Right-wing groups that scream about freedom of speech often are interested only in freedom of speech for people who support their views. If you disagree with them, they’re much less interested.
I can’t speak for others (obviously), but I am equally
opposed to censorship by the left. At the moment, however, I think that that is a much smaller risk than is censorship by the right. The right controls all three branches of government and Trump has never been very enamored of people who criticize him about anything.
not equally …You’re not …You didn’t give a shit when the Dems were in power. And leftists control every school and university in the country. Academics and teachers get sacked all over the western world when they don’t go along with woke bullshit. Your side used the court system to try and defeat the American people You don’t like it….tough shit, But if you want to re-create a shared middle ground, then it’s your side that has to move furthest and fastest.
What does that have to do with it? Because you're able to critique that instead of the argument. Come on, bring your examples to the table. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to others
More than 10,000 books were removed from the H.B. Beal Secondary School Library in London, Ontario, between January and March of 2025, and two years earlier, all books published before 2008 were removed from Peel District School Board libraries (also in Ontario). These book purges were initiated by school and library staff, not by citizens demanding censorship.
The call is coming from inside the house for some liberals.And unfortunately, I wished we could all clean the house.So we could actually be presentable and votable for the next midterms.
When it came to political correctness and other things.Our illiberalness came at this price, and now the right has just marched on through.
And I can't help but think that the people with the best of intentions have helped pave that road with the curtailing of speech.The compelling of speech, the banning of books, the tearing down of monument...
But thank you for being consistent in a time where that is rare.
Thank you for being a supporter of liberal values and even acknowledging that sometimes the so called liberal can be very Illiberal.
We need more people like you in the world.And we also need more conservatives that realize that trump isn't doing anything to conserve anything. Even his fiscal policy is it's terrible, but people still are thinking that he's a fiscal conservative. When he's doing anything but
"And I can't help but think that the people with the best of intentions have helped pave that road with the curtailing of speech.The compelling of speech, the banning of books, the tearing down of monument..." You are of course right. But this was not accidental. It goes to the heart of what the left has always been about. Jahr Null -- Iconoclasm....It started with the Jacobins in the French Revolution ...and has been part of the deal with each subsequent wave
Because there is a pattern of progressive utopian absolutist thinking that starts with the French Revolution….and carries on through all liberal and socialist streams of ideology, including national socialist and fascist….The ends justify the means. This is why so many liberals privately and publicly cheered the assassination of Kirk and attempts on Trumps life; it is why so many marched along side trans activists with ‘kill a Terf’ signs or ‘punch a fascist’ signs.
Voegelin quipped ‘ don’t immanentize the eschaton’ and this is what he was referring to. The utopian tendency to excuse malpractice in the present for a better future.
No, that's not an idiotic phrase. At least with the conservatives there openly bigoted, but with the so called liberals, acting very illiberally with their wokeness or whatever they certainly seemed to have shot the very good ideas that they have... or least the principles of a liberal society and shot it in the foot.
On the name of some benevolent, cause and conceit.
The Biden administration's gambit to curb the amount of disinformation was understandable but wrong. There is no doubt that what they did was neither censorship nor industrial strength interference in free speech.
There was no Censorship Industrial Complex. It was a straw man full of sound and fury and signifying nothing but more clicks, likes and shares and some bucks for some antisocial media influencers and people like Matt Taibbi desperate to remain relevant in a shifting and precarious information market.
What we see happening today is industrial strength tyranny. Period.
To seek protected speech in order to track down and intimidate or punish "enemies of the state" with no probable cause is classic tyrant behavior. In America the government has no business in accessing this information without probable cause and a warrant for the communications of a specific individual. Fishing expeditions with the use of A.I. is not permissible unless the consumer has given consent in advance through the terms of service. That is why my personal information and search histories can be sold hither and yon to every business and corporation willing to pay for it---but not the GOVERNMENT!
It takes a lot of disingenuousness, dishonesty or just garden variety hypocrisy to equate the actions of the Biden administration and what is happening through the Trump administration today.
Great piece by Mike. Taibbi and Shellenberger would have to feel shame for exposing their hypocrisy to matter; they instead continue to loudly repeat the same debunked lies. But for making the point to a broader audience this is a very-well argued article.
Not sure how this qualifies the author as not doing his homework. Kind of seems like you’re more interested in a snarky comment than adding anything interesting to the discourse here. Lol
FIRE's worth mentioning. They pursue First Amendment issues in a non-partisan way. I suspect they do so with more consistency than the modern ACLU, although I'm happy to support both (and do).
Everyone who is involved in Greater Trumpistan is a hypocrite, end of. Is the left guilty of soft censorship? Absolutely, and it's about time we got serious about it. Is banning the ideas of the left through government restraint or threatened lawsuits better? No, it's arguably far worse because that's *hard* censorship, the kind explicitly banned by the First Amendment. They're both bad, and FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) have been doing yeoman's work standing up against both varieties. The partisanship and polarization in this country (and others...looking at you, Keir Starmer) is so bad that very few people have the consistency to stand on the principle of free expression. That's why I give Greg Lukianoff and FIRE such high marks, because both the Lefty profs and MAGA goons seem absolutely happy to suppress ideas they don't like. It takes courage, the strength of your convictions, and a good moral compass to fight against all prior restraint. (http://www.fire.org/)
Well said. It is perfectly correct to object to people facing an unjust level of social opprobriumvfrom private companies, whether or not you agree with what they said.
It is also correct to object far more when the government is very explicitly using it's power to try to control constitutionally protected free speech, and not even trying to hide the fact
You also don't have to think Colbert, Kimmel student protesters, etc are especially well-spoken to understand that it is their right to speech that matter, not the overall quality of the content. If poorly reasoned hackwork were a crime, every quarter-wit with an office at the foxnewsnationbariweiss hive mind would be in the Gulag Archipelago.
You're such a hypocrite. There is nothing soft about left censorship. Tens of thousands were kicked off Twitter. Facebook suppressed stories everyday. The MSM suppressed and denied the hunter laptop story in order to influence the election. Hundreds of academics in Canada and America have been fired. Schoolboards fire teachers and kick parents out of meetings. And leftists across America cheered when Charlie Kirk was shot. Dem politicians actively encouraged violence against people on the right. Trump's speech was deliberately misrepresented to appear opposite to what he said (the both sides comment.....) And the BBC have acknowledged they doctored his speech to make it look like he pushed insurrection (which he did not).
There is MUCH more freedom online with Musk and the retreat by FB.. MUCH MUCH more access by all sides.....ANd still the EU is trying to ban and suppress speech with support from Democrats.
Yes FIRE are good.....but this is not a both sides issue. The left are congenitally MUCH worse
My apologies, my non-literal language seems to have gone right over your head (I also suspect you don’t know the actual meaning of the word “hypocrite”). I didn’t mean “soft” as in better, I meant “soft” in the sense of “not [clearly] illegal”. It appears that you are such a partisan that you cannot see there is a clear difference between what non-public universities are doing with regard to free speech and what Trump, the government of Texas/Texas A&M, etc, are doing. Only one of them is covered by the First Amendment. Neither is good. I think I said that they both needed to be dealt with, did I not? So how exactly does that make me a hypocrite? (for reference: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocrite).
Hypocrisy is not caring about what your team does and criticising the other side by a much different set of values. For example, like not caring that your candidate is an adjudicated sex offender and caring that a non-government relative of the other team took some dirty pictures and left them on his laptop. Or caring that the other team’s guy paid 2 car payments for his brother, while the son-in-law of your guy got a literally multibillion-dollar windfall as a result of working on behalf of a foreign nation while a government employee. I don’t think you MAGAs have any ground to stand on with regard to hypocrisy (once you actually understand how it’s defined, that is).
And BTW insulting people doesn’t make your argument. You’re a hypocrite because you condemn on the right what has been standard practice on teh left forever and a day. But since you clearly despise your political opponents, don’t be surprised when then hand it back with interest
My only “opponents” are people who have no self-critical skills—and idiots (frequently the same people). I know it’s hard for people like you to understand, but I don’t have a side. I’m critical of whoever makes bad arguments, left or right.
I understood totally. But legality has nothing to do with whether there can be a middle ground. What the left has been doing — illegally under Biden and with the soft cultural power that comes of dominating the institutions is far worse; and you can’t expect an appeal for compromise and liberal values unless you acknowledge the scale and intensity at which conservatives and Christians have been pilloried and excluded. Suddenly the boot is on the other foot and you are whining. Acknowledge the problem — the massive problem, ongoing in the public square….and maybe you can recover the historic compromise that we all need.
I wouldn't even call it shrugging, rather a quiet pleasure that their ideological enemies are being stifled as they hoped. As you say freeze peach was just a grift and a cudgel for their side and had nothing to do with the actual first amendment.
Sorry, but if Judge Terry Doughty had heard Mark Zuckerberg’s subsequent admissions about interference from the Biden administration, he would have ruled against them. Not that it makes what the current admin is doing any less egregious, but don’t try to tell us what Taibbi and others called the Censorship Industrial Complex didn’t happen or wasn’t a big deal.
Read the letter. Zuckerberg says they made their decisions themselves. The Murthy case was garbage from the start — and Doughty DID rule for them lol. It was SCOTUS and to some extent the Fifth Circuit that saw through the BS.
You may be right. I just assumed no one would censor true things without being forced by the government (regardless of the effect).
Things like having natural immunity from having contracted Covid was just as protective as vaccination; or that the virus likely started at the WIV lab; or Hunter's laptop. Or that young healthy, particularly males, have a higher incidence of myocarditis from the vaccine boosters than from Covid; or that the findings of Roland Fryer may actually be correct and in contradiction to the common narratives; or that BLM riots were not peaceful.
And agreed it was Scotus; and in fairness I will read the full letter.
My question has always been about coercion. How? Is asking for voluntary cooperation, even urgently requesting cooperation, in stemming the tide of potentially deadly misinformation somehow to be understood as coercion?
The ask by the Biden administration was silly and out of order because anyone who believed the misinformation being vomited around the antisocial media platforms probably deserved to die. Free speech has the power to cull the herd of a lot of idiocy. if idiots are allowed to follow the influencers of their choice.
Because some of it was not misinformation. Some of it was true, but did not lead to the outcome desired by the Biden admin. So the question is should the government be allowed to pressure media and others to censor true statements that are possibly harmful to the people as a whole. Things like natural immunity to COVID from having had it is protective and shouldn’t require someone to have the vaccine. Or that masks didn’t work. Or that the vaccine, for the most part, didn’t stem transmission of the virus.
Let us say that Zuck tailored his testimony as he did in order to remain in favor with the current administration. The notion that he was a victim of coercion of any sort is laughable. He played along to curry favor then and he is playing along to curry favor now. He is just a political ass licker from the word "go." He is not a victim of anything except his own unprincipled and unethical self interest.
Please share with us what adverse consequences were suggested that could be used to coerce. Even Zuck in his testimony was pretty vague about any actual threats made.
Yet there is a censorship industrial complex, and they did have valid fears. However, I would love to see these people be consistent.
And yes, I don't like how you downplay how twitter is just an arm of the government at that point... at the same time.Thank you for calling out the hypocrisy.And the horrible shit that trump is doing, especially when he ran on a platform that was supposed to be the reduction of the censorship.
ACLU don’t make me laugh. Your hypocrisy is beyond measure. I don’t care for corporate or state censorship. But until you own the massive authoritarian monopoly, exercised by the left in schools and universities, and in many nation states, you’re just another partisan hack. The bottom line is that your side has created a zero sum politics. You abandoned the rule of law and liberal principles. Tens of thousands of you cheered when Charlie Kirk got killed. You egg on people who are assassinate Trump…. And then you cry when he doesn’t play nice. Welcome to the world you created. It’s pretty shitty. We can agree on that.V but you created it .
This sounds like a "you started argument" maybe in principle, you should be against what trump is doing.Because it's a question of principle, not a question of sides period.
And I think you over exaggerate the amount of people that cheered when that person got killed... you seem to ignore that people were thinking.He was going to raise from the dead three days later, because they're absolutely insane.
It was political violence.There was a terrible tragedy.However, let's not forget that the man was not exactly a saint.
Who's egging on Who, when did this author do that?
I don't care who started it. And if you don't like it, you don't like the censorship industrial complex as you are very right to hate it.. you shouldn't like it when another side does it but so brash, and so terribly that the constitution is being threatened.
What kind of question is that? Kirk was indeed a hypocrite. He said it says a lot about people.How they try to politicize deaths and murders?And then he did exactly that.
I don't support charlie kirk. I said it was an act of political violence, and that was terrible.
I am saying that there is an industrial censorship complex that must be considered... at the same time, the author of this article is absolutely correct in calling out their hypocrisy
The bottom line is that we are trapped between social authoritarianism sold as pseudo-niceness to preferred subgroups on one side and actual attempted authoritarianism/kleptocracy sold as a necessary reaction.
If your side is driving voters away towards someone so deeply flawed then the onus is on you to find out why.
If you do it twice then then you have not learned that lesson because your basic assumption was “there must be something wrong with all of those people’.
Right-wing groups that scream about freedom of speech often are interested only in freedom of speech for people who support their views. If you disagree with them, they’re much less interested.
Pot kettle
I can’t speak for others (obviously), but I am equally
opposed to censorship by the left. At the moment, however, I think that that is a much smaller risk than is censorship by the right. The right controls all three branches of government and Trump has never been very enamored of people who criticize him about anything.
not equally …You’re not …You didn’t give a shit when the Dems were in power. And leftists control every school and university in the country. Academics and teachers get sacked all over the western world when they don’t go along with woke bullshit. Your side used the court system to try and defeat the American people You don’t like it….tough shit, But if you want to re-create a shared middle ground, then it’s your side that has to move furthest and fastest.
What does that have to do with it? Because you're able to critique that instead of the argument. Come on, bring your examples to the table. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to others
More than 10,000 books were removed from the H.B. Beal Secondary School Library in London, Ontario, between January and March of 2025, and two years earlier, all books published before 2008 were removed from Peel District School Board libraries (also in Ontario). These book purges were initiated by school and library staff, not by citizens demanding censorship.
The call is coming from inside the house for some liberals.And unfortunately, I wished we could all clean the house.So we could actually be presentable and votable for the next midterms.
When it came to political correctness and other things.Our illiberalness came at this price, and now the right has just marched on through.
And I can't help but think that the people with the best of intentions have helped pave that road with the curtailing of speech.The compelling of speech, the banning of books, the tearing down of monument...
But thank you for being consistent in a time where that is rare.
Thank you for being a supporter of liberal values and even acknowledging that sometimes the so called liberal can be very Illiberal.
We need more people like you in the world.And we also need more conservatives that realize that trump isn't doing anything to conserve anything. Even his fiscal policy is it's terrible, but people still are thinking that he's a fiscal conservative. When he's doing anything but
"And I can't help but think that the people with the best of intentions have helped pave that road with the curtailing of speech.The compelling of speech, the banning of books, the tearing down of monument..." You are of course right. But this was not accidental. It goes to the heart of what the left has always been about. Jahr Null -- Iconoclasm....It started with the Jacobins in the French Revolution ...and has been part of the deal with each subsequent wave
The jacobins were oppressed and then oppressed back.
Could you tell me why you mention the jacobins, when there's more recent examples of explicit power politics and yeae zero thinking?
And on to mention some of the more extremist elements of the misappropriation of class warfare to be with respect to identities.
Because there is a pattern of progressive utopian absolutist thinking that starts with the French Revolution….and carries on through all liberal and socialist streams of ideology, including national socialist and fascist….The ends justify the means. This is why so many liberals privately and publicly cheered the assassination of Kirk and attempts on Trumps life; it is why so many marched along side trans activists with ‘kill a Terf’ signs or ‘punch a fascist’ signs.
Voegelin quipped ‘ don’t immanentize the eschaton’ and this is what he was referring to. The utopian tendency to excuse malpractice in the present for a better future.
Try an actual comment rather than an idiotic phrase.
No, that's not an idiotic phrase. At least with the conservatives there openly bigoted, but with the so called liberals, acting very illiberally with their wokeness or whatever they certainly seemed to have shot the very good ideas that they have... or least the principles of a liberal society and shot it in the foot.
On the name of some benevolent, cause and conceit.
And people say it's progress when it's not
What does that even mean?
jim's had a bad day. needs a nap
The only value that people have in the right of free speech is.If they're willing to defend the speech of which they do not like
On that we agree completely
And yes, people say that free speech is hate speech.I'm sorry, but nobody seems to be liking free speech.
And the onus is on us.To remind everyone on how absolutely important it is because we've all taken it for granted.
A free speech absolutist here.
The Biden administration's gambit to curb the amount of disinformation was understandable but wrong. There is no doubt that what they did was neither censorship nor industrial strength interference in free speech.
There was no Censorship Industrial Complex. It was a straw man full of sound and fury and signifying nothing but more clicks, likes and shares and some bucks for some antisocial media influencers and people like Matt Taibbi desperate to remain relevant in a shifting and precarious information market.
What we see happening today is industrial strength tyranny. Period.
To seek protected speech in order to track down and intimidate or punish "enemies of the state" with no probable cause is classic tyrant behavior. In America the government has no business in accessing this information without probable cause and a warrant for the communications of a specific individual. Fishing expeditions with the use of A.I. is not permissible unless the consumer has given consent in advance through the terms of service. That is why my personal information and search histories can be sold hither and yon to every business and corporation willing to pay for it---but not the GOVERNMENT!
It takes a lot of disingenuousness, dishonesty or just garden variety hypocrisy to equate the actions of the Biden administration and what is happening through the Trump administration today.
Great piece by Mike. Taibbi and Shellenberger would have to feel shame for exposing their hypocrisy to matter; they instead continue to loudly repeat the same debunked lies. But for making the point to a broader audience this is a very-well argued article.
Only the ACLU? Someone didn’t do his homework https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-sues-bondi-noem-censoring-facebook-group-and-app-reporting-ice-activity
Not sure how this qualifies the author as not doing his homework. Kind of seems like you’re more interested in a snarky comment than adding anything interesting to the discourse here. Lol
FIRE's worth mentioning. They pursue First Amendment issues in a non-partisan way. I suspect they do so with more consistency than the modern ACLU, although I'm happy to support both (and do).
Same here!
The author alleges Heterodox people are not interested in Trumps admins behavior on free speech. The comment demonstrates a counterexample.
Everyone who is involved in Greater Trumpistan is a hypocrite, end of. Is the left guilty of soft censorship? Absolutely, and it's about time we got serious about it. Is banning the ideas of the left through government restraint or threatened lawsuits better? No, it's arguably far worse because that's *hard* censorship, the kind explicitly banned by the First Amendment. They're both bad, and FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) have been doing yeoman's work standing up against both varieties. The partisanship and polarization in this country (and others...looking at you, Keir Starmer) is so bad that very few people have the consistency to stand on the principle of free expression. That's why I give Greg Lukianoff and FIRE such high marks, because both the Lefty profs and MAGA goons seem absolutely happy to suppress ideas they don't like. It takes courage, the strength of your convictions, and a good moral compass to fight against all prior restraint. (http://www.fire.org/)
Well said. It is perfectly correct to object to people facing an unjust level of social opprobriumvfrom private companies, whether or not you agree with what they said.
It is also correct to object far more when the government is very explicitly using it's power to try to control constitutionally protected free speech, and not even trying to hide the fact
You also don't have to think Colbert, Kimmel student protesters, etc are especially well-spoken to understand that it is their right to speech that matter, not the overall quality of the content. If poorly reasoned hackwork were a crime, every quarter-wit with an office at the foxnewsnationbariweiss hive mind would be in the Gulag Archipelago.
You're such a hypocrite. There is nothing soft about left censorship. Tens of thousands were kicked off Twitter. Facebook suppressed stories everyday. The MSM suppressed and denied the hunter laptop story in order to influence the election. Hundreds of academics in Canada and America have been fired. Schoolboards fire teachers and kick parents out of meetings. And leftists across America cheered when Charlie Kirk was shot. Dem politicians actively encouraged violence against people on the right. Trump's speech was deliberately misrepresented to appear opposite to what he said (the both sides comment.....) And the BBC have acknowledged they doctored his speech to make it look like he pushed insurrection (which he did not).
There is MUCH more freedom online with Musk and the retreat by FB.. MUCH MUCH more access by all sides.....ANd still the EU is trying to ban and suppress speech with support from Democrats.
Yes FIRE are good.....but this is not a both sides issue. The left are congenitally MUCH worse
My apologies, my non-literal language seems to have gone right over your head (I also suspect you don’t know the actual meaning of the word “hypocrite”). I didn’t mean “soft” as in better, I meant “soft” in the sense of “not [clearly] illegal”. It appears that you are such a partisan that you cannot see there is a clear difference between what non-public universities are doing with regard to free speech and what Trump, the government of Texas/Texas A&M, etc, are doing. Only one of them is covered by the First Amendment. Neither is good. I think I said that they both needed to be dealt with, did I not? So how exactly does that make me a hypocrite? (for reference: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocrite).
Hypocrisy is not caring about what your team does and criticising the other side by a much different set of values. For example, like not caring that your candidate is an adjudicated sex offender and caring that a non-government relative of the other team took some dirty pictures and left them on his laptop. Or caring that the other team’s guy paid 2 car payments for his brother, while the son-in-law of your guy got a literally multibillion-dollar windfall as a result of working on behalf of a foreign nation while a government employee. I don’t think you MAGAs have any ground to stand on with regard to hypocrisy (once you actually understand how it’s defined, that is).
And BTW insulting people doesn’t make your argument. You’re a hypocrite because you condemn on the right what has been standard practice on teh left forever and a day. But since you clearly despise your political opponents, don’t be surprised when then hand it back with interest
My only “opponents” are people who have no self-critical skills—and idiots (frequently the same people). I know it’s hard for people like you to understand, but I don’t have a side. I’m critical of whoever makes bad arguments, left or right.
Yep, I meant “blind ideological partisans”.
I understood totally. But legality has nothing to do with whether there can be a middle ground. What the left has been doing — illegally under Biden and with the soft cultural power that comes of dominating the institutions is far worse; and you can’t expect an appeal for compromise and liberal values unless you acknowledge the scale and intensity at which conservatives and Christians have been pilloried and excluded. Suddenly the boot is on the other foot and you are whining. Acknowledge the problem — the massive problem, ongoing in the public square….and maybe you can recover the historic compromise that we all need.
I wouldn't even call it shrugging, rather a quiet pleasure that their ideological enemies are being stifled as they hoped. As you say freeze peach was just a grift and a cudgel for their side and had nothing to do with the actual first amendment.
Sorry, but if Judge Terry Doughty had heard Mark Zuckerberg’s subsequent admissions about interference from the Biden administration, he would have ruled against them. Not that it makes what the current admin is doing any less egregious, but don’t try to tell us what Taibbi and others called the Censorship Industrial Complex didn’t happen or wasn’t a big deal.
Read the letter. Zuckerberg says they made their decisions themselves. The Murthy case was garbage from the start — and Doughty DID rule for them lol. It was SCOTUS and to some extent the Fifth Circuit that saw through the BS.
You may be right. I just assumed no one would censor true things without being forced by the government (regardless of the effect).
Things like having natural immunity from having contracted Covid was just as protective as vaccination; or that the virus likely started at the WIV lab; or Hunter's laptop. Or that young healthy, particularly males, have a higher incidence of myocarditis from the vaccine boosters than from Covid; or that the findings of Roland Fryer may actually be correct and in contradiction to the common narratives; or that BLM riots were not peaceful.
And agreed it was Scotus; and in fairness I will read the full letter.
Wrong.
You just liked Covid misinformation and other right wing tropes.
You're obviously clueless on the legal issues.
You know what they say about ASS U ME ?
It's actually worse than that. You wanted the state to coerce private companies to platform speech that you favored.
Disgusting.
My question has always been about coercion. How? Is asking for voluntary cooperation, even urgently requesting cooperation, in stemming the tide of potentially deadly misinformation somehow to be understood as coercion?
The ask by the Biden administration was silly and out of order because anyone who believed the misinformation being vomited around the antisocial media platforms probably deserved to die. Free speech has the power to cull the herd of a lot of idiocy. if idiots are allowed to follow the influencers of their choice.
Because some of it was not misinformation. Some of it was true, but did not lead to the outcome desired by the Biden admin. So the question is should the government be allowed to pressure media and others to censor true statements that are possibly harmful to the people as a whole. Things like natural immunity to COVID from having had it is protective and shouldn’t require someone to have the vaccine. Or that masks didn’t work. Or that the vaccine, for the most part, didn’t stem transmission of the virus.
I did? You must be joking. On what basis do you put those words in my mouth ?
Let us say that Zuck tailored his testimony as he did in order to remain in favor with the current administration. The notion that he was a victim of coercion of any sort is laughable. He played along to curry favor then and he is playing along to curry favor now. He is just a political ass licker from the word "go." He is not a victim of anything except his own unprincipled and unethical self interest.
So he played along with the Biden admin to avoid any adverse consequences ? Sounds like the textbook definition of coercion.
Please share with us what adverse consequences were suggested that could be used to coerce. Even Zuck in his testimony was pretty vague about any actual threats made.
Exactly ....
Okay, first off, that.Begs the question, is he doing that?
It's very much of a big deal.And so is this current administration's bull crap and he's trying to call for consistency
Yet there is a censorship industrial complex, and they did have valid fears. However, I would love to see these people be consistent.
And yes, I don't like how you downplay how twitter is just an arm of the government at that point... at the same time.Thank you for calling out the hypocrisy.And the horrible shit that trump is doing, especially when he ran on a platform that was supposed to be the reduction of the censorship.
The decline of Matt Taibbi continues to confound.
Trump and his cronies are making a list. If you are on it, they are going to use it against you when the time comes.
ACLU don’t make me laugh. Your hypocrisy is beyond measure. I don’t care for corporate or state censorship. But until you own the massive authoritarian monopoly, exercised by the left in schools and universities, and in many nation states, you’re just another partisan hack. The bottom line is that your side has created a zero sum politics. You abandoned the rule of law and liberal principles. Tens of thousands of you cheered when Charlie Kirk got killed. You egg on people who are assassinate Trump…. And then you cry when he doesn’t play nice. Welcome to the world you created. It’s pretty shitty. We can agree on that.V but you created it .
This sounds like a "you started argument" maybe in principle, you should be against what trump is doing.Because it's a question of principle, not a question of sides period.
And I think you over exaggerate the amount of people that cheered when that person got killed... you seem to ignore that people were thinking.He was going to raise from the dead three days later, because they're absolutely insane.
It was political violence.There was a terrible tragedy.However, let's not forget that the man was not exactly a saint.
Who's egging on Who, when did this author do that?
how about this lovely man below ? https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/what-are-heterodox-free-speech-warriors/comment/216902370
Exaggerating? And yet the very first comment....
https://substack.com/home/post/p-188512478
Where did charlie kirk come up in any of this?
I don't care who started it. And if you don't like it, you don't like the censorship industrial complex as you are very right to hate it.. you shouldn't like it when another side does it but so brash, and so terribly that the constitution is being threatened.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-188512478
If you wanna hi hard hit here
Can you draw pictures as well?
What kind of question is that? Kirk was indeed a hypocrite. He said it says a lot about people.How they try to politicize deaths and murders?And then he did exactly that.
I don't support charlie kirk. I said it was an act of political violence, and that was terrible.
I am saying that there is an industrial censorship complex that must be considered... at the same time, the author of this article is absolutely correct in calling out their hypocrisy
The bottom line is that we are trapped between social authoritarianism sold as pseudo-niceness to preferred subgroups on one side and actual attempted authoritarianism/kleptocracy sold as a necessary reaction.
If your side is driving voters away towards someone so deeply flawed then the onus is on you to find out why.
If you do it twice then then you have not learned that lesson because your basic assumption was “there must be something wrong with all of those people’.
Yep they are partisan hacks
Alas so are you
"Freedom for me, not for them"