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This may or may not be true, but the US doesn't have an Anglo political system. It has its own thing, which has a lot more veto points, asymmetric representation, and parliamentary rules which allow a minority to veto new legislation. Plus an electorate that seems to like divided government (in contrast to many parliamentary systems where divided government isn't even possible). In order to enact major legislative changes in the US you either need to convince diametrically opposed factions to cooperate or win an absolutely overwhelming victory (or bite the bullet and abolish the filibuster).
Absent that, you're pretty much stuck with executive discretion or lobbying the Supreme Court to declare that not doing what you want is unconstitutional.
Here I think we're going to hit an impasse, because I don't think right-wing populists in the US are being censored. I think they are (especially their more extremist representatives) attempting to frame losing soft power conflicts (or even just getting hit with the banhammer for TOS violations) as censorship.
Let's just say I will believe you don't think it's censorship only when you get hit by it to the same extent, and maintain that position. But either way losing soft power conflicts does not imply lack of popularity, it implies losing influence at centers of soft power, and what I said above still stands - you wouldn't need to pull strings at the centers of soft power if what you were trying to silence was truly unpopular.
Like I said, I don't think there's any chance of us coming to an agreement on this. What far-right American populists are experiencing is novel only in that it is falling on them for the first time in a very long time.
Multiple issues here.
First: People don't act on their beliefs out of need, they act on them out of sincerity (or at least a desire to signal sincerity). Religious conservatives don't persecute trans and gay people out of need; they do it because they genuinely believe these things to be immoral.
Second: you can be winning a contest and still correctly feel threatened by your opponent. To resort to sports metaphor, the second lowest form of argument: being ahead doesn't preclude the other team from staging a come back. Or cheating. Or doing something really weird, like pulling a gun. Especially when the game never actually ends and the only way you can really 'win' is to crush your opponent so badly they're forced to fire half the players (and half the fans) and try and poach some of your guys.
I'm not asking you to agree with me, I'm asking you to prove you actually believe what you say. For example, setting aside the fact that the people this is happening to mostly aren't right-wing (let alone far-right), American, or populist, since you're saying it isn't novel, can you give a few examples of it happening to a group you favor, and then elaborate on how you think this is not censorship at all, and it's a perfectly good way for a society to function.
To me it looks like you went of on a tangent. Nothing you said here addresses my argument that the people losing the soft power conflicts aren't unpopular, and that if they were unpopular, you wouldn't need to exercise soft power to silence them.
David Shor, a man for whom I have a lot of sympathies, was somewhat famously fired at the behest of a twitter mob for saying that rioting was a poor method of achieving policy goals. This was not censorship. I might prefer that people saying reasonable things didn't suffer serious professional consequences, but there's no way to do that without fatally compromising freedom of speech and association. If Civis wanted to disassociate from Shor for dumb reasons, that's their prerogative. To do otherwise would require allowing extremists (or anyone, really) to hold audiences hostage.
And this is a much more substantial injury that your typical far right grifter has, which is usually that they got banned from Twitter for blatant TOS violations.
No, the point is that your model is wrong. It doesn't matter whether or not some behavior is needful, because needfulness is only one possible motivation.
You're free to peruse stats about younger generations' views on race, religion, gender, sexuality, immigration, etc... Or just take a look at how right-wing populists keep losing what ought to be easily winnable elections.
Last I checked censorship was mere the suppression of speech by an authority, but arguing over definitions is probably the least interesting form of discussion that can be had.
If that's the case it's a bit odd you insist that people complaining about censorship / "losing soft power conflicts" are mostly "right wing American populists".
I did not realize that was my model. In fact, I am still not realizing it. I'm actually pretty sure it's not.
Why? Last I checked the world consisted of more than just younger generations, and they're an every-shrinking group. Also, let me write the questions for these surveys, and I'll get the answers I want too. It's a weird argument to make given everything you said about soft power.
Why? The point is that David Shor - someone who I do not regard as a political adversary, per your accusation of one-sidedness - was the victim of a social media mob that got him fired. Not that he spent a lot of time complaining about "censorship" i.e. being moderated on social media (he doesn't)
The people complaining loudest and longest about 'censorship' on social media are right-wing populists - Trumpists and the like, or people even further right like groypers.
It sure appears that way:
I'm not sure how else to interpret it.
The people complaining loudest and longest about censorship are disaffected liberals, called "rightwing populists" by some. They have loudly complained about the David Shor case as it was happening, which you will find if you search /r/TheMotte or SSC (not sure which one was hosting the CW thread at the time) for his name. The fact that you're trying to use his case to your advantage and against people who were bringing his case to light is insane, and why it's hard for me to believe you don't count him as your adversary.
Simple: people prefer to expand as little effort as possible, and true unpopularity would kill an idea while expanding essentially zero effort.
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