http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/alex-jones-and-the-rise-of-corporate-censorship/21658#.W2sG6uSotPb
So we’re now trusting the capitalist class, massive, unaccountable corporations, to decide on our behalf what we may listen to and talk about? This is the take-home message, the terrible take-home message, of the expulsion of Alex Jones’ Infowars network from Apple, Facebook and Spotify and of the wild whoops of delight that this summary banning generated among so-called liberals: that people are now okay with allowing global capitalism to govern the public sphere and to decree what is sayable and what is unsayable. Corporate censorship, liberals’ new favourite thing – how bizarre.
We live in strange times. On one hand it is fashionable to hate capitalism these days. No middle-class home is complete without a Naomi Klein tome; making memes of Marx is every twentysomething Corbynistas’ favourite pastime. But on the other hand we seem content to trust Silicon Valley, the new frontier in corporate power, to make moral judgements about what kind of content people should be able to see online. Radicals and liberals declared themselves ‘very glad’ that these business elites enforced censorship against Jones and Infowars. We should be ‘celebrating the move’, said Vox, because ‘it represents a crucial step forward in the fight against fake news’. Liberals for capitalist censorship! The world just got that bit odder, and less free.
Over the past 24 hours, Jones and much of his Infowars channel has been ‘summarily banned’ – in the excitable words of Vox – from Apple, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube. Initially, Facebook and YouTube had taken only selective measures against Jones. In response to a Twitterstorm about his presence on these platforms, they took down some of his videos. But then Apple decided to ban Jones entirely – removing all episodes of his podcast from its platform – and the other online giants followed suit. Or as the thrilled liberal commentary put it: ‘The dominoes started to fall.’ Despite having millions of subscribers, despite there being a public interest in what he has to say, Jones has been cast out of the world of social media, which is essentially the public square of the 21st century, on the basis that what he says is wicked.
This is censorship. There will of course be apologists for the corporate control of speech, on both the left and right, who will say, ‘It’s only censorship when the government does it!’. They are so wrong. When enormous companies that have arguably become the facilitators of public debate expel someone and his ideas because they find them morally repugnant, that is censorship. Powerful people have deprived an individual and his network of a key space in which they might propagate their beliefs. Aka censorship.
It doesn’t matter what you think of Jones. It doesn’t matter if you think he is mad, eccentric, and given to embracing crackpot theories about school shootings being faked. You should still be worried about what has happened to him because it confirms we have moved into a new era of outsourced censorship. It shows that what was once done by the state is now done by corporations. The illiberal, intolerant cleansing from public life of ideas judged to be offensive or dangerous has shifted from being the state’s thing to being the business elite’s thing. Witness how many campaigners for censorship now seek to marshal capitalist power to the end of erasing voices they don’t like – from the Dump Farage campaign that wants corporations to withdraw their advertising from LBC until it dumps Nigel Farage as a presenter to the calling on Silicon Valley to deprive the oxygen of publicity to offensive broadcasters.
In essence, so-called liberals and sections of the political class now want corporations to do their dirty work for them. They want the capitalist elites to do what it has become somewhat unfashionable for the state to do: ban controversial political speech. What an extraordinary folly this is. To empower global capitalism to act as judge, jury and executioner on what may be said on social-media platforms, in the new public square, is to sign the death warrant of freedom of speech. What if these bosses decide next that Marxist speech is unacceptable? Or that Zionist speech is dangerous? In green-lighting the censorship of Jones, we grant corporate suits the moral authority to censor pretty much anything else, too.
People on both the liberal left and the libertarian right argue that what has been done to Jones is acceptable because this is simply a case of businesses deciding freely who they should associate with or provide platforms to. This is disingenuous. This was not a clean, independent business decision – it was a rash act of silencing carried out under pressure from a moralised mob that insisted Jones’ words are too wicked for public life. This isn’t the free market in action – it’s the bending of capitalist power to the end of enforcing moral controls on speech. There is one very interesting thing that will spring from this incident: we will witness the severe limitations of right-wing libertarianism. Libertarians’ obsession with the state, their belief that things are only bad if the state does them, means they are incapable of arguing against capitalist authoritarianism, and in fact even support it on the basis that this is the free market being the free market (even though it isn’t). Libertarianism is devastatingly ill-prepared for the new authoritarianism, for tackling the rise of outsourced censorship and informal intolerance.
For good or ill, the social-media sphere is the new public sphere. The expulsion of people from these platforms is to 2018 what a state ban on the publication or sale of certain books was to 1618. How can we convince the owners of social media to permit the freest speech possible and to trust their users to negotiate the world of ideas for themselves? This is the question we should be asking ourselves, rather than concocting more ways to encourage these corporate overlords to censor and blacklist.
Do corporations have the right to ban right wing media on the basis that they spew "hate speech" and "lies".
Absolutely!
Should they? That is the question each of us must answer.
Do we mind seeing Madonna on YouTube get up there and say she wants to blow up the White House? Should that be banned? Isn't that hate speech?
Do we mind seeing CNN on YouTube getting up there and telling lies such as the Travel ban implemented by Trump was a ban on Muslims instead of correctly saying it was a ban that did not effect well over 90% of Muslims in the world?
Do we mind seeing Maxine Waters getting up there on YouTube and inciting her followers to "resist" in any way possible? Before you answer, keep in mind a Bernie Sanders follower tried to assassinate the entire GOP Congress.
What we now have are openly Leftist corporations, at war with conservatives, every bit as much as the IRS who targeted them under Obama.
Is this a good thing?
What say you?
When it comes to Alex Jones, I know precious little about him, but all I see are stories that attack his character, anything from him believing crazy conspiracy theories to his wife who is divorcing him saying he is a terrible person.
Yet we allow people like Madonna up there who is the queen of failed relationships speak her mind, and we let people like Nancy Pelosi get up there and say that "W" lied about WMD's as they used politicized intelligence from the experts that soon afterwards were after Trump to be shown on places like YouTube.
Is this a good development or a bad one?
Originally posted by @whodeyyes, I know, wrong forum.
Yes...................yes, I know, wrong forum.
Thanks for that.
Not necessarily.
How often have you seen someone complain and say Take it to the Science Forum, or Take it to Debates or the General Forum?
This is (perhaps) the ONLY forum here that comes close to exercising the trumpeted left wing liberal ideal of 'inclusiveness'.
ironic, ain't it
Originally posted by @lemon-limeYou forgot the Spanky.
[b]yes, I know, wrong forum.
Not necessarily.
How often have you seen someone complain and say Take it to the Science Forum, or Take it to Debates or the General Forum?
This is (perhaps) the ONLY forum here that comes close to exercising the trumpeted left wing liberal ideal of 'inclusiveness'.
ironic, ain't it[/b]
Originally posted by @lemon-limeInclusiveness on the spirituality forum?
[b]yes, I know, wrong forum.
Not necessarily.
How often have you seen someone complain and say Take it to the Science Forum, or Take it to Debates or the General Forum?
This is (perhaps) the ONLY forum here that comes close to exercising the trumpeted left wing liberal ideal of 'inclusiveness'.
ironic, ain't it[/b]
Did I miss something?
Originally posted by @whodeyDid I miss something?
Inclusiveness on the spirituality forum?
Did I miss something?
I've seen a variety of topics at this forum that might appear to belong to some other forum, but I've rarely seen anyone insist it be taken somewhere else.
Originally posted by @lemon-limeOk then, so what do you think of the topic?
[b]Did I miss something?
I've seen a variety of topics at this forum that might appear to belong to some other forum, but I've rarely seen anyone insist it be taken somewhere else.[/b]
Should people be censored like this?
To make it more applicable, are there any religious teachings that should be censored from society?
Also, is freedom of speech a God given right?
Originally posted by @whodey'Do have a right' and 'should have a right' are two very different propositions.
Ok then, so what do you think of the topic?
Should people be censored like this?
To make it more applicable, are there any religious teachings that should be censored from society?
Also, is freedom of speech a God given right?
'Should have' is subjective and indicative of personal opinion. 'Do have' on the other hand is more cut and dried... you either 'do have' or you don't have, minus all of the reasons for why it should be so or not.
If I had my druthers inflammatory speech should be censored... but more often than not it isn't.
And basically harmless speech should not be censored, though often times it is.
My own personal take on this:
Whether or not I exercise my 'right' to speak (at any given time) has more to do with wisdom, and less to do with any expressed 'right'.
Even if not expressed, implicit in any "right to free speech" is also the right to not speak.
Originally posted by @whodeyThat you protect this piece of trash should tell anyone everything they need to know. If only someone had censored Hitler before he re-instilled nationalism to a country still reeling from the punitive damages caused by the Treaty of Versailles. If you give evil a voice in the rush to be "egalitarian", then you're as evil as that you ally yourself with.
Ok then, so what do you think of the topic?
Should people be censored like this?
To make it more applicable, are there any religious teachings that should be censored from society?
Also, is freedom of speech a God given right?
Originally posted by @lemon-limeI disagree.
'Do have a right' or 'should have a right' are two very different questions.
'Should have' is subjective and indicative of personal opinion. 'Do have' on the other hand is more cut and dried... you either 'do have' or you don't have, minus all of the reasons for why it should be so or not.
If I had my druthers inflammatory speech should be censored ...[text shortened]... n not it isn't.
And basically harmless speech should not be censored, though often times it is.
As human beings, we tend to only hear what we want to hear. As a Christian, when I read the Word of God is cuts like a surgical instrument.
I don't like to ever be told I'm wrong, but then God corrects me, I have a choice to make. I can either hear what I want to hear or let if change me for the better.
So who should be the inflammatory police? If I said that abortion is murder, is that inflammatory? If I said that killing blacks in the Deep South in the 1800's was murder, would that have been considered inflammatory, etc.?
I find that letting people speak freely, without fear of retribution, allows people to perhaps hear a truth that they need to hear, or it exposes those who have no truth, but only hate.
Either way it's a win/win.
Originally posted by @suzianneI'm not protecting anyone. I have no interest in what a good or bad person he is. I'm not the judge of this man.
That you protect this piece of trash should tell anyone everything they need to know. If only someone had censored Hitler before he re-instilled nationalism to a country still reeling from the punitive damages caused by the Treaty of Versailles. If you give evil a voice in the rush to be "egalitarian", then you're as evil as that you ally yourself with.
But to take away his ability to communicate to others on the presumption that he is bad and you are good, is pretty messed up Suzy.
Additionally, one of the main reasons Hitler was embraced was probably because no one understood or heard about what he wrote in Mein Kamf.
Originally posted by @whodeyInflammatory in the sense of inciting violence against another person or persons.
I disagree.
As human beings, we tend to only hear what we want to hear. As a Christian, when I read the Word of God is cuts like a surgical instrument.
I don't like to ever be told I'm wrong, but then God corrects me, I have a choice to make. I can either hear what I want to hear or let if change me for the better.
So who should be the inflammator ...[text shortened]... eed to hear, or it exposes those who have no truth, but only hate.
Either way it's a win/win.
For example, in spite of many left wingers insisting they are against hatred and violence, I know better than to say anything if I happen to find myself in the middle of one of their protests.
I did inadvertently walk into a protest a few years ago, and didn't say anything to anyone until I had passed through it.
I have Alex Jones' infowars podcast on my phone. I listen to what he has to say 2-3 times a week. I find it interesting. If the podcast player I use - or any other privately owned entity or platform - blocks him some day, that is their prerogrative and choice. Alex Jones will still have his right to free speech.