Comment by mtgp1000
5 years ago
>While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture
The "radical right" enclaves on the internet are literally the only places where you won't be banned for not falling in line.
We need to have this discussion in more than one dimension. Left/right and authoritarian/anarchist are orthogonal metrics.
I'm not sure which "radical right" enclaves you are talking about.
Donald trump and conservative groups on reddit for example are some of the most ban-heavy groups around. Where are you thinking about?
TD is not far right. 4chan is "far right". 8chan is "far right". But there are regular far left threads on chans advocating for all kinds of radicalism (including violence) as well as making legitimate talking points - no one gets banned, even though the sites primarily lean right.
The only "side" interested in actual free speech currently is the "far right", unlike left leaning forums and media outlets which explicitly censor one particular point of view, regardless of whether it is backed by legitimate science which should be open to discussion.
Censorship has undeniably become a leftist problem, if you insist on reducing the high dimensional space of political leanings to a single myopic dimension. Unbelievable that in 2020 people are shamed for going to the last places on the internet where discourse is unrestricted.
You can't in good faith make the claim that the far right is interested in actual free speech. They'd rather see people get dropped from helicopters than let those they deem to be "degenerates" voice their political opinions.
TD, /r/conservative, /r/uncensorednews [1], and all the shitholes on voat have one thing in common, they all ban pretty much anyone who goes against their narratives.
And TD was far right, not as far right as /r/uncensorednews was, but still pretty far right. But perhaps your Overton window is much further to the right than mine (and northern Europe's) is.
[1] The subreddit was banned about two years ago but had 100k+ subs and featured pretty frequent racism, anti-semitism, transphobia, and neo-nazi imagery (the head mod is a self-described neo-nazi after all).
Not my experience. Back when it was a going concern, The_Donald moderators were incredibly quick to ban anyone who was not a 100% full-throated supporter of Trump. I know because I was banned repeatedly for trying to engage in nuanced, good faith discussions. r/Conservative is extremely quick on the ban trigger as well.
I find that a desire for safe-spaces and monoculture spans both sides of the aisle and seems to be a broader trend in our culture today. Perhaps this desire always existed and the Internet's ability to cater to the long tail has simply enabled it.
There are discussion websites other than reddit...
Also calling the_donald "far right" really indicates the bias of discourse online. Which is part of the problem - people are deliberately loose with language and netizens (at least on reddit) truly believe that Nazis have taken over the Republican party...
The top post on their new site right now says that "Donald Trump is our last and only hope" and encourages readers to "VOTE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. IT DOES." I think this is an extreme viewpoint by any reasonable standard; the vast majority of people don't expect they're going to die if the wrong person wins an election.
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