I did read the whole article with hope in my heart that it’d be revealing. I actively listen and reach out to people on the ideological “right” that don’t share my views. I am queer, and yet, just the other day I was listening to a podcast run by an organization in Australia (the Australian Christian Lobby) that sees my identity and fighting for equal rights, as “identity politics”, and which sometimes successfully seeks to remove mentions of queer people from schools. But, I feel like I can only speak for the “left”. If I were to say there’s a “both sides” position I can take on these issues, I can’t, really. The right has fundamentally undermined the access to knowledge and resources that queer people need to just, survive. Often that just constitutes erasing all trace of our existence.
In my sandblasted political activist (not just on the internet) brain, what you’re effectively saying to me is that my considered and involved response to this, often repeated truism - that there are extremes on both sides, and that the left is just as bad if not worse in terms of censorship - by people who sit in a position that they bestow upon themselves, that of the middle path - is just a reflex.
If you read my other comments on this article you’ll see that before you made that judgment, I’d already formulated an alternate theory for the prevalence of contemporary censorship, one which is what I think a lot of people would see as a middle path answer - that much of this censorship arises from the very systems we now rely on to deliver speech. So often this discussion, uninterestingly, focuses on political and ideological opposition and ignores the huge elephant in the room. That’s my view, and I’m happy to be challenged on it.
In my sandblasted political activist brain, people often bestow themselves with the title of existing on that middle path, viewing takes and commentary with a disaffected logic that really allows them to rise above the world of ideological reflex and conformance. To me, that pattern matches to people lying to themselves, people that have the (orthodox) privilege to look at certain issues in this way because they don’t exist in a space where those issues have and have had real consequences. In such a space it is easy to bestow the title on oneself of taking that middle path.
And what even is the middle path? It is dispassionately examining both sides, right? Can I then bestow that title upon myself, given that I actively research and listen to these organizations? And what does it mean if I do truly fit the middle path and yet make a well considered choice to follow “left” politics? Does this perhaps mean that it is possible to be considered and researched and to appear to some on the middle path as reflexive and conformant? Does that perhaps mean that those on the middle path sometimes fall into the same reflexive pitfalls as the rest of us, appear to, unknowingly? To me, that’s troubling. We have people assuming a position of middle-path-ness, of considered and impassive curiosity, and yet are being just the exact thing they seek to escape. Do they know that’s happening?
Perhaps then, even internally bestowing that middle path viewpoint of impassive curiosity upon oneself is the ultimate substrate of bad faith. My sandblasted pattern matching can see nothing else.
I revert to an ideological side because that’s the side I get bestowed on me, and I don’t feel like I can speak from any perspective but my own. Am I on the left? What even is that? I proudly own my lack of impassive curiosity on this topic. To do anything else, wouldn’t be true and authentic. All things considered I don’t find the article interesting, it retreads old talking points and the logic could be absolutely flipped in this, to say that left censorship is just a reaction to the millenia of witch burnings and inquisitions. This article reinforces the view that there is a middle path on this topic, between the crazy ideological and conformant extremes. I speak my truth, and to reflexively not hear it because it is emotive, seems like a shame.
But on the other hand, thanks for listening. My “Reality by Consensus” submission went into the second chance page recently and did ok on the front page, which was a nice treat. Cheers!