Sorry if this is more fit for a debate sub, so this is the first place I could think of to post this.
So Twitter banned Mike Lindell. My thoughts towards Twitter banning right-wingers is that it’s not equal to left-wingers and anti-capitalists being censored and assassinated. And that because they constantly advocate for “If a baker won’t make you a cake go to a different baker or start your own bakery” and that their just the woman sobbing “I NEVER THOUGHT THE LEOPARDS WOULD EAT MY FACE” after voting for the Leopards Eating Faces Party.
Twitter shouldn’t exist, and socialism suppresses those who advocate for the bourgeoisie anyway. So I don’t give a single shit if right-wingers are getting banned.
What’s your thoughts?
Twitter banning right wingers is good but the ban is also pure theatre. They banned Trump after four years of relentless rule-breaking behaviour because he generated content and traffic for them and they banned him only when his movement presented a semblance of threat to the bourgeoisie’s new chosen one. Many shitty right wingers will continue to have their platform. To encapsulate, Twitter sucks. It should be used to agitate but it will never fulfill the purpose of being main platform for pro-worker movements. Banning right wingers is alright but consideration should be given to how much damage they are doing to the movement. It’s not much so much shouldn’t be expected.
Well, first I think the phrasing you use is misleading. They’re not “banning right-wingers”, they’re banning people who are literally inciting violent insurrection.
The people inciting violent insurrection are, in this case, predominantly right-wing, but inciting violent insurrection is not an inherently right-wing position, and nobody has been banned for being right-wing.
At this point I think it’s a safety issue, and if anything, the bans were long overdue.
Misinformation can be dangerous, and speech that is likely to incite imminent lawless action has been excluded from free speech protections in the US since like 1920.
Moreover, these are private companies, and they’re able to ban anyone for any reason. Like you mentioned, it’s in no small part thanks to the right-wing panic over a gay wedding cake… and the Supreme Court they cheerfully stacked with radical right-wing activists.
Social media corporations are the private arm of the police state. These bans just look like right wing infighting to me. I love to see it!
Right-wingers think that them getting banned is because the wrong people are in charge. That if they could get the right people in charge, they would uphold their inalienable rights.
We understand that you have no rights in the bourgeois state, and that the state will do whatever it must to survive, legal or not. Communism has been outright banned in dozens of countries. That means no parties, no organisation, you sometimes couldn’t even say you were a communist – under penalty of imprisonment.
Meanwhile neoliberalism and reactionary politics have always been allowed in the capitalist world.
Unlike right wingers we have no illusions; if twitter or even the state wants to ban us, they will find an excuse. So I take what little victories I can get in the meantime and if they fight each other that’s good to me.
All this is is private property law, keywords: private property. When these private entities ban some fascists or right wingers it means nothing to me. These are not public platforms beholden to federal law but private ones. If a leftist platform banned any right wingers from its platform I wouldn’t complain because that is their right according to laws of private property; terms of service and all. Now of the federal government specifically in America created a social media discussion platform started banning folk they would be beholden to their own constitution because a federal public forum would be directly beholden to free speech laws.
So to sum it up it doesn’t matter to me, socialists can create their own private platforms, and if the government shuts them down then that would be a violation of its own laws, especially if socialists engage in peaceful discussion and advocate for peaceful protesting and organizing. The red scare era was one of the most blatant government violation of the constitution in American history, only other time I can recall is the patriot act which came close.
The issue that some leftists have with the bans is not who is being banned, but rather that by socially accepting the bans we’re giving the companies like twitter the go-ahead to police speech on their site. This means that if they can ban right wingers for saying things they deem to be wrong, they can equally ban us for the same thing. We shouldn’t condemn the bans or ask for them to be lifted, but we should recognize that is puts us into a weaker position on capitalist websites and fear for what it portends.
