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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?
It depends on the people in question, I'd imagine. I doubt there's currently any shortage of moderate Reds, your Rod Drehers and so forth, who still cling to "enlightenment values" and "Constitutional Principles", who derived great pleasure and satisfaction from the dash and élan of the middlegame. I think there's less and less of them over time, though, because they lose too goddamn always.
Censorship is a constant. Free speech, to the extent that it has ever existed as anything other than a polite fiction, is unstable and unsustainable. It destroys itself. Progressives are correct that they are only doing what everyone everywhere has always done: setting bounds on acceptable speech, and then policing violations thereof. Reds failed at this responsibility when last we had a workable amount of social control. This was a mistake, and we suffer now for it. If we should secure power in some eventuality, it would be regrettable in the extreme to fall victim to the same foolishness again.
This is too totalizing and bleak. It's a matter of degree of censorship, and approximation to liberal attitudes on speech. It hasn't been exactly like it is now since forever, otherwise we wouldn't all be talking about censorship in the current era as if something important really has changed in the last decade or so.
Tangentially, speaking in terms of "we shouldn't let that happen again, so let's censor harder," fails to grasp that there are a number of disagreements within one's own tribe or political camp.
Demonstrate that more moderate stances can solve or even significantly ameliorate the problem, and I'll happily concede.
What's different this time, in the main, comes down to tech centralization, mutual reinforcement of Blue-Tribe centers of power, and the unusual fervor generated by peculiarities of the Progressive worldview. Progressivism has been a serious contender since the founding of the nation, but the fight didn't have to go this way, and I think it evident that it did go this way in large part through naïve trust in "enlightenment principles" that were never, ever going to hold.
And sure, there are a great many disagreements within all tribes or political camps. Have faith in human nature, give it a little more time. The escalation spiral works its magic, and such disagreements resolve themselves.
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