As if it wasn’t obvious enough to everyone in the world, the courts have ruled. Elon Musk uses his ill-gotten gains to punish speech and censor critics.

“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation,” wrote District Judge Charles Breyer, of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, in the order’s opening lines. “Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose.”

“This case represents the latter circumstance,” Breyer continued. “This case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech.”

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[Elon Musk] “wishes to have it both ways,” trying to impose “punishing damages” on CCDH but without having to clear the high bar of a defamation suit.

See also: strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP).

…lawsuits meant to censor, intimidate, or silence critics by saddling them with legal defense costs until they drop their criticism.

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Since taking over… Musk has allowed Nazis and the Taliban on Twitter—and even verified them. He also has done nothing to rein in antisemitic and transphobic speech on the platform. If anything, he’s one of the main sources of it.

Nazis and Taliban were welcomed, while antisemitic, racist, transphobic, mysogynist attacks were promoted via robots as if by design.

Then Elon Musk tried to censor prominent researchers who exposed the obvious hate rally.

If anything, America should (in these troubled times of Twitter and Palantir attempting extrajudicial control over society) acknowledge a significance of the 1837 murder of Lovejoy. A man was attacked by white supremacist mobs, who murdered him and destroyed his printing press, because he dared to report on their threats to democracy.

Related: Boeing is alleged to have assassinated a prominent whistleblower.

Also related: Russian leaders continue falling to their death