Matt Taibbi asks: “Are Authorities Using the Internet to Sap Our Instinct for Freedom?”
Here’s what Taibbi has to say on the matter:
It wasn’t hard to understand why the FBI was organizing a censorship scheme, or why companies like Twitter and Facebook that lived off lucrative regulatory subsidies were going along with one. The motives of the powerful actors in all this were never mysterious. The part that didn’t compute was why so many in the general public were accepting of the situation. This included people I knew. Many people in America are not just accepting of digital censorship, they believe it to be vitally necessary.
Growing up I was very influenced by organizations like Nadine Strossen’s ACLU. Liberals I knew were as proud of having fought to let Nazis march in Skokie as they were ashamed of the FBI and police in cities like Memphis having spied on Martin Luther King.
Taibbi’s answer has to do with the internet and its ability to influence thought without the consumer necessarily know it’s happening:
First [Americans] became addicted to the Internet as a tool of convenience. Then it became a cheap substitute for real-life interaction. Finally they learned to submit to the wisdom of crowds, which on the Internet, as we also found out, is really an artificial representation of a crowd, generated by political and social engineers from the FBI, DHS, the Pentagon, Meta, Google, and other bureaucracies.
Yes, the internet shapes thought, in particular social media but also search engines. I first noticed many years ago that search engines – Google in particular – had changed, and the information to which the algorithm led users was not politically neutral. Simply put, it favored Democrats and the left. So I agree that this is huge.
But I think Taibbi misses something, which is the inherent bias. The artificial crowd being represented is a left-leaning crowd, and therein lies the key to why so many organizations and people who are liberal or on the left, who used to speak in favor of free speech, are now all in for censorship. It’s because it’s censorship on behalf of their side. Their people are the censors, so it’s all to the good.
Their devotion seemed to have been to free speech, but it never really was. It was contingent on their fear that they would become the censored ones. Now that the Gramscian march is nearly complete, they are no longer afraid of that, because they are in control. So censorship becomes a virtue when practiced by the virtuous – which they define as themselves.
Twas ever thus.
There are still some old-fashioned liberals or even a few on the left who champion free speech and are against censorship, and I admire them. I’m thinking of Dershowitz and Turley and yes, Taibbi. But there’s a blind spot there, at least in Taibbi. The devotion of many liberals and leftists to a neutral principle of free speech was never as neutral and principled as it seemed.
As for the American right, it is my impression that for the moment, many more people on the right are against censorship. But I’m not sure how neutral that stand is, and how it would change if the right was doing the censoring. I do think that, in general, the right is less “ends justifies the means” than the left, and that people to whom liberty is more important naturally tend to gravitate to the right these days. But people are people, and it’s my impression that a devotion to liberty must be taught and inculcated in order to really take hold.
As Reagan said:
Didn’t the pandemic measures teach you that it was all for the Greater Good? Get vaccinated and get on with social distancing and ritual mask wearing? Save The World!
Well then, you are a dissident and you MUST BE shut down! It’s for the Greater Good of All.
Yes–this “reasoning” surrounds us. And yes, here we reflect the weariness of it all.
And they do not know that ALL censorship regimes “reason” the same way.
I have strong opinions. I am a Free Speech absolutist. I’m also a contrarian.
I got kicked off of Twitter. Again. I got kicked off the first time for supplying a caption to a picture of Putin on a video screen and Biden at a table. The caption was, “We will bury you.” Everyone here knows who said that first and the context.
I came back under a different name. I was relentless against NE Dems on this trans thing. The screaming and chanting redhead state senator (M. Cavanaugh) blocked me from replying because of my “bullying” or some such nonsense word. Two state senators blocked me; contrary to law.
The Dems figured out it was me and they kept using my real name. They posted personal stuff about me.
The Dems can’t tolerate different opinions so that’s why they need to cancel and censor dissidents. It’s a disgrace and unAmerican.
So, one Dem complained to Twitter and once banned, you’re banned for life. The first ban, under the Dorsey, regime was wrong in the first place.
AMZN deleted about a dozen years of my book reviews because I don’t believe in CAGW.
A Creighton sports message board had an off topic section. I got into it with the libs; mostly on CAGW. I got banned. But I came back 2 or 3 times. They recognized my writing style. My last post was about Free Speech. Turns out Creighton is full of libs.
Dem censorship is one of the biggest problems we have today.
I absolutely hate the Dem party. They are on the way of destroying America.
“Their devotion seemed to have been to free speech, but it never really was. It was contingent on their fear that they would become the censored ones. Now that the Gramscian march is nearly complete, they are no longer afraid of that, because they are in control. So censorship becomes a virtue when practiced by the virtuous – which they define as themselves.”
— Landlord neo, thenewneo dot com
Yes, just so . . .
“When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.”
— Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
Because Freedom of Speech is far too important to allow the hoi polloi, the riff-raff and the white supremacists to abuse it…
…and WE decide and define—since WE are the ONLY ONES who can be relied upon to do so—exactly who (and what) the hoi polloi, the riff-raff and the white supremacists are.
That way WE can protect OUR democracy…(oh, and OURSELVES)…while ensuring that OUR uber-toxic opponents—INSURRECTIONISTS and DANGERS TO DEMOCRACY all of ’em—are kept at bay.)
File under: L’etat, c’est NOUS.
My husband, in the early 2000s, told his many international colleagues that Americans cherish their freedoms and will defend them. This doesn’t seem to be true for many these days.
The rub always comes when it becomes necessary to accept that our Rights are granted by the Creator, not man. Man is the only one that disputes this, but the dispute always centered on your Rights.
I’m sure there have been plenty of conservative censors in past eras who enjoyed the comfort of a position of advantage and didn’t want to let it go of the power. But on the whole, I think conservative thinkers understand the importance of accepting different viewpoints as valid and worthy of consideration, perhaps even worth eventually incorporating. It’s a little ironic that conservatives are perhaps more inclined to allow change, if it’s constructive. They are certainly more willing to argue and debate in good faith.
Meanwhile, the Progressive Left openly channels Marxism, Leninism, Maoism and folds those principles into its daily activities.
I do sometimes get frustrated with Taibbi, and also with Taibbi & Kirn on their weekly broadcast, because they sometimes seem a little dense, slow to recognize these strategies as they are unfolding, as they comment on the unseemliness of the behavior that identifies it, without connecting the dots. Sometimes, they just don’t seem to get it.
I don’t blame the common Americans for not resisting more than they do. The “professional” govt employ has allowed the totalitarians increble access to tools that can punish and destroy people. Not to mention the rage the the extremists has seeped into the common voter.
Resisting has incredible costs with little rewards. The media “cons” tickle the left and punch right which leaves the unaligned with a very narrow field.
Taibbi can’t admit that his leftist bed mates have always been totalitarian assholes. To do so would expose him as being even more foolish in his past beliefs than he has currently been willing to admit.
@ stan > “Taibbi can’t admit that his leftist bed mates have always been totalitarian assholes.”
He is dancing around that realization.
https://www.racket.news/p/where-have-all-the-liberals-gone
A sampling of contrasting actions follows, showing that “his leftist bed-mates” have totally reversed their positions, because of course their only real position is “what advances the Left’s Agenda.”
I didn’t try to read them all — I do think this one is on target.
@ stan > “Taibbi can’t admit that his leftist bed mates have always been totalitarian assholes.”
Change is hard for everyone.
Note all the “National Review” types who couldn’t cope with Trump’s populism and decided their only choice was to break off from the post-Trump GOP or even vote Democrat.
I think much of this is loyalty to the tribe they thought they belonged to.
Would you be able to hold to your principles if all your friends and political allies suddenly were against them?
I did and I lost more than 80% of my social support. I didn’t realize I was taking such a risk. I was a serious progressive, but I assumed we are all good liberals when it came to disagreements.
If I had known the risk, I believe I would have done so anyway — Joan of Arc is my patron saint — but I would have given it more thought and perhaps tried to find a softer landing.
Well, at least heretics in America aren’t burnt at the stake just yet.
@ huxley > “I was a serious progressive, but I assumed we are all good liberals when it came to disagreements.”
IIRC, that his socialist colleagues were not “all good liberals” is the same realization that precipitated Orwell’s writings.
Related…a very powerful “J’accuse” against the grotesque betrayal of the Liberal Media and Infotech—of Liberals generally—and their collusion with what can only be termed Big Brother…
“The New Censorship;
“How the establishment Left embraced government control of digital speech”—
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-new-censorship-2
H/T Powerline blog.
No, not quite burning anyone at the stake. Not yet at least…but the incineration of trust and the bonds that hold an open—and decent, trusting (for the most part)—society together
– – – – – – – –
Another incisive, disturbing analysis from the same author—Martin Gurri—but then we live in disturbing, lamentable times…:
“Truth After the Apocalypse;
“Our new reality is a competition between differing versions of reality.”—
https://www.city-journal.org/article/truth-after-the-apocalypse
+ Bonus:
“Real Journalism in an Anti-Journalism Age”—
https://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2023/07/13/real_journalism_in_an_anti-journalism_age_965967.html
H/T Powerline blog.