The Silencing of Kennedy's Most Notable Critic
Jared Beck sued the DNC in 2016 in a landmark lawsuit. The DNC won. Legally, it can pick whoever it wants as its nominee. Now Beck is saying RFK Jr. is a sheepdog. He's banned by Twitter.
“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
[This is the latest in a series of pieces I’ve done on Kennedy and his presidential run. The latest was “Dueling -- or Logrolling -- Apartheids”.]
Today, RFK Jr. is doing a Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk. Kennedy, who talks about having been silenced with other critics of the establishment during the pandemic, something I objected to in 2021 if not earlier, has effectively used Twitter to get audiences larger than many cable TV shows.
A notable person will probably not be participating in the Twitter Spaces.
In 2016, Jared Beck with his wife and law partner Elizabeth Lee Beck put forward a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee rigging nomination process against Bernie Sanders.
In the course of the lawsuit the DNC lawyer argued before the court: “We could have voluntarily decided that, look, we’re gonna go into the back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.”
The DNC won the case.
Thus, as a matter of law, right now, the top executives of the “Democratic Party” can rig the nomination as they wish. It’s their candy store.
I emailed Beck as part of an effort to determine the true nature of Kennedy’s campaign in the Democratic primaries.
Beck replied: “While our case did not result in a positive judgment for our clients, and it ended up bringing down a lot of hardship on our legal practice, it is still gratifying that those who remember generally understand it as a kind of evidentiary ‘guidepost’ demonstrating the sham nature of our country’s elections. If you run a search on Twitter for #DNCFraudLawsuit, you will see what I mean.
“I am very pleased that there are already two law review articles that use our case as a lens to understand and address some of the perplexing and difficult problems posed by our politics of oligarchy-masquerading-as-democracy.”
Beck added: “This gives me some hope for the future, whereas our electoral system gives me no hope. Until those with the power to do so remove our elections from the control of the two parties and install a bona fide system of electoral integrity (like any institution purporting to be democratic requires), I am afraid elections will remain a form of entertainment geared toward distracting the citizenry’s attention from those who actually wield power while sucking money into the political party ecosystem.”
But what of Kennedy and his campaign?
Beck: “As to RFK, Jr. – I am afraid he is playing the Bernie Sanders role this time around, to give a ‘voice’ to the disaffected, so that this ‘voice’ may be publicly gaslit and abused in the mainstream media, used as a tool to extract funds from the disaffected for the political party system, and then deployed to sheepdog the disaffected into supporting Joe Biden. That’s how U.S. ‘electoral’ politics rolls and has rolled since at least the time RFK Jr.’s uncle was publicly executed. I can’t imagine RFK Jr. is unaware of the role he is playing. But in order to play any substantial role in the family profession, it’s the only role he would ever be allowed to have. So perhaps understandable, but no less morally despicable.”
He then added: “The fact that Elizabeth and I are still banned from Twitter – notwithstanding Elon Musk’s purported ‘general amnesty’ – demonstrates just how high the stakes are for those invested in maintaining the sham.”
Beck wrote the book What Happened to Bernie Sanders as an account of the case itself, covering the proceedings in the trial court but was written before the appeal was decided.
Beck, again, with his wife and law partner Elizabeth Lee Beck, has filed a lawsuit against Twitter. It maybe long shot, since as Reuters recently reported, in “Banned by Twitter, Florida lawyers try new tack for reinstatement” — “Twitter underscores this in its terms of service, which states that it can suspend user accounts for ‘any or no reason.’”
But the Becks obviously have a track record of putting forward serious lawsuits that break new ground and possibly planting the seeds for meaningful reforms.
They were banished from Twitter because “Elizabeth and I became thorns in the side of the Democratic Party,” Beck said.
Twitter and the DNC fundamentally have the same rationale. They effectively argue: It’s their candy store. They can do what they damn well please. Any rhetoric about “Democracy” or “Free Speech” is simply worthless propaganda for suckers.
It’s hard not to see parallel structures working in concert, limiting and manipulating what speech gets heard — and limiting and manipulating electoral prospects.
I’m not sure Beck is completely right in all he says — and hope to be writing a more detailed piece about various aspects of Kennedy’s campaign.
But it’s completely scandalous that the Becks are being silenced.
See a recent interview Kelley Lane posted with Elizabeth Lee Beck about the DNC fraud lawsuit:
We know the DNC is a shower of ****. We know RFK jr will be shunted to the side.
However he is out there on every podcast who will have him talking openly about all things that matter, no punches pulled. With the exception of Israel. Deeply disappointing that he hasn’t addressed it but prob wants to stay alive. He was in the White House as a 10 year old boy when his dad hauled in the CIA chiefs re culpability for his uncle’s assassination. He knows the landscape and the fact that right wingers will flock to vote for him is huge. I would give him money if I knew that when the DNC pull their BS that that money would go to a new party or something other than the utter appalling theatre we have now.
In soliciting questions for tonight's event I spotted at least one question asking RFK how he proposes to overcome the DNC's legal obstacles. He better address it and not just glibly say "I have no Plan B,"