Left and Right: Trying to Censor Speech
bottom line: we don't have a clue
Really, it all comes down to what you are not allowed to say. On the right these days you are not allowed to question Israel or World War II. And recently Ben Shapiro came down hard at Turning Point USA “to launch a blistering attack on the grifters and charalatans on the right.”
You think, Ben? I’d say that anyone that goes outside the Overton Window anywhere in the world is considered a grifter and a charlatan: left, right, and center. Until the grifters and charlatans gain political power and can start to brand The Other Guys as grifters and charlatans.
Meanwhile Mike Miller writes about censorship on the Left:
The Left’s decades-long attempt to suppress, distort, or outright censor speech that discredits their various narratives, deceptions, and bald-faced lies is obvious to most Americans…
In addition to censorship, the Left is all about compelled speech; demanding its adherents stick to the narrative, including the strict use of words and terms, with deviation considered a hypocrisy.
I’d say that the censorship problem is worse on the Left than the Right, because the institutional power of the left is so much stronger. How about this professor at the University of Washington getting into trouble over compelled speech:
In 2022, Professor Stuart Reges triggered a firestorm when he refused to attach a prewritten “Indigenous land acknowledgement” statement to his course syllabi.
Look I get it. Religion — including modern religion like Marxism and postmodernism — is all about the One True Narrative. And that makes sense. Most people don’t have the time or the ability or the desire to construct a True Narrative for themselves. They are just social animals. So they just want to pick up an Approved Narrative at the convenience store and live their lives by it: because it’s true.
And let me be clear: experts agree that it’s not enough to believe in the Narrative; you have to renew it by recitation. That’s why Christians recite the Creed every week in church.
And when the religion starts encountering competing Narratives the priests in the church and the monks in the monasteries and the professors at the universities and the functionaries at the Ministry of Truth start to double down. Don’t think of it as scandalous; it’s just human.
Right now in the United States, I’d say, both the “conservatism” and the “liberalism” of the post-WWII era are crumbling. Let’s say that modern liberalism as instituted in the Democratic Party goes back to FDR and his heroic achievement in rescuing the US from the Great Depression in the nick of time from the eevil Herbert Hoover and the spectre of Literally Hitler. Modern conservatism — and its political manifestation in what we now call RINO Republicanism — goes back to Bill Buckley and his effort to create a safe and acceptable alternative to the dominant liberal ideology in the post-WWII era.
Guess what: both ideologies are breaking up. Of course they are. It’s now a couple of generations since the heroic days of yore, and we need new ideas, new idols, new beliefs to sustain us in a belief that all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
And guess what. Before you can start to build a new cathedral, you have to clear the building site of the crumbling remains of the old cathedral, dig new foundations, and start anew.
OK, you don’t always have to dig new foundations. But sometimes you do.
I’d say that the Republican establishment has only limited power to control the Narrative and keep the old beliefs sacred and inviolable. The Democratic establishment has much more power to control the Narrative.
But in the end it does not matter. A new world requires new Truths, and the old Truths will crumble into dust.
The populist nationalist movement all over the world is about a rising ordinary middle class that wants a world founded on the identity of the nation state and middle-class morality that works for them. The old conservative establishment really doesn’t have the power to enforce “compelled speech,” especially now that Independent Media allows independent voices — including grifters and charlatans — a significant bandwidth. That’s why the old conservatism is giving way to populist nationalism.
The postmodern wokism in the Western world is about the educated ruling class trying to keep the Age of the Educated Class going for one more ideological cycle. Look, the ideas of the Enlightenment and the replacement of absolute monarchs by the rule of the educated class were just what the doctor ordered if you were a middle-class intellectual back in the day that had access to the new-fangled Gutenberg printed books. And what was good for intellectuals back then is good for the whole world now. So it makes complete sense that the educated class is doubling down on its ideology and enforcing “compelled speech.” The educated elite still has the power to do this, for now. But, with the replacement of Mass Media by Independent Media, the power to compel is slipping away. Clearly with the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America and the election of politicians like Zohran Mamdani in New York and Katie Wilson in Seattle, the space for a new beginning is not yet available for the educated class.
Like I say, censorship is a “tell.” It is a sign that the ideas of the movement aren’t working as in the olden time. And the reason is simple: they aren’t providing a convincing answer to the question of the meaning of life, the universe, everything. Not any more. Not for intellectuals and not for normies. And nobody cares about the lower class, not really, darling.
Guess what: we humans don’t have an answer to the meaning of life, the universe, everything. We never did, and we never will. What we have are cobbled together Narratives that convince us for a season. And the Season of the Intellectuals is over.
And frankly, I would say that the more we learn about life, the universe, everything, the more we learn that we really don’t have a clue. About anything.