There are a lot of things conservatives almost get right, and the nature of censorship in these times — under late-stage capitalism — is one of them. We love to laugh at them when they complain about Twitter or Facebook censoring them, but it isn’t because they’re wrong about the censorship; rather, it is because they actively promote a world that allows this kind of censorship.
If you were around in the ’90’s and early 2000’s, you witnessed the beginning and end of a truly free Internet. Back then, the Internet was likened to a new world that people were colonizing, but colonialism means destroying a civilization that was already there — this was something much better. It was as if we’d discovered a whole new world, lifeless but aggressively supportive of new life. In those early days, the Internet was real freedom — not the fake freedom of right-wing libertarianism, but the very real freedom of libertarian socialism. People built incredible things that were not dependent on huge corporations — even going so far as to use their home computers as servers.
All that changed when capital realized it could use the Internet to make money — huge piles of money. Now, normal people cannot afford to have a truly independent web presence, and the most effective platforms are controlled by neoliberal corporations and their billionaire owners. (Almost no one will see this post, for example, if it doesn’t end up trending on one of those platforms.) It’s not surprising that those platforms are hostile toward anything that threatens capitalism. Today, the flow of information has been returned to the preferred model of the elites, flowing from the elites down to the common folk, and containing a mixture of truth, strategic omission, and outright lies. They’ve again managed to poison the meanings of words so that it is difficult to even talk about what it would be to oppose their power.
Anarchy does not mean chaos. Socialism does not mean fascism. Freedom does not mean the freedom to oppress other people with your economic might. Neoliberal is a real word despite what your spellchecker might claim. And yet, if you use any of those words, you have to spend a great deal of time explaining what they mean or most people (both liberal and conservative) won’t even understand what you are talking about.
So what is censorship? From the perspective of neoliberalism (the ideology of late-stage capitalism), censorship is when the government prevents the expression of an idea; so, only the government is capable of censorship. In contrast, individuals — not matter how powerful — and corporations — which they define as an extension of individual power — can never be guilty of censorship. This perspective is part of culture that most people take for granted, so they don’t even see it. It’s based in “property rights” — the idea that you can do whatever you want with your property no matter who it hurts — and “the invisible hand of the market” — the idea that market forces are always morally good. On closer examination, these are silly ideas. Clearly, if I have a club that is my property and I hit someone with it, I’ve caused harm. Clearly, if the market promotes slavery (which it does), the market is not morally good.
The true meaning of censorship is whenever anyone is stopped from expressing an idea, and that includes expressions of ideas that are blocked from reaching an audience. The claim that economic power can’t be oppressive is ridiculous. The claim that only government power can be oppressive is ridiculous.
Capitalists have managed to convince normal Americans that the rights of capital are the same as the rights of working class people, even though working class people don’t control the staggering power of capital. In terms of Internet censorship, the result is capital censoring people even while most of those same people are demanding the right of capital to censor people. As with anything else, it’s this dramatic power differential between capital and the people that is the problem, but in late-stage capitalism this differential is magnified because elected politicians are controlled by capital, and so the state itself is a tool of capital (rather than of the people). If conservatives would take the position that censorship is wrong no matter who does it, that the power of capital should be curtailed because it allows the wealthy to oppress the rest of us, their cries wouldn’t be so funny.
What I’d propose to you, though, is that we should stop laughing at them and instead admit that their outrage at corporate censorship in service of an oppressive ruling class is completely valid — it’s their deeply troubling misattribution of blame for this censorship that we need to address. That brings us to Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance:
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
There’s a lot of subtlety in that paragraph, but I think it is clear that some people are not “prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument”; however, there are still some conservatives out there who are, and it’s imperative that we try to talk to them. On the other hand, genocide, slavery, and other end-goals of fascism are not “rational arguments”. When Facebook chose to lump anti-fascist organizations in with fascists and conspiracy theorists, this was censorship and an escalation of the conflict between the established neoliberal order and — literally — democracy, justice, freedom, and morality. It’s yet another sign that the super rich would rather risk social collapse caused by destructive neoliberal policies than do the right thing and give up even a little of their enormous, oppressive power.