The Case For Censoring Extremist Leftist Content Online

In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.

There was never a philosopher or a political theorist who was a "free speech absolutist". The only people who are, happen to be terminally online autists and even they aren't true to their principles when it's personal. If you want a deeper dive into the subject, then I recommend you to read my previous article on Substack.

The question is, where should this threshold be? By which moral or practical standard should we determine when someone’s content may be subjected to censorship? A TOS of any social media system would say the moment a certain community becomes targeted or when it is used to promote violence. Both of these censorship justifications are based off the harm avoidance principle, and are being excessively overused by these same platforms. I have argued that they do not necessarily abide by those rules themselves, however taking them at their words, it becomes clear that these rules aren’t always being applied when a friendly social group breaches them.

If we look at the people whose free-speech rights are being violated, it becomes very evident that they come disproportionately from the Right. If we look at the people whose free-speech rights are violated, they consist disproportionately from the Right. In fact about 82% of PhD students admit to discriminating Right Wingers at least on one occasion, while 91% of pro Trump academics are afraid to share their views.

On the other hand, lefties feel free to say whatever they want, without being subjected to the same draconical laws that we are. As a result of that, many leftists become radicals, extremists and anti-liberals who advocate for extreme repressive measures against their opponents.

Whereas Conservatives and Libertarians think that it is never okay to use violence in order to shut down a speech, many Queers, "Democratic Socialists" and others seem to think that it is almost a moral obligation.

And while there are many theories for why they are this bloodthirsty. I will not dwell upon that, in this Substack article. What is important to know now is that, they do that from a position of power, and that they abuse those who are marginalized. Those who are without means or resources to defend themselves.

Consequently this has created a climate where only one narrative proliferates over, and programs the rest of society into following it. What we are left with is a generation of people who think it is okay to use violence, censor and destroy the life of your opponent.

A rational agent in this situation would try to limit the proliferation of attitudes which threaten to undermine the free speech rights of other members of society. Unfortunately, that has not been done and many activists and NGOs continue to target the marginalized Right. A group of people which as has been established before, not only constitutes a small percentage of our elite, but also actually respects the freedoms of their opponents. Currently, the values of democracy and liberalism are rapidly declining, and most severely they decline among the demographics which happen to disproportionately be on the left.

Some establishment liberals may point out that "The Right" is also dangerous for democracy, however such claims can only be made regarding Eastern European leaders, while the political Right in the West is not only powerless but also believes in free speech and liberal values.

Karl Popper, the originator of an Open Society had advocated that we must never tolerate those who are intolerant in order to prevent them from acquiring a monopoly on socializing the next generation in intolerant and illiberal belief systems. This has already happened. George Soros has appraisingly wrote of the Open Society. Stood against intolerance, post-modernism and praised the ability of citizens to speak truth to power. Where is he now, when feedback loops and liberal norms are being completely eroded?

The central foundation of an Open Society is the mechanism of a feedback loop, which in Systems Theory is understood as a continues cycle of self-regulation of a system which studies a system’s output and modifies its own input accordingly. A way of self correction if you will.

Inside a framework of a Closed Society the feedback “winds” by which an agent’s input could be sent to the system or vice versa in order to be studied or modified is severely limited, closed or even shows a false result. A good example of “false results” that we sometimes witness, is the interpretation of social dysfunctionality that is caused by “diversity” as being caused by majoritarian “racism” or not enough “diversity”. I suppose if we were to travel over a hundred years into the past, much of leftist causes would outright not be transferred into the social system from the agent, let alone the system would limit the range of thought that an agent could be generate, much like today our systems of thought are severely restricted by the lefty-centric “Overton Window” (a conception that I have severely critiqued).

In the current political climate, our ability to self correct and generate accurate social policies do not occur, as many of our feedback loops (especially at the highest levels) become closed due to the rise of the political left. Whether be it violence, open discrimination, intimidation, public shaming or self-censorship it does the job. Right wingers are being systematically silenced and the only way to critique the system is by agreeing with its main set of assumption that are immoral for a Conservative to agree with.

The results of that are not only bad for Conservatives, but for the entire country as a whole. It undermines progress, the economy, and the wider society’s ability to deal with bugs. We can't function as a society when we aren't allowed to honestly explore how society even works. Economic and Personal freedoms almost correlate at a 1 to 1 ratio and whenever something happens to one type of freedom, the decline in another one follows, given every system is interdependent with another. If you change one small component, the whole superstructure will change. At the present time, both cultural and economic freedom are being attacked by the left and the changing demographics which will replace the current demographic’s role in operating complex systems.

In the current environment today the threat to the liberal democracy or perhaps the remainder of it, comes from the Left in addition to the changing demographics that place no emphasis on either personal or economic freedoms.

If we wish to fix the current state of affairs, we must mobilize our forces and not only stand for free speech for ourselves, but just as Karl Popper had advised us, not tolerate the intolerant. Those who promote "cancel" campaigns, profess violence as a viable weapon against their opponent, openly discriminate in services or employment on political grounds and indoctrinate others with intolerance must be sacked from whatever position of power they have.

Furthermore, companies like Twitter and Twitch must be pressured to moderate and censor the extreme elements of the left or whichever other elements cause significant social dysfunctionality and endanger the liberal-democratic social contract.

Only by fighting fire with fire and limiting the amount of extremist informational noise online are we able to reverse engineer the illiberal trajectory of our society. Karl Popper never advocated against not tolerating a marginalized group of extremists or radicals like the Dissident Right, but when a group of radicals constitutes a near majority or occupies important positions of power which allow them to threaten the liberal-democratic order directly, they must be dealt with, if we wish for our Western values to survive.