What do Left Twitter pundits believe? Taking them at their word, they tend to believe that free speech is a fascist ideal, or only fetishized by reactionaries…until they, the correct leftists, need it, that is. They have an absurdly reductive view of the First Amendment, which holds that only state censorship is meaningful, and individual institutions have the power to shut down and censor speakers…until one of their sacred cows, like the comical George Ciccariello-Maher, gets placed on academic leave. Then, the hypocrisy of the right is somehow evidence that the left was the real supporter of free speech all along. Cynical, lying opportunists abound.
In conceiving the sum total of the tree of Western life as patriarchal colonialism and nothing else, they also see fit to take an axe to the ideal of individualism. There is, as a certain strand of left ideology states, no genuine individual – there is only an oppressed monetary relation, and a need for solidarity. But there is no solidarity. Solidarity is a lie. These DSA people shitpost and call their representatives, and occasionally lobby for increased health insurance, and then malign ‘the libs’ for being too moderate? For not being revolutionary? Only Ted Kaczynski was a revolutionary. Everyone is a reformist within capitalism, but those reformists who don’t like reform have seen fit to throw away the ideals of free speech and open discourse, as if their haste should suffice for revolutionary action.
The left’s position on free speech is simply incoherent. Current Affairs, a left magazine which is a cut above the rest, agrees that Charles Murray is pretty much a white supremacist. Now, let’s take this into Ciccariello-Maher world, where punching Nazis is a moral revolutionary obligation. Follow me there, into the pit:
What is the difference between a white supremacist and a Nazi? None, right? It would be splitting hairs. It would be like saying that Milo is not a Nazi, which would get you ‘ratio’d’ (dog-piled until you look like an idiot online) by the drooling irony boys of left Twitter. So, if the free speech of Nazis is unimportant, and Charles Murray, being a white supremacist, is effectively a Nazi, then punching Charles Murray would be a revolutionary anti-racist act. Correct?
Let’s take it one further. Ben Shapiro, as a conservative who defends these ‘Nazis’, is effectively a Nazi sympathizer. Would you not punch a Nazi enabler if you would also punch a Nazi? Of course you would. In your demented world, those would be the worst people of all – those who caped and covered for Nazis while claiming that they, themselves, were not Nazis.
So, now we’ve justified silencing, punching and denying free speech to virtually every conservative in America. Who’s next? The centrists, of course.
People like Jonathan Chait, and those liberals despised by the irony-glob Dionysian chaos-slugs of left Twitter, are also defending the rights of Nazis. They are, in the final analysis, Chamberlains. Enablers. Those who refuse to go to war.
What, then, of Jordan Peterson? Clearly a Nazi, for going on Nazi shows, like Rebel Media, famously headed by Gavin McInnes. Now, the leading purveyor of the logos in the West can get punched for the revolution.
What a dead, sick enterprise this virulent sect of the left is, this repulsive left that has surfaced to decry Zaid Jilani’s uncontroversial Intercept article explaining the hypocrisy of their crowned coward limped-wristed communist warlord, George Ciccariello-Maher.
None of these people are capable of creating a new society. Imagine it, a school board meeting populated by Chapo Trap House listeners, ironic-nihilist existentialist DSA kids, wannabe-communist and relentless identitarians who will soon spit up all the white boy ‘allies’ who have thrown in their lot with the messiah complex.
Nobody who believes in collective solidarity over individual rights has a good society planned for you. None of them can even articulate what they want, not even the best of them. That’s why the 70s, and Occupy, and likely the DSA, will fail. That doesn’t mean the now is okay. That doesn’t mean that the neoliberal center, nor the conservative stagnant swamp-sitters, have a plan.
But this left has no future. Of that, I am sure.
You have an interesting way to look at things, and a powerfully evocative writing style. Made me think, made me ponder. I can dig it.