Gab.com

October 29, 2018 Longrider Civil Liberties, General News, misanthropy, Political 16

I’ve only just caught up with this – having been away travelling.

Gab, the social media site popular with the far-right, has been forced offline by its service providers after it became clear that the alleged Pittsburgh shooter Robert Bowers had a history of anti-semitic postings on the site.

Formed in August 2016 after Twitter began cracking down on hate speech on its social network, Gab has been labelled “Twitter for racists” by the website Salon but describes itself as “a free speech website and nothing more”. But the platform has proved popular among white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the “alt-right”, including the man accused of opening fire on a synagogue in Pennsylvania on Saturday, killing 11.

Is anyone surprised by any of this? Really? When the so called “far right” were forced from Twatter and Farcebook because they said things that the leftists don’t like, then someone setting up an alternative platform was a fairly likely outcome. That the platform should then come under attack because of voices being unacceptable comes as no surprise to me.

Yes, sure, Bowers is vile anti-Semitic scum. But, and here’s the thing, free speech applies to everyone, no matter how vile their thoughts or opinions, for those opinions don’t go away. Hate speech laws and no-platforming does not stop people thinking hateful things, they merely go underground. That’s why freedom of speech is so fucking important, so precious, for it allows the bleach of sunlight. I thought we had learned that lesson decades ago, but it seems not.

That Bowers crossed the line into actual violence does not justify shutting Gab down. What it does do is give the various vested interests an excuse to act against their critics, using “polices on hate speech” as their justification. What we are seeing here is the left using all the means in its power to silence those who dare to go off message. Bowers is merely a convenient tool for them. After all, violent criminals and murderers use the Post Office or the telephone and no one is suggesting they be shut down for hosting unacceptable opinions, but once online, those vested interests can combine to silence the inconvenient. And, yes, nasty, brutish creatures such as Bowers should be free to speak, for his freedom to speak is our freedom to speak. That said, Bowers relinquished those freedoms when he took to murder. However, in so doing, not only did he take innocent lives he also gave the useful idiots of the left the excuse they needed to silence an inconvenient platform that sidestepped the censorious behaviour of Twatter et al.

Also, bear in mind that “Far Right” is merely a euphemism for anyone who does not agree with the left. It is meaningless. Much like populism, which is merely a democratic result the left doesn’t like.

16 Comments

  3. Not forgetting that the real curtailment of free speech is, of course, by fascists. I believe this is more about stifling the competition.

    So if you’re a Greek and you get Ilias Panagiotaros stoving your head in whilst talking about “Greek rights”, don’t moan about there not being a genuine far-right.

    • I don’t get why fascism continues to be referred to as far right. The only fascists that I am seeing are on the far left. Being in favour of free speech and having a genuinely liberal live and let live approach, as I do, being described as fascism is absurd.

      • There are genuine far-right fascists. If people like Nikolaos Michaloliakos, shouty, raving Greek Nazi that he is, was kicking your fucking face in, you probably wouldn’t disagree that he’s a Nazi.

        There are two main crushers of free-speech – the far-left and the traditional far-right.

        • But what precisely is the difference between a far left person who believes in a state run centralised economy and reacts to those who disagree with violence in order to try to shut them up, and a far right person who believes in a state run centralised economy and reacts to those who disagree with violence in order to try to shut them up? The far right are openly racist while the far left are racist but pretend not to be, is that it?

          • Basically. The traditional far-right are openly and unapologetically violent in their rhetoric and actions, whereas the far-left are not openly violent in their rhetroic (talk of revoluytion aside). I think? It’s all aggravation at the end of the day though.

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