I am repeatedly stunned by the number of people, many of them claiming to be politically progressive, who willingly and consciously refuse to recognize this distinction:
I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire
Matt Taibbi writes:
Matt Orfalea didn't lie, alter clips, or remove key context. He made edits faithful to reality and just got a strike for it. Welcome to post-Trump America, where truth is a censorable offense.This is our New Rule: Only Democrats can deny that elections are not legitimate.
See Taibbi's entire distressing article: "Election Denial" for Me, But Not for Thee: YouTube Censors TK-Produced Videos, Again, Despite Factual Accuracy."
We need to be more aggressive about the evil of censorship. Censorship is a blatant lie, disguised as an action. It is the false claim that there is no other side to the story. Or it's a false claim that any challenge to the prevailing narrative is bullshit before we even hear it. Censorship constitutes lies of omission. It is a technique for manipulating people by deceiving them. When used on social media, censorship is a tactic for fooling innocent users that a view is universally embraced when it is actually contested and, in fact, might be the minority view.
Chomsky: "I do not think that the state has the right to determine historical truth and to punish because I'm not willing to give the state that right even if they happen . . ."
Unknown man: "Even if they deny that the gas chambers existed?"
Chomsky: "I'm saying if you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like. I mean, Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech he liked, right? So was Stalin. If you're in favor of freedom speech, that means you're in favor of free speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of freedom of speech. There are two positions we can have on freedom of speech, and you can decide which position you want."
Chomsky: "With regard to my defense of the people who express utterly offensive views, I don't have the slightest doubt that every commissar says, "You're defending that person's views." No, I'm not. I'm defending his right to express them. The difference is crucial, and the difference has been understood outside of fascist circles since the 18th century."
Glenn Greenwald has focused on this issue repeatedly because many people who consider themselves to be "liberal" have abandoned free speech, now embracing the opposite, censorship of things they find offensive and things they don't like. I agree with Greenwald. Many modern so-called liberals have dramatically changed positions on free speech as a stealth maneuver. They won't admit that they formerly embraced wide-open free speech (the version described by Chomsky) and they won't explain why they turned their position upside down.
Have you kept a journal for a long time? I wrote a lot in my pen & ink journal for decades. I'm now 66, and looking back, there are two things that are rather stunning:
1. There are some things that seemed very important to me back when I wrote about them, but I don't remember them at all. That amazes me, because I wrote about a person or event in some detail. If you had asked me back then whether I would always remember that person or event I would have quickly responded "yes." It doesn't happen all the time. For most things, my journal revives a memory that is still in my brain intact or it offers me details that I don't remember, even though I have some memory.
2. I have changed a LOT over the years. Some of my observations about the world, the things I believed with certitude, have changed dramatically. In fact, some of my journal writings are cringe-worthy, making me wonder "How could I have been so certain about that when it is clearly so untrue?" If I time travelled back to 1980, for instance, my 1980 self might even bristle about some of the things that I now believe. That is the nature of "truth." It is always evolving, even in ourselves. It is a constant work in progress, even in ourselves, no matter how hard we try to get things right and no matter how sure we are about things. Certitude is only an emotion and it very often misleads us. These observations are critically important to me--they some of the reasons that I am so much opposed to censorship. Truth constantly evolves in all of us and we need each other because all of us, some of the time, fall off the tracks and need course correction. No one has ever had it right all along. In short, no one is equipped to declare the "truth" for the rest of us. To believe that would be supremely ignorant. We need free speech, including wide-open speech that can seem offensive and even odious, to test each other, so that we can make figure things out. And the only option to being for free speech is to be pro-censorship. The only option to free speech is to be authoritarian, to relish in the arrogant and narcissistic exercise of power over others. I trust absolutely no one to be the censor of others, not even myself. Truth-seeking is not possible in the non-stop society-wide churning of ideas over time.