Censorship never was a left-wing tactic. Opposing censorship was never the hallmark of right-wing values. And censorship is never aimed at one ideology or the other, but at *dissent* from the ruling class wherever it comes from.
Listen to Noam Chomsky:
Read how Chomsky, in 1981, object to the attempts to have a tenured professor in France fired for Holocaust revisionism, because Chomsky knew that that framework, once implanted, would be used against people like him, Edward Said, Howard Zinn, etc.:
Here's the ACLU today explaining why it's so proud of its decision in 1977 to represent a neo-Nazi group's right to march through Skokie, Illinois, a town filled with Holocaust survivors.
Here's Ira Glasser -- the ACLU Executive Director from 1978 to 2001 -- explaining to me why resisting all censorship, including of far-right views, is a vital expression of leftist values and especially Jewish and Civil Rights left-wing values.
In case anyone is confused, *that* is the tradition in which I believe, the values I follow, the people I most respect. Label it how you want. Accuse people who defend these crucial rights of whatever you want: we love Nazis, racists, etc. etc.
Don't care. This is what's noble.
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No speculation is needed. Those who wield power are demanding it. The only question is how much opposition they will encounter.
The more honest proponents of this new domestic War on Terror are explicitly admitting that they want to model it on the first one.
Continuing to process Washington debates of this sort primarily through the prism of “Democrat v. Republican” or even “left v. right” is a sure ticket to the destruction of core rights.
This isn't a leftist or conservative tactic but a ruling class tactic: to quash all dissent.
Keep telling me "Liberals' 9/11 and War on Terror" is hyperbole and I'll keep posting tweets like this one, from the still-embittered Dem colonel who lost to Madison Cawthorn, explicitly comparing him to GITMO detainees, calling him a "terrorist," and urging a "war on sedition":
Do you think if establishment Dems join with people like Liz Cheney & Mitt Romney to launch a domestic War on Terror -- new anti-terrorism bills, new FBI surveillance & infiltration powers, more internet censorship -- that most of the left would support or oppose it? Don't know.
"Hoover started amassing secret intelligence on 'enemies of the US' — a list that included terrorists, communists, spies — or anyone Hoover or the FBI had deemed subversive." It
"led to FBI's secret intelligence ops against anyone deemed 'subversive.'"
"Anti-war protesters and civil rights leaders were added to Hoover's list...These people were enemies of the state, and in particular MLK was an enemy of the state. And Hoover aimed to watch over them."
As you root for and help the FBI, guess who its DC HQ is still named after?
In one of MLK's greatest speeches - on why the fight against racism can't be separated from anti-imperialism - he called the USG "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
No domestic progress possible, he said, without ending US militarism:
Fascinating attempt to reconcile the fact that so many non-whites voted for Trump (more than 2016), and that some of the key participants in the Capitol riot and related groups are non-white:
"Multiracial whiteness": they're white even when they're not.
What is "whiteness," even when it somehow ends up describing Blacks & Latinos? The evil it references it this -- it "reflects an understanding of whiteness as a political color and not simply a racial identity":
Isn't the idea here -- that race "reflects an understanding of a political color and not simply a racial identity" -- the one Joe Biden invoked when he told @cthagod that he "ain't black" if he's in doubt about voting for Biden?
The two cable personalities arguably more responsible than anyone on TV for Trump becoming the GOP nominee by endlessly promoting him are now demanding that Facebook "be shutdown," and they apparently want Biden to do it. Just listen:
Meanwhile, for any of you who doubt that Dems are 100% planning the total importation of the War on Terror onto US soil to be used domestically, just listen to NBC's Jeremy Bash (formerly of Obama's CIA & Pentagon, needless to say). Just hear the words:
For liberals or others vaguely on the left who think it's a good idea to further empower FBI to fight domestic "terrorists" with new laws/powers, here's a reminder: in 2011, the London police declared the UK version of Occupy Wall St. a "terrorist" group: