The rise of the internet and a new age of authoritarianism
harpers.org
harpers.org
If you want to find corruption, then "Follow the money." If you want to find authoritarians, you can follow the flow of fundamental things in much the same way:
- Who is doing the silencing?
- Who is engaging in coercion?
- Who wishes for the power to coerce?
- Who is using violence?
- Who is distorts the truth to push agendas?
- Who eschews the universal for the momentarily convenient?
The best thing to do is to let people have their voice. There's no authoritarian nonsense, no matter how virulent, which lasts forever and is immune to general good sense. It might take awhile, but people eventually come around.
A note of caution: there are a lot of villains who thought they were on the side of good, who turned out to be the opposite. When you've given up on convincing, and you're starting to shout, to hate, and to want to coerce people, you're probably on the wrong side of history.
Hitler was only in power for a decade or so and did a lot of damage to say the least.
So I'll admit the situation is too complicated for me to really say this honestly, but the real issue the Germans faced was that they had lost WWI and a bunch of foreign powers were extracting large amounts of wealth from them. They eventually snapped and responded with violence. The fact that the focus when they snapped was Nazi ideology was unfortunate, but the problem wasn't the ideology - it was that foreigners were taking their wealth and the government failed to keep people fed, sheltered and employed.
This is pretty blatant Nazi apologist rhetoric. Many groups have been wronged by foreign and domestic powers for decades, and they did not all respond with large-scale mechanized genocide. The buildup and virulent spread of focused hate in Nazi Germany was unique and can't be explained by a simple external geo-political power struggle.
I did admit it was complicated. But the state of the economy was clearly a contributer to the rise of the Nazi party. It isn't like Hitler got in because the Germans just went crazy one day and thought the dude was a great guy to lead. He got in because the country was collapsing anyway.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_t...
Which doesn't explain the Nazis' profound hatred of Jews, gays, and the disabled.
Racism was a mainstream position back then. For example, US black population got full rights only in the 60's.
The horror of nazis was not that they were some deranged mob of gangsters that only german subconscious could put up with. The horror of nazis was that they could have happened anywhere. They are a historys dark mirror showing to all societies a very bad example of what could be.
What was unique in Nazi germany was the industrialized efficiency with which the horror of genocide was implemented. IBM:s machines played a no small part in that.
The nation of Goethe and Beethoven plunged into a total inhuman batshit insanity. Another horrible aspect of this was the ease people could go on with it - "just doing my duty and following orders". Some people did the final horror of killing, but the precursor to that was the industrial labour and logistical planning of getting the people to the slaughterhouse. The system that funneled people to their doom was absolutely chilling in it's efficiency. And it could have happened everywhere as well.
Yes. In addition to libertarians, there are also center-left classical liberals and scientists who are concerned about politically motivated science denial.
That's a decidedly right-wing power fantasy.
The people on the left using violence are using it to fight the extreme right directly.
E: for clarity, I am speaking from a modern left-wing position, specifically the libertarian left, which is the strongest left-wing current today. Unfortunately the so-called "left"-wing in many Western countries has drifted to the right, which is absolutely deleterious.
Not sure of the context you meant, but in the general context left can be bullish on authoritarianism.
a) would not have authoritarians
b) hence could not implement authoritarian power structure if it became prominent
History has shown that authoritarianism can rise in what ever political ideology.
Pretending that ones political collaborators did not include at least some potential authoritarians (even if not vocal) is politically quite naive, despite what the common accepted mainstream position in ones party is.
They're also a relatively tiny group of ridiculous LARPers that no one takes seriously.
The far right says the same.
This idea that the left are the good guys and care about the poor and vulnerable it’s their m.o. since the beginning but any serious book about the 20th century will obliterate that image.
People from the left have practiced extreme authoritarianism in the past (Stalin, Mao, Khmer Rouge).
There's no reason to think they won't in the future.
The extreme left and right behave exactly the same way, while saying different things.
Analysing left v right is less useful than analysing authoritarian v non-authoritarian.
Btw, your use of left-wing term is the classical No true Scotsman fallacy.
There are extremists on both sides. Anyone living in a highly developed first world country using violence to "defend" their ideals is an extremist. They're only feeding extremism on the other side and it's why political divides keep growing deeper, despite the internet and social networks theoretically allowing more people of different beliefs to come together and discuss differences.
That's why "decorum" doesn't work. Fascism must be opposed at all turns, by all means. Otherwise they will succeed in moving the overton window even further to the right.
That's not what we're doing. We're not silencing anyone, only fighting back when they try to spread hatred and incite violence against minorities.
It is resistance, not aggression.
Not sure if serious... "Libertarian left" is not even close to being the strongest libertarian current today, so to suggest that it's "the strongest left-wing current" is beyond ludicrous. Don't get me wrong I even think left-libertarianism has a lot to go for from a purely intellectual POV, but that's some serious wishful thinking.
Let's not forget that the Progressives lauded Hitler and his eugenics program in the 30s shall we.
The strongest left-wing group today is the Communist Party of China...
There are those who say this is precisely what is happening with California.
And, as Engelbart predicted, it has created a race. Lets take a look on online content, and we see that - because of vested interests - there's very little in-depth content available (at any price) and plenty of superficial content to foster the dangerous. (What's there has largely not been a concern of SV.)
Television (and FM radio before it, as the creators of both complained) played a similar role (with better control-rods) before the net. Pouring out thoughtless sludge creates the expected result.
Yeeeesss but, and it's a huge but, auto-didacticism in particular has huge risks. Misapprehension of core knowledge self acquired is remarkably hard to shift. Hence, huge numbers of ant vaxx, anti agw and like movements with self sustaining belief about science data and it's interpretation.
Monkton is a prime example. Tries to claim authority vested in his own interpretation of the science inputs.
I guess I'm agreeing.
Never mind the documented cases of data fraud, it's because "auto-didactic."
If this were important, surely some scientist would have found holes in the theories no? This "fraud" of which you speak appears to be a non-issue amongst scientists.
That's a dangerous way to think. Isn't data fraud, particularly when in line with an alleged agenda, something that should be vexing? You don't think it's possible that the same shunning that occurs in non academic settings towards deniers might occur in the sciences? In which case perhaps scientists aren't willing to risk careers and funding to go against the grain, if they are even concious of any bias. I imagine most young people are entering into this field now treating agw as confirmed fact.
And if you combine that with the all of the ways in which the scientific institution is currently broken (p value abuse/misuse, publish or perish, reproducibility crisis), it's very possible for an artificial, or massaged, narrative to come to dominate discourse even if it isn't quite true...
The only people I've seen who are worried about it are either propagandists or autodidacts.
Not using the term propagandiat loosely. Referring to people at industry funded think tanks. But others who thrive on being "contrarian" and self educated always seem to reference this "fraud" even though there seems to be nothing to it.
Added some quotes to my original post to clarify.
Yes, and they have. But you ignore them and slander them and then say "see, nobody has found any holes!".
Are you sure the huge risks are attributable to auto-didacticism itself and not to the decreased cost of nation-state influencers to stir the pot in any or all of those categories of bunk?
I certainly wouldn't call a lot of the anti-vaxxers I've met autodidacts.
As opposed to those who seize on one subject and are open to any 'evidence' that 'supports' it. Say, Bigfoot.
This is simply the human condition. It was just as true of written language and illustration. Also, take a look at YouTube. There's quite a bit of in-depth content there in an absolute sense. 90% or more of it might be fluff, but as Theodore Sturgeon observed, 90% of everything is "shite." Yet somehow, we muddle through. Young people with almost no resources and education still manage to create marvelous new culture, seemingly whole cloth.
If we are to have a free society, that means people have to be free to make the wrong choice. Otherwise, we've empowered some entity or another to dictate to us what's acceptable and what's not, and we're no longer free.
There's a famous book, "The Revolt of the Masses" by Ortega, which claims the opposite. His conclusion is that, before mass media, common people were uneducated, but were actually quite aware of and humble about their ignorance - they did not think they understood how the world around them (incl. politics etc.) works. But after they've been exposed to the press and radio, which mostly gave them random, disjointed and poorly checked facts as well as opinion pieces (almost always with an agenda), they started to believe they understand more than they actually did. That's the "Revolt of the Masses" - masses of people started to have an opinion, and it was often ignorant and stupid.
People having parochial, uninformed opinions isn't new.
I don't recall college being that sort of 'free society'. You learned from subject matter experts, and they indulged no nonsense. For me, my (public college) education was a revelation. I'm in favor of informed opinions, and of giving people the knowledge to protect themselves from exploitation.
My BS tuition was about $500/year. Then the US was -helping- students. Then came Reagan. Now we prey on students, encumbering them with debts they many never pay off. And trade-school curricula.
Making the wrong choices because of manufactured ignorance and consent isn't "freedom", it's the exact opposite. My god, this is Education 101 shit.
It was 'simply the human condition' for a very long time. Back then there was an excuse. Now the excuse is profit-taking. From our grandchildren. They will come to curse us ... if they're allowed to live.
Now we have far left activists posing as fake "experts" who engage in ideologically driven science denial, and administrators who aid and abet them, while trying their best to intimidate actual experts.
My BS tuition was about $500/year. Then the US was -helping- students. Then came Reagan. Now we prey on students, encumbering them with debts they many never pay off.
A lot of this is now perpetrated by administrators in higher education who are overwhelmingly on the far left of the political spectrum. Which staff are capturing more and more of the money that goes to salaries? It's not the professors.
I think we'll counter authoritarianism on 2 fronts:
1) Make more information freely accessible. 2) Take existing, accessible information and convey it in a friendly way for the masses.
In related news, a relative of mine complained that he was receiving fascist posts on Facebook. Thing is, he didn't follow those groups, but one of his friends did, and Facebook's stupid algorithm thought it would share what his friend liked in his news feed, without asking.
That's how politics work, it's a pendulum. It has swung too far to liberalism, we're almost at Weimar republic now. Now it's time for the pendulum to swing back. If anything, the Internet is going to accelerate it.
Historically both fascist governments and fascist movements require external attack to collapse - or a succession crisis, which takes a while. And a lot of people can get killed along the way.
As for ending up attacking each other I think that is a general authoritarian thing with purging to take/secure power - it happens with communism and it happened with monarchies.
One interesting outlier along the lines was Fascist Spain. It was caused by a chain of events caused by internal attack of fascists for their own cynical reasons. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Luis_Carrero_...] Combined with a secret liberal king, Juan Carlos and the power was used to restore democracy.
No it wasn't. The economic recovery occurred way before the war did.
Which is to say we need to be clear about our objectives: if free society and individual liberty is important to us, those need to be the goals potentially at the expense of short-term economic growth.
The system of corporations we have today is a super-civilised way of wresting power and control from existing structures - if you can do something better and cheaper than the company currently in power, you can displace them quickly and with minimum fuss.
The core of that mechanism in the west is if you think a companies management are just clueless you can start your own company and compete. That is a big component of what freedom is - if you think you can do it better you can try to do it better.
Non-free societies would almost certainly disrupt that mechanism as the first thing they did. Given how complicated a modern economy is, I'm not sure they'd be competitive with a free society. The inefficiencies would build up to spectacular levels.
How free are they? How do I compare that to another country? How much of my view is tinted by not speaking Chinese? I dunno. As a statement of principle, there is no evidence that the top-down economy nut has been cracked, so if they are trying to do that it will fall apart in messy fashion at some point. You can't take your best and brightest, tell them what to study & where to work, then expect a central planner to get the numbers right. There aren't enough geniuses for that to work. You have to let the smart ones figure out what the best use of their time is, like the West has been doing for the last few centuries.
1. They have set themselves up massive health time-bombs with their pollution and ineffective regulations. Not to mention prevalence of smoking. 2. China's Social Credit plan is creating a turn-key rebellion as the newly created lower caste has nothing to lose but their chains and the high social credit scores means they have a purge list for when bloody repression begets bloody revolution. 3. They have enough people laundering money for 'emergency escape hatches for when they fall out of favor' that they are blowing up real estate prices internationally in major cities. Optimistically it could just be fallacious beliefs that real estate is a foolproof investment but that doesn't make things much better. 4. The party leadership flat out know that they cannot survive a recession and try to prop things up constantly.
They may be the most viable example but they are still vulnerable to collapses - not a guarantee by any means but there is definite precedent.
Which means that the avenues for practical freedoms are somewhat limited outside of the corporate/mercantile paths.
From Wikipedia: "In 1930 the Hertzog government worked to undermine the vote of Coloureds (South Africans of mixed white and non-white ancestry) by granting the right to vote to white women, thus doubling white political power. In 1934 Hertzog agreed to merge his National Party with the rival South African Party of Jan Smuts to form the United Party. A hardline faction of Afrikaner nationalists led by Daniel François Malan refused to accept the merger and maintained a rump National Party called the 'Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party' (Purified National Party). The Purified National Party used opposition to South African participation in World War II to stir up anti-British feelings amongst Afrikaners. This led to a reunification of the Purified Nationalists with the faction that had merged with the South African Party; together they formed the Herenigde Nasionale Party (Reunited National Party), which went on to defeat Smuts' United Party in 1948 in coalition with the much smaller Afrikaner Party. In 1951, the two amalgamated to once again become known simply as the National Party."
So the NP wasn't actually in power during ww2, but came to power fairly shortly afterwards, and enforced ethnic nationalism. Way back when I read Mandela's biography it struck me that this wasn't a historical coincidence, and that the leadership of the NP were very likely Nazi sympathizers, with a pretty long leash to carry out the white nationalist agenda that had been stopped on the global north.
That's also the "endgame" of pure democracy, and of basically every other "pure" form of government. (Classical Western philosophers knew this very well, BTW - they had very detailed models of how these violent crises happen, and how they lead to different forms of government in turn, with their own inbuilt instability.) It's one reason why sustainable government is pretty much always based on a variety of institutions that enable ongoing checks and balances among different organized interests. It's why we have republics, and not pure ("direct") democracies.
IMHO Leopold Kohr enlightened us about all this, "centralized political and economic structures" are the main culprits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#Philosophy
That is why while I am interested to read such article, it will never work: the author is talking to him/herself, while instead he/she supposedly should talk to people who disagree with him/her in the first place.
A legislature passing laws is not authoritarianism, but is instead the normal functioning of a legislature in a representative democracy, whether or not one agrees with the laws themselves.
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism
"1. Limited political pluralism, that is such regimes place constraints on political institutions and groups like legislatures, political parties and interest groups"
Authoritarianism is, among other things, about the head of government constraining the legislature from performing oversight of the head of government.
It's about the head of government being effectively above the law, either by the law itself being changed to codify that, or by the non enforcement of laws against the head of government when they break them.
Whether its the problem or the solution depends on the legitimacy of the government.
Kidding aside, this brings back memories of Clifford Stoll’s book, “Silicon Snake Oil.” I’d love to read it again. I know, he’s been panned for making really wrong predictions (“no one’s gonna use a credit card over the internet”), but I’d love to read it again standing on the other side of the internet experiment. I feel like for all the stuff he got wrong, he got a lot right when it comes to there being more to being human than the internet has ever been able to deliver.
Actual journalism is doing better than ever - just look at the state of the art of fact checking and detailed refutations of the tripe published in comments.
Computers have conquered scale. Before cheap computing and networking, large companies had trouble getting out of their own way. There were inefficiencies in companies that got too big. Most of those problems seem to have been solved, and the intrinsic limits to corporate growth have been removed.
So now the US has three big banks. Three big drugstore chains. Three big delivery services. Three big cell phone companies, if Sprint and T-Mobile get to merge.
Big companies don't have to have regional subsidiaries any more. In the Bell System days, AT&T had about ten regional operating companies, each with somewhat independent management. Today, they don't bother. Amazon is run as one big company.
In the US, government hasn't really gotten into this in a big way. Too many governmental units with their own local authority. China, though, or the UK, where the central government has total authority...
(This is not about Trump. He's an old guy who does things the 20th century way - broadcasting to large numbers of people and hands-on project management. When we get someone who's similarly authoritarian but understands modern scaling technology, we'll have a real problem. Peter Thiel, maybe.)
We've already had a high elected official praised for his understanding of technology, who advocated for legislation mandating how people should spend their money and took other actions on executive authority to bypass legislative processes.
Peter Thiel seems pretty sincere in his libertarian bent. What has he advocated for which is authoritarian?
> I think a lot of the voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally. And so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment or things like that, the question is not ‘Are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China?’ or, you know, ‘How exactly are you going to enforce these tests?’ What they hear is ‘We’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy. -- Peter Thiel, October 2016
I see no evidence of his being duped. That's a pretty good analysis of how many perceived the Trump immigration message.
I used to think that China's central government would say "jump" and everyone else would ask "how high?" But after several years of reading about central government initiatives being hobbled by provincial/local officials[1], I'm not so sure. It could be that the central government is just better about preventing knowledge of their relatively weak control circulate abroad (limited press freedom, plus language barriers that prevent most Westerners from reading what ordinary Chinese people might be writing about.)
[1] Like the central government trying to reduce air pollution while local officials try to keep as many coal workers as busy as possible.
(although I'm sure it's more complicated than that)
It is a mistake to assume that the solution which works in industry is equally applicable in government. Businesses and governments are very different institutions. They have different missions, different stakeholders, different legal obligations, and different responsibilities.
Surely, things would be more efficient if we just had one large uniform, monolithic state institution, but a (small R) republican state cannot exist without extensive delegation. It is only though the process of delegating power to states, counties and municipalities, that we can even attempt to execute the will of the people.
This all comes with tons of redundant infrastructure - thousands of city councils, mayors, police departments, courts, and school systems. 50 governors, 50 state cabinets, 50 independent boards of elections, 50 different state legislatures - but each community has its own needs and its own ambitions, and nobody knows those needs better than the community itself.
tl;dr: Like every other long-term and protracted crisis, people predicted it was going to happen, but everyone acts surprised when it actually does.
The Data & Society report by Rebecca Lewis (quoted in this article as a source) is very poorly done. It brands people who are clearly on the left as "alt-right" because they have either once spoken to an alt-right person, or even (in one case) simply been at the same event (not an alt-right event) with an alt-right person (Tim Pool, evidence in his YouTube videos on the subject).
I'm defending the 4/5 people who have been labelled "alt-right" by groups like Data & Society and by articles like this one, who believe in equal opportunity, legal immigration, individualism, and principles of the enlightenment. Most of them are progressives and several of them are jews. Lumping them in with "fascists," "racists", "nazis", or people who yelled "Jews will not replace us!" is factually wrong, morally wrong, and has done real-world damage to them. This includes people such as Jordan Peterson, Tim Pool, Eric Weinstein, Dave Rubin, James Damore, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, and yes even Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad).
I am NOT defending Richard Spencer, Stephan Molyneux or Milo Yiannopoulos. I've listened to them, I disagree with them, and I think "alt-right" is an appropriate for them.
There seems to be a mass delusion going on here. Folks on the left talk about the boogy-man "alt-right" and label people at whim, and then everyone is scared to actually go and fact-check lest they be discovered watching "alt-right" material. The predictable result? The set of people labelled "alt-right" just gets bigger and bigger.
Contrary to what you believe, we lefties do actually fact check, and it's not looking good for Jordan P. et al.
Also, how does "normalizing trad-right rethoric" equal "working to further fascism and inflame hatred and division"? Where do traditional right values equate fasism, hatred and division?
His list of absolutely nonsense racist, bigoted and misogynistic statements is basically endless, it's in everything he says.
He leans on the MRA/MGTOW side of things, which has a clear and documented link to the alt-right right, a neo-fascist movement.
Regarding trad right, that is simply an ideology of exploiting the working class for the benefit of capitalists, to the overall detriment of society and life in general.
Have you listened to him? He specifically speaks that he's been in good contact with trans people, who often thank him for his actions. As for the rest of the items you listed, they look like your opinions on him, not facts. I was hoping for direct quotations from Peterson. For example, how do you back your claim that he's speaking "absolutely nonsense racist and misogynistic statements"? I've listened to probably about 100 hours of Peterson and I haven't ever heard any. Please give citations.
https://blog.apaonline.org/2018/02/20/why-are-so-many-young-...
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/how-dangerou...
https://www.thecut.com/2018/09/jordan-peterson-threatened-to...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/comments/8kw3ig/jord...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-profound-sadness...
https://medium.com/s/story/a-field-guide-to-jordan-petersons...
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/05/199599/jordan-peter...
Jordan Peterson is not a person to admire nor adore.
My impression is that Jordan fears dystopia. He has studied the psychology of totalitarianism, both on the right and the left. He has concluded that the atrocities could not have been committed were it not for the failings of individuals, a failure to remain true, to remain moral. As a result, Jordan is very careful to remain as moral and ethical as humanly possible. He very carefully choses his words so as to not accidently say something that isn't quite true. People are drawn to him because his ethics and morality are many levels higher than anything anybody has seen in generations, and it is striking.
The man is a fraud and a charlatan, and you exhibit the clear signs of having been taken in by a convincing speaker, with little regard to what he's actually saying and preaching. A so-called "True Follower", with a complete lack of understanding for criticism against the Adored Idol, in this case Peterson.
I do see the appeal. He's positioned himself as a father figure to disaffected young white men, and he says things they want/need to hear (stand up straight etc.). Unfortunately he also uses that platform to spread old-fashioned misogyny and fear of the Other, and some outrageously wrong-headed nonsense. I suggest you review the Reddit thread I linked.
As per a previous thread, you also thought Gab was entirely above-board, and not an alt-right/white supremacist hideout with the very thinnest veneer of legitimacy haphazardly added on top.
More critical thought about the "hidden" agendas of notorious online presences would be very good practice.
But your critiques are bad. Really bad.
Gab IS entirely above board. Do you know what that term means? It means not doing anything illegal.
I'm going to assume you are young, and I apologize if I'm wrong. But what you young tikes are getting very wrong is this idea of parallel justice, mob justice, as if you can rewrite everything about justice that we have learned over the centuries and draw up entirely new rules where gab is considered not above board, where saying "women aren't men" is considered hate speech, where people are presumed guilty, innuendo and accusation are taken as conclusive evidence, any offence requires a lifetime permanent ban, and ideas themselves are crime (hate, racism, misogyny... are not crimes for some very good reasons). The idea that racism is infectious is ridiculous -- racism comes from a natural suspicion of outsiders, and is cured by multiculturalism, not deplatforming. Misogyny is mostly rejected men not taking ownership of their own failure, and blaming women instead. You can't cure that by rejecting them yet again. Sometimes I think I must be dreaming; the world can't have gotten this crazy this fast, can it?
Go look into pre-WWII Germany and see how the holocaust came about. It all started with pretty much exactly what social justice warriors are doing today... the willful erosion of human rights. Back in 1933 everyone was cheering Hitler on as the right to free speech was taken away. I'm afraid history is repeating.
They spend a lot of time focusing on Richard Spencer which is really strange because there's always been fringe white supremacists out there and I don't see how the internet has made Spencer any more relevant than the Nazis Geraldo used to have on his show in the 80s.
In the past, neonazis and fascists had to lay low and work in the shadows. But the internet has a hell of a lot of shadows, and they're all accessible from everywhere. They are also getting better at hiding their true intent behind "identity" and "heritage" and other "soft" forms of their ideologies.
That is precisely why fascism is now a real actual threat to millions of people, and the reason why we must never let down our guard, we have to root them out and expose them for what they are.
And that's parent commenter's point: for all the "efficiency" of modern social media, these groups are still as fringe as they always were. And "identity and heritage" were always a part of the appeal too, so there's nothing new in that either - but let's not pretend that there aren't plenty of genuinely "softer" ideologies that appeal to the exact same things.
But again, that's not authoritarianism. Quite the contrary, the left demanding that people like him not be allowed to speak, and in many cases demanding he be attacked or even killed, that is authoritarian.
When an ideology is built on intolerance, it must be opposed and deplatformed at every turn.
Rather we must expose the fascists for what they are, drive them back to their hiding holes. We're not forcing anyone, simply showing social media platforms etc. that the presence of hate-spewing and minority-oppressing fascists is not wanted. They react by simple mechanisms of capitalism, by removing them, in order to not lose ad revenue.
The fascists are free to find other platforms, no one is censoring them.
But the bulk of the people being targeted are none of those things. What the average person is seeing is that anyone who dares to state a fact that far left ideologues don't like gets attacked and called racist. And if twitter doesn't censor them, twitter gets attacked too, and called "a haven for white supremacists and nazis". In reality, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are wanted, it is only a small group of vocal objectors that insist they are unwanted.
>The fascists are free to find other platforms, no one is censoring them.
The former does not support the latter. People moving to an uncensored platform does not mean the censored platform is not censored.
I see people repeat that, but I don't see anything to indicate it is true. Quite the contrary, it would appear that one of the main factors in the growing white nationalist population is censorship and other attempts to silence people (calling them some thought terminating cliche like "racist" or "bigot" when they aren't saying anything racist or bigoted). When you say that someone's words are dangerous and they must be silenced, you imply that their views are so overwhelmingly convincing that large numbers of people will be swayed if they hear them. Since you can't actually silence them, all you do is cause them to move somewhere you don't control and then point to your censorship on platforms you do control as evidence that you know they are correct and fear the truth. You end up portraying yourself as the evil authoritarian empire, and the people you are trying to silence as the valiant freedom fighting rebels. People are sympathetic to the rebels, not the empire.
>When an ideology is built on intolerance, it must be opposed and deplatformed at every turn.
But that very ideology is built on intolerance. I presume you are going to delete your account so as to "deplatform" yourself?
This sounds like speculation and doesn't match what I've seen in real life. Do you have any data to back up that white supremacy is more popular now than it was in the past?
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/02/22/number-white-a...
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/15/politics/hate-groups-spik...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/lens/documenting-rise-whi...
It is also blatantly obvious to anyone who spends any time at all on social media or forums. White supremacist and alt-right viewpoints are sneaking in, hiding under banners such as "appreciating heritage" or by trying to co-opt historic traditions and symbols as ethnically exclusionary.