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Caitlin Johnstone writes in a blog post over at Medium that corporate censorship is ramping up while people are distracted by the menace of government censorship.
It is true that it is the most controversial and repulsive speech which is most severely in need of protection, and that a government which is granted the power to silence Nazis can be expected to use that power to silence political dissent. But there is no danger of this ever happening in the United States, because corporate censorship can be used to silence anti-establishment voices with far less pushback.
Egged on by the resurfacing of obnoxious and sometimes illegal groups, more groups are pushing for, and sometimes getting, full online silence from other voices. Those in power will have corporations do any of the dirty work that might generate push back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:56PM (9 children)
You're conflating multiple different threads in the generally-regarded-as-right groups.
If you think that those neo-nazis are all libertarians, I hope you're sitting down, because I have some very sad news for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @08:01PM (2 children)
I keep doing a search, but I just can't find anything about libertarians!
Also, never heard anyone say all libertarians are nazis. Not ever. Maybe we should bring back the dunce hat of yore?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:36PM (1 child)
Libertarians want to ensure free speech for Nazis, because the Nazis are all so manly men and into the man-boy love of a Milo. But Libertariantards do not know about the Pink Triangle.
Or, it is just that Limbaugh, O'Really, Fox News in general, and the Trumpster are being hurt in the bottom line by some really bad public relations! Who would want to buy ad space on Brietbarf News, or on the Daily Strum-und-Drang? Some things are just not socially acceptable, or what we STILL call it, "politically incorrect". Political incorrectness has real world consequences! Who could have foreseen this?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:04AM
I'm not a libertarian but I know some -- in your second paragraph you seem to be conflating Republican with Libertarian -- the two are very far apart.
As for the first point, Libertarians would support freedom of speech for all people, even communists. If you don't get that, you don't get libertarianism.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 17 2017, @01:23AM (5 children)
Huh? The mainstream conservatives are constantly spouting "free market" rhetoric, and Republicans have been pushing deregulation for decades; it isn't just a libertarian theme. As for the neo-Nazis, I doubt they think too much about economic issues like that; they're too busy screaming racist crap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @02:08AM
I too find it odd that the republicans here do not see that for what it is.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:27AM (3 children)
What they don't seem to understand is whenever Big Government gets smaller, they get their favorite Corporations to do more and more of the stuff for them.
A smaller weaker corrupt US government working with more powerful corrupt corporations will screw US residents even more.
As this story hints at, there's no freedom of speech in Facebook, Google, etc. There's no right to bear arms in Disneyland. The FOIA doesn't work on Apple.
The US Gov has to at least pretend to provide this stuff, but you can see that corporations don't have to pretend at all and those who were pretending, now say "because Nazis!".
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Thursday August 17 2017, @12:30PM (2 children)
Sorry, I don't buy that a smaller, weaker, corrupt US government working with powerful corrupt businesses is going to be worse than a larger, stronger, corrupt US government doing the same thing. I think the problem here is that the author of the piece is working from bad priors. They need the government to do their shaping of society (for example, Caitlin Johnstone supports single payer [counterpropa.com] health care and fighting global warming [inquisitr.com]) so a priori, they can't advocate anything that would diminish that power to achieve their goals. OTOH, I don't need society so shaped, thus I don't have a similar need to protect the power of government.
I also think there is a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance here, exhibited by the author who routinely expounds on government conspiracy theories (such as the Seth Rich assassination theory [thedailybanter.com]), and then rails against the corporate media or other anti-business diatribes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @10:45AM (1 child)
If you look in Africa you can see many examples of smaller, weaker, corrupt (and sometimes US-installed) governments working with powerful large corporations to screw the locals. When your small government's military is smaller and weaker than a corporation's "Private Security Team" guess who is calling the shots?
In contrast if you have lots of normal folk/voters working in the Big Government it means more people are actually represented in Government by virtue of actually being _part_ of it. Yeah they may still do the wrong stuff but that's just like voters voting for the wrong person.
In short, if the rulers are somehow crazy enough to pay to keep around a Big Government it means lots more people are getting paid (while there's money to pay them anyway). I think you can see this in some oil-states (almost like basic income ;) ). In contrast in many other places the rulers don't bother, the rest of the country could starve whether there's enough money or not - the oil money goes mainly the Corporation and the rest goes to the Warlord. I'd say the latter is worse.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 18 2017, @12:48PM
Which government has that problem? Sorry, even unrecognized African rebel groups can field a larger military.
We call that "conflict of interest" where now, a large population of voters has incentive to vote against the common interests of the country in order to increase their piece of the pie. It's great if you're a cog in the government wheel, and terrible, if you're a taxpayer paying for people to do nothing.
That's a fantasy. We have as counterexamples, Russia, China, the US, and EU, for example, their large and growing security and intelligence bureaucracies.