We live in strange but dangerous times when even our legislative representatives are routinely censored by BigTech, acting in collusion with other state actors, when they depart from or resist the grand narrative on election integrity, mask and vaccine mandates, diversity, open borders, and the like. New Black Legends are being written as we speak, spreading calumnies relating to this or that nation’s past. There is now a coordinated attempt to stifle any resistance to the new hegemonic order emerging in the post-Cold War era both in Europe and the Anglosphere. Consider the effort being expended on the denigration of PM Orbán in Hungary merely for offering his people a reasonable alternative to liberal globalism that would not have battered an eyelid a generation ago. Do not underestimate the viciousness of this campaign; their will to power is terrible.
This is directed more to monty than dover beach:
Have you had a serious bump on the head, or something?? The old Catallaxy was full of nonsense – and dangerous nonsense at that if you think (as anyone with a sensible brain in their head does) that climate change and COVID are dangerous and serious threats to us all, and which should be above the stupefying culture war-ing of the Right. And it was full of people so self-gaslite, like dover-beach, by the monetised wingnut media that they could not see authoritarianism staring them in the face.
IT IS GOOD THAT IT DIED, AND THAT ITS NONSENSE HAD ONE LESS AVENUE OF PROMULGATION IN THE WORLD.
You have no obligation to aid its further promulgation – you are doing the world a harm by giving them the dignity of another outlet.
Get a grip and close this down – run your own blog with your own views as much as you like – but this system of repeating bullshit that has appeared in former Catallaxy is just ridiculous.
If big tech won’t carry the story he should flood his supporters with emails and a link to a server it is not banned from, encouraging each person to send it to a few others, and them to a few others, etc.
My own Hairy Hubby, a PhD in Science who makes something of a study of matters climatological, is outraged that the latest IPCC ‘political’ section, the policy-makers part, and NOT the scientific part, is actually using the discredited Michael Mann Hockey Stick graph as part of the persuasion. He is very depressed about the state of science and fake-science under the current iteration of modernity.
Can’t say I blame him. In my field of any competence, epidemiological methods, I see much to complain about. Even more than some of the blatantly wrong modelling is the way in which reasonable scientific epidemiological findings are misinterpreted for their own purposes by those who wish to drum up support to discredit vaccines for Covid (which are not perfect, as we know, but not the killers some say they are). I put up a critique of some crazy interpreters of a competent study, regarding the pregnancy safety of mRNA vaxes, on the Dash-Cat today. The response was a predictable ‘get off the site then’ from some of rabble there now. The commenters on a linked published medical article had no scientific comprehension of even how to read an epidemiological table. They confused population incidence with the incidence in the study and then abstracted ridiculous numbers from this confusion. Such an elementary mistake, now taken as gospel by the internet meme crowd to prove that there is a circa 80% incidence of spontaneous abortion in women who were vaxxed in trimester 1 and 2. I am not fond of vaxxes during pregnancy, but this is outright disinformation. The population incidence and this study incidence both came in at about 12%; so no discernable vaxx effect there from the study in question.
I think I’ve had it with blog commenting altogether. It’s too abusive and too depressing. Prefer to do something else with what’s left of my life.
Thanks, Dover, for your site, btw. It is no criticism of this site that I am feeling so down.
I know that there are good, measured and reasonable commenters around still from the old Cat, but it is hard to replicate the bonhomie mostly found there.
Chin up, Lizzie. Maybe give it a break for a week or see and check back in. You’ll always be welcome here and there, I’m sure.
Yes, but the censoring of public business such as this, the other recent example is the AZ Senate hearing which covered the election audit, is beyond the pale. BigTech has no business removing content of that sort from the public posts, DMs, of its subscribers. None at all.
In the current climate, this could be only written by someone in lockstep with the present moral and intellectual milieu. You exemplify the dead thing in Chesterton’s quote, “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”
Just some people showing their full characters now they are off the Sinc leash.
Posting at the cat always required a thick skin.
Monty was right, big tech needs a big break up.
I’m glad monty has finally agreed.
There has always been some form of censorship. Before the internet we relied on paper and TV for news, often without realising that those outlets were crafting the narrative to their own ends. So when I see people claiming Big Tech is censoring free speech I have to wonder if they have ever thought about how much of the narrative has always been controlled by powerful interest groups.
Property rights are important and anyone has the right to support views of their choosing. The Right keeps complaining about the restrictions of Big Tech but is incapable of creating its own outlets. What happened to Parler? Is Stormfront the best the Right can do? Catallaxy is at present in disarray with multiple alternatives only diluting the message. Divided and being conquered done by its own tribe.
I completely agree that censorship in some form has always been with us. I don’t think you can have a polity that doesn’t engage in some form of censorship, but my immediate complaint here is not against censorship per se, but against the censorship of public business by private actors on behalf of state actors outside the purview of public accountability.
As to the second, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. never started off as Left projects. They began as neutral platforms and obtained the protection of a carrier under those conditions. If they want to depart from that now their should be legal and political consequences.
As to the second, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. never started off as Left projects. They began as neutral platforms and obtained the protection of a carrier under those conditions. If they want to depart from that now their should be legal and political consequences.
Why censor just those platforms? On Sky News statements are made that are so obviously wrong I can’t decide if they are lying or ignorant. I can’t watch The Project because of their political slant. Even if Google etc were broken up the new entities would most likely just be clones.
The risk of your proposal is that it gives the State more censorship power.
1. Not just those platforms, and 2. There is a risk to any proposal, but as I’ve said elsewhere, one of the major problems for the Right is the dream that you could avoid this risk by some instrument or other. You cannot. We need to realize that unless we reengage in public institutions, we simply cede the field to the Left. To put it another way, you do not simply eschew a weapon because it may fall into the hands of the enemy.
We need to realize that unless we reengage in public institutions, we simply cede the field to the Left. To put it another way, you do not simply eschew a weapon because it may fall into the hands of the enemy.
That’s my argument. You want the solution through government intervention. I want it through public intervention. In the USA there is nigh impossible to expect governments to take action. Trump’s legal action against Google etc. is regarded by most as a joke.
I think the whole left/right, public/private divides are obsolete. I think it’s just a tweedledum/tweedledee sort of argument that the real Powers That Be have let the plebs bicker over while they got on with their agenda.
Our overlords will use both government and private means to achieve their new technocratic serfdom. They have certainly used both left and right political parties. It sounds like a shut-up-conspiracy-theory, except that they’ve been telling us for years about the sort of power they want over the lives of their serfs.
“You will own nothing and you will be happy” is only one of the latest iterations of it.
Tyranny brooks no dissent.
a reasonable alternative to liberal globalism? He doesn’t believe in democracy. He is destroying necessary institutions needed in a democracy as we speak.
Re Ellen if Tasmania, left/right is definitely obsolete. The real divide these days is between internationalists/nationalists (using other terms, cosmopolitans/parochials). The internationalists/cosmopolitans are the ones who want to dominate every aspect of our lives, and hence the more dangerous.