Biden has announced plans to roll out new domestic terrorism laws in the wake of the Capitol Hill riot.
Did you know that Biden has often boasted about being the original author of the US Patriot Act?
[...] Accounts are vanishing quickly, including some popular Trump supporter accounts. I myself have lost hundreds of followers on Twitter in the last few hours, and I've seen people saying they lost a lot more.
It also wasn't just Trump supporters; leftist accounts are getting suspended too. The online left is hopefully learning that cheering for Twitter "banning fascists" irrationally assumes that (A) their purges are only banning fascists and (B) they are limiting their bans to your personal definition of fascists. There is no basis whatsoever for either of these assumptions. [...]
[...] "The post 9/11 era is over," Slotkin [CIA 'analyst'] tweeted while sharing a clip of her appearance. "The single greatest national security threat right now is our internal division. The threat of domestic terrorism. The polarization that threatens our democracy. If we don't reconnect our two Americas, the threats will not have to come from the outside." [...]
This is the urge to bring the draconian policies from abroad home.
[...] Supporting the censorship of online speech is to support the authority of monopolistic tech oligarchs to exert more and more global control over human communication. Regardless of your attitude toward whoever happens to be getting deplatformed today, supporting this is suicidal. [...]
See full linked article, not a long read.
Remember, Biden loves to brag about being the author of the first Patriot Act. We are 100% going to get another one that's much worse and seeks to clamp down on "dis-information" which will mean Russia hysteria and Sinophobia being used to justify silencing of any opinions too far outside the mainstream consensus.
I mean, I was laughing and being worried at the same time. Can't I do both?
Nothing wrong with laughing at the pained racists and fascists I suppose. But I object to cheering it. It's not being done for the right reasons and the rationale will be used against us, already is being used against us. Have no doubt, the left loses far more out of such silencing than the right whose culture is already sewn into the fabric of the nation and the nation's culture.
Oh totally. This is going to suck for everyone.
What is the material result of us cheering this vs not cheering this?
Exactly this. These platforms aren't constrained by anything, including actual laws, but they're going to change their behavior based on what the online left does or doesn't complain about? They're monopolies, they don't give a fuck what anyone thinks. Maybe we should all change our avatars to black to protest this injustice? Y'all need materialism.
What's the material result of cheering violent imperialist action versus not? I am not saying this is that. But you're basically cheering for a state of affairs that is very bad for us, lending your voice in support. Why not go down to the police station and cheer them and buy some back the blue merch? In the larger picture it wouldn't matter if you did do that of course but it isn't uh to the benefit of the left to do so.
What I am attempting to do here is make people aware of what these moves really mean. It's like all that very annoying "the libs are waking up/wtf woke subredditx" posting that has been going on for a while that misunderstands the nature of things, it sees a good thing, devoid of context and cheers of it then is confused why it is followed by a bad thing. The fascists are not being silenced and deplatformed because they are fascists or because they are particularly violent or hateful. They are being silenced and deplatformed because they are being violent towards the wrong people (in this case the institutions of power and representatives thereof) and because their hate is too obvious and uncivil, of a lowbrow nature as opposed to approved racism via police violence and institutional means and methods like uh Biden ran with in the 90s.
So yes it is amusing to see the fascists hurting of course. But they are not being hurt for the right reasons and they are not truly as dangerous as the liberal institutions, certainly their body count is a rounding error on that of the institutions and capitalist system itself. And these reasons are not good reasons and often non-sensical, if you read Twitter's explanation for banning Trump it's the most bullshit thing I've seen in a bit. It's not a clear "this guy is a racist or here are racist things", it's more "he said some things which we believe may be taken by some of his supporters to mean the precious election was a fraud or that they should engage in violence against the capital" when he is on record urging people to directly beat people up, on record with racist statements, and so on and so forth. Because they don't fundamentally object to that so it boils down to "how dare you sir disrespect our precious bourgeois democracy and its institutions". Which is vague as fuck. I disrespect that, anyone who debunks the State Dept does that.
My question was genuine and not rhetorical. If you had said that if we cheered it on, twitter admins might be encouraged to do more of such actions in the future which will inevitably backfire on us, I would have agreed with you.
For those leftists who cheer on imperialist action, we can see their material goals, that is free healthcare for the core at the expense of the world. I just want you to frame your answer in this way so we can see clearly the benefits or negatives to doing this or that for the movement
chuckles
I’m in danger!