Censorship is now so broadly defined as to mean anyone disagreeing with me is censoring me

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.editorialboard.com/p/censorship-is-now-so-broadly-defined

Newspapers and magazines and any kind of media in printed form have always, and I mean always, reserved the right to publish or not publish whatever they feel like publishing or not publishing for whatever reason—even just because. I come from printed stuff. This belief is baked into me. When newspapers and magazines and any kind of media in printed form decide not to publish something, it’s not nor ever will be censorship. It’s reserving the right to publish or not publish whatever for whatever.

This right to publish or not publish whatever they want for whatever reason is rooted in the history, tradition and constitutional guarantee of the rights to free speech, free thought, free expression and free inquiry. People who do not own the local newspaper have the equal right to raise hell when the paper doesn’t publish their letters to the editor, when the newspaper won’t run their press releases, but the local newspaper is not silencing them or cancelling them—and it is not censoring them. Everyone in America has the right to free speech. No one in America has the right to be published.

Newspapers and magazines and any kind of media in printed form used to be the exclusive venues for the expression of the public opinion. Obviously, that’s still partly the case, but Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms have expanded the square infinitesimally. Instead of writing for the New Haven Register, and hoping to have a modicum of influence on the political thinking of my neighbors, I now write this newsletter, hoping to have a modicum of influence on the political thinking of my fellow Americans. The principles of free speech, however, are the same. If Substack, the platform I’m using, stopped working with me, for whatever reason, there might be serious consequences, but among those would not be credible allegations of censorship. Substack has the right to publish or not publish whatever for whatever.

I’m making a big deal about this for a good reason. We are in a moment in our history where politics is slowly taking our culture further, a few steps further, in a liberal direction. The election of an out-and-out fascist in 2016 unleashed a torrent of political energy, especially with respect to women (#MeToo) and Black people and people of color (George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, DACA, the border wall and Muslim ban). The unseating of a sitting president by an anti-racist and anti-fascist coalition is, to me, the greatest illustration of this forward movement. One of the consequences of this torrent of history-changing political energy has been that “white people—white men, in particular—face a little more scrutiny today than in the past,” wrote Thomas Zimmer, a historian and visiting professor at Georgetown University, recently.

*snip*

[Tadpole Raisin]

1. Totally agree.

Also those who talk about being censored will say you are violating their rights as stated above talking about free speech.

1. They are quite happy to censor other people. They say it is their right to do that even though you do not have that right.

2. They never understand there is a difference between the government violating your rights and a private company (twitter’s TOS or a store’s “no shoes, no shirt, no service type requirements).

I think one of the things that bothers me the most is their lack of understanding that rights and responsibilities are opposite sides of the same coin. If they talk about their rights in a certain situation and you calmly ask them “well what is your responsibility in this situation?” they will look at you with a blank face because as far as they are concerned they have all the rights and you have all the responsibilities. It never occurs to them that they should ever be responsible for anything.

That’s the kicker for me.