Deplatformed is not being muzzled. Youtube isn’t the only video sharing service out there. I’m sure somebody will bankroll an alternative service for all those crying over the big mainstream companies that won’t let them easily spew hate and FUD.
This isn’t just about the fringes spewing hate. You’re fooling yourself if you think the employees at these companies only have Alex Jones in their crosshairs.
Rights are eroded in degrees. Silencing questionable speech is the first step.
I bet it’s in response to people on the right identifying as “classical liberals” and such. The phenomenon I’m referring to started on the center and right about three or four years ago.
It’s more about disillusioned lefties who are done with identity politics and mainstream media than righties trying to rebrand as something less conservative.
A lot of those people that are “done” with identity politics are playing it just as much as the left does. I used to be one of those disillusioned lefties that didn’t see that hypocrisy. I used to be a guy that watched Dave Rubin and Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro and Sargon and those other hacks. I know the crowd. They can’t go more than a couple sentences without mentioning identity. Jordan Peterson is obsessed with identity. He can’t stop talking about gender identity and how society disadvantages men and how people need Christian morals to be good and all that shit. He and his ilk play the identity politics game. The idea that these people are against identity politics is dishonest. They’re against the left’s identity politics, but that’s it.
I don’t agree with your assessment of most of that crowd; the main reason they bring up identity is to refute what’s being said by the left, and I’ve never heard them argue in favor of a particular identity or offer up one’s identity as an excuse for their behavior or beliefs. I’m just not hearing what you’re hearing when these people present their views.
Isn’t that just an excuse? Crowder particularly can’t even talk to a gay, female, black, mexican, or even handicapped guest without constantly bringing up their respective identity. Do a drinking game where you take a shot every time he brings up his minority guests’ identity, you’ll have alcohol poisoning before the segment is over. It’s the same thing with Rubin and the absolute worst is this Candace Owens character (and I call her a character because her politics do a total 180 depending on who’s paying her) who is incapable of not crying about perceived racism. She is a total “SJW” by typical standards.
One of the worst videos I’ve ever seen on Youtube was when Crowder posted a screed about how the AIDS epidemic was a hoax because gay people were suffering from it (and of course it’s their own fault, right?). The white, Christian victimhood narrative drives a lot of the right wing. Keep an eye out for it, because it’s there and just as pathetic as some of the leftwing victim narratives.
I haven’t seen much of Crowder, so I can’t speak to the examples you cited. I find his interview style annoying (condescending tone, talks too fast and too long) and his jokes mostly unfunny, which is why I haven’t followed him.
Owens strikes me as an opportunist, but I don’t find a shift in politics all that unusual since I also kind of woke up one day and realized I wasn’t what I thought I was. I don’t know who’s paying her; follow the money though, as they say.
I’ve watched plenty of Rubin and don’t share your assessment of him at all. He welcomes any guest from any background, asks some interesting questions, and lets them answer fully without interrupting. Any interviewer that lets their guest do most of the talking is fine by me.
Random political thought:
I’ve seen a lot of “leftists” vs. “liberals” stuff lately, and I wonder, since when did “liberals” become synonymous with specifically center-left democrats? I always thought “liberal” was just a general term that encompassed the entire left.
A lot of center-right and even straight-up rightwing people have been trying to make some distinction between “liberals” and people that are more socialistic as a way to co-opt the term liberal.
Just as the right has the alt-right, whose views are too extreme or racist for the typical conservative, the left has been overrun with wackos who have as much in common with their far-right “enemies” as they do with their own party (see: Horseshoe Theory).
I agree, but I’m going to need examples of how the left is “overrun” by these wackos. I’ve asked you many, many times for evidence of this and you’ve yet to give it to me so please do. I think it’s an important conversation.
Some recent examples:
The firing of James Damore
Google’s firing of Damore was completely unjustified. He presented a reasoned argument regarding not just why women are underrepresented in tech, but how Google could change their policies to encourage more women to enter the field. I read the memo and while some argued against his data and conclusions, nothing he wrote would be considered radical or incendiary in scientific journals and the dude is rational almost to a fault. He was smeared by the mainstream media as alt-right and misogynist and he lost his job.He lost his job before being called alt-right. Him losing his job was what the whole story was in the first place. I didn’t read the memo so I won’t comment on the details because I’m ignorant now. But the reason he’s called alt-right is because he immediately started going onto all of the alt-right’s main outlets as a guest. Stefan Molyneux, the cult leader that’s been linked to at least one suicide, for example. How is this solitary instance from over a year ago evident of the left being overrun by wackos?
Maybe this was a solitary event to you. Perhaps if you worked in tech, you’d understand that this is an ongoing problem and conservatives know to keep their mouths shut about their politics at the office. You’d also know about the trouble brewing with the Linux kernel due to their new Code of Conduct and the injection of politics into their working group. “Activists” are already digging through old tweets of contributing devs and trying to get them kicked out. I don’t want the quality of the code that drives the OS responsible for almost all modern servers to be driven by ideology and outrage. This shit is pervasive.
The memo went public on August 5th and Damore was fired on August 7th. Whether Google had planned to fire him already or they caved to pressure after the media firestorm and used their Code of Conduct as an excuse, the result was the same. Damore lost his job because he expressed scientifically valid ideas about gender differences—not female inferiority, but generalized differences between the typical male and typical female—that are incompatible with leftist and extreme feminist ideology. He then spoke with those he thought would provide fair coverage; why should he interview with a network that supported the narrative that he was alt-right and misogynist? Was he supposed to go on CNN or MSNBC and get lobbed leading questions that would end up getting used against him? Maybe talk to the NYT and get the same fair and honest coverage Jordan Peterson got with the whole “enforced monogamy” thing? The entirety of the mainstream media, minus Fox News, tore that kid to pieces.
The deplatforming of Alex Jones
Alex Jones was deplatformed in a coordinated effort by major media companies. Agree with him or not (I don’t watch the guy, I know him mostly from the whole Sandy Hook thing and some memes), having corporate entities who are powerful enough to instantly erase someone’s online presence because the company’s management doesn’t agree with their views should concern everybody, regardless of politics or personal feelings.Who cares though, right? It’s Alex Jones. That guy’s insane! The point is that everyone should care when major publishing platforms can shape political discourse by silencing or amplifying certain voices. Anyone who claims to be concerned about Russian interference in our elections via social media and isn’t concerned about what happened to Alex Jones is making their decisions based on ideology and not law or right vs. wrong.
I agree that the coordinated banning of Jones was disturbing for all the reasons that you pointed out, but let’s be honest about why he was banned. He repeatedly slandered people. He claimed that the parents of Sandy Hook were participating in a hoax shooting. His platform falsely accused an innocent man of committing the Parkland shooting (whose survivors he also slandered by claiming were crisis actors). He sells scam, false-hope supplements. He’s seemingly called for the death of Mueller at least once, among other people that he claims (by name and without evidence) are child-molesters. I find the coordinated ban disturbing, but there’s a case to be made that Alex Jones’ content may not even be legal, which is why they banned him. It had nothing to do with him being conservative or with management not agreeing with his views. And I don’t see how corporate interests in this case are evidence of wackos controlling the left. I, as with some other leftists, are advocating that the first amendment be applied to massive platforms like Youtube. I don’t see any solution like that coming from anyone on the right, who support those corporations’ ability to coordinately shut people down, even if they don’t like it.
Some people on the right are talking about forcing First Amendment protections on social media (I’ve seen it mentioned on Twitter quite a bit), but it shouldn’t be surprising that the idea would get little traction in the mainstream since it goes against practically everything Republicans support: free market solutions, minimal regulation, etc.
I have mixed feelings about it. Do I think YouTube and Twitter are large enough that banning content producers causes undue harm not only to the content producer, but people in general? Yes. Would I ever want that type of regulation applied to myself as someone who runs an online community? Probably not, although I imagine a feeling of relief washing over me knowing that I’d never have to police another forum post 😉
If Jones were convicted of a crime, I might feel differently. He hasn’t been, though. My concern lies with the notion that it’s only the “bad guys” who will be shut down. I don’t trust Google and YouTube to filter my content. That’s what my brain is for. If they want to be publishers, then be publishers, not censors. Let audiences and advertisers decide what content survives.
YouTube demonitization
The frequent and unexplained demonitization of YouTube videos in order to rob them of their income should also be concerning. Many videos by “conservatives” (i.e., anyone not openly left) are flagged as problematic either by community reports or YouTube’s own moderators. Conveniently, they remain flagged—and therefore unable to earn advertising revenue—until a further manual review is performed. The videos often have advertising revenue reinstated, but they don’t get the revenue they missed while they were flagged, only future revenue. Most videos from popular YouTubers get most views right after they go live, so most revenue is lost.When I say “overrun”, it’s kind of a sloppy way of saying that real people’s lives are being affected by emotional assholes with an axe to grind; even if the “wackos” are a minority, they’re loud enough that some companies are listening and the position of the party is shifting.
How is this leftism? I’ll give you some great left-wing examples that have been demonitized. The Amazing Atheist, David Pakman, Secular Talk, Thunderf00t, The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder, Jimmy Dore, among others. You’re framing this issue inaccurately; you’re leaving out half of the demonitization’s victims, and I get why, because those “classical liberal” outlets have framed it that way too. I used to think the same way, but those guys that I mentioned are far leftists that got destroyed by demonitization. The narrative that the right wing is singled out doesn’t hold up when you examine who all gets affected. Demonitization doesn’t discriminate and has been across the board on Youtube, even in apolitical channels. The only survivors have been corporate outlets. Claiming that only your side is affected, as the rightwing is doing, is dishonest no matter which side is doing it. Realizing that we’re actually all in the same boat in this case is the only way to put a stop to it.
I don’t see how those examples, only one of which is even arguably an example of leftist bullshit, could possibly lead anyone to thinking that the leftwing is overrun by wackos. I think it’s held back by corporatists, if anything.
I’d be willing to bet that most of the content producers you mention found themselves demonetized for saying things that run counter to left-wing ideology. I don’t follow them, but I’m going to look into them now that you’ve brought them up. My point isn’t that only conservatives are affected, but that anyone who deviates too far from accepted leftist thought patterns gets unpersoned and cast out.
Those who are left-leaning but have some views that are traditionally (or even more recently) seen as conservative often adopt the label of “classical liberal” to separate themselves from a left wing that is increasingly irrational and emotionally driven.
Classical liberalism is a laissez-faire, conservative ideology. That’s not a recent evaluation of it. The people using it as a way to separate themselves from the left are misusing it because if they’re actually classical liberals then were never on the left. I also agree that there is an irrational segment of the left, particularly the one that cares more about culture and language than policy and economics, but how is that any different than the right? How is the left more irrational and emotionally driven than Trump’s portion of the rightwing?
It’s not. I’m a centrist, remember? The biggest change in my political views over the last several years is the realization that the left isn’t automatically “on the right side of history”. Both sides have their insane fringes, and the fringes have shifted the boundaries of what’s conservative vs. liberal. The fringes are destroying our ability to meet in the middle and progress as a society. Add dying traditional media who are desperate for clicks into the mix and you have a disaster.
They do, but by that logic you surely can’t deny that the insane fringe is running the right. The Trump crowd controls the White House and Congress. The reason I forget that you’re a centrist is because you have a clear sympathy towards the people on the right doing the exact same thing you chastise the left for. Forgive me for being confused by that obvious bias. I am a leftist. I don’t doubt that my pro-left bias shows and I don’t pretend to be a centrist. If you’ve read this thread, you’d know how I feel about centrists. 😉
I don’t know where you get this idea that I sympathize more with the right than the left. I sympathize with those who present rational ideas and are labeled as extremists by those who disagree with them. When I’m talking about the stuff I see on the left that caused me to walk away, I’m not saying the right doesn’t do the same thing. It saddens me to come to terms with the fact that the left is as bullshit-ridden and disingenuous as the right, which is why I beat on them so hard.
I think part of the problem is that you keep referring to the Trump crowd as the fringe when the man got 60+ million votes. That’s not fringe. The fringe definitely supports him, but people don’t become president with only fringe votes. His support among Republicans is insanely high. Seems to me that being on the left and having an irrational hatred of Trump go hand in hand, which makes any Trump supporter “fringe” in comparison.
I understand not supporting his policies and finding him gross and classless, but most of what comes out of the left right now just sounds like insane screeching in response to rhetoric that’s doing exactly as it’s designed to do. I’ve found that separating Trump’s rhetoric from his policies helps me process what’s going on in politics without losing my mind and painting all Trump supporters with the same brush. Politics has always been mostly bullshit; Trump’s bullshit is just right out there in the open rather than masked with a charming disposition and well-rehearsed oration.