The evolving U.S. version of China's social credit system is designed to make it easier for the ruling Party's corporate muscle to target and punish dissidents, bypassing the Constitution to suppress speech and political freedom.
https://twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1432317490458206211
The twisted genius of the new fascism involves suppressing speech and political freedom by imposing extraordinary costs upon them, without the government attempting to ban them outright. You're technically "free" to exercise "rights" you can't actually afford to invoke.
This would never have been tolerated back when the Left played the role of counterculture. Imagine if the cultural revolutionaries of the 60s-80s had been hit with steep costs for expressing their views, and told to suck it up because they were still *technically* free to speak.
Thanks to Information Age technology, the new fascists can go after ordinary people, not just high-profile celebrities and political leaders, and they can bring the pain much faster. If you side with the ruling Party and ideology, your speech is free; everyone else pays dearly.
The social credit system will systematically invalidate the Constitution and Bill of Rights, punishing those who use nominal rights in ways the ruling ideology disapproves of. Sure, on paper you have rights to speech, religion, association, and arms, but good luck using them.
This is really little different than the Chinese Communist approach - we're reaching the same destination by slightly different roads. CCP apparatchiks will tell you with a straight face their subjects have all sorts of freedoms; they're just not allowed to use them unwisely.
Sure, we have free speech in China - look at all those Weibo users! They're just not allowed to say things that damage China's national security, cultural integrity, or the common good, as defined by the CCP. They can't spread "misinformation" but can speak "truth" all they want.
Americans should unite in fighting the social credit system on principle. If you support fascism when it beats up on people you dislike, you have no right to complain - and will have no ability to do so - when it comes after YOU. And rest assured, it eventually will. /end
Addendum: Notice how the presumption of innocence, a huge obstacle to totalitarian power, is smoothly eliminated by a social credit system. You just get instantly zapped, supposedly by algorithms. You might not ever be told what you were accused of, or by who.
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