Back in the day, when Dems were insurrecting left and right because some dude named Donald had won the office of the Presidency, progressive factions coalesced under the idea that they were the resistance. They were a resistance … to the people resisting the establishment’s tyranny.
Voters chose Trump to disrupt that movement, while the Left’s revolution was to protect the status quo of Obamaism. The weaponization of the IRS, FBI, Education, Energy, all of it, against the people to whom it was meant to answer. It wanted open borders, a stunted economy, and favored America’s declining influence in the world—oh, and speech policing. There was a lot of that.
Mr. Trump was the true new way and the mainstream everything wanted nothing to do with that or the people who supported it.
Trump turned out to be a speed bump whose effect, while startling, passed quickly. Obama’s meat puppet – Joe Biden, was installed, and Barry’s court got back to business, erasing the progress of making America great again. Part of that planned decline included his super-sized surveillance state, which used COVID to expand establishment power to silence dissent.
Many people who should have known better took up arms, masks, distancing, and mandates in the fight against natural rights and free speech.
Not us, no sir, but we enjoy any opportunity to discuss that subject, and there’s been no shortage of those. When it comes to the Left, anything that dares contest their monopoly on narrative is hate speech, disinformation, misinformation, or malformation. Anyone carrying that dissenting water is anti-science, anti-government, anti-climate, anti-democracy, this, that, or the other thing. They suffer from white fragility, supremacy, or they are a Nazi, even if they are black or Jewish.
Nazis.
Nazis are National Socialists whose societal model is based on genetic superiority and despotic rule. They are better than everyone else, and intimidation and violence are reasonable tools to make sure everyone understands. It is a worldview where the party defines success at its pleasure and almost nowhere else. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds a lot like the modern-day globalist elites to me. That superior stock of people who think and act correctly and in line with the approved agenda. The very folks that the Left’s so-called resistance worked to restore to power when the Deplorables mistakenly elected Donald Trump in 2016.
Ideologically, National Socialism is a kissing cousin to Democrat Socialism, rubbing elbows with Communism on the totalitarian side of the political Spectrum—a tyranny of the elite whose power requires a police state on word, thought, and deed. Dissent is not permitted, questions are ill-advised, and the answers are almost always lies.
Opposing this is our mission, part of which requires us to accept speech from every corner, including the elites and their kissing cousin tyrants who think the world needs National Socialism.
Free Speech lawyer Ken White recently spoke to the issue after Substack tried to explain why it would not censor or deplatform Nazis in its webspace. He fisked their response, exploring branding, value judgments, tropes, and various nuances of Substack’s reaction. He also broaches the question of platform policing and policy, practically and as a reflection of the brand.
Site moderation is a big bundle of choices. As a writer and reader, I decide what’s important to me when I choose a site. Sometimes it’s about content I want to consume or avoid and fellow-travelers whose society I crave or despise. But sometimes it’s an ethos I want to endorse, or be seen as endorsing. Do I want to go on Twitter to signify that I am not a snowflake and that I am open to discussions of how the Jews created polio? Do I want to go on Mastodon to signify that I believe human perfection can be achieved through scolding? Do I want to go on LinkedIn and talk exclusively to people who hope to monetize my existence in their quest to be Deputy Assistant Regional Manager? Do I really only care if the app works on an iPad? It’s up to me and my array of values.
Site managers make choices too. What ethos do we want to signal, and what crowd will that attract, and how much money can we make from them? If we moderate content, will it turn into an expensive, thankless, all-consuming task? Will moderating some people (like Nazis) result in constant demands that we moderate a huge array of things that make people angry (like, say, posts that are either too supportive or not supportive enough of Palestinians)? Will it attract more people than it alienates? If we don’t moderate will the place turn into a notorious sewer? What’s our moderation brand?
Every individual will have some sense of what a concept like free speech means to them. In many cases, it goes something like this. Everything I have to share is free speech. If you edit it or block it, you are a censorious authoritarian bastard whose interference with the open exchange of ideas will bring about the end of liberty as we know it.
Our approach is simple and aligns with the general interpretation of the First Amendment itself. Just about everything is reasonable except true incitement, explicit threats, and acts of violence toward individuals or groups. And while nudity, pornography, and vulgarity are generally protected speech where matters of public indecency are not in play, there are limited practical reasons for it here outside the vectors of the transgender agenda and groomer lit in public schools. Hence, we are inclined to edit it out or block it outside legitimate debate along those lines.
Everything else is allowed (except trolls who are not engaging to add value or interest), with my position being that what is otherwise deemed inappropriate or offensive (all the gray areas) can and should be worked out by the commenting community.
That’s our brand, and I think it allows us to control the chaos while encouraging that open exchange of ideas. I hope you agree but welcome contrary analysis. The goal is to build the commenting community, and I am looking at ideas to improve engagement. Yours are also welcome, assuming it’s not more nudity or allowing incitement or explicit threats.
We won’t be doing that.
We will, however, continue pushing back against the establishment in all its faces and forms, and we look forward to your help.