Picture instead private businesses who all refuse to do business with Jews. Anyone who does business with them are subject to reprisal and boycott by their vendors, friends, and neighbors. The Jews themselves of course are fired from their jobs if anyone finds out they're a Jew. In practice the Jews cannot do business and must live a marginalized existence or hide who they are. So it's not enough to say "well it's a private business they can do what they want" when you would not consider this valid in other contexts.
And of course all this is ignoring the question of whether any of this is likely to be successful in the end or if it will further justify reprisals and enrage anyone subject to this mob justice. Certainly all the tech companies banding together to silence politics they don't like plays exactly into the narrative the far right is pushing.
This is a false equivalency.
Race, religion, etc. are protected classes. It's impossible for people to change their race, and our society has agreed that we shouldn't force people to change their religion.
Political beliefs are not protected classes. When your political beliefs include inciting violence by spreading unfounded conspiracy theories, then private companies have a right to kick you off.
> Certainly all the tech companies banding together to silence politics they don't like plays exactly into the narrative the far right is pushing.
In my opinion, the far right is already too far gone — they are already conspiracy theorists. Any contradictory information will be used as evidence to show that the conspiracy is much wider and bigger than one could have imagined — adding to the weight of the theory. There is no reasoning with them unless someone they truly believe (read: Trump) dismisses the theory convincingly.
This is a common error in reasoning by the way: looking to the way current law happens to be and inferring from that what the right thing to do is. For example, it is not against the first amendment for Amazon to ban Republicans. This does not mean it would be a good thing for Amazon to ban Republicans. Similarly I'm sure, if you tried, you could come up with all kinds of unjust laws that punish things that should not be punished (I certainly can think of many).
I would start by exploring the differences between what it means to hold a religious belief vs a political one. Maybe start by comparing how each of the above has changed, or the associations thereof with their respective ideals over, say, the last 1000 years. Maybe then proceed to identify from where a religious belief manifests vs a political belief. Finally, you could look towards the kinds of answers of which each respective belief offers explanatory power (i.e. What kinds of questions does religion answer vs politics?). We could probably even take this a step further and look at the history of each as well no? Political leanings have existed at least as long as religious beliefs. At one time these were likely the same! So what is it about the history of politics and religion that has lead us to the the kinds of separation we have reached today?
I have confidence you can come up with many kinds of differences. Good luck!
I understand this, and the understanding is implicit in the way I phrased: "our society has agreed that we shouldn't force people to change their religion." It's also worth noting that "religion" here usually refers to practices and beliefs that don't infringe on other people's rights. To evaluate whether these practices infringe on someone's rights, one should take into account their protected classes: i.e. you're not allowed to discriminate against a person's skin color even if your religion says that you should.
Our society has also agreed that certain beliefs are reprehensible and deserve no place in society: both major political sides think that advocating for violence is unacceptable, and therefore both the Democrats and the (centrist) Republicans cannot claim that private companies who refuse to host a platform that allows calls for violence are unjustly discriminating — if the politicians want to be logically consistent. (This is what I meant by "When your political beliefs include inciting violence by spreading unfounded conspiracy theories, then private companies have a right to kick you off.") This is a positive statement, not a normative statement.
Normatively, alt-right beliefs should not be given the same protections as religions because they infringe on other people's rights. For example, repeated, false allegations of voter fraud indirectly infringe on people's right to vote because they effect court cases that call for legitimate voters to be disenfranchised.
In your example it's probably slightly different because religion is a protected class, while political leanings aren't.
I think what's particularly interesting is you substitute "right wing" with "Jews" like you did, and you start to wonder if Amazon crossed the line. But then change "Jew" to "terrorist", and you think Amazon might be in the right. Clearly we can't protect ALL groups, that'd be silly.
Yes. The funny thing is that it happened to people who foam at the mouth about the rights of private businesses to do what they want and decry government intervention.
Surely if they're voting for the same people, some of them must share the same beliefs. Unless you're saying all Parler users are completely distinct from all non-Parler conservatives?
Is it like a game of hot potato where the last hosting company has to host them? Because it seems there are alternatives to each individually, and it's only when they all say no that there are issues for Parler. And to me that feels like a Parler problem, not an AWS problem.