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I read something today which I have long thought deep down, but hadn’t really seen spelled out elsewhere.
Namely, the censoring done by the liberal left, while there, is rather mild in the scheme of things and is probably much less than the same left would be censored by the people it currently censors if that group was in power.
The quote that brought it to my mind was from here, on Richard Hannania’s substack. After a post discussing being banned by Twitter, he drops this at the end of the article.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/saying-goodbye-to-twitter
The attitude of censoring opponents seemed to have crystallized for the left around 2016, where I distinctly remember the conversation centering around the limits of tolerating intolerant ideologies. (Which seems to have become fully settled by now, interesting to observe an ideological movement update in real time in that way).
Does Hannania have a point here? Is the issue that the right takes offense with censorship itself, or would the right if it actually gained back power censor in a much more strict and comprehensive way?
You have generalized one conservative's point of view to "enough conservatives that it would drive their policy if they had political dominance."
I don't think this was true in 2016. I think it is probably true today.
The gentleman's agreements that allow us to have freedom of thought have expired. We're in the hardball stage, and the degree of censorship is likely to only get worse as time wears on.
Counter argument: without censorship, online communities naturally drift rightward as the sacred cows of progressives are slaughtered one by one with simple evidence.
No, not so. You'd have to entice people to come back in the first place, and then engage in what we might call outright-draconian moderation to ensure that tactics that are harmful to the discussion, but do not qualify as normal censorship, are also banned.
And that's assuming communities don't just decide to take on that censorship themselves. I have yet to see anyone believe that all communities everywhere should not engage in censorship.
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Uh huh. Just like the old-fashioned Internet atheist communities destroyed by right-wing Facts and Logic.
I don't know anything about internet atheist communities. But feminism and intersectional orthodoxies don't tend to stand up well to basic inquiry by those not within the academic social setting.
What sort of orthodoxies did you have in mind?
Core tenets like “diversity is a good thing” are hard to disprove. Others like “women ought not be restricted to the home” are outside the realm of proof and into that of values.
Like women have been oppressed by a patriarchy for ten million years.
Like 1 in 4 female students will be raped on campus.
Like confusing the pay gap with the earnings gap.
Like looking at black homicide victim statistics. (Police killing black men make up less than 1% of the total.)
et cetera...
Facts are progressive Kryptonite.
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That all hinges on the meaning of "good" being used. If diversity is axiomatically accepted as virtuous in itself, then obviously its benefit can't be "disproved." But otherwise it's not so hard to provide historical and current examples of comparatively more and less diverse places and societies and make a choice.
Hardly; the expanded economic role of women can also be observed in different historical settings, and the results judged (according to the viewer's criteria, of course). For example, there is a powerful argument put forward by Liz Warren of all people that the economic and social liberation of women in the 60s doomed the middle class by creating dual-income rat races and driving up the costs of family-formation essentials like housing and childcare.
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One could argue that they were destroyed by being re-branded as right-wingers.
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