So, Biden has recently proposed a new anti-terrorism program for dealing with domestic terrorism, and apparently leftists are freaking out. The program appears to be related to the January 6th and other extremist incidents in recent years, calling for a stronger response to dealing with terrorism.
The left is claiming this will suppress their speech. Let me just say, since this is my "see I told you so" moment, this is why I'm not for attacking fascists like the far left is. The left wants to deplatform fascists, and punish them for their views, and suppress them, but these leftists dont understand, often times given their own radical anti capitalist views, this makes them a target too, because if we want to be objective and target extremists who threaten people and our way of life, leftists who advocate for violent crap are going to be on the list of targets along with right wingers, and this could lead to red scare-esque suppression of these people. So yeah, as someone who borders on being a Kyle Kulinski style free speech absolutist, let me just say, see I told you so.
But to delve deeper into this, as someone who has taken a class about terrorism in college, I feel like I can offer a less hyperbolic and more nuanced perspective on this. Looking at the verbiage the leftist twitter user posted above, it seems very clear that mere advocacy for positions is not grounds for being treated as a terrorist. Embracing violent tactics to get your point across is. This is good. I mean, that's the balance you want to take. You want to not violate free speech, while targetting people who act in violent ways. But people claim that because on the anarchist section they did not elaborate as much as other sections, that the standard is lower or something. Given the graphic it's not like they have enough space to elaborate, and such elaboration is redundant, so it seems ridiculous. Yet leftists are claiming this will violate their rights.
I mean, I get it to some extent. The US government has been crap to leftist activists in the past. But here it just seems like an even handed approach of saying that while we all have free speech rights, actually committing violence to accomplish your political goals is unacceptable. This is a no brainer, folks. You can't have a civil society, if you take the civility out of society. People should be free to express whatever view they want, even awful ones, but they should not act in a violent way to get that across. I feel like leftists who are obsessed with revolution fail to understand this. I hate to be one of those "the only people who have something to fear have something to hide" kind of guys, but maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be advocating for freaking overthrowing the government if you didn't want to be a target? I mean, I get it, I'm a bit of a soft leftist myself, but I've always tried to align with reformism, strongly. I dont like the violent rhetoric leftists used about guillotining people and how real change can't come unless we overthrow the system, blah blah blah. These are extremist beliefs. I'm sorry, they are. And I feel like the Biden administration has the right balance here. You're free to have your views. You're even free to use strong rhetoric or have philosophical beliefs toward violence according to the link above. But if you actually act violently, well, sorry, free speech doesn't protect that. Freaking deal with your consequences.
In fairness though there is one aspect of this anti terrorism program that I have an issue with, and that's pillar 4, which focuses on combating the root causes of such extremism and polarization. After all the root causes...are speech. I mean, people on the right are allowed to be racist. People on the left are allowed to make guillotine memes. And....honestly, I think that's part of free speech. And this is where I side with both leftists, and crappy rightists who the left hates me for...showing fairness toward? I mean, you should be free to express what you want, and I do think that when the government talks about, and I quote, "counter the polarization often fueled by disinformation, misinformation, and dangerous conspiracy theories online, supporting an information environment that fosters healthy democratic discourse.", I have to seriously ask a simple question. How? How are you going to do this? Because it seems to me like they're going to try to stamp out extremist views on the internet somehow, or establish some sort of ministry of truth to establish what is truthful. And that does make me uncomfortable. As we know, for the past 5-6 years, I've been very anti establishment in my views. And I have views, despite disliking outright violence and believing in rule of law, that could be considered to be polarizing. I've found, post 2016, much of the effort to suppress speech has had cynical political motivations behind it. I feel like the democrats go after sources of so called "fake news" because they wanna control the narrative. They want to tell people what to think and not be challenged. That said, i'm not sure I really want the government using its resources poking around into online discourses to try to steer things toward the narratives they want. Because the narratives they want suck.
Look, if the government wants to go after violent people who do violent things, that's perfectly fine. But leave free speech alone. To be fair, I feel like the Biden administration's language, reading into the details, seems to be focused on "we need to do a good enough job at governing so people don't turn into extremists in the first place." Yeah, I agree, you guys have been sucking at that. I know my views left the political overton window in large part because of a failure to do a good job at governing. But at the same time, they need to do a much better job than they're doing. I feel like Biden has been doing the bare minimum acceptable. Regardless, if we could hash out these differences at the ballot box, rather than with extremism, yeah, I agree with Biden on that. For the record when I talk about shifting things, I talk about doing it electorally. That's why I believe the left needs to leverage their votes against the dems to pull them left. And that's why I'm perfectly fine with splitting the democratic coalition if need be. Because if they dont do a good job, there's no reason we should remain democrats.
That said, in practice, is Biden's anti terrorism policy bad? On paper at least, no. I'm fine with most of this and it strikes a good balance. However, I am concerned about the potential for governmental efforts and otherwise to crack down on dissenting opinions online. This might not even take the form of overt suppression by the way. It could involve troll farms a la correct the record, or deplatforming people off of social media, or downplaying them in the algorithm on youtube, all of which I oppose too. But other than the potential for that, I feel like the leftists need to chill out. And, you know, maybe stop advocating for violence if they don't want to be considered violent extremists.
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