This is what I was talking about when I was saying we shouldn’t cheerlead for social media censorship.
This is us losing our meaningful right to free speech in real time.
The First Amendment and “free speech” didn’t just benefit white supremacists first and foremost, but male white supremacists. Still does.
Yeah, I’d rather not deal with the “white knights of free speech” in the States. Your free speech equips bigots and abusers to say what they want, when they want. No thanks.
It will always be legal to speak on behalf of white men. Free speech is most important to the left. Look at how reddit treats the left and the right respectively. Right wingers are terrorists when they say they about to do violence lefties are terrorists when they joke about it.
Free speech in the US was hard fought for by unionists who needed to be able to table for their unions without getting arrested or beaten.
By worshiping free speech, you will not convince your enemies to do the same. You will merely expose yourself to their deceptions through instrumental language. Right wing ideas exert a kind of gravitational force on us, pulling the Overton Window closer toward racism and prejudice simply by being expressed. Therefore, the normalization model demands that unsavory views are never entertained by mainstream platforms, because they are a mechanism through which society will come to embrace those ideas.
Many right wing stances on free speech serve to further the idea that racism and extremism must be openly tolerated by those around you. Free speech is a tree that can only grow crooked, right-wingers have proven this beyond all doubt, thus new progressives have a duty to make sure toxic ideas are extinguished.
Fascists always hide behind free speech.
