Why do so many socialist/communists/leftists adopt libertarian rhetoric when it comes the subject of freedom of speech and deplatforming? - "Muh private company can do whatever it wants!"
- Thread starter Lensherr
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- Mar 18, 2020
I don’t think they actually believe it, they’re just exposing how many “free-market” conservatives get angry when a company decides to make a decision about their platform.
If they actually believe it, then they aren’t left-wing.
If they actually believe it, then they aren’t left-wing.
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It's still shitty but at least it's a less shitty take than the people who say nationalizing social media would somehow protect freeze peach. People who say shit like that don't know a thing on how government works.
I don't like either take. We're fucked either way.
I don't like either take. We're fucked either way.
Something Different
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It comes down to hate speech. I dont know any leftists at all that think you should be able to be fired for most types of speech, whether they agree with it or not, they just want safety nets for minorities so they can work in hate free spaces. Thats always been there position so this is a weird question in general
Key the Metal Shitposter
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I get that its a meme for libertarians to simp for corporations, but wouldnt valuing freedom of speech against a monopolistic grasp on public discussion online be a libertarian stance? I think the majority of libertarians would agree that freedom of speech should be protected no matter what.
Hellbound Hellhound
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Libertarians tend to subscribe to the notion that freedom is something inherent which can only be taken from you. As a consequence, they're usually blind to the ways that it can also be given, or at the very least, so doctrinaire that they choose to purposefully ignore such cases.
If we think about this within the context of a private company's right to refuse services to people based upon their opinions: a libertarian would probably argue that state intervention requiring companies to provide services indiscriminately would be an imposition upon their owners' right to self-determination; what they fail to appreciate is the freedom which has been gained on the other end.
Personally, I have no problem with left-wing people using this argument, because it highlights the hypocrisy of their own position as well as the conservative/libertarian one. Two birds with one stone.
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Even if Current Year ends and the pendulum swings out of far left, the trend of heavy censorship could be here to stay.
(because positions of power and influence are magnets to jerks who like control)
(because positions of power and influence are magnets to jerks who like control)
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- May 10, 2020
They're just expecting right-wingers to be consistent. If they think that a business should be allowed to refuse service to gay people if it wishes to do so, then it should be able to refuse service to right-wingers if it wishes to do so.
Honest Fan Soni-chan
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The most important thing to understand about the left is that they typically don't believe their own talking points. Leftism has nothing to do with equality or equity or being king of the black people. It's about breaking down society and any tool that will further that aim is a good tool. A leftist as an individual can best be compared to a cancer cell in a body.
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re: the question in the OP
In a general sense, debate tactics are used because there is the perception that they work. I imagine that using this specific tactic has paid off enough times that leftists see some value in continuing to deploy it. If you have a slam dunk response to the tactic, that's all well and good, but maybe most rightists don't and just get flustered and mad about it, which selects for the left continuing to use it, because they see rightists get mad when they see other leftists using it.
Specifically though, there are multiple reasons why it's used. The Left isn't a homogenous mass (and so aren't all engaging with the Right for the same reasons) and similarly the Right isn't a homogenous mass to be engaged with on the same issues in the same way either. A basic bitch Democrat is going to engage with an ancap on the issue differently and for different reasons than an authcom tankie will engage with TradCath monarchist.
Some leftists just do it to troll, because it works and it makes a lot of rightists mad.
Some do it to point out the irony of the right being vehemently pro-free speech when it lets them clown on niggers and trannies and vehemently pro-capitalism, but then pulling a 180 when a capitalist, private, for-profit company either uses speech in a way they don't like or polices speech on their private property.
Some do it to point out that corporations, or capitalism as a whole, are bad and to try and redpill the right on how bad they are, using an issue the right ostensibly cares about as an example.
Some do it to point out what they perceive as the absurdity of enlightenment era-style free speech, especially when mixed with 21st century capitalism.
Some on the right are just trolling and like to clown on niggers and trannies and then point out that the left can't do shit because their right to do so is enshrined in the constitution.
Some on the right actually care about free speech as a political issue and want to preserve it for everyone.
Some on the right genuinely care about corporate overreach regardless of who is targeted by it.
Some on the right use free speech as an easy recruitment tool for nationalist or hardline right politics but would happily crack down on free speech for dissidents (especially leftists) if they ever had the political capital to do so.
I'd say that probably MOST of the time, the right's issue with it is simply being mad at having their own personal social media being taken away and doesn't extend much beyond that, and probably MOST of the time the left is just engaging in schadenfreude and it doesn't extend much beyond that.
In a general sense, debate tactics are used because there is the perception that they work. I imagine that using this specific tactic has paid off enough times that leftists see some value in continuing to deploy it. If you have a slam dunk response to the tactic, that's all well and good, but maybe most rightists don't and just get flustered and mad about it, which selects for the left continuing to use it, because they see rightists get mad when they see other leftists using it.
Specifically though, there are multiple reasons why it's used. The Left isn't a homogenous mass (and so aren't all engaging with the Right for the same reasons) and similarly the Right isn't a homogenous mass to be engaged with on the same issues in the same way either. A basic bitch Democrat is going to engage with an ancap on the issue differently and for different reasons than an authcom tankie will engage with TradCath monarchist.
Some leftists just do it to troll, because it works and it makes a lot of rightists mad.
Some do it to point out the irony of the right being vehemently pro-free speech when it lets them clown on niggers and trannies and vehemently pro-capitalism, but then pulling a 180 when a capitalist, private, for-profit company either uses speech in a way they don't like or polices speech on their private property.
Some do it to point out that corporations, or capitalism as a whole, are bad and to try and redpill the right on how bad they are, using an issue the right ostensibly cares about as an example.
Some do it to point out what they perceive as the absurdity of enlightenment era-style free speech, especially when mixed with 21st century capitalism.
Some on the right are just trolling and like to clown on niggers and trannies and then point out that the left can't do shit because their right to do so is enshrined in the constitution.
Some on the right actually care about free speech as a political issue and want to preserve it for everyone.
Some on the right genuinely care about corporate overreach regardless of who is targeted by it.
Some on the right use free speech as an easy recruitment tool for nationalist or hardline right politics but would happily crack down on free speech for dissidents (especially leftists) if they ever had the political capital to do so.
I'd say that probably MOST of the time, the right's issue with it is simply being mad at having their own personal social media being taken away and doesn't extend much beyond that, and probably MOST of the time the left is just engaging in schadenfreude and it doesn't extend much beyond that.
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- Dec 22, 2020
A few reasons.
One is that the modern left is strongly allied with corporations, the mainstream media, and corporate censorship. BLM, for instance.
Another is that these leftists base much of their rhetoric about social issues on a vulgarised form of capitalism's rhetoric. For instance, capitalism often brought an emphasis on the language of 'rights,' and the concept of negative freedom. Socialists typically take this concept and corrupt it into pure arbitrariness, hedonism and caprice, as for instance with transsexuals and their 'right' to their gender identity.
This leftist version of 'rights' is not concerned about social order, and will allow atomised individuals to trample all over society and reality itself, for instance by redefining 'gender' and thus nature based on however they feel or by regulating social conduct based on the feeling of 'offence' whether or not it has any basis. In this sense, it's not surprising that they would occasionally fall back on the basis of their conceptions, capitalistic private property, when they can use it as a vehicle for their own arbitrariness. They want to let gays do whatever, let trannies do or be whatever, and if the 'rights of private companies' can give them a pseudo-official stamp of approval then they figure that it's one step closer to importing their fifty hundred genders into reality itself. If private companies can do things for no reason, then maybe they can add a few hundred genders? Past a certain point, modern leftist ideology needs a way to express itself arbitrarily because it becomes a pointless, irrational hodgehodge of identity politics, gender identity preference, and cancel culture.
However, this focus on the 'rights of companies' tends to disappear often, such as when blacks are rioting and burning down businesses. Since it isn't a vehicle for leftists' own agenda here, they mostly dispense with the concept.
They can hence tend towards rhetoric resembling that of libertarians, and might well resemble several libertarians, but in general the leftists have much less commitment to these ideals. Libertarians might support others' rights to express things that they abhor, but modern leftists often just want to 'bash the fash' and hate on Orange Man.
One is that the modern left is strongly allied with corporations, the mainstream media, and corporate censorship. BLM, for instance.
Another is that these leftists base much of their rhetoric about social issues on a vulgarised form of capitalism's rhetoric. For instance, capitalism often brought an emphasis on the language of 'rights,' and the concept of negative freedom. Socialists typically take this concept and corrupt it into pure arbitrariness, hedonism and caprice, as for instance with transsexuals and their 'right' to their gender identity.
This leftist version of 'rights' is not concerned about social order, and will allow atomised individuals to trample all over society and reality itself, for instance by redefining 'gender' and thus nature based on however they feel or by regulating social conduct based on the feeling of 'offence' whether or not it has any basis. In this sense, it's not surprising that they would occasionally fall back on the basis of their conceptions, capitalistic private property, when they can use it as a vehicle for their own arbitrariness. They want to let gays do whatever, let trannies do or be whatever, and if the 'rights of private companies' can give them a pseudo-official stamp of approval then they figure that it's one step closer to importing their fifty hundred genders into reality itself. If private companies can do things for no reason, then maybe they can add a few hundred genders? Past a certain point, modern leftist ideology needs a way to express itself arbitrarily because it becomes a pointless, irrational hodgehodge of identity politics, gender identity preference, and cancel culture.
However, this focus on the 'rights of companies' tends to disappear often, such as when blacks are rioting and burning down businesses. Since it isn't a vehicle for leftists' own agenda here, they mostly dispense with the concept.
They can hence tend towards rhetoric resembling that of libertarians, and might well resemble several libertarians, but in general the leftists have much less commitment to these ideals. Libertarians might support others' rights to express things that they abhor, but modern leftists often just want to 'bash the fash' and hate on Orange Man.
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- Feb 26, 2019
The only speech that's free is speech that doesn't rustle jimmies. Not even "fire in a crowded theater" speech but shit like misgendering or calling someone a nugget. That's your answer OP. They just want legal speech to only be speech they want to hear.
Edit: My phone decided to change nigger to nugget
Edit: My phone decided to change nigger to nugget
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- Sep 9, 2021
I used to frequent a few commie forums in the early 2010s and there's a couple things to note about how different things were back then:
Now, there is no need for commies to hide away in obscure forums, or to form tiny fringe parties with a few dozen members that receive a handful of votes. Now, they can converse on Twitter freely and receive 100,000s of retweets. They can join up with any mainstream left-of-centre party in a western country and talk about the "need to abolish capitalism" at a public party meeting. They feel themselves as being part of the political mainstream now, so they have no need for freedom of speech as a concept, and they don't respect the efforts that commies/socialists in the past had to go through in order to keep those ideas alive.
- The sperging about problematic speech and slurs was always there. I used to get banned from left-wing forums for casually calling someone a "pussy". Not because it was insulting, but specifically with the ban reason being "You used a gendered slur with sexist connotations". I think this comes from some leftists overanalysing the roots of the language we use, and then trying to remove any undesirable things they discover. So, for the word "pussy", it didn't matter to them that I was using it as basically just a by-word for "coward", because the very fact that I was using a word for female genitalia to convey a negative meaning meant that I was being sexist. In order to banish these wrongwords from usage, they need to censor heavily until people get the message.
- HOWEVER, more generally speaking, far-leftists back then seemed to be more respectful of political freedom of speech. This was because being a commie or any form of actual socialist in the 00s and early 10s was much less popular. This was a time when socialists were getting purged from some mainstream left-of-centre parties (eg. UK Labour Party) and were outright never even included in others (US Democrats). The political trend of the young at the time was generic Obama liberalism. Commies and socialists were, essentially, relegated to a similar status as Nazis and fascists are today - a lunatic fringe that nobody wanted to hear from. And any political ideology which is made to feel as if it is part of the fringe is going to be more in favour of freedom of speech, as they are the main targets whenever a government or corporate platform tries to restrict it.
Now, there is no need for commies to hide away in obscure forums, or to form tiny fringe parties with a few dozen members that receive a handful of votes. Now, they can converse on Twitter freely and receive 100,000s of retweets. They can join up with any mainstream left-of-centre party in a western country and talk about the "need to abolish capitalism" at a public party meeting. They feel themselves as being part of the political mainstream now, so they have no need for freedom of speech as a concept, and they don't respect the efforts that commies/socialists in the past had to go through in order to keep those ideas alive.
Kyria the Great
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Personally the real take is why should we allow any major media institution to exist at any level whether private or public? They only exist to project power and the only solution to this problem is their outright destruction and those who stand in the way of their destruction. If nothing drastic is done, no freedom will exist and we will be either slaves to the state, megacorp or both.
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It's because communists have realised that democracy and mass media is the greatest tool for them to implement an incremental subversion of their host society all the while centralising power, wealth and control. Notice how the ultra-wealthy are never about just making money? They all want to "change the world". I recommend any interested in understand what people are doing is read Gramsci Prison Notebooks essays. https://b-ok.xyz/s/Gramsci?
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Nigger Respecter
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This kinda shit is pretty common with any political hobbyists with paper-thin ideologies. They don't really care about the issues or their causes, they just want to signal their dislike for the opposition