"[G]ood doesn't drive out evil. Evil doesn't drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive."
-- William Bernbach
Whew. What a week, eh? A bunch of Trump supporters broke into the Capitol Building. At least two - six people died as a result, including a police officer. Millions of people believe the election was rigged, and don't accept the outcome of the election. And such perceptions were stoked by cynical politicians who stood to gain power and money by playing on the paranoia of their constituents.
I know I've been posting a lot about this issue. And I know that my posts annoy a lot of you. And I realize that my comments have not always been temperate. My apologies!
However, I see a lot of cheerleading for censorship right now, both public and private, from both the left and the right. And I'm quite worried, because once a censorship regime has been established, it can be very difficult to root out.
[Note, I address the progressives and libertarians in this essay, because they make up the bulk of my audience. I will address Trump supporters in a future essay.]
Many people across the world live under regimes where they risk imprisonment or death if they criticize the government.
For example, the Soviet Union and its satellite countries severely repressed speech for 80 years. The Chinese government has been suppressing speech even longer, and shows no signs of abating.
Remember Tiananmen Square?
The Arab Spring?
The Hong Kong uprisings?
The very same arguments that are now being used to crush the speech of Trump supporters are used by authoritarian regimes to crush dissenters. Sedition! Treason! Terrorism! These are the excuses authoritarians the world over use to censor their opposition.
And I don't think Americans have any special resistance to tyranny. We're humans, with the same foibles as the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians.
Did a handful (100 - 200) of Trump supporters occupy the Capitol building? Yes.
Did a few people die? Yes.
Were some police officers injured? Yes.
Should the Capitol occupiers be prosecuted and serve time for their crimes? Yes.
But 74 million people voted for Trump. 1-2 million people had accounts on Parler. Should we let the speech of millions of people be suppressed based on the bad behavior of 0.0002% of their members?
No!
But, you might say, aren't Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Amazon private companies? Don't they have the right to determine who uses their services, to censor whom they like, how they like?
Yes, of course. The right to free speech includes the right to refuse coerced speech. It would be equally foolish to demand that those companies be forced to host speech they oppose, as it would be to tolerate government censorship.
But let's not pretend that these companies are wholly private actors either or that they are not doing anything wrong.
For example, all rely on government enforced patent and copyright monopolies that make it more difficult for other companies to compete with them.
Anti-trust laws give the government the power to investigate them, and potentially heavily fine them, break them apart, and/or imprison their executives. Both Facebook and Amazon are likely to face anti-trust hearings in front of a Democratic controlled Congress and Biden appointed regulators.
The political views of SF Bay tech firm staff skew heavily Democratic and progressive. So, I'm sure most felt little compunction about censoring and de-platforming Republicans. However, couldn't their motivation for censoring Republicans be equally explained by a desire to curry favor with incoming Democratic lawmakers? Isn't it convenient that political principle and business interests align so closely?
Government officials also exert heavy handed control over access to internet cable backbones, radio spectrum, banks, payment processors and other services critical to their operation. Powerful Democratic politicians, such as Al Gore, sit on the boards of these companies. Their lobbyists often write the regulations the government enforces upon their industry, and their employees often later serve in the regulatory agencies.
The self-dealing regulations, subsidies, and sweetheart relationships between these companies and regulators are a formidable barrier to new competitors. Startup companies typically have little money to pay the costs of meeting stringent regulations, let alone pay for lobbyists to change them.
So while I don't think the established powerful players in industry should be censored or forced to speak (as any organization with such power would quickly be itself corrupted), they should also not be celebrated for censoring their users, or colluding to bankrupt would-be competitors.
I also think they should be ashamed at their treatment of their users.
At the invitation of these companies, millions of people poured billions of hours of their lives into building up these companies. They've built businesses around the advertising and marketing tools provided by these firms. They've established deep connections with friends and family all over the world. In a year of Covid quarantines, these companies have played a vital role in maintaining employment and human connection.
People have invested so much because they trusted that they would be treated fairly by these companies. Yet now, because of the poorly considered decisions of some conspiracy theorists in bison hats, these companies are systematically, arbitrarily, and with little warning canceling their accounts.
Who would not be furious to have their livelihoods destroyed? To lose years of writing, artwork, and stupid jokes erased? To be cut off from friends and family?
And what are they told when they complain?
"Don't like our decisions? Tough! Our network, our rules. Fuck off, fascists, go roll your own site."
So they did. The pariahs of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube cobbled together alternatives: Gab, Parler, Bitchute, etc.
And they were growing. Fast!
But then a few hundred Trumpist yahoos occupied the Capitol building. Two people died as a result, and some windows and doors were broken.
And the tech firms flipped out! They immediately the colluded to destroy the alternative social networks the pariahs cobbled together.
Sedition! Treason! Insurrection!
Yet these same tech firms had tolerated months of rioting by BLM protesters. Protests that caused the deaths of at least 19 people, resulted in $1 - $2 billion in property damage, and involved firebombing of police and government buildings.
Did Democratic politicians cry insurrection when the CHAZ protesters took over several city blocks in Seattle? Did the Google and Apple store ban Facebook and Twitter for letting BLM protesters organize through their services?
No, they did not hold the vast majority of "mostly peaceful" protesters responsible for the violence and crime caused by the small percentage of bad actors. They did not ban BLM protesters en masse, or collude to destroy BLM websites.
They did not hysterically claim that the intent of the BLM protesters was to incite an insurrection. They didn't accuse the BLM protesters of sedition when they attacked police and government buildings.
Instead, they blasély excused the BLM riots as "the language of unheard".
Who would not be furious at the blatant double standard?
The left condemns Trump for "inciting" insurrection by cynically stoking his supporter's anger, and not sufficiently condemning the Capitol Building occupiers.
But what does the left think that censoring tens of millions of Trump supporters will do? Colluding to bankrupt their businesses? Cutting them off from their friends, customers? Cutting them off from their payment processors?
Aren't tech companies inciting insurrection at least as much as Trump did?
What should progressives do instead? How can the left address the legitimate concerns they have with the Trump supporters without becoming the very monster they fear? I'm not sure. But I have a few suggestions for what they should _stop_ doing.
1. The big tech firms should stop colluding with each other to try to deplatform/censor Republicans. Such collusion doesn't exactly counter the conspiracy (?) theories that the election was rigged by a cabal of anti-Trump tech firms, the media, and Deep State operatives. If I were Biden, I'd get on the phone with the tech CEO's and ask them to apologize for overreacting, and let Parler, Gab, Minds back on their platforms, without censorship.
2. Take the allegations of election rigging seriously. I mean, haven't Democrats been squawking about voter suppression, Russian astroturfing, and voting machine tampering for years? Why is it so surprising that Republicans have the same concerns?
Are their concerns unwarranted? Have they bought into conspiracy theories? Yes, and yes, probably.
But people are people, and you can go a long way towards mollifying people if you treat them with some dignity and take their concerns seriously.
Biden should get on television and publicly acknowledge their concerns about the election. Meet with Trumpist leaders privately, and promise them that you'll put together a bipartisan commission to make sure that future elections are more secure.
3. Stop treating the Capitol Building protest like it was an attempted coup or insurrection. I know, I know, the protesters took a dump in the Holy of Holies of the Church of Progressivism. They freaked out some Congresspeople, instead of burning down some wig shops and Autozones. But what the Trump protesters did was no different in kind than what the BLM protesters did.
War is hell. If a hot Civil War breaks out, and people are killed in the same proportion of people as died in the first Civil War, then about 6 million people will die. But I fear that's where we're headed, if we don't figure out to live together more peacefully.
-- William Bernbach
Whew. What a week, eh? A bunch of Trump supporters broke into the Capitol Building. At least two - six people died as a result, including a police officer. Millions of people believe the election was rigged, and don't accept the outcome of the election. And such perceptions were stoked by cynical politicians who stood to gain power and money by playing on the paranoia of their constituents.
I know I've been posting a lot about this issue. And I know that my posts annoy a lot of you. And I realize that my comments have not always been temperate. My apologies!
However, I see a lot of cheerleading for censorship right now, both public and private, from both the left and the right. And I'm quite worried, because once a censorship regime has been established, it can be very difficult to root out.
[Note, I address the progressives and libertarians in this essay, because they make up the bulk of my audience. I will address Trump supporters in a future essay.]
Many people across the world live under regimes where they risk imprisonment or death if they criticize the government.
For example, the Soviet Union and its satellite countries severely repressed speech for 80 years. The Chinese government has been suppressing speech even longer, and shows no signs of abating.
Remember Tiananmen Square?
The Arab Spring?
The Hong Kong uprisings?
The very same arguments that are now being used to crush the speech of Trump supporters are used by authoritarian regimes to crush dissenters. Sedition! Treason! Terrorism! These are the excuses authoritarians the world over use to censor their opposition.
And I don't think Americans have any special resistance to tyranny. We're humans, with the same foibles as the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians.
Did a handful (100 - 200) of Trump supporters occupy the Capitol building? Yes.
Did a few people die? Yes.
Were some police officers injured? Yes.
Should the Capitol occupiers be prosecuted and serve time for their crimes? Yes.
But 74 million people voted for Trump. 1-2 million people had accounts on Parler. Should we let the speech of millions of people be suppressed based on the bad behavior of 0.0002% of their members?
No!
But, you might say, aren't Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Amazon private companies? Don't they have the right to determine who uses their services, to censor whom they like, how they like?
Yes, of course. The right to free speech includes the right to refuse coerced speech. It would be equally foolish to demand that those companies be forced to host speech they oppose, as it would be to tolerate government censorship.
But let's not pretend that these companies are wholly private actors either or that they are not doing anything wrong.
For example, all rely on government enforced patent and copyright monopolies that make it more difficult for other companies to compete with them.
Anti-trust laws give the government the power to investigate them, and potentially heavily fine them, break them apart, and/or imprison their executives. Both Facebook and Amazon are likely to face anti-trust hearings in front of a Democratic controlled Congress and Biden appointed regulators.
The political views of SF Bay tech firm staff skew heavily Democratic and progressive. So, I'm sure most felt little compunction about censoring and de-platforming Republicans. However, couldn't their motivation for censoring Republicans be equally explained by a desire to curry favor with incoming Democratic lawmakers? Isn't it convenient that political principle and business interests align so closely?
Government officials also exert heavy handed control over access to internet cable backbones, radio spectrum, banks, payment processors and other services critical to their operation. Powerful Democratic politicians, such as Al Gore, sit on the boards of these companies. Their lobbyists often write the regulations the government enforces upon their industry, and their employees often later serve in the regulatory agencies.
The self-dealing regulations, subsidies, and sweetheart relationships between these companies and regulators are a formidable barrier to new competitors. Startup companies typically have little money to pay the costs of meeting stringent regulations, let alone pay for lobbyists to change them.
So while I don't think the established powerful players in industry should be censored or forced to speak (as any organization with such power would quickly be itself corrupted), they should also not be celebrated for censoring their users, or colluding to bankrupt would-be competitors.
I also think they should be ashamed at their treatment of their users.
At the invitation of these companies, millions of people poured billions of hours of their lives into building up these companies. They've built businesses around the advertising and marketing tools provided by these firms. They've established deep connections with friends and family all over the world. In a year of Covid quarantines, these companies have played a vital role in maintaining employment and human connection.
People have invested so much because they trusted that they would be treated fairly by these companies. Yet now, because of the poorly considered decisions of some conspiracy theorists in bison hats, these companies are systematically, arbitrarily, and with little warning canceling their accounts.
Who would not be furious to have their livelihoods destroyed? To lose years of writing, artwork, and stupid jokes erased? To be cut off from friends and family?
And what are they told when they complain?
"Don't like our decisions? Tough! Our network, our rules. Fuck off, fascists, go roll your own site."
So they did. The pariahs of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube cobbled together alternatives: Gab, Parler, Bitchute, etc.
And they were growing. Fast!
But then a few hundred Trumpist yahoos occupied the Capitol building. Two people died as a result, and some windows and doors were broken.
And the tech firms flipped out! They immediately the colluded to destroy the alternative social networks the pariahs cobbled together.
Sedition! Treason! Insurrection!
Yet these same tech firms had tolerated months of rioting by BLM protesters. Protests that caused the deaths of at least 19 people, resulted in $1 - $2 billion in property damage, and involved firebombing of police and government buildings.
Did Democratic politicians cry insurrection when the CHAZ protesters took over several city blocks in Seattle? Did the Google and Apple store ban Facebook and Twitter for letting BLM protesters organize through their services?
No, they did not hold the vast majority of "mostly peaceful" protesters responsible for the violence and crime caused by the small percentage of bad actors. They did not ban BLM protesters en masse, or collude to destroy BLM websites.
They did not hysterically claim that the intent of the BLM protesters was to incite an insurrection. They didn't accuse the BLM protesters of sedition when they attacked police and government buildings.
Instead, they blasély excused the BLM riots as "the language of unheard".
Who would not be furious at the blatant double standard?
The left condemns Trump for "inciting" insurrection by cynically stoking his supporter's anger, and not sufficiently condemning the Capitol Building occupiers.
But what does the left think that censoring tens of millions of Trump supporters will do? Colluding to bankrupt their businesses? Cutting them off from their friends, customers? Cutting them off from their payment processors?
Aren't tech companies inciting insurrection at least as much as Trump did?
What should progressives do instead? How can the left address the legitimate concerns they have with the Trump supporters without becoming the very monster they fear? I'm not sure. But I have a few suggestions for what they should _stop_ doing.
1. The big tech firms should stop colluding with each other to try to deplatform/censor Republicans. Such collusion doesn't exactly counter the conspiracy (?) theories that the election was rigged by a cabal of anti-Trump tech firms, the media, and Deep State operatives. If I were Biden, I'd get on the phone with the tech CEO's and ask them to apologize for overreacting, and let Parler, Gab, Minds back on their platforms, without censorship.
2. Take the allegations of election rigging seriously. I mean, haven't Democrats been squawking about voter suppression, Russian astroturfing, and voting machine tampering for years? Why is it so surprising that Republicans have the same concerns?
Are their concerns unwarranted? Have they bought into conspiracy theories? Yes, and yes, probably.
But people are people, and you can go a long way towards mollifying people if you treat them with some dignity and take their concerns seriously.
Biden should get on television and publicly acknowledge their concerns about the election. Meet with Trumpist leaders privately, and promise them that you'll put together a bipartisan commission to make sure that future elections are more secure.
3. Stop treating the Capitol Building protest like it was an attempted coup or insurrection. I know, I know, the protesters took a dump in the Holy of Holies of the Church of Progressivism. They freaked out some Congresspeople, instead of burning down some wig shops and Autozones. But what the Trump protesters did was no different in kind than what the BLM protesters did.
War is hell. If a hot Civil War breaks out, and people are killed in the same proportion of people as died in the first Civil War, then about 6 million people will die. But I fear that's where we're headed, if we don't figure out to live together more peacefully.