Written by Otaku Apologist
Free speech has been under attack in the western hemisphere for far too long. Because we forgot the most fundamental arguments for free speech, the all-important “why” we must embrace the anarchy that is liberal democracy.
The main reason we need free speech is that humans are prone to a list of cognitive biases. We all need people telling us when we’re going too far.
Now, radicals are often good at making observations. They’re adept at describing problems. But either due to lack of creativity, lack of patience, lack of social skills, or just informed cynicism, they don’t use official channels to address problems.
For example, I actually read from top to bottom what the Christchurch shooter wrote online in 2019. I found a site that allowed full access to this writeup. I won’t link directly to this post, so please do your own digging.
Anyway, the guy laid out his reasons for his abominable actions very articulately. He observed, very accurately, that the contemporary western culture bloc, the political establishment, our academia and media, our television and social medias, pretty much the entire shebang is all too censored for observations about demographic problems in Europe, US and New Zealand to be addressed. He explained why he saw no other sensible form of political activism than going in guns blazing.
Also read my thoughts on why modern times are dividing us.
We have seen the effort it’s taking men like Donald Trump to address the systemic issues in US. During his four-year tenure, he brought the economy back and initiated the ending of the forever-wars in the middle-east. From the moment he started his presidential work in 2016, he’s been the target of a non-stop political witch hunt. I have watched closely as his political enemies have used every conceivable dirty trick to take him down, from cliché sexual misconduct allegations to treason charges, none of which held much water. After 6+ years of attacks, his enemies may finally have something that sticks. Why is Trump attacked so much? Because what he threatens is the global power structure based on bottom-to-top wealth transfer programs, such as the forever-wars in the middle-east, the justifications for which were lies. The mainstream media are complicit in these schemes, because they inspire populations into supporting these wars, just like they did with Ukraine.
According to the greatest journalist of our time (we know he’s great, because he’s going to jail for his work), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were corrupt money laundering operations to multinational military contractors. The direct quote is, “the goal in Afghanistan is an endless war, not a successful war”.
I believe Assange. I think he’s a great man. But at no point will I relinquish commitment to intellectual integrity.
Assange makes bold statements that we should discuss to disseminate what part of them is true. As much respect as I have for Assange, he’s still a human being, as are his sources. I believe his data, but there is always a chance he may be seeing just part of the situation. The conversation about what is true should never stop, it should always remain open, just in case we made a mistake somewhere, same as with the scientific method: Every established truth is subject to perpetual scrutiny.
Now, the reason why radicals are challenging to include in the public discussion is that when they feel that official channels don’t work fast enough, which they seldom do, they expand their methods. In the case of social media, radicals run coordinated operations to manipulate the algorithms, boosting certain search tags. On twitter for example, you’ll often see around 15k tweets talk about some social issue, hyperfocus on a news story, bash on some politician, boost a controversial video.
Personally, I think that’s acceptable. It’s certainly annoying, as sometimes you’ll stumble on to material that is just misleading and deliberately manipulative, but it’s better than having radicals feel only guns can solve political disputes.
We need radicals in the conversation, because they’re often reacting to an unaddressed problems. They go overboard in getting attention for the issues, because too few are listening. It will make them less radical when they receive direct feedback on their ideas. Feedback encourages radicals to moderate, as they’ll see that by moderating the message, you expand your reach, thus getting more social power to actually solve the issues.
Every person, community and society must have the flexibility to adapt to this dynamically changing world. Free speech provides us this very necessary mental flexibility.
If your views are very faulty, you can get trapped in a feedback loop where your expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies. Your life experience thus accumulates to sharpen established views, which can be accurate in some cases, faulty in others. How do you know? Someone must tell you, in your face. Appreciate them for the courage it takes to be honest.
