Written by Otaku Apologist
As censorship in the west has exploded into a sweeping phenomenon, we are seeing more and more petty despotic behavior from everybody. We see policemen, banks, social media companies, payment processors, even gaming forums turning into group-think cesspits run by small-minded control freaks. Everyone is protecting their reputations in corrupt systems by severing ties with others for wrong-think.
The amount of red tape is staggering. Laws and social rules and this toxic media environment encumber both businesses and individuals. We are not learning to mediate our differences peacefully with so much coercion in the system setting roadblocks to conversations. It’s this fear of crossing the line, to have your life destroyed over cracking a bad joke, or expressing an unpopular opinion, that is making our lives miserable and full of fear. You can’t even post news or memes these days without getting branded a bigot.
Enough is enough. Whatever well-meaning intent political correctness, deplatforming, hate speech laws and similar restrictions were meant to service when the ideas became popular and legislation was passed, they have failed at it. Instead of protecting us from tyranny, these things have made us all into tyrants. We cannot have free speech and hate speech laws, as the latter cancels the former. At this point I’m so pissed off, I want hate speech laws abolished in their entirety. Let us start curtailing government power from that angle. I am sick of all these garbage optics we all have to play to maintain access to our jobs, to banking services, social media, and more.
I’m clearly not the only one that’s pissed. Look at the two images below. It’s the same idea in both: Fuck the government.
Our governments and the corporations that hold monopoly power in many sectors are becoming so oppressive in their efforts to stop this nebulous “hate speech”, that compliance with the system is not even worth it. A silent uprising is already occurring, as consumers are changing their email providers, their sources of news, their preferred video streaming platforms, and more.
The system is not protecting us from tyranny, it is making us all into tyrants. We cut ties with our friends and family and co-workers who vote the wrong guy, think the wrong shit, or question government science. We wage our personal information wars in our off-time, sharing news and content that provides a different perspective. There’s no debate or conversations, we’re seeking to identify friends from enemies.
Internet censorship has gotten way out of control. Right now, links to websites are being blacklisted from Google, Discord, and social media, for talking about taboo topics, like the government’s strategy to combat the china virus. You cannot criticize the lockdowns or the vaccines or other government science without potentially losing your Google traffic. People everywhere are losing their jobs for pointing out the newest statistics and research that propose adjustments to various policies. If we cannot talk, how can we improve?
Governments and corporations are practically getting married and having public sex in front of our faces. This is fascism, the textbook definition of it. The only difference between the fascist regimes of the 1940s and today’s European and American nation states, is that ethno-nationalism has been replaced with diversity and woke culture.
I followed the 2020 US elections keenly. Regardless whether you believe Trump or Biden won that clusterfuck, the brutality of the censorship around the debate was unquestionable. Big tech companies Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, and many others, abused their power with impunity. Twitter had the audacity to ban the president of the United States along with thousands of his supporters. And when Trump supporters fled to Twitter’s competitor, Parler, all these companies pulled the plug on the app.
This is not how democracy is supposed to work. We, the people, are supposed to be allowed to speak our minds about concerns we have without fear of repercussions. Were the elections fair? Are vaccines safe? What’s happening to the climate? We are not allowed to ask questions. We do not live in free societies, we live under fascism. It’s an abusive relationship between the government and its citizenry.
The argument for this censorship is to stop the spread of hateful ideas and to suppress violence. The flaw in that argument, and the flaw of censorship is that it leads to lack of exposure to people who hold different ideas than we do. When we can’t understand each other, how can we talk to one another? There’s a strange fear going on that fringe ideas such as national socialism and fascism will start gaining traction unless we actively suppress them. The suppression is unnecessary, as the ability to freely criticize the ideas and the people spreading their views contains the growth of their popularity. Ideas are fought with persuasive arguments, not bullets.
People are not easily seduced by arguments, not even the best ones. But if we already know that persuading anyone into changing their views is so difficult, why are we afraid that fringe ideas would suddenly spread like wildfire if given the chance to be voiced publicly?
Freedom of speech means the ability to express dumb ideas. You are free to say your uninformed opinion, and I am allowed to point out the many ways you are wrong. Conversations are essential to mellow out differences of opinion. We’re all human, we make mistakes. When someone points out our mistakes, we can begin to correct them. We have to be able to talk through our differences, otherwise political extremists who believe the use of violence is an acceptable means of advancing their goals gain legitimacy and support.
A violent uprising against this oppression is unlikely in this day and age of high-tech weaponry, but thankfully, it is unnecessary. Most of us own a car and have enough money and skills to simply relocate to a more free environment. We can choose where we pay taxes and which companies we buy service from. We can uproot our lives when we must and flip the middle finger at petty despots and their edicts.
7 comments
The government hasn’t done any of this (which is obvious since Trump has been in power until a week ago).
It’s all been corporations, who have the right to decide who they want to provide service to.
Trump supporters were real happy when the Supreme court ruled that the Colorado bakery had to right to deny service to gay couples. Now they are mad that Twitter/Youtube denies service to right wing lunatics.
The hypocrisy and irony is real.
https://xkcd.com/1357/
If you delete this comment, you’ll be proving my point ( ͡ᵔ ͜ʖ ͡ᵔ )
The big companies collude with governments. Google and Facebook work with the CCP, Amazon has worked with the CIA. Some companies have strong affiliations to domestic political parties and their people get rewarded with government positions. That’s how these select few companies get so big and establish monopoly positions. We’ll cover this issue later, since you brought this up.
Sorry buddy, I can’t follow you into conspiracy theory territory. Good luck though.
I would just like to mention that Google is restricted from doing business in China, and (again) that Trump was the US president until just last week. For colluders, they sure seem to hate each other.
Unless you believe in the deep state (lol).
It might be hard to confront, but maaaaaybe these ideas are just not economically popular, and these people are a detriment to the companies?
Yes, there is a deep state. It’s the incentives in the system that create cliques of people with common goals. It’s not so fantastical, just social dynamics.
Damn this is toxic I need in on this.
Firstly Cope my dude stop being such a stereotype. You got to be nicer if you actually want to convince people. I have issues with both of your arguments but I’ll start yours Cope.
THE DEEP STATE IS REAL!… maybe kinda sorta. The issue with the deep state is that it’s a boggy man. There’s no actual definition, its a one size fits all term. It spans ***ish question trash to more reasonable Democratic/Republican ‘elite’ and the uber rich. And yes I know that “the deep state” is often associated with right wing nut jobs, but don’t just assume someones crazy because they don’t understand a dog whistle.
Now moving on to the main course. Google and Facebook absolutely collude with the government so they can be as powerful as possible. This is public information for example, ‘Google spent more than $1.9 million in lobbying in the third quarter of this year, a 14.2% increase from the prior quarter. Facebook spent $4.9 million, a 1.5% increase from the previous quarter.’ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/21/google-ramps-up-lobbying-facebook-outspends-peers-in-third-quarter.html This is public information from “LIBERAL NBC”. The problem is Oil companies and everyone else is lobbying the government too. Both parties take money from big corporations and screw the little guy.
I get why Otaku focuses on big tech because they’re the ones making his life miserable, not the oil and fracking a-holes next door. Now do I disagree with private websites moderating/censoring? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, it depends on the circumstance. I’m not the best person to discuss dog whistles, or the I’m not racist I’m just making memes argument, and I don’t feel like it right now. But even though I often agree with these companies choices, I don’t think its controversial to say that Billionaires shouldn’t decide what is okay and not okay to talk about. Not to mention ruin your life if you run a website. I censored myself earlier in THIS POST because I’m afraid google might have a scanner that looks for “bad words” and may cause this website issues.
Okay this is going long and I’m tired so I’ll sum up. The Important thing is to trust no one in government, or at least not completely. There is no “good party” in a two party system, only bad and arguably worse. One of the few things I really appreciated about Trump was the Executive Order that he signed in his first days of the presidency, that Banned former government officials from lobbying for 5 years. However he blew that up when he rescinded that order in his final days of office. Talk about virtue singling! Not Like Joe Bidens going to reinstate that though.
Shit I’m still going; okay how do you fix this? Individual politicians from any party that give specific policies, hold them to those policies. And kill citizens united! Look up citizens united, only vote for politicians who will get rid of it!
God Damn Goodnight.
Career politicians are a big problem. I believe much of the corruption would disappear if we didn’t have life-long politicians creating networks in business, finance, the military, foreign governments, etc. If we can get the conversation past the partisan pointing fingers bullshit, we can progress to the next topics. But we don’t really have nonpartisan conversational hubs anymore. And where do you talk about this outside of the internet?
So true, thanks for sharing this timely criticism of the growing nanny-state!