I don't think we've ever seen terrorism condoned or encouraged by anyone as admired or as powerful as Trump in the history of the country, save the Civil War.
It's not like these are some lunatics, they're obedient fans actively consuming what Trump is feeding them and violently acting on it.
Does he have the right to stand in a public park and spout his threats and lies? Absolutely.
Does he have the right to demand access to a private company platform to spout his threats and lies? No way.
Idiots get kicked out of bars for far less every day.
Sorry, you're right I went on a bit of a tangent there.
I guess the point I was making was that this violent language wouldn't be spreading on Parler if Trump hadn't have abused his Twitter account to drum up this kind of violent extremism with self-serving lies about a free and fair election.
Those hundreds of thousands of users flocked to Parler as a result of Twitter cracking down on this same type of violent speech. So is it really a surprise that AWS cracked down on them too for the same reasons? And Google? And Apple? And Shopify? And others? If you're repeatedly running into bans and suspensions, it could be a multi-company conspiracy to silence you, or it could just be you. I guess that's the debate.
The 1st amendment has limits like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater or coordinating to murder the VP of the US.
This isn't the same free speech debate as a professor refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns or someone publishing racist research or someone touting conspiracy theories or someone blowing off steam. This is about a small number of users using a platform to illegally threaten and coordinate violence on others in very explicit and direct terms and that platform standing by their right to do so. The only thing stopping them from following through is their low numbers.
What do we want 2 years from now? Parler letting thousands of people threaten to murder Biden, Pelosi, AOC, Romney or every elected official that doesn't subscribe to their version of reality? No way. History tells us this doesn't end well. "Fall in line or we'll shun you" politics is abhorrent. "Fall in line or we'll harm you" politics is the absolute bottom of group behavior. We have laws against violent speech and conspiracy to commit murder for very valid reasons.
I guess I don't know how free speech and violent political groups can coexist as violence itself is the most brutal form of censorship.
> Are the threats from the left a problem?
This is a "both sides" argument, that compares apples and oranges. Someone punches a person and someone drives a car into a crowd of innocent people. One is far worse than the other and they're not even in the same ballpark. But when the person who punched someone is "ANTIFA" and the person who drove the car into a crowd is "MAGA" then suddenly we have a debate where there wouldn't have been one if folks had a stronger moral compass than political identity.
Imagine this scenario:
A Muslim group with dark skin and long beards, wearing hijabs, led by a billionaire Muslim who dodges condemning 9/11 and openly disparages white people, organizes a "march for Islam" on Marler (Parler for Mulsims) and tries to hunt down various white Christian conservative politicians in the capital building who advocated for the travel ban (killing a police officer in the process) with the stated objective of certifying their Muslim nominee for President who clearly lost the election, yet has been lying about winning and says he'll never concede. Would these same white Christian conservatives being hunted down by a relentless self-serving Muslim politican dust off their near death experience and immediately stand up for Marler and these "very fine" Muslism's right to continue to post their follow up plans for next week?
If modifying the roles in the scenario doesn't feel as comfortable, then this censorship debate might be more related to the social / political identity of those involved than it is about the principle of the debate.
> Or are those not as dangerous?
Kathy Griffen doesn't have the same power as the leader of the free world. Neither does Dr. Reza Aslan, whoever that is. Kathy Griffen's post was messed up and I think they did suspend her for that and made her delete it, right? "Burn the whole thing down" is a euphemism for "start over". Is it inflammatory? Sure. Is it a direct, actionable threat? I don't think so, but I would certainly see it differently if a mob of Aslan's followers showed up carrying torches. Would I have a problem with Twitter deleting the Tweet until he rephrased it to be clear that no violence was intended? No. The more civil our discourse, the more civil our society in my opinion.
I'm all for a very generous line on free speech to make room for very shocking or antagonizing points of views, but when your free speech encourages people to act towards violence and illegally overturning a court-upheld democratic election, I have a huge problem with that because that ultimately leads to more censorship, not less. You think AWS suspending your account and having to self-host is bad? Wait until the capitol mob destroys your business or threatens to kill you. That's true censorship, the kind that's so intimidating and so permanent that you don't dare speak up. That's the kind of censorship the capital mob was advocating for on Parler. Banning a digital account and making you create a new one somewhere else is literally the smallest, most insignificant form of censorship I can think of. And if literally no one will let you create a digital account with them, then maybe it's you and not everyone else. Violence, intimidation and death is the censorship I'm far more worried about. Just look at how brutally effective fascists or the mob can be in censoring entire communities or schools of thought.
> Or have we simply realized that mass censorship makes the situation even worse?
Let's look at Germany who banned Mein Kampf and have "mass censored" the Nazi party, it's symbols and it's ideas. It's not just shunned in Germany to be a Nazi or spread Nazi ideas, it's illegal. Why does Germany believe in "mass censorship"? Because freedom of speech is not all or nothing and censoring Nazis pales in comparison to the alternative of letting Nazi groups freely organize. So, it's not like this road of letting Parlor continue to allow violent political groups to coordinate an uprising leads to more freedom in the long run, it's quite the opposite. From Germany's experience: Want peace and freedom? Then censor those who don't.
In Arnold's recent video (https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/134824948128487424...) he talks about his father's personal experience with slowly going along with Naziism. I've lived in Germany and Austria and seen the remnants of fascism and it's horrifying. What's even more horrifying is how easy it was for 1930's men and women to dismiss Hitler as "not that bad" or "yeah, he says some outrageous things, but he'd never do it" or "at least he's fighting for Germany" or "he went a little far there, but he won't do it again" or "at least Hitler's on my side" (until he isn't). Sure, people like me might sound alarmist and maybe the capital mob fades quietly into history with no further violence, but my Austrian professor who lived through WWII talked at great length about how seamless and natural the transition from the Weimar Republic to Naziism was and this action at the capital certainly reminded me of his stories, just like it reminded Arnold of his father's story. Giving Parler and the capital mob another shot is not the nail in the coffin for democracy, but it is another notch in violent political extremism's tightening belt. And no one knows which notch is the final one, but when it is, there's no room for anyone to breathe. So, instead of flirting with a violent fascist takeover we're asking Parler's users to please rephrase their beliefs in a non-violent way. Seems a pretty small ask.
Many dismiss the capital mob as lunatics, but Hitler was a 3rd rate fanatic and a recurring failure for years before he took power. In fact, the Weimar Republic wanted to work with him specifically because of how inept and easily manipulated they thought he was. Dismissing the gravity of the capital attack because it failed is a huge mistake in my opinion. Germany wasn't a country of evil citizens who loved Naziism, it was a country of really good people who slowly went along with a few really bad people bending the norms until they had normalized the ultimate censorship: death.
Here we know we have a few really bad people. We don't need to be the good people that go along with it and I'm glad that there are people in powerful positions who aren't.
It's not like these are some lunatics, they're obedient fans actively consuming what Trump is feeding them and violently acting on it.
Does he have the right to stand in a public park and spout his threats and lies? Absolutely.
Does he have the right to demand access to a private company platform to spout his threats and lies? No way.
Idiots get kicked out of bars for far less every day.