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  • yeah, definitely we should just do the current system where you can say whatever you want, so long as you have a billionaire patron to platform you and ensure the state protects you from any consequences.

    the free speech absolutist weirdos remind me of the bit in the yellow parenti lecture where he mockingly complains about the insistence on perfection for socialist state projects.... "what about civil rights for the fascists? why won't the revolution let them have their newspapers?" because that is 100% really what these people want. socialists are deplatformed as a rule and experience retaliation in the workplace constantly. state constitutions have rules about communists being allowed to be civil servants. somehow none of that rises to the level of criticism.

    but stopping a rich white psychopath from trying to incite violence against marginalized people by claiming they are subhuman is somehow the literal destruction of a soul's right to breathe and the first step of government overreach.

  • Who gets to decide what's acceptable?

    We do: a vanguard of Hexbear posters get to decide what's acceptable discourse; to think that it's only the forum that's being actively moderated is to completely misunderstand the dynamics of modern cultural power

  • Since we've never had ratings boards for movies or television that get to decide what is acceptable and what is not we could never figure it out for the internet. Children are just allowed to buy and watch and be influenced by whatever.

    Would it be perfect? Nah. Would it be better than nothing? Absolutely yes.

  • The question of “free press” and “free speech” is not separable from the question of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie versus the dictatorship of the proletariat. The idea of “political plurality” as such turns out to be the negation of the possibility of achieving any kind of truth in the realm of politics, it reduces all historical and value claims to the rank of mere opinion. And of course, so long as someone’s political convictions are mere opinion, they won’t rise to defend them. And so the liberal state remains the dictatorial organ of the bourgeoisie, with roads being built or legislation being passed only as commanded by the interests of capital, completely disregarding the interests of workers. Under regimes where political plurality is falsely upheld as a supreme virtue, the very notion of asserting oneself as possessing a truth appears aggressive and “authoritarian.”

    from https://redsails.org/brainwashing/

62 comments