Comment by iamnothere
2 days ago
Totalitarianism has the same end state whether it comes from the left or the right. It always results in suppression of the truth, broken feedback loops that lead to poor decisions by government, economic failure, and finally either bloody repression, war, or revolution.
It’s possible to move through this to a place of stability. After all, China only had to kill 15-55 million people in the Great Leap Forward and a couple thousand more in 1989. Today they are fairly stable and prosperous, even with tight controls on information. Perhaps the UK will have a similar path!
Both extreme leftism and extreme rightism are composed of the same people - more focused on ideology rather than truth, and authoritarian control rather than voice of reason.
In the middle, there is an acceptable range of compromise. Social media is the new town square. People shouldn't be able to post stuff on there without recourse for lying and spreading misinformation, just like they shouldn't be able to do this in public. History shows that this leads to bad outcomes. Also, history also shows that we can't just have personal freedoms unrestricted.
And just because that "freedom" is being taken away, doesn't mean that the leftists are in charge.
Historically, at least in the US, people are indeed explicitly allowed to lie or spread misinformation in the town square. This is specifically allowed by the first amendment and backed by court cases. Your mention of the “town square” here is interesting, as Marsh v. Alabama and Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins both center around this idea. In both cases the Supreme Court ruled that unrestricted free speech was allowed in the town square, whether it was a company town or a shopping mall, so long as the location was effectively serving as a surrogate town square.
Now of course this is about the UK. But to my knowledge and based on research there are no laws or cases about lying in public. As long as you aren’t committing perjury or slander, or urging violence, or inciting a panic, this isn’t illegal.