Today, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) and Media Freedom Project (MFP) issued a statement condemning the decision by Free Press to reject even the mildest consensus of network management in any new FCC guidelines regarding Internet non-discrmination. Even moderate Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine has accepted a basic level of freedom for network owners.

Socialist Media Org. Shows Extremist Stripes

Free Press attacks even basic assumptions accepted by ‘net neutrality’ supporters like Sen. Snowe

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. –Free Press, a socialist media organization headed by Marxist Robert McChesney, former editor of the leading communist Monthly Review, has now even rejected a nascent baseline of consensus (including several champions of so-called “net neutrality”) admitting at least the requirement of basic technological functionality of network management in any new FCC guidelines for ensuring non-discrimination. McChesney’s group has continued to stake out a radical position in letters to the FCC, its latest on December 15.

 

Since the Obama FCC has taken root, Free Press has held sway in the Commission, with the socialist organization’s former communications director having moved over to the FCC’s employ. There are some small signals of a potential new reasonableness at the FCC, however, and the hard-left property abolitionists at Free Press have reacted with attempts to derail even the smallest potential for rapprochement.

 

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) and its Media Freedom Project (MFP) have argued strongly against the government monitoring, regulating and administering scheme, ironically known as ‘net neutrality,’ which is the current primary goal of Free Press. The free market is the best force for allocating bandwidth and online goods and services argues ATR President Grover Norquist, just as it is for the allocation of pizzas and auto parts.

 

“The Internet and the online marketplace are a rare bright spot in the U.S. economy. Attempts by the left to force government regulation of the Internet under so-called net-neutrality would bring it to its knees. Along the way, Americans’ most fundamental freedoms would careen off the information superhighway and into a crevasse,” the taxpayer leader and free-market advocate said.

 

While ATR and the MFP have staked out a position of economic freedom for the Internet since the beginning, over the last weeks even erstwhile advocates of new regulation such as moderate Republican Olympia Snowe (Maine), have begun to accept a basic level of freedom for network owners to manage their own networks in order to provide for traffic flow. But McChesney’s Free Press is attacking any reasonable standard that permits sensible network management as completely unacceptable.

 

“The only solution ultimately acceptable to the hard left like Free Press is the socialist, public-utility model,” argued MFP Executive Director Christopher Butler. “The disabling demands of Free Press will bring down the networks that constitute the Internet and they know it. Their goal is a complete government takeover and they know the way to achieve it; by destroying the present system.”

 

MFP noted that Free Press’ Robert McChesney has stated “What we want…is an Internet that is not private property, but a public utility,” and “we need to do whatever we can to limit capitalist propaganda…perhaps even eliminate it.” McChesney has noted that control of the Internet and other media is a prerequisite for total societal reorganization along Marxist/ socialist principles.

 

Click here to obtain a printable .pdf of the document.