Replies

An excellent article, and thanks for posting. The wars for the Internet began quite some time ago, and this site, FR, has been in the front lines from the outset. On a broader scale these very same wars began the first time someone in government decided that only government could own a printing press. He lost that one. It was tried again in many places, most successfully in the Soviet Union, which lost the war to samizdat anyway. Now once more the totalitarian impulse raises its head for another try.

The only way for the left to win the second phase is to either fundamentally change the structure of the internet so that it more closely resembles its old media model or to silence everyone who opposes it.

The old media model, at least in the countries where the Internet arose, was and remains heavily corporate, and it is through the corporation that the latest attempt at control is operating. Google's "don't be evil" has become a joke; Facebook is openly deleting entire threads and users its proprietors don't like, Twitter is currently a red-hot battleground. But so long as there is competition, so long as all of those corporations fear that a competitor will arise, then they know they cannot manage the necessary monopoly on opinion. But with the State's help, they can, and it is that marriage that has so corrupted the conventional media entirely out of recognition and into the monolithic monster it has become.

"Hate Speech is not protected" means simply that whoever gets to define Hate Speech has the monopoly in hand. No wonder every totalitarian heart beats to its cadence. That can squelch the competition, that can solidify political power in the hands of an elite few. It's an excellent working definition of tyranny and it cannot be allowed.