Politicians like this still exist in democratic countries, and the socialist Pedro Sánchez is one of them.

The digital censorship announced by Sánchez for minors and adults

This Tuesday, from a country with an authoritarian regime (the United Arab Emirates), Pedro Sánchez announced a series of measures against social media. The most widely reported measure is the ban on its use by minors under 16, a measure that sends a clear message to families from the Spanish socialist leader: Sánchez will decide how to raise your children because he considers you incapable of doing so. Until now, parents have monitored minors' use of new technologies, but Sánchez considers this insufficient.

This flagship measure, launched to grab headlines, conceals a very clear form of censorship, which has also been exposed by the Spanish Prime Minister in his announcement today: Sánchez has announced sanctions against social media platforms "if they do not remove content that violates the law or is considered hate speech". It is significant that he is not limiting himself to demanding the removal of illegal content, which should be the only content prohibited in a democratic country. What is "hate speech"? Well, whatever Sánchez says. It's not hard to imagine what his government will label that way, because he's already been doing it: In 2023, Sánchez called Vox, the third most voted party in Spain, the "party of hate," and like other left-wing politicians, the Spanish socialist leader has a habit of labeling as "hate" anything that contradicts his ideological dogmas.

A measure imposed by a government complicit with the Venezuelan dictatorship

It's worth remembering that Spain has a coalition government of socialists and communists. I think it's necessary to emphasize this because it's the only EU government with ministers who support communism, a totalitarian movement that has established dozens of dictatorships, some of which still subjugate a fifth of the world's population.

That's the government that will prohibit your children from accessing social media and will also censor the ones you use. If you're wondering what idea of ​​freedom and democracy that government has, remember that Sánchez and his partners voted in 2024 against asking the dictator Nicolás Maduro to end his brutal repression in Venezuela, a country where that socialist dictatorship has perpetrated politically motivated arrests, subjecting detainees to torture, sexual violence, and even extrajudicial executions. That's the idea of ​​democracy behind a guy like Pedro Sánchez.

A modern-day book burning by a left wing that supports censorship

We must also remember that in 2022, after acquiring that social network, Elon Musk revealed the censorship that politicians in various countries were imposing on Twitter, thus undermining the exercise of freedom of expression through extrajudicial and undemocratic means. In this new phase initiated by Musk at Twitter, he set himself the goal of restoring freedom of expression. The left's response was to call for people to abandon Twitter because they could no longer arbitrarily censor their rivals. For the more authoritarian left, a social network is only acceptable if it has the power to censor any opinion it doesn't like.

Sánchez fully shares this anti-democratic view of social media. In fact, a year ago he attacked the right to privacy and compared using a social network to buying a gun, a colossal absurdity that had a very clear purpose: to demonize what he cannot control and censor. Perhaps some have already forgotten, but it is The same method used by totalitarians (also by communists) to justify book burnings during the 20th century, a method taken up by the extreme left a few years ago to make those books that are not to their liking disappear, including the Bible.

After denouncing Franco, Sánchez imitates the methods of his dictatorship

The current Spanish government's eagerness to control social media has intensified, moreover, with the corruption scandals affecting Sánchez and his inner circle and the collapse of the Spanish left in the polls. More and more Spaniards are getting their news from social media, which is why Sánchez wants to censor it, just as others wanted to censor books when they were the primary vehicle for transmitting ideas. Paradoxically, while Sánchez denounces Franco's dictatorship, he dedicates himself to imitating its methods of censorship, methods that he has even threatened to impose on the media, in an attempt to intimidate the journalists who are exposing socialist corruption.

Sánchez, Largo Caballero and the PP's pitiful response

The digital censorship announced today by Sánchez is another step towards a dictatorship. Of course, we Spaniards cannot claim we weren't warned: In 2022, Sánchez said he would imitate Francisco Largo Caballero, stating: "He acted as we want to act today". During the Second Republic, Largo Caballero, then leader of the PSOE (Sánchez's party), defended a "socialist dictatorship". So, that's not what's new. What is new is that instead of rejecting this authoritarian drift, the Popular Party has limited itself to presenting amendments that do not question the essence of Sánchez's authoritarian plan. What kind of political opposition is this?

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Photo: PSOE.