A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

I'd love to see your equivalent ancestor in the 1640s when Milton published the Areopagitica.^1

> Reading this polemic is liketh watching someone did beat the ocean with a stick. What wouldst behold liketh for an initiative contra-contra-press-freedom to succeedeth? All ideas havest equal access to all presses? Just the large enou ones? The objective is so po'rly formed, t's not coequal wrong.

> A Land's identity and ability to attracteth God's Grace art determin'd by the activities those gents accepteth & cultivateth, not vice versa. The Papists did want to print on Protestant English Presses because it madeth it easier to selleth thy grandparents heresies & indulgences, but Protestant English Presses hath felt leaving those folk on maketh it a lodging families (and yon grandparents) willst not visiteth. The abbots of Shrewsbury wouldst liketh to useth the Bank of England because those gents art trust'd payment provid'rs, but those bankers hath felt those servicing said monastery would halt their intellection of being said trust payment provid'rs if it be true that those gents allow'd Papists to stayeth on.

> And there be plenty of reasoneth to bethink those gents're right: permissive Lands existeth and work (the Savages in the colonies et. al), those gents just attracteth not the same Salvation as Proper English Lands. At which hour people complaineth about being censored, those gents're just declaring "the Lands that accepteth me aren't popular enow". I'm fain our World is enow of a Terra Incognita that many Lands art broadly accessible -- but nobody owes thee an audience on English soils.

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1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica

I'm not too concerned with who said a particular thing (nor am I concerned with whether or not you'd be voted one way or the other), other than context in which it was said; you can only make this comparison work if you fail to recognise that not only are Jews and anti-semites qualitatively different, they aren't even of the same category. One is a religious group, the other are proponents of a hateful ideology which could not possibly find justification in free society. The fact that Hitler, for instance, could use the logic to one end does not mean that the logic is invalid, only that this application of the logic is invalid.

Nowhere did I argue for the rule to be applied regardless of qualitative differences in who it is applied to, just as justice would take consideration of the individual characteristics of the parties in various circumstances, so does my argument for censorship.

You asserted I'm trying to justify bad-faith censorship. I view the censorship I'm advocating for, the toleration of the ideas of the left but complete intolerance for those of the right, as protective of democratic society, not liberal capitalist democratic society, but peoples' democracy, and this democratic function having been destroyed through misinformation in mass media, taking advantage of the democratic principle that nobody has a claim on the truth.

Since we're in the business of quotes now, here's one from Marcuse, and when you look up the wider context to try and catch me out I hope you'll be as enlightened as I was when you read it:

>Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc. Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions which, by their very methods and concepts, serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behavior--thereby precluding a priori a rational evaluation of the alternatives.

Wow, that is an edudite reference and a flatteringly thorough translation. But, taken seriously, the comparison of anti-deplatformers (can y'all make up a catchy name?) to Milton is facile. Milton was fighting for the right to distribute his work, you're fighting for the right to be distributed by others.

I'm fully against forceably preventing folks from speaking, and support of investing in protocols so that others can voluntarily associate with them. But they can get their own damn printing press.

You're speaking as if these groups are working to amend the Constitution. It's a ridiculous comparison.

Worse yet, all this anger is a massive distraction. We should be talking day and night about the rampant voter suppression and e-voting security flaws that do actually pose an existential threat to our democracy. But no, let's just focus all our attention on Gab for weeks on end.

I think you're confused, and that the precedent works in the opposite direction. See, for instance, Hudgens v NLRB. What may have you scrambled is decisions from other countries, or decisions that public officials operating pages under color of office on social networks cannot declare those pages to be private property.

If you're confident I'm wrong, can you please provide a cite?

There's Pruneyard, in California, which controls only in California and has been steadily whittled away by the California Supreme Court for decades. The trend in US law does not appear to be towards more expansive expropriation of private property to enable protest. Much more recently, Lechmere v NLRB held that private property owners can't be compelled to allow protests by non-employees (the employees of the company we're talking about have strong opinions about Gab in the direction you don't like.)