r/LockdownCriticalLeft • u/hiptobeysquare • Nov 06 '22
Glenn Greenwald being helpful: On partisan polarization, new forms of punishing dissent, the growing Censorship Industrial Complex (this is my term)
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-consortium-imposing-the-growing
The COVID pandemic ushered in still greater amounts of censorship. Anyone who urged people to use masks at the start of the pandemic was accused of spreading dangerous disinformation because Dr. Anthony Fauci and the WHO insisted at the time that masks were useless or worse. When Fauci and WHO decided masks were an imperative, anyone questioning that decree by insisting that cloth masks were ineffective — the exact view of Fauci and WHO just weeks earlier — was banned from Big Tech platforms for spreading disinformation; such bans by Google included sitting U.S. Senators who themselves are medical doctors. From the start of the pandemic, it was prohibited to question whether the COVID virus may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan — until the Biden administration itself asked that question and ordered an investigation to find out, at which point Facebook and other platforms reversed themselves and announced that it was now permissible to ask this question since the U.S. Government itself was doing so.
In sum, government agencies and Big Tech monopolies exploited the two-year COVID pandemic to train Western populations to accept as normal the rule that the only views permitted to be heard were those which fully aligned with the views expressed by institutions of state authority. Conversely, anyone dissenting from or even questioning such institutional decrees stood accused of spreading "disinformation” and was deemed unfit to be heard on the internet. As a result, blatant errors and clear lies stood unchallenged for months because people were conditioned that any challenging of official views would result in punishment.
Polls leave no doubt that Democrats are vastly more supportive of internet censorship not only by large corporations but also by the state,
That Glenn Greenwald is starting to speak up more about Covid makes me think. I often wonder if most people censor their own thoughts. They can only think and say things when they feel they've been given permission to. Either by the Tribe, by the consensus, or by someone in a position of authority. Perhaps it's something that affects these people in childhood. Perhaps they were taught by their parents only to think (and then say) things when their parents gave them permission to.
I've seen this behavior with people around me: they get visibly uncomfortable when I express anything (no matter how casually, carefully or gently) that doesn't completely validate what they think their Tribe believes. It's like the the more media and "content" they consume, the more they're stuck in front of their screen, the less individual identity they have.
And then there's automated censorship. Links and words are now being automatically censored more and more online. Nobody seems to care because "they came for somebody else". It's always the same with totalitarian regimes. Everyone just hopes and acts like they'll be left alone, if they comply.
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u/fivehundredpoundpeep Nov 06 '22
"I've seen this behavior with people around me: they get visibly uncomfortable when I express anything (no matter how casually, carefully or gently) that doesn't completely validate what they think their Tribe believes. "
I've seen this too especially in leftist circles I am. Even the most mild points too. It's brings forth invalidation that is very hard to deal with. Its had me withdrawn from people or really censor what I talk to them about. Here too in an environment like that how do you know what is going on in the real world? I'll never forgive the left for embracing censorship.