Shoot the Messenger

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

STEVE ANGLESEY explores the dark world of Parler and the hate parade led by Katie Hopkins.

I think we can see where this is heading, can’t we? Hardly likely to be an unbiased exploration of a new social media site that doesn’t bend the knee to the far left’s desire to silence dissent. Indeed, conservative or right wing views are now a “dark world”.

Run from Nevada by “libertarian engineer” John Matze Jr, Parler is a newish social platform which touts itself as “unbiased” and promoting free speech. Despite having a name which means “talk” in the language of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys – you’re supposed to pronounce it that way too – it’s now the favoured platform of the American right, with high-profile users including Donald Trump’s son Eric and presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Note the scare quotes around libertarian engineer and unbiased. Like Gab, this platform is simply not engaging in censoring. So you can post left wing or right wing views and you won’t be closed down for being offensive to some cry-bully who thinks that your views need to be silenced. While the mainstream sites now routinely censor dissent from the orthodoxy at the slightest excuse, the rise of an opposition that doesn’t clearly bothers those who have been wielding this power up until now.

Indeed, these couple of paragraphs show us just what sort of man Steve Anglesey is. He would have been at home in the party of 1984.

She, and Parler, hope the 1.1 million followers who lived for tweets like “Dear Marcus Rashford, do you think women should think about how they are going to feed a child before they decide to have it?”

According to Anglesey, this is unsayable and is right wing, beyond the pale. Yet what, precisely, is wrong with it? When did such an innocuous question become so controversial – so controversial that it ultimately led to censoring of the writer.

Could it really be worse than a scroll through Twitter, which on a bad day can be like walking through a tunnel of men spitting at one another?

Why yes – a journey into Parler feels like being dunked head-first in a vat of astringent urine.

Parler is to Twitter what the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks is to reality: Breathe in the engine oil, slip between the velvet curtain and you’re in a bizzaro world where users post ‘Parleys’ rather than tweets and ‘echo’ rather than retweet. But it isn’t long before you meet a host of grotesques and restless spirits talking backwards.

Over here are conspiracy theories about European church burnings, ‘Obamagate’, ‘Pizzagate’ and so on. Over here is a man who wants to arrest George Soros, and another who wants to whisper some theories about the Reading stabbings into your ears.

Have they met the man whose user profile includes the likes “White and proud, say it loud”? He’s over there by the dumpster full of hashtags – #DrainTheSwap, #BLMisajoke, and so on.

Welcome to the world of free speech, you prick. If you believe in free speech, there are no “buts”. You believe in it for everyone – and that includes the wackos, the nut-jobs, the conspiracy theorists and the racists. Because that is how free speech works. You allow it for everyone – no exceptions other than that already imposed by law: incitement and libel. That’s it. Everything goes.

She may be comfortable here; but would even Trump associate himself with this sort of stuff, while the user base remains relatively low and the hate speech relatively high? What about Steve Baker, Ben Bradley and the other Tory MPs who have joined Parler in recent days? Is the chief whip happy for them to post among this unfiltered swill?

Because, speech must be filtered. There, then is the swill – Steve Anglesey and his like at the New European, the censors who would silence those who dare to voice wrongthink. I know which I would prefer – the anarchic world of places like Gab and Parler where you might find the occasional diamond rather than the unmitigated shit poured put by right-on far left activists posing as journalists at rags like the New European. No contest really.

Parler styles itself as the social media platform “Where agreement is not the precursor for debate”. Yet the vileness of so much of its content necessarily precludes debate because no-one seeking reasoned debate could possibly want to debate there. Who wants to have a thoughtful, sit-down discussion in a sewer?

Who wants to have a discussion where some views are censored out because they are wrongthink? That is not a discussion. The sewer here is the mainstream media and the silicon valley giants.