“The cultural left right (meaning the part of the left right focused on cultural issues rather than imperialism or corporatism or fascism) … has become increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating.”
It always amuses me when right wing grifters describe the right, but attribute it to the left
We’re going to get nowhere if we can’t call out the “my side” for their shit in a way that’s consistent with how we call out “their side” on theirs…it’s OK, I’m ready for the downvotes.
Show me all those examples of the Democrats banning books. I’ll wait.
People experiencing social repercussions for their public speech that society deems inappropriate absolutely is not the same thing as passing laws restricting freedoms the way the a Republicans currently are doing en masse.
Oh we’re 100% on the same page about books, there is no equivalent to that with the dems. But I was talking about the larger idea of censorship, not books specifically. I don’t think that you can say with honesty though that specific institutions are specifically attending to drive narratives in ways that Democrats want them to. Cable media is an easy one, tech companies are another. Shadowbanning and suppression of specific topics have and are happening, and are censorship. They algorithmically and explicitely tamped down legitimate persuits like discussing lab leak, until it actually became the most feaseable beginning of COVID. They suppressed the hunter Biden bullshit (I’m not taking that on its merits, just saying it happened, and near an election).
On another note, I’m not your enemy here. I responded to something that I thought I could add something to. You obviously did the same. We can make Lemmy a more healthy place to talk than Reddit was.
“our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred through the live wildlife trade in China and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic”
Public censorship of ideas is not evil. Never has been, never will be. Should you be able to find out about bad ideas in a library? Absolutely. Should we allow social media to amplify and legitimize those ideas? No. I want Mein Kampf freely available for people to read. I don’t want Neo-nazis to be able to use online platforms to recruit vulnerable teenagers.
Preventing the non-consensual sharing of nude pictures of a man on a social media platform in no way “suppressed” information about Hunter Biden. I was very well aware of the entire argument without ever being on Twitter or having those photographs shared. Twitter is not a news organization and they were right to restrict sharing of those pictures.
I’m sorry, but you come in here parroting an awful lot of bad talking points commonly shared by people who most certainly are my enemies, however you choose to think about yourself that allows you to sleep at night. It doesn’t matter how kindly you speak about it, some ideas deserve to be refuted.
All ideas deserve to be refuted, which is why suppression isn’t the answer.
As far as the specifics of your claims, I don’t think anything has been definitively show to be true regarding the origin of COVID. The paper you linked said that the first hotspot they found were in the wet markets, assuming that’s the case, it still doesn’t say if it was naturally produced or as part of a “gain of function” research program that was in place at the time.
Check this out for a deeper dive into the intercepts work on corona virus origins. There is no smoking gun, no gotcha moment, in fact it may be a natural origin. My point wasn’t that it did happen in a lab leak, but that lab leak turned out to be a viable theory of origin, in spite of how it was portrayed by officials, the media and social media.
The above article is quite a different point of view from what was being said by officials earlier in the pandemic. Again my point isn’t to argue lab leak, but to say that if the establishment had it’s way, this question would have been wiped away and never investigated. The complexity of the issue would have been lost to the public. That seems like censorship to me. Not book burning, but still censorship.
I 100% agree with your point about amplification though. That’s a complication in the issue here because they are incentivised to push divisive, exreme views in order to drive engagement. There is a lot of discussion to be had there.
Regarding my mention of Hunter Biden, I wasn’t lamenting that images of him were removed from social media. That’s just basic cleaning up of feeds that needs to happen. I mean the fact that despite being verified by the FBI it was treated as bearing all of the hallmarks of Russian mis-information at the behest of other law enforcement agencies. It was then suppressed.
I don’t know. You can assume that I’m parroting in bad faith if you want, but I hope you don’t.
Isn’t the process of refuting something properly by definition critical rather than uncritical? Not all ideas are equal by a long shot, I’m just saying someone shouldn’t decide for us which ones we can engage with.
No individual human being has infinite time to dedicate to sifting through every insane conspiracy theory and terrible political theory that has ever been thunk. We, as a species, need to decide what we should and should not spend our limited time engaging with. Sometimes, that means listening to experts who have taken the time to study the subject in more detail than we will ever have time in our lives, and trusting their word on the matter.
For example, no one feels like they have to waste public time refuting the existence of aether (yet, anyway, though I’m sure the flat earthers will get around to it.) For another example, smart people who study history for a living identify several of key characteristics common to fascist political parties that look suuuuuper familiar to anyone looking at the modern day Republican party in the US.
We do not have infinite resources. Infinite time, infinite brain power, infinite public discourse. Just as it is widely recognized that it’s fine to limit discussions of pro-anorexia groups for the public good, so too is it fine to limit the reach of harmful ideas like vaccine conspiracy theories, Neo-nazi recruitment of young people, whether or not people with this characteristic or that characteristic have equal rights and deserve life and freedom, climate change “debate”…
And some “ideas” that might not seem that harmful on their face should be suppressed when it is clear they are being deliberately used to lead people down paths toward much more harmful ideas for the profit of grifters. (Like Qanon and the Alt-Right YouTube pipeline)
It is ok for us to moderate what is said in public. We have always done this because it is necessary to a functioning, healthy society.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, the democratic party as a whole isn’t great on the whole imperialism/colonialism schtick, but the Dems at least have people willing to go after countries like Israel (who are openly and illegally colonizing Palestine).
But on the "increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating” front, there’s no comparison. The only real point he has is that the Dems are big on keeping the status quo, where the reps just want to burn it down and institute Der Orange Fuhrer as president for life. The right objectively is worse on every other point than the left, which was more of the point I was trying to get across.
Agreed on all this, with the small point that some (and I emphasize it’s mostly a very noisy, but mostly powerless minority) on the left spend way too much time on doing things I don’t think are helpful at all: the oppression olympics games, tone policing everyone and looking for the slightest difference of opinions of those around them on the left and spring into attack mode, and spend nearly all their time on culture war stuff (rather than spend much time on uniting us on issues of class) and I really do think some of this might just help create more Republicans due to their sanctimony and unwillingness to flex on anything - it’s absurd to think that everyone is going to tick all the checkboxes of certain types of identity in order to be in a position of leadership in the movement, nevermind even be able to voice their opinion without being told their opinion doesn’t count as much, etc…
As much as I now loathe the likes of Greenwald (and Maher and others like this) I wish I could say I’ve never experienced what they are talking about, but unfortunately I have seen this.
Now plenty of this type have told me that they won’t change their ways because they apparently seem to not care about how off-putting this all is or that they may actually be giving fascists a huge assist. I just don’t get it. If I was more conspiracy-minded, I’d assume some of them are plants in order to do exactly that - make leftists look extremely ridiculous and intolerant, and push just enough people into the arms of the alt-right rabbit hole. Some of them have told me that they don’t care about winning hearts and minds, and that I shouldn’t either. Apparently, everyone will naturally reach the proper mode of thinking - as they see it - and they don’t have to explain themselves to anyone? Or the world will burn, I guess.
I’m pretty far on the left and I’d debate that Democrats are also very fond of the status quo. But your point stands.
I wasn’t trying to say that they’re the same, I just think it’s important to be weilding the same analysis for “allies” as for “enemies”. Otherwise you get into a situatiin like the US, telling the world that Russia is a war criminal for using cluster munitions, then sending Ukrain cluster munitions.
It always amuses me when right wing grifters describe the right, but attribute it to the left
Its always a confession, not an accusation
Its always a confession, not an accusation
We’re going to get nowhere if we can’t call out the “my side” for their shit in a way that’s consistent with how we call out “their side” on theirs…it’s OK, I’m ready for the downvotes.
Show me all those examples of the Democrats banning books. I’ll wait.
People experiencing social repercussions for their public speech that society deems inappropriate absolutely is not the same thing as passing laws restricting freedoms the way the a Republicans currently are doing en masse.
Oh we’re 100% on the same page about books, there is no equivalent to that with the dems. But I was talking about the larger idea of censorship, not books specifically. I don’t think that you can say with honesty though that specific institutions are specifically attending to drive narratives in ways that Democrats want them to. Cable media is an easy one, tech companies are another. Shadowbanning and suppression of specific topics have and are happening, and are censorship. They algorithmically and explicitely tamped down legitimate persuits like discussing lab leak, until it actually became the most feaseable beginning of COVID. They suppressed the hunter Biden bullshit (I’m not taking that on its merits, just saying it happened, and near an election).
On another note, I’m not your enemy here. I responded to something that I thought I could add something to. You obviously did the same. We can make Lemmy a more healthy place to talk than Reddit was.
What lab leak?
“our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred through the live wildlife trade in China and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic”
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
Public censorship of ideas is not evil. Never has been, never will be. Should you be able to find out about bad ideas in a library? Absolutely. Should we allow social media to amplify and legitimize those ideas? No. I want Mein Kampf freely available for people to read. I don’t want Neo-nazis to be able to use online platforms to recruit vulnerable teenagers.
https://gizmodo.com/why-censorship-is-part-of-everyday-life-section-230-1850095976
Preventing the non-consensual sharing of nude pictures of a man on a social media platform in no way “suppressed” information about Hunter Biden. I was very well aware of the entire argument without ever being on Twitter or having those photographs shared. Twitter is not a news organization and they were right to restrict sharing of those pictures.
I’m sorry, but you come in here parroting an awful lot of bad talking points commonly shared by people who most certainly are my enemies, however you choose to think about yourself that allows you to sleep at night. It doesn’t matter how kindly you speak about it, some ideas deserve to be refuted.
All ideas deserve to be refuted, which is why suppression isn’t the answer.
As far as the specifics of your claims, I don’t think anything has been definitively show to be true regarding the origin of COVID. The paper you linked said that the first hotspot they found were in the wet markets, assuming that’s the case, it still doesn’t say if it was naturally produced or as part of a “gain of function” research program that was in place at the time.
https://theintercept.com/collections/origins-of-covid/
Check this out for a deeper dive into the intercepts work on corona virus origins. There is no smoking gun, no gotcha moment, in fact it may be a natural origin. My point wasn’t that it did happen in a lab leak, but that lab leak turned out to be a viable theory of origin, in spite of how it was portrayed by officials, the media and social media.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-covid-origins/index.html
The above article is quite a different point of view from what was being said by officials earlier in the pandemic. Again my point isn’t to argue lab leak, but to say that if the establishment had it’s way, this question would have been wiped away and never investigated. The complexity of the issue would have been lost to the public. That seems like censorship to me. Not book burning, but still censorship.
I 100% agree with your point about amplification though. That’s a complication in the issue here because they are incentivised to push divisive, exreme views in order to drive engagement. There is a lot of discussion to be had there.
Regarding my mention of Hunter Biden, I wasn’t lamenting that images of him were removed from social media. That’s just basic cleaning up of feeds that needs to happen. I mean the fact that despite being verified by the FBI it was treated as bearing all of the hallmarks of Russian mis-information at the behest of other law enforcement agencies. It was then suppressed.
I don’t know. You can assume that I’m parroting in bad faith if you want, but I hope you don’t.
This kind of uncritical placing of all ideas on the same footing, deserving of the same treatment is not enlightenment.
Isn’t the process of refuting something properly by definition critical rather than uncritical? Not all ideas are equal by a long shot, I’m just saying someone shouldn’t decide for us which ones we can engage with.
No individual human being has infinite time to dedicate to sifting through every insane conspiracy theory and terrible political theory that has ever been thunk. We, as a species, need to decide what we should and should not spend our limited time engaging with. Sometimes, that means listening to experts who have taken the time to study the subject in more detail than we will ever have time in our lives, and trusting their word on the matter.
For example, no one feels like they have to waste public time refuting the existence of aether (yet, anyway, though I’m sure the flat earthers will get around to it.) For another example, smart people who study history for a living identify several of key characteristics common to fascist political parties that look suuuuuper familiar to anyone looking at the modern day Republican party in the US.
We do not have infinite resources. Infinite time, infinite brain power, infinite public discourse. Just as it is widely recognized that it’s fine to limit discussions of pro-anorexia groups for the public good, so too is it fine to limit the reach of harmful ideas like vaccine conspiracy theories, Neo-nazi recruitment of young people, whether or not people with this characteristic or that characteristic have equal rights and deserve life and freedom, climate change “debate”…
And some “ideas” that might not seem that harmful on their face should be suppressed when it is clear they are being deliberately used to lead people down paths toward much more harmful ideas for the profit of grifters. (Like Qanon and the Alt-Right YouTube pipeline)
It is ok for us to moderate what is said in public. We have always done this because it is necessary to a functioning, healthy society.
The irony of linking to The Intercept in a post talking about what an idiot Greenwald is…
He left in 2020 because they wouldn’t allow him enough " editorial freedom". The end of that conflict should put you at ease with the intercept.
It does. Thank you.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, the democratic party as a whole isn’t great on the whole imperialism/colonialism schtick, but the Dems at least have people willing to go after countries like Israel (who are openly and illegally colonizing Palestine).
But on the "increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating” front, there’s no comparison. The only real point he has is that the Dems are big on keeping the status quo, where the reps just want to burn it down and institute Der Orange Fuhrer as president for life. The right objectively is worse on every other point than the left, which was more of the point I was trying to get across.
Agreed on all this, with the small point that some (and I emphasize it’s mostly a very noisy, but mostly powerless minority) on the left spend way too much time on doing things I don’t think are helpful at all: the oppression olympics games, tone policing everyone and looking for the slightest difference of opinions of those around them on the left and spring into attack mode, and spend nearly all their time on culture war stuff (rather than spend much time on uniting us on issues of class) and I really do think some of this might just help create more Republicans due to their sanctimony and unwillingness to flex on anything - it’s absurd to think that everyone is going to tick all the checkboxes of certain types of identity in order to be in a position of leadership in the movement, nevermind even be able to voice their opinion without being told their opinion doesn’t count as much, etc…
As much as I now loathe the likes of Greenwald (and Maher and others like this) I wish I could say I’ve never experienced what they are talking about, but unfortunately I have seen this.
Now plenty of this type have told me that they won’t change their ways because they apparently seem to not care about how off-putting this all is or that they may actually be giving fascists a huge assist. I just don’t get it. If I was more conspiracy-minded, I’d assume some of them are plants in order to do exactly that - make leftists look extremely ridiculous and intolerant, and push just enough people into the arms of the alt-right rabbit hole. Some of them have told me that they don’t care about winning hearts and minds, and that I shouldn’t either. Apparently, everyone will naturally reach the proper mode of thinking - as they see it - and they don’t have to explain themselves to anyone? Or the world will burn, I guess.
I’m pretty far on the left and I’d debate that Democrats are also very fond of the status quo. But your point stands.
I wasn’t trying to say that they’re the same, I just think it’s important to be weilding the same analysis for “allies” as for “enemies”. Otherwise you get into a situatiin like the US, telling the world that Russia is a war criminal for using cluster munitions, then sending Ukrain cluster munitions.