Nazis are the least of our problems

Substack has a totalitarian bully problem

A post about the point of censorship, it’s use, its nature,
the moralizing arguments to justify it and the pathetic reality of its practice.

Intro

I started this post with the determination that I will NOT make it personal, but at some point, I realized that I cannot avoid it. So here we go:
I lived in this building from age 11 to 17. The three windows you see were of our apartment.

It wasn’t exactly a basement, as our floor was at street level, but looking out the window we were looking at the birds and the bugs in that elevated garden at ground-level. I was about twelve when on a beautiful summer evening I was standing at the middle window with my mother, sister and stepfather, looking at the diming lights, listening to the birds and the crickets. I remarked on how loud the crickets were. These are not crickets, said my stepfather, these are little lizards. The crickets do not have big enough lungs to make such a loud noise, he said.
But crickets don’t have lungs, I started to say, they are rubbing their ….

I’ve been corrected. He showed me the errors of my ways in two seconds, teaching me a valuable life-lesson about censorship in the process.  Censorship is the use of power by idiots who are lacking the power of persuasion, who are spectacularly wrong most of the time and mentally fragile to handle any opposition to, or even the slightest divergence from, their well settled views on the subject. The essence of censorship is authoritarianism.

The problem with the discussion of censorship around us is its focus. We allow the totalitarian promoters of censorship to define the parameters of the discussion around absolutes. About virtue signaling versus the right to free speech. It is not easy to get anywhere if we keep talking past each other on parallel planes.

The subject is a typical left-right discussion where virtue signaling righteousness is supposed to trump logic, evidence and the most basic human rights; when the discussion should be about the dubious morality of that righteousness, the foundation of all pro censorship arguments.

I am not an ideological free speech absolutist. I am a pragmatic free speech absolutist. I consider it an essential prerequisite to the most important social good: self-ownership. I oppose any kind of censorship because it is harmful. Not just in the balance, but absolutely.

The fascists are just the most convenient boogiemen.
They are the foot in the door. The supposedly undebatable evil that we need to be protected from. But once the door is open, the rest will rush in. It will start with the expansion of the definition to include anybody that is deemed to be a nazi by the censors; then the attacks will move on to the ‘racists’, the conspiracy theorists, the sexists, the whatever-phoebes and the whatever-deniers until we get to the point where every fact of our reality is defined not by observation, evidence and logic but by pure, unadulterated, totalitarian power.
Where your life can be destroyed and career canceled for disagreeing with the official narrative; where professional accreditation can be canceled for ‘misgendering’ or ‘deadnaming’ someone; where your bank account can be frozen for donating to the wrong cause; where you cannot even state that a dude with a dick is NOT a women.

Part one - the claims

The arguments for censorship are based on a form of collectivist morality; on the idea that some decisions should be controlled NOT by the moral judgements of individuals, who in turn will have to take responsibility for them, but on the moral judgement of the collective, as defined and enforced by its representatives. Some ideas, people and behaviour should be supressed to protect the collective and its individual members.

• While we have laws to deal with actions that cause harm, we also need to control ideas that may cause harm and limit the rights of the people who may be spreading them.

• What constitutes ‘harm’ does not need an objective definition. The best person to decide what harm is, is the person who was harmed. Obviously.

• Even the truth can be harmful for people who are not prepared to handle it; it can be therefore desirable to suppress truthful information to protect the people from harm.

• Words, thoughts and ideas can all be harmful, even if the harm is not obvious or not present. Potential harm is sufficient justification for their suppression.

• Questions can be especially harmful as they may lead to undesirable, harmful answers. It is therefore highly desirable to exclude certain subjects from public discussion altogether.

• The people who should be entrusted with the protection of the public space of ideas, are the ones with the moral sensibility to recognize, and the intelligence to analyze the above stated potential dangers.

Since I am sorely lacking on the totalitarian mindset, I am sure that the advocates of censorship can add several more justifications for their benevolent totalitarian drive. Please do that in the comments.

FULL STOP!!!

As I am writing this, I just learned that Tucker Carlson is in Moscow, possibly to interview Vladimir Putin. The neocons were quick to respond:

Being the freedom loving low-life I am, I did not consider this one. That asking questions from the designated enemy shouldn’t only be censored, but it should be treated as high treason.  For our protection, of course.

Part two – the analysis

It should be obvious, that I strongly disagree with all of the reasons stated above, but instead of analyzing the stated reasons, I will point out a few problems with censorship in general:

The target of censorship is not the censored, but their audience.

As I pointed out in my post on censorship last April, the real targets are the message and the audience; the censored messengers are just collateral damage.

The ‘moral’ foundation of censorship is pretentious hypocrisy

We, as a society, are what we are. Pretending that we are better, that we are more moral than we actually are, does not make us so. The only thing that can makes us better is confronting the problems censorship is aiming to hide.

Censorship is contemptuous condescension

The assumption that other people’s stupidity makes them, the censors, smart by default.
The very essence of the censorship concept is that the potentials consumers of the censored information are dumber than the censors themselves.
This delusion of self importance makes the censors even dumber than they would otherwise be.

Censorship inevitably leads to corruption

… because there is a tremendous value in capturing the process.
Billions were made on controlling Covid information.
Same for the controlled information about the vaccines.
The political gains were also considerable, proving how easy it is to make the masses compliant.

Just like aggression, censorship is the domain of the weak, the cowardly and the stupid.

Self-confident brave men have no need for censorship.

Censorship has nothing to do with either truth or morality

It is all about the official narrative, it is all about power, obedience and compliance.

Censorship never has positive effects

I challenge anybody to show me a historic example, where censorship created a better society.
With enough totalitarian power, censorship can create a more stable state with a reliably docile citizenry, but such state will inevitably lead to cultural decline.

Censorship NEVER works

It creates martyrs. It reinforces existing beliefs. If your are not allowed to meet challengers to possibly bad ideas, that will be perceived as a testament to the validity of those ideas in the eyes of their promoters.

The only thing censorship can create is ignorance

…which is counterproductive at best, genocidal at worst.
Ignorance and stupidity is NOT protection. Ignorance of potential problems renders us vulnerable and defenseless.

Censorships is inseparable from propaganda

In order for propaganda to work, it must eliminate questions, disagreements and alternative interpretations. If the censors want to lie, they must make truth inaccessible.
There is no censorship without an implied message of propaganda that it is designed to protect.

The point of censorship is the affirmation of POWER

The authority and the censor, their world-view and unquestioning acceptance of the official narrative.

The censors can never be trusted

…because the power given to them is always arbitrary. The censors can always be corrupted by material interest, credulity, ideology or simply lack of information.

The definitions are ALWAYS fuzzy, always open to interpretation.

If it wasn’t it would be a law.

“One does not “abuse” free speech. For that to happen, free speech would have to be a privilege rather than a fundamental right.”  (Peter Nayland Kust)

Censorship is ALWAYS extrajudicial.

That is, in fact, its greatest appeal.
No cumbersome legal definitions, no procedural limitations, no appeal process, no real lawyers or judges with professional accreditation, expectations and obligations.
The best example of that would be Canadian Human Rights Tribunals.
Ezra Levant wrote a book about them, appropriately titled: “Shake down”
These tribunals have a 100% conviction rate and no appeal process.

extra:

(added on 2024-03-05)

Censorship dulls the censors

Censorship makes the censors more stupid, less capable to distinguish between true/relevant/important information and garbage. Lies and ignorance diminish the world. Censorship is always a downward slope leading to more censorship and more desperate attempts to protect the narrative of power.

The truth needs no protection

Only lies need the protection of censorship. The truth does not need protection – ever.
Lies can be challenged by other lies, so something being censored does not automatically make it true; but whatever argument or narrative is protected by censorship should be treated with suspicion.

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Part three – the judgement

There are three basic types of censorship advocates: promoters, supporters and enforcers/hitmen.

The promoters of censorship are the ones driven by nefarious intent.
The ones promoting lies, self-serving narratives, ideology, corrupt interests and propaganda messages.
They are the virtue-signaling propagandists creating and defending the allowable narratives.

The supporters are of the credulous masses controlled by FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt.
They find comfort in the safety of the herd, compliance and blending in. They want a simple message and the encouragement of adapting it to assuage their uncertainty. They can easily be persuaded not to entertain alternative views and narratives.

The enforcers and hitmen are the fact-chokers, the slanderers and hit-piece writers/researchers like Jonathan Katz.
For them, it is just a job. Lying, cheating, insinuating, misrepresenting twisting the fact to fit the narrative.
They also see their job as a necessary part in the advancement of the underlying ideological narrative.

The question

…that should be asked from all wannabe totalitarians is this: 

How can anybody, in 2024, with at least a trace of decency and integrity left, defend the concept of censorship after it was proven to be complicit in mass murder, crimes against humanity, war crimes, immeasurable economic harm, political corruption, drug trafficking, child trafficking and mutilation?

The list could go on. Censorship still plays a central role in all of these ongoing crimes and their attempted cover-ups. It is the most essential tool of political control. We shouldn’t be simply defending free speech, but actively fighting against genocidal censorship.

The People Trying To Censor Us Are Government Spies (substack.com)

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This post was inspired by a post of

Margaret Anna Alice

:
The Substack Censorship Wars: Round 1

As I was about to finish this post, she posted round two of hers:
The Substack Censorship Wars: Round 2

…in which she points out to a critic:

“You are likely not self-aware enough to realize this, but you do know that you and the other particularly strident voices screeching for the curtailment of our liberties are the ones who are sounding and behaving like Nazis, right? You guys are the ones who have been making literal threats, aligning with fascist values, and calling those of us who value “true freedom”—as you so sneeringly state—vicious, dehumanizing names for having the audacity to speak out in defense of your civil rights. Oh, the irony.”

Irony indeed, with a serious lack of self-awareness, making me question the effort of pointing it out again:

What I find most fascinating about the ‘debates’ that are going on in Substack posts and Notes is how pathetically wrong the promoters of totalitarianism are in their actual examples.  
I will illustrate the problems with only three examples:

Philopita

says: “The current information landscape is leading to unhinged populism”

Dustin Du Cane

(with his very typical Polish name) makes an assertion:
“The gas chambers were born on the pages of Mein Kampf.”
and a demand:
“Stop telling me free speech is good when Russian genocide in Ukraine is justified in the West under the guise of free speech”

Philopita

’s expression about unhinged populism is just funny in its condescending, ‘unhinged elitist’ stupidity; but

Dustin Du Cane

and his ‘unhinged’ hatred of the Russians is a little more dangerous.
He is not the first Russia-hating Pole I met and I can even understand and sympathize with the sentiments.
That, however, does not justify the lies and the calls for censoring dissenting views.

The greatest harm of censorship is the gross oversimplification of VERY complex problems.

• We could have serious conversations about populism, but not with

  Philopita
  ’s condescending attitude.

• Reducing the problems of fascism and the history of the Third Reich into blaming it on an unreadably stupid and boring book is beyond retarded. Nobody would even know that such a book existed if it wasn’t for the fact that its writer turned into the Fuhrer of the Third Reich.

• We are on the brink of the greatest geopolitical change since World War II.
  Instead of analyzing it in its full context, blaming these most historic events on the supposed mental illness of one of the players isn’t particularly bright either.
  With his unhinged war-mongering,

  Dustin Du Cane
  is far more guilty than

  My little sister, the mass murderer

Every one of the censors’ claims is ridiculous. The attacks on free speech are not.

Part four – the real agenda

While I am trying hard to avoid conspiracy theories, I have a firm belief that we all tend to act in our own self interest. That includes organizations and institutions as well.
Charlie Munger said:

“Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcomes.”

I am trying to deduce the incentives that led to the outcome we see. (A very focused attack on free speech)

To put it bluntly: The article of Jonathan M. Katz in The Atlantic was a hit piece on Substack. Whether it was pitched by Mr. Katz or commissioned by The Atlantic shouldn’t really matter.
What should matter is that it is a slanderous attack on a competitor.

Public

in its post Censors Are Trying to Trick You Into Thinking Substack Has a "Nazi Problem" does a very good jo to show how spurious the claims of Mr. Katz are.

The Atlantic is owned by the Emerson Collective, the philantropathic ‘foundation of Laurene Powell Jobs. The foundation is also a strategic partner of the World Economic Forum, and, obviously, a supporter of their goals.

Substack is a threat to The Atlantic as it is a threat to the traditional business model. The slanderous attack on it was just business.

Nothing personal, but it should still be taken seriously.
Unlike the Nazis, who are hardly even good enough for a joke any more:

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more from me

Censorship

more from others

• The Substack Censorship Wars: Round 1

• Honest Assessment of Putin’s Hybrid WWIII Strategy Is Critical For Victory

• The People Trying To Censor Us Are Government Spies (substack.com)

• Microsoft CEO Says the Company Is Working To Address Election “Disinformation and Misinformation” (reclaimthenet.org)

• Substack Has a Nazi Problem - The Atlantic

• Censors Are Trying to Trick You Into Thinking Substack Has a "Nazi Problem"

• Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights: Levant, Ezra

• The Tyrants Are Out in Force Today (substack.com)

• You Can't Handle the Truth!

• Laurene Powell Jobs solidifies control of The Atlantic as Bradley relinquishes duties - POLITICO