Socialism Behind “Net Neutrality” FCC Internet Takeover

Socialism Behind “Net Neutrality” FCC Internet Takeover

FCC's proposed "net neutrality" rules grew out of the work of socialists

Image Credits: Jason Hargrove / Flickr

The FCC’s proposed “Net Neutrality” regulations grew out of the work of a socialist professor who wants to take control of the Internet out of private hands by declaring it a “public utility.”

The professor, Dr. Robert McChesney of the University of Illinois, founded the socialist thinktank Free Press in 2002, which receives funding from billionaire activist George Soros.
“At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies, but the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control,” he told the website SocialistProject in 2009.
Here’s some more quotes from McChesney revealing the FCC’s true agenda:

“What we want to have in the U.S. and in every society is an Internet that is not private property, but a public utility. We want an Internet where you don’t have to have a password and that you don’t pay a penny to use. It is your right to use the Internet.”
(Media Capitalism, the State and 21st Century Media Democracy Struggles: An Interview with Robert McChesney – The Bullet Socialist Project, August 9, 2009)

“Advertising is the voice of capital. We need to do whatever we can to limit capitalist propaganda, regulate it, minimize it, and perhaps even eliminate it. The fight against hyper-commercialism becomes especially pronounced in the era of digital communications.”
(Media Capitalism, the State, and 21st Century Media Democracy Struggles: An Interview with Robert McChesney – The Bullet Socialist Project, September 8, 2009)

“Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism. It is impossible to conceive of a better world with a media system that remains under the thumb of Wall Street and Madison Avenue, under the thumb of the owning class.”
(Journalism, Democracy, … and Class Struggle – Monthly Review, November 2000)

“There is no real answer (to the U.S. economic crisis) but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”
(A New New Deal under Obama? (with John Bellamy Foster) – Monthly Review, December 21, 2008)

“Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism.”
(The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers – Nation, March 18, 2009)

McChesney’s managing director at Free Press, Craig Aaron, had this to say:

“We need a law that says, no matter what kind of network you’re on—wired, wireless, I forget, there’s some other network coming in the future—that net neutrality applies.”
(Interview with Robert McChesney – Media Matters Public Radio show, March 22, 2009)

And McChesney’s former policy director at Free Press, Ben Scott, also said:

“Increasingly the Internet is no longer a commercial service, it’s an infrastructure…What we’re witnessing at the FCC now is the logical next step which is we are going to create a regulatory framework for the Internet which recognizes it is an infrastructure now and not a commercial service.”
(C-SPAN: The Communicators – C-Span, September 25, 2009)

Free Press has welded extraordinary influence over the Obama administration for the past several years.
“[Former FCC Chairman Julius] Genachowski’s press secretary at the FCC, Jen Howard, used to handle media relations at Free Press,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “The FCC’s [former] chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd, co-authored a Free Press report calling for regulation of political talk radio.”
Lloyd’s report, entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, advocated draconian measures to limit free speech on AM and FM stations under the guise of “balanced radio programming,” i.e. a fairness doctrine.
“While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, conservative talk continues to be pushed out over the airwaves in greater multiples of hours than progressive talk is broadcast,” the report stated, oversimplifying politics into a false left/right paradigm. “These empirical findings may not be surprising given general impressions about the format, but they are stark and raise serious questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.”
The FCC wants to similarly restrict political free speech on the Internet.