Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Tuesday, August 07, 2018

The New High Water Mark of Left Censorship

Yesterday, in an act of "collusion", Apple, YouTube and Facebook all decided to de-platform InfoWars. This surprises no one who has been paying attention. Almost a year ago today I wrote:
Having lost what little decency the left had left, when Trump won the election the [tech] powers that be decided that free speech and free expression of ideas (that don't directly incite violence) could no longer be accepted. In fact, the left made a great leap into censorship when it came to the subject of illegal immigration and the fake refugee conspiracy being used to ethnically cleanse various European nation states. And that's what it is: ethnic cleansing of Europe. Google/Youtube has just raised the ante on this behavior:
Remember that the Left (and bullies in general) use what we'll call the Test Technique. That is, they will do something provocative and see how you react. If the reaction is "strong" but not fatal (in that there are serious consequences) then the the bully will wait and then push again. Hence what we see here is the next step. When YouTube, etc. decided to "shadow ban", de-monetize, etc. certain types of video, it was a test. When the response was simply a lot of hand waving and shouting, YouTube knew that conservatives (the main target of these actions) were the paper tigers of Chinese lore.

I said some time ago when Target essentially told it's non-liberal customers to fuck off when they announced their new changing and bathroom policy, that if those opposed could not cause empty parking lots in Target stores across the nation then they would be seen as a non threat for more "onerous" policies. Empty parking lots did not happen and more onerous actions have appeared as expected.

So one of the big lessons here is that non-left people (including moderates) have been boxed in. The left played a very long game and have gotten themselves into pivotal and powerful positions within private as well as public entities and are now showing their true faces (and asses). With the decimation of "mom and pop" stores, large corporations can essentially control the purchasing power and ability to earn of larger and larger swaths of the public. You can thank Republicans for that too. When a non-left objects to a corporate policy, the corporation can simply say "So where else are you going to go?" If you depend on Facebook for your business and Facebook bans you. Bye bye business. If you depend on Apple Inc. for your business and Apple Inc. decides not to do business with "haters", well good luck with Linux. If you make your living off YouTube and YouTube decides to ban you, well...Bitchute?

Oh you want to see just how far this rabbit hole goes?

If MasterCard, Visa and Discover decide that they are not going to do business with "haters", how exactly do you plan to do financial transactions? PayPal has already de-platformed "haters" and gets away with it because it's business is not considered a "financial transaction".

Oh you are going to get your own domain pay for hosting? Well what if the registrar refuses to do business with "haters"? No Domain registration means no DNS entry and therefore no website. Game over.

Oh and if an ISP decides that it won't do business with haters and therefore refuses to give you internet service.

That's how far this goes. Don't think that because MasterCard, etc. are considered financial entities that they cannot be allowed by law to not service "haters". Right now in NYS, governor Cuomo is using the power of the state to pressure private businesses to not do business with a legal entity, the NRA, which has committed no crimes nor is under any investigation for crimes. The power of the state is being used against the NRA simply because the head of that state dislikes the political philosophy of that organization. Once the state decides who (or what) is a "persona non-grata", then all protections are off. Which leads to the real problem.

Let's all be clear here. The First Amendment is a prohibition against government censorship. It does nothing to prevent private entities from censoring. Hence, it is not my argument that the actions of Apple, etc. are somehow illegal. Nor should it be your argument. What YouTube (TheirTube), etc. actions are symbolic of is a fundamental shift in the customs and mores of the general population. I had often read on what would be considered "far right" publications that America would not survive the changing demographics because the political enterprise that has been America was the outgrowth of the people who created said country. If you replaced the founding population with one that does not share the same customs and mores then inevitably the country itself changes. So for example, if the country is founded be people who are highly suspicious of government power and therefore create a limited and restrained government, is then populated by those characterized by belief that government should be *very* powerful, then you have a problem for the founding population (well their descendants).

America until very recently was characterized in part by the idea of free speech. Embedded in the sovereign document, this concept is understood that offensive speech was just as protected as "complementary speech". That is, you cannot have free speech if speech cannot offend, insult, etc. And because of this understanding, it was understood by all (or the vast vast majority) that we suffered "the fools" in order to protect this vital freedom. This was a political as well as cultural understanding. The very few exceptions were direct incitement to violence and things like yelling "fire" in a crowded room. This common understanding of free speech is no longer applicable in America. What changed?

We have to go back 50 years to get at the genesis of the change. When the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, it changed a very fundamental concept in America: Freedom of association (and dissociation). For the first time, the government could punish private entities for not "serving" citizens. Of course if you were black in Jim Crow America, this was a good thing (at least on one level). But this change planted the seed of what we are seeing today. Once the government was able to legally tell a private business what it could not do the precedent was set.

The next thing was a creation of "protected class" of citizens. The 14th clearly states:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The concept of "protected class" is in direct contradiction to the provisions of the 14th Amendment. "Protected classes" means that there are two classes of citizens: "Protected" and "Not Protected". Again, this may have been done with "good intention" but the fallout is now clear for all to see. Understand that under strict reading, being white is protected. That is, the text doesn't say "black". However in practice the "race" protected class is generally understood to be "not-white and not heterosexual".

You might be thinking: What does an employment law have to do with censorship? Well follow me.

We have what I'll call the "Discrimination Complex" which is the network of so called "Civil Rights Organizations", lawyers and government agencies who make a living finding and making money off of discrimination. This complex which got the government to accept "disparate impact" and vague concepts of "hostile work places" meant that if an employee of any firm felt that the company was being discriminatory or the magic creating a hostile work environment then the employer was on the hook with the feds who had gained power over private companies.

So we saw that Brendan Eich was tossed from Mozilla because he donated in favor of a political issue that an employee disagreed with. All that (or those) employees had to do was say that they "felt unsafe" or some other permutation and the company was on notice for "a discriminatory climate". Mozilla got away with this firing. Blood was in the water.

More recently in a huge step up Damore got the axe from Google for discussing known sex differences in a public forum. Once again, employees, asserting their "protected status", made claim that they felt "discriminated against" and that there was a "hostile work environment" created by allowing Damore's speech to go unpunished. Never mind that Damore's text was:

1) Scientifically sound.
2) Not threatening to anyone.
3) Did not discriminate against anyone.

What mattered was that the new class of super citizens had been offended and such offense is enough to support a claim of "hostile work environment" which spells legal problems for their employers.

Once it was established among the power brokers that "wrong think" and "wrong speak" can be regulated on the grounds of "protecting 'victim' classes" the foundation for corporate censorship was laid. Censorship became OK because "victim classes" had to be protected. Failure to protect "victim classes" could become costly both legally and supposedly commercially. I say supposedly because there has been no concrete evidence that the people and organizations that do the most complaining actually have an impact on the bottom line of the many companies they target. However; since corporations avoid bad press by any means necessary they bend to these campaigns. This is why YouTube, FaceBook et-al discuss their actions in terms of "safety" and "harm" and the like. Who could be against "safe"? Who can be against stopping "harm"?

When combined with the ideology that "victim classes" cannot be victimizers, an ideology that is a direct outgrowth of the misunderstood concepts discussed in The Isis Papers and it's foundational text The Textbook For Victims of White Supremacy, you get a super class of citizens who are immune from the very same laws that get the lower class of citizens in financial and legal trouble.

This Super and Lower Citizen is why Alex Jones is persona-non-grata while Sarah Jeong got a job at the prestigious New York Times in spite of writing material that if targeted at any group would have been an automatic disqualification for even mail room duty. Jeong is a part of the super citizen class. There are no consequences for the NYT's actions just as there will be zero consequences for Apple, YouTube or FaceBook. Trust and believe that Apple will continue to be a trillion or near trillion dollar company tomorrow. YouTube will continue to have new uploads and FaceBook will continue to get page views. Where else are they going to go?

And this is a serious question. Alex Jones supposedly had millions of subscribers across platforms. How many of those subscribers quit the platforms? I know that quite a few of his supporters are still on this platforms. So aside from a lot of complaining what has been the actual consequence?

Not a damn thing.

And this "zero consequences" is why this will escalate. A bully continues to harass his victim because the victim is unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to stop the bully. The victim lives in fear of continued bullying and hopes that today they manage to not be picked on. But the real solution to the bully is:

If non-left people are actually serious about consequences for YouTube, then they should go to other platforms. There are other video sharing platforms out there. Disappear the entire content on YouTube and repost to these platforms. Same for the other social platforms. The only way to "win" is total disengagement. To-tal. These companies will not change tactics if they continue to make money off the same people who are complaining (short of legal changes). We need to recall the lesson of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

It worked because the buses looked like that. Empty. It became VERY expensive to treat certain citizens badly.