I know plenty of people who are afraid to speak out. Even having a little bit different opinion can destroy your career. But you have family and kids. What is more important?
The Google Memo guy is a brilliant example. It doesn't matter what he wrote, people wanted to destroy him and they did. No freedom from consequences...
We had a similar saying over here too. It meant a crime against the state/society. That is a reason my grandmother was not able to go to the university. Her father used to own a small two-man brick factory and by being a capitalist he committed a crime.
Your universities are filled with ignorant, blinded radical people, who don't teach thinking but dogmas. Looks like the KGB work started to take effect a little too late.[0]
People reading it I'm a republican nutjob, but believe me, having once lived in that kind of society they are pretty close to the truth on that. Wrong on many other things.
Concentration of power into international corporations that know everything about everyone is dangerous also, not least because of the potential for blackmail against any that oppose some action those corporations wish to take.
That said, while some of your criticisms of the left ring true, you seem quite unaware of similar authoritarian monoculture tendencies in the right wing.
Hilariously predictably, it strictly only scares them when it's not their person in power. We get to watch this rotating clown show every few years, where the left suddenly wakes up again and pretends to be against concentration of power or various rights abuses (Clinton to Bush, Obama to Trump). When it was Obama abusing his power, they were as silent as could be (except for a few fringe people like John Cusack or Cindy Sheehan, who both got ostracized for speaking out - they were consistent in their beliefs - once it was a liberal in office).
If it were Hillary in there abusing power right now, they'd be just as silent as they were a year ago. There are more people willing to speak up against abuses of civil liberties on the left than there are on the right, it's still always a small bunch when you've got a Democrat in the Presidency (people like Ron Wyden).
And the fact that I am also left, is what triggers me off. I'm sure I don't understand all the details but believe me seeing the whole media circus from here, you see it also from a very different angle.
Your critique is correct, the right is every bit as brutal about censorship when it comes to a context of authoritarianism. The left in the US is progressive (to varying degrees) in mentality, adopts technology much faster, and gets to utilizing new tools (in this case online) for censorship much faster accordingly.
The interesting thing about the left in regards to censorship is two fold: they (used to) pretend to be the champions of free speech and civil liberties, that makes them a dangerous fake protector. They can strip your civil liberties much easier, as their own base will remain quasi-silent (as we saw in the Obama era), while the right often won't protest because they agree with the abuses. This is fundamentally why the left was able to put us into Vietnam: there was nobody left to stand in the way of it, the right (more inclined to war) was naturally going to agree with the premise.
They're also fast adopters of technology. In my opinion people in the more left half of the political spectrum (call them Democrats or whatever makes sense), on average, move substantially faster as adopters of technology (Clinton & Obama were far more technologically progressive than the Bushes or Trump). The big platforms are all extremely left in their political bias, deriving from the people who work there, the memo was correct in that regard - not to mention credible people like Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel have noted this publicly for years. These platforms are/were built by young people, who (likely inherently) do not tend toward conservatism.
It makes perfect sense that social platforms founded by people with a left wing bias, including: Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Google - would then link up with left-favoring ideology/politics/causes when it comes to what they allow on their platforms, or what ideas they tolerate.
The left are the fast(er) adopters of technology, at least in the US. Of course they're going to get to using these tools for censorship before the slow-moving conservatives do. The far more scary part, is when the right catches up, and both sides are gun-ho about abusing technology for censorship.
Disagree. The internet used to be more libertarian, even just a few years ago. This turn to authoritarianism coincides with an influx of late adopters.
In the '90's we believed that Freedom on the Internet was unassailable because all the talented engineers wouldn't work for or participate in all the sleazy stuff, in fact would actively fight it. The best cryptographers, security researchers, etc, were on "our side". How naive we were.
A better way of framing it is authoritarian-libertarian. Some authority is useful, but too much is highly corrupting.
Currently a section of the left is rather authoritarian and dogmatic. In the past the same has been true of the right.
Nazis are literally holding rallies in downtown Charlottesville with torches and yelling kill jews. One just ran over people counter-demonstrating in the streets. But yea it's the left who are a threat.
We have a president who refuses to condemn white nationalism. He has repeatedly issued calls to violence and wants to rough up journalists. But yes, it is the left who are endangering our free speech.
A close advisor to the president, Gorka, wore a Hungarian nationalist pin to Trump's inauguration - this group were nazi collaborators. He says that the bombing of a Minnesota mosque could've been a "false flag" and he has refused to condemn white nationalists. But yea it's the left who are a threat to our wellbeing.
You're observing a response to authoritarianism on the left. We can expect increased conflict between ideologues on both sides of the political spectrum.
The actual number of neo-Nazis is very small but we hear more about them because they're the greatest troublemakers and because of history.
There are many disgruntled conservatives and former lefists who are also upset about authoritarism on the left. The neo-Nazis are using their sentiment as fuel, so to speak.
We can see a similar thing happening with Antifa emboldend by the current clout of social Marxism.