The Skinny: Chuds, Social Media & Censorship Edition

 

Chuds, Social Media & Censorship

 

None Of This Is About Free Speech

At this point we’re now more than a week out from the chud riot on Capitol Hill that is increasingly looking like a (poorly-executed) Seven Days in May style fascist coup attempt. As part of the fallout from this event, numerous social media companies have tried to wash the blood from their hands by suspending Donald Trump’s accounts, and the accounts of various other high-profile fascist politicians, media figures and provocateurs. I am even as I write this, also working on an article about why this gesture is far too late, fails to conform to its own logical reasoning, and is purely motivated by self interest on behalf of Big Tech, so I won’t waste my breath repeating those arguments here in my journal.

I would however like to say that not only do I support the suspension of high-profile fascist social media accounts, I think the arguments that this constitutes a free speech, or censorship issue, being pushed by both the far right and the increasingly-unhinged, contrarian “left” are either openly mendacious, or laughably naïve; depending on the argument and the individual delivering it. Unfortunately, because the group of people pushing these arguments ostensibly represents such a wide swathe of the political spectrum, the entire issue of social media, fascist organizing and free speech has become a swirly clusterf*ck of confusion and emotionally manipulative propaganda. So what I’m going to try to do here in this journal is separate out, and ultimately refute, some of the more common lines of argument on offer in the online discourse here; to sort it out, as it were.

First and foremost, it is as far as I can tell, literally impossible to censor the President of the United States; a man who can instantly call a press conference that will be attended by every corporate media outlet in the country, virtually any time he likes. You can apply that same logic to noted Q-Anon fascist windbag Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga,) who had the brass balls to wear a “censored” mask (see header image) on the floor of the House of Representatives, while on television and standing in front of a microphone into which she presumably b*tched about losing her Twitter account for all the world to hear. The idea that close personal friends of Tucker Carlson and other fascist windbags at Fox, are being silenced by social media companies who, after four plus years of this nonsense are finally enforcing their standing terms and conditions on rich white crackers, is utterly absurd and literally beneath my effort to debunk.

This of course brings me to my second point; namely that Donald Trump losing his social media accounts in precisely the same way any other person would have for violating the terms and conditions in the manner that he has, is not a censorship issue. For starters, no matter how popular services like Twitter and Facebook become, they are not actually the public discourse; Trump signed the same contract you and I did on Twitter, and is in theory supposed to be subject to the same terms and conditions we are. If you’d just spent the past four years using your Twitter account to propagate hatred, erode democracy and rack up a real as f*ck body count by inspiring various forms of stochastic terrorism, you’d have lost your Twitter account (and heard from the FBI) a very long time ago. Censorship very specifically implies that Donald Trump or any of these other revanchist muppets are being singled out and suspended for their heterodox beliefs, and that simply isn’t true; anyone reading this would be suspended under the same circumstances, for making the same tweets.

Of course there will be those who argue that invoking the terms and services agreement is in fact merely a technicality, and that the difference between government censorship and corporate censorship is fairly irrelevant; I think I read some drivel like that in Current Affairs recently. In a vacuum, that logic sounds pretty reasonable and in another situation I might well be arguing right alongside folks deploying this talking point; no it’s probably not a very good idea to let a mutant like Mark Zuckerberg, or Jack Dorsey decide what people are and aren’t allowed to stay in public – although again, I’m not really sure that’s what’s happening here since I’ve already rejected the argument that being popular, automatically makes a social media service the public discourse. More to the point however, even if you an I would agree that social media should be a publicly controlled utility, with an entirely people-powered moderation system that truly stood for free speech rights in the public sphere, surely it would still be against the rules to preach hatred, incite violence and literally organize a fascist insurrection on that new, Utopian social media platform, wouldn’t it? And that is of course, where the argument that Trump or any of his fascist cronies are the victims of corporate censorship, falls apart entirely as well; the right to free speech online does in fact end someplace before inciting fascist chuds to commit criminal acts of violence against your enemies.

Frankly, from out here it seems to me like a lot of folks in the online left have bought into the cracker argument that “free speech” means your right to say literally anything, anywhere, and that theory has no basis in reality whatsoever. There’s a whole lot of things you can’t say in a liberal democratic society without facing consequences, even the force of the state, and sometimes for very good reasons. I mean everyone reading this knows that I can’t just shout “I’m going to kill you” at someone in open discourse, threats are explicitly not defended by free speech rights. Yet those same folks turn around and expect people to be able to threaten and intimidate whole communities with violence, on social media, free of consequence? That’s not free speech buddy, that’s cracker nonsense and the only reason anyone is even entertaining the idea that defending this is a reasonable position, is because America is a white supremacist country that has spent more than two centuries rewarding cracker supremacist attitudes and violent, reactionary politics. You simply do not have a right to incite violence, preach hatred and literally plot a goddamn coup on Twitter, and frankly I can’t believe I even have to type that out.

Look, I’m not a fool; I’ve been watching MSNBC commentators continue to conflate left wing resistance with right wing violence, I’ve heard the whispers about a new Patriot Act, and the cries from neoliberal authoritarians for increased powers to police “domestic terrorism.” There are a numerous aspects of the ongoing fallout from the chud coup attempt in D.C., that the left needs to be extremely concerned about, and prepared to fight against going forward. Factually however, refusing to let rich white crackers build a modern Brownshirt revolution on social media isn’t one of them. Let fascists cry for fascists, because they sure as f*ck aren’t going to cry for you; save your outrage for folks who really are being silenced – like the poor, the marginalized, and anyone who thinks for-profit private health insurance is monstrous.

 

The Police State You Fear Already Exists for the Left

At this point I must confess that I can’t figure out if the incessant buzzing about how we’re going to end up with a neoliberal police state unless we defend the neonazis, chuds, and billionaire fascists who just organized a coup attempt online, is the result of naivety, egotism, or genuine bad faith argumentation; I guess it really depends on the person who is making the argument. Since I’m generalizing and vague-booking here in my journal, let’s divide up those three categories of people so I can respond to each in turn.

Some of the people insisting that we need to defend rich fascists from, again, preexisting laws, rules and regulations that would generally have applied to anyone who wasn’t a rich fascist before now, are simply naïve enough to believe in the essential sanctity of empire.

What I mean by that is that they don’t understand that we already live in a police state, and that for literally the last hundred and forty years at least, that police state has been directed primarily towards the left. They don’t know anything about COINTELPRO, state suppression of the Civil Rights movement, or police efforts to infiltrate and destroy groups like the Black Panthers. They weren’t politically aware enough to notice the state crushing the Occupy movement, they have no idea that the feds are spying on and trying to discredit the Black Lives Matter movement even as you read this. Furthermore, it has never really dawned on them that they live in a country that pays special forces ninja assassins to strangle labor organizers in Latin America to death, to ensure a steady supply of dirt-cheap labor for American corporations.

On some fundamental level, they believe their rights are more than a legal fiction, that the authorities always obey their own laws, and that everyone is entitled to their day in court; where TV has taught them their human rights reign supreme. This is of course all a fantasy, as any number of organizers murdered by the state and kangaroo court trials against activists in America have already proven; unless of course you think it’s a coincidence that high profile Ferguson activists keep turning up dead. To these folks I’d simply say, read more books, please, I’m begging you.

These poor souls are then joined in this largely innocent, but still extremely harmful, collaboration to defend fascists from consequences for their words and actions, by those vain enough to believe their own online existence demonstrates that free speech is functioning. These harmless enough (in most situations) folks genuinely believe that the tweets they post about organizing a revolution, guillotining the rich, and seizing the means of production constitute a genuine threat to state power, and as such the fact that they personally haven’t been banned for sh*tposting to their 280 followers means nobody should be. I would however assure those people that as someone who has had seven Twitter accounts suspended, primarily for evading my first ban incurred entirely for talking back to rich people, the only reason you haven’t been suspended is that the machine doesn’t think anyone is listening to you. If that changes, they’ll come for you; the capitalists might sell you the rope to hang them with, but not if you gleefully announce your intentions to do so on their social media platforms – hot OpSec tip: don’t expect to organize the revolution on Facebook.

There is however a third, smaller, but far more influential group of people pushing the same argument that we need to defend fascists from the state, to protect our right to pursue left wing politics, who fit into neither of the two above categories, and whose motivations I’m not sure I can dismiss as an honest mistake. Without naming names, this group includes highly educated historians, investigative journalists, and experienced analysts who know full well the power of the American police state, and its preexisting role in suppressing left wing organizing on behalf of the capitalist machine. Furthermore, as many of these folks are quite popular online and have worked in professional media, they are more than aware they’d also be run off social media and questioned by the state for trying to incite an insurrection; when you’ve got a million and a half followers on Twitter, you need to be a least a little bit careful about what you say online.

So what motivates that last group? Ideological agreement with the fascists about hating liberals? Vain contrarianism? A desire to keep getting guest spots on the Tucker Carlson show? Your guess is really as good as mine, but I can tell you one thing you can bet your last dollar on. I’m not going to defend a bunch of affluent cracker fascists who’d gladly put my dead trans body in a shallow grave, out of fear for a police state that’s already here, and to defend rights that I, as a marginalized leftist, have never enjoyed. No amount of disingenuous bullshit from ex-Ron Paul bros online, changes the reality that fascists organizing on social media are a very real threat to my safety, and quite frankly, yours; but I guess ex-Intercept writers are probably pretty safe for now, and that is after all, what really matters.

Look, if we’re getting down to brass f*cking tacks here; you’re simply not allowed to incite insurrection on social media, you’re not allowed to incite violence against your political enemies on social media either. Donald Trump’s twitter feed literally has a f*cking international body count and should have been suspended years ago – boutique media, naval-gazing bullshit about censorship against the left that already exists, and fascist howls about “the sanctity of the public discourse” are irrelevant; nobody, anywhere, would get away with the sh*t Trump and his fascist cronies use social media to do, and it’s just that simple. I’d tell folks who’re mad about that to go cry about it on Parler, but I hear they’re having a little trouble finding a host right now.

 

Just Asking Questions

Quite frankly, the next time some pasty edgelord tells me that banning the fascists from social media is bad because “I’d rather have them out in the open where I can see them,” I am going to lose my f*cking religion, right there on the spot. The simple truth is that the people who make this argument are, invariably, people who do not track violent fascists on social media now, have done absolutely nothing to fight fascism up until this point, have almost certainly spent the past four years defending a fascist reality TV show host because they like people who yell at rich liberals, and are typically white or wealthy enough to not have to fear for their safety because fascists are organizing openly under a guy they elected President. You ever wonder why none of the marginalized people and activists who are actually fighting fascism online, thank social media companies for platforming neonazis? You think it might be because while keyboard warriors cosplaying as James Madison are explicitly not tracking dangerous fascists online, those same dangerous fascists are using those platforms to recruit? Now now, don’t get hysterical, I’m just playing devil’s advocate; that’s how this game works, right?

Hey, that reminds me, I wanted to ask these contrarian brain geniuses a question about their “sunlight is the best disinfectant for fascism” approach. How would you guys say your theory of letting violent nazis organize in the open online, so the “good guys” can catch them easier of course, is working out today? Please keep in mind that in the past four years, Trump’s tweets alone have helped inspire countless acts of racialized violence and harassment, multiple mass shootings, an attempt to overthrow the government of Michigan, and oh yeah, a plot to kill people on Capital Hill so Trump can stay president despite losing the 2020 US election. Would you say your argument is surviving contact with reality so far? Really? Hey, chill out my dudes, I’m just asking questions here.

Of course, there’s not much point in asking questions, even rhetorical ones, if you’re not going to get an honest answer. And one does have to wonder why twitchy black helicopter “leftists” who would otherwise laugh you out of the room if you suggested the heroic feds were going to swoop in like Elliot Ness to get the bad guys, in any other situation, are suddenly convinced the FBI has a team of dudes working around the clock reading fascist social media and strategizing against the chuds? Again, given that the fascists have been organizing online for years now, and just the other day FBI director Chris Wray bragged that his agency was finally reading chud social media posts, this position seems… spurious at best.

Maybe the real truth is that you find online fascist trolling pretty entertaining, you appreciate the fact that Trump makes every liberal in America lose their f*cking minds, and you really don’t care if any of that gets other people killed? No, that can’t be it; after all, that’d be too ugly, even for folks who spend all day sh*tposting on r/StupidPol. I guess we’ll never solve this mystery.

 

Debunking PragerU Isn’t Beating PragerU

I think that after watching at least five different half-hour or more long Youtube videos about why PragerU sucks, it feels like a lot of folks (nominally) on the left are failing to understand why the right wing propaganda videos put out by PragerU and other billionaire-backed fake media organizations are so effective. Which in turn, is resulting in numerous intelligent, and clearly well-meaning people, all trying to combat what PragerU is doing in precisely the wrong way; or at least a way that I don’t think will ultimately be effective.

For example, a lot of counter-propagandists dissecting PragerU videos will focus on how absurd it is to think you can really learn everything about an issue, particularly issues surrounding ethics, moral values and the social contract, in five minutes. Or they’ll create long, nerdy reply videos that demonstrate PragerU is selling ideology as fact, and in many cases also presents false “facts” to support that distortion. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with calling a liar a liar, or demonstrating that a first year college student would wreck muppets like Dennis Prager (or for that matter Ben Shapiro) in a debate. That’s all useful to a certain point, but it doesn’t really even address the reason PragerU and other big-money right wing propaganda outlets are winning on social media, including of course Youtube.

So why exactly are PragerU’s horrible videos so effective in the social media propaganda war? Because on a basic level, virtually every junk idea Dennis Prager is trying to sell is something millions of uninformed people throughout the Pig Empire already believe. Indeed, Prager has two key factors working in his favor here, and thus the Youtube Left is also presented with two huge obstacles in their (noble) quest to “take down PragerU.”

The first poisonous factor here is that all of these videos, and indeed pretty much every social media right wing talking point, is based on “common sense” in a strictly Gramscian sense of the word; in other words, these are simply beliefs that are commonly held by the public at large. It’s important to understand here that this says absolutely nothing about the veracity, quality or righteousness of those beliefs; just that they’re already held widely by many, even a majority. Now, if human beings truly were rational, independent actors operating in the “marketplace of ideas” with perfect access to the truth, then what we know as “common sense” would probably not be a bunch of reactionary nonsense that curiously always benefits the rich and powerful.

Alas however, we are not in fact all wandering philosopher kings seeking an enlightened truth; most of us believe what we believe because that’s what we’ve been told by “the experts and authorities” all of our lives. This then brings us to our second reason the Youtube Left’s efforts to debunk PragerU videos are like bailing buckets of water over the side during the last hours of the Titanic. Namely the long-term (literally decades,) right wing capitalist project to sell elitist, neoliberal and ultimately anti-labor class ideas to the whole of society; which is a fascinating tale that spans well over a century in American history, and essentially involved the purchase and production of idea factories across academia, the media, think tanks, policy mills and of course the political sector. Yes, that is correct, rich guys just bought the sources that produce this “common sense” and subverted them to the capitalist project on behalf of the ruling classes; for a brief history of how this happened in America, consider reading “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer.

Thus, the problem with the Youtube Left’s approach in refuting the PragerU videos claim by claim, and talking about the paucity of factual information offered in each five minute dose, is that ultimately you’re not only fighting infinite money and ten decades worth of manufactured “common sense” – but also the structural underpinnings of the neoliberal worldview embedded inside those popular sets of ideas. If one does not address the underlying roots of capitalist accumulation, the poison pill of those “common sense” ideas being disseminated with these PragerU videos, then no matter how many you refute and deconstruct, the people who assume those “common sense” beliefs will simply fall for the next one. It’s an endless game of catch up you can’t win; and it’s a game that minus complex media forms, is as old as capitalism itself.

This is why Marxism and most vaguely coherent left wing, redistributive ideologies focus so heavily on deconstructing capitalist propaganda and teaching critical analysis – ways to think about power, ways to think about capitalism, ways to think about class. Because if you don’t know that you live lies, and you don’t know how to perceive the world for what it is, elite rule for what it is, then you’re a chump for whoever controls “common sense” and propagates its beliefs. You have to teach people how to think about propaganda outside of the pre-established lens of capitalist, bourgeoisie ideology in the first place or it simply doesn’t matter how many of Prager’s “facts” you obliterate.

Thus, in short, you’d honestly be better off sitting down for a half hour in front of your camera to just read and explain Marxist theory, or Kropotkin’s mutual aid, than any number of “debunking PragerU’s latest video” shenanigans. Dennis Prager is operating on a rigged playing field, building castles of bullsh*t on those very same “common sense” ideas rich people before him have propagated throughout our society. Until we attack the structural underpinnings of that “common sense” – we’re always going to lose to that flatulent fascist f*ck and his reactionary billionaire backers.

For a good example of a video I think does do a good job of attacking the ideological underpinnings of PragerU propaganda, check out this recent Film Sessions post on Media Madness.

 

– nina illingworth