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by i4k 2020 days ago
Imagine a world where you can create a blog and write anything, even discuss ideas against the "status quo". That's the world the OP lives now and he's arguing against it.

The "status quo" in the dark ages was: bigotry, fanaticism, supremacism, conspiratorial theories, anti-science, slavery, and so on. At this time, writing anything against the masses beliefs would lead to persecution and death. People died trying to educate others and at the same time others extremist ideas were born but the society learned to ignore them. The good ideas were victorious.

Remember: On May 10, 1933 around 25,000 books from 34 university towns in Germany were burned! Some of those books were unique, their ideas will never be known by society.

If you go back in time, 50 years, 100 years, 1000 years back, whatever, the society always approved horrendous ideas and few people fought back. You should never trust the "status quo" or the "justice warriors" of the internet, as they could easily be on the wrong side of history. The access to information is the solution not the problem.

In my opinion, asking for censorship shows no respect for the ones that died trying to change the world.

1 comments

There has been a trend among the progressives lately to scoff at freedom of speech as something that stands in the way of progress and majoritarian rule. Which is kinda amusing, given all the fights over it on campuses etc back in the day, that were in many cases about the rights to publicly express those political opinions that are now mainstream on the left.

But what's especially worrying is that some people do remember, and dismiss it anyway, because it "had served its purpose". That is - they explicitly say that it was never an actual principle, but merely the means to enable their propaganda when they were not in a position of power to ensure that they'd be heard. Now that they are, they don't want that tool to fall into the hands of those who "oppose progress". Same thing goes for due process rights, and some other long-held left liberal principles. Indeed, the very word "liberal" is becoming a slur further on the left, and specifically so because they see it as an ideology that protects their enemies. Much of that rhetoric is hard to distinguish from Soviet propaganda of old (take a look at question 42 here to see what I mean: https://archive.org/details/USSR100QuestionsAnswers1986/page...).

And while it's tempting to dismiss all this as some random internet rants that don't matter, it's hard to continue doing that when even ACLU is forced into changing their long-held stance to appease the social pressure and demands of newer members, and when their events are shut down by protesters chanting "liberalism is white supremacy".

Meanwhile, here's what non-authoritarian socialists thought about something similar going on 70 years ago: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

ACLU had long defended speech they hate: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/aclus-longstanding-com...

There is some weird playing the victim card here as social networks try and clean pure play disinformation campaigns on their networks. Nothing is perfect and there will be missed but there is clearly a intent towards reality rather than lies.

It's kind of the point of the lies and subjugation that cast this as a liberal conspiracy where its just a matter of not getting it right 100% of the time ( which is not possible )

Indeed, ACLU has long done so - this is why I said "even ACLU". But this particular article is misleading - they certainly did change their take on free speech after post-Charlottesville criticism from the left. It kinda dodges the issue by saying, "well, there are conflicts between rights sometimes, so we just issued a guidance on how to resolve them" - but the point is that the guidance is different from ACLU's past consistent stance.
"because it "had served its purpose""

Let me introduce you to the quote by Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

"Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off."

No wonder that these birds of a feather stick together.