Ed West has a good piece this week on the concept of a 'permission structure'. It looks like many leftish liberals need something like this to allow dissent from such obviously illiberal developments. Or maybe only an ascendent right (god help us when that surely happens) doing the same things to their cheerleaders.
The 'Liberals' neither need nor want anything like this. Did the Jacobins allow dissent from the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution?
I can't find the piece - is it on Unherd? But in any case my point still remains - if our rulers are actively trying to suppress dissent, then nothing that might enable dissent will be allowed to work.
Sep 24, 2022·edited Sep 24, 2022Liked by Thomas Prosser
The claim that private companies can refuse service to people based on this or that trait is also imported wholesale from US libertarianism, without much thought as to whether it comports with traditional debates in these Islands about freedom of association.
Barry Goldwater, for example, used the same argument to oppose passage of the Civil Rights Act.
One can make the point: forcing people to be "friends" can have nasty social effects. But it is best to be honest when doing so.
That doesn't matter. The point of the defence is not to persuade anyone. The point is that it gives it's supporters something to say which they can then use as an excuse to cancel the opposition.
Thanks for mentioning the old saw:”...defend... your right to say it.” THAT used to be the bedrock principle of liberalism. But now we assign labels and exchange insults on the basis of team loyalties. We can expect no less in an era of comprehensive corporatisation, in which marketing trumps (no pun) all and becomes a vital tool of the groupthink that inevitably accompanies that. As an American I’m not familiar with Young or his positions. That PayPal reflects the business-major mentality of our libertarianism comes as no surprise. Thanks for the counterpoint. But here’s a suggestion: lets not continue granting petty powermongering entities the status of labels that reflect principled positions, particularly when their illiberal attitudes and actions betray their true nature.
Liberals have been supplanted, silenced and overwhelmed by Leftists, and for Leftists there is only ever one principle: WHO/WHOM.
Or, in the words of the proto-Bolshevik Sergey Nechayev: "Everything that allows the triumph of the revolution is moral. Everything that stands in its way is immoral."
If you peddle misinformation and outright provable lies then any organisation helping your process $$$ would surely be opening themselves up to potential lawsuits if someone/thing is harmed because of the spread of that information.
Paypal are staying on the right side of the line here. It's got nothing to do woth free speech, it's got everything to do with accountability. Don't confuse the two please.
If trades unions started effectively campaigning for workers’ rights, and making a nuisance of themselves to our corporate masters, how long would it be before the corporate censors came for them too?
The left is deluding itself in thinking censorship is kind and that vast corporate interests have peoples’ best interests at heart. Censorship is about power, and power is about money; and huge amounts of money are made by exploiting ordinary people. PayPal is not your friend. It’s a money making machine.
Toby Young today; tomorrow, a union leader, a campaigner against the arms trade, an environmental campaigner. If we can’t summon up the energy to stand up for free speech, maybe we deserve the oppressive future that’s coming at us fast.
Prof. T Prosser has written a perfectly correct, and perfectly pointless, article above.
He seems to assume that self-prefessed 'liberals' are liberal. They are not. In terma of thinking, they have much more in common with Lenin's Bolsheviks. in that power is their aim, and they are perfectly happy to let ends justify means.
None of the arguments they adduce are meant to be considered rationally. Instead arguments are used (oftem simply made up) to repulse the enemy and clear him from any debating chamber. I first noticed this effect with Global Warming, and Michael Mann's 'hockey stick' graph. Delve into the maths of Principle Component Analysis and it's obviously a load of rubbish - but no statistician could bring themselves to say this. Anyone who did was promptly smeared as a 'climate change denier', and their papers were refused publication. Some were ejected from their jobs - an activity reminiscent of Stalin's Trofim Lysenko.
We are now seeing this cancelling technique applied to all forms of dissent. During the Covid Pandemic, anyone who disagreed with the State/Big Pharma polices was not only cancelled, but often arrested and fined. The Bureaucratic State was very happy to apply extra-judicial force, aided by the Banks, to close down Canada's Trucker Protest. Paypak is only following where most of the Establishment has led.
I really cannot see how reasoned argument can address this kind of social restructuring. There is no one who can listen to such arguments without losing their position.
I'm scratching my head as to whom Peter Thiel's baby is trying to endear itself? Anti Toby Young camp unlikely bedfellows. I don't know enough UK libertarians but they seem to be a different breed to US. Rebranding itself as thought police doesn't appear to be a savvy move for PayPal - or is it trying to distance itself from Palantir/BlackRock Neuroscience association, that aims to bottle and categorise our thoughts??
I think I may be able to answer that in a word - marketing. About 10 years ago marketing influencers (predictably from the US) began talking about ‘brand purpose’ and ‘corporate citizenship’. These entities now see themselves as players in the wider project of liberalising the culture. It became self-perpetuating as their graduate workforces found comfort in ideological continuity and distraction from the grind of enriching shareholders.
I get that, but don’t they have an inevitable tendency to drift in that direction? B/c it’s about $€£¥, and they can’t ignore the strong effect pols have on the bottom line. Remember when non-Americans decried the Coca-Cola-ization of the world? Seems quaint now.
Ed West has a good piece this week on the concept of a 'permission structure'. It looks like many leftish liberals need something like this to allow dissent from such obviously illiberal developments. Or maybe only an ascendent right (god help us when that surely happens) doing the same things to their cheerleaders.
Will check out the West piece - sounds very interesting!
Tl;dr - it’s a nifty way of allowing people’s true instincts to emerge. Deffo worth your time, in this context I think
The 'Liberals' neither need nor want anything like this. Did the Jacobins allow dissent from the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution?
It’s a group made up of individuals who may break ranks, under skilfully engineered circumstances. As West’s piece suggests
I can't find the piece - is it on Unherd? But in any case my point still remains - if our rulers are actively trying to suppress dissent, then nothing that might enable dissent will be allowed to work.
The claim that private companies can refuse service to people based on this or that trait is also imported wholesale from US libertarianism, without much thought as to whether it comports with traditional debates in these Islands about freedom of association.
Barry Goldwater, for example, used the same argument to oppose passage of the Civil Rights Act.
One can make the point: forcing people to be "friends" can have nasty social effects. But it is best to be honest when doing so.
The liberal defence of Paypal is full of holes!
That doesn't matter. The point of the defence is not to persuade anyone. The point is that it gives it's supporters something to say which they can then use as an excuse to cancel the opposition.
Thanks for mentioning the old saw:”...defend... your right to say it.” THAT used to be the bedrock principle of liberalism. But now we assign labels and exchange insults on the basis of team loyalties. We can expect no less in an era of comprehensive corporatisation, in which marketing trumps (no pun) all and becomes a vital tool of the groupthink that inevitably accompanies that. As an American I’m not familiar with Young or his positions. That PayPal reflects the business-major mentality of our libertarianism comes as no surprise. Thanks for the counterpoint. But here’s a suggestion: lets not continue granting petty powermongering entities the status of labels that reflect principled positions, particularly when their illiberal attitudes and actions betray their true nature.
Yes, many progressives are very illiberal!
Liberals have been supplanted, silenced and overwhelmed by Leftists, and for Leftists there is only ever one principle: WHO/WHOM.
Or, in the words of the proto-Bolshevik Sergey Nechayev: "Everything that allows the triumph of the revolution is moral. Everything that stands in its way is immoral."
If you peddle misinformation and outright provable lies then any organisation helping your process $$$ would surely be opening themselves up to potential lawsuits if someone/thing is harmed because of the spread of that information.
Paypal are staying on the right side of the line here. It's got nothing to do woth free speech, it's got everything to do with accountability. Don't confuse the two please.
If trades unions started effectively campaigning for workers’ rights, and making a nuisance of themselves to our corporate masters, how long would it be before the corporate censors came for them too?
The left is deluding itself in thinking censorship is kind and that vast corporate interests have peoples’ best interests at heart. Censorship is about power, and power is about money; and huge amounts of money are made by exploiting ordinary people. PayPal is not your friend. It’s a money making machine.
Toby Young today; tomorrow, a union leader, a campaigner against the arms trade, an environmental campaigner. If we can’t summon up the energy to stand up for free speech, maybe we deserve the oppressive future that’s coming at us fast.
Prof. T Prosser has written a perfectly correct, and perfectly pointless, article above.
He seems to assume that self-prefessed 'liberals' are liberal. They are not. In terma of thinking, they have much more in common with Lenin's Bolsheviks. in that power is their aim, and they are perfectly happy to let ends justify means.
None of the arguments they adduce are meant to be considered rationally. Instead arguments are used (oftem simply made up) to repulse the enemy and clear him from any debating chamber. I first noticed this effect with Global Warming, and Michael Mann's 'hockey stick' graph. Delve into the maths of Principle Component Analysis and it's obviously a load of rubbish - but no statistician could bring themselves to say this. Anyone who did was promptly smeared as a 'climate change denier', and their papers were refused publication. Some were ejected from their jobs - an activity reminiscent of Stalin's Trofim Lysenko.
We are now seeing this cancelling technique applied to all forms of dissent. During the Covid Pandemic, anyone who disagreed with the State/Big Pharma polices was not only cancelled, but often arrested and fined. The Bureaucratic State was very happy to apply extra-judicial force, aided by the Banks, to close down Canada's Trucker Protest. Paypak is only following where most of the Establishment has led.
I really cannot see how reasoned argument can address this kind of social restructuring. There is no one who can listen to such arguments without losing their position.
I'm scratching my head as to whom Peter Thiel's baby is trying to endear itself? Anti Toby Young camp unlikely bedfellows. I don't know enough UK libertarians but they seem to be a different breed to US. Rebranding itself as thought police doesn't appear to be a savvy move for PayPal - or is it trying to distance itself from Palantir/BlackRock Neuroscience association, that aims to bottle and categorise our thoughts??
It's all extremely curious! Why do corporations have to be political at all?!?
I think I may be able to answer that in a word - marketing. About 10 years ago marketing influencers (predictably from the US) began talking about ‘brand purpose’ and ‘corporate citizenship’. These entities now see themselves as players in the wider project of liberalising the culture. It became self-perpetuating as their graduate workforces found comfort in ideological continuity and distraction from the grind of enriching shareholders.
This is good: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/08/the-puzzle-of-woke-capital/#notes
I get that, but don’t they have an inevitable tendency to drift in that direction? B/c it’s about $€£¥, and they can’t ignore the strong effect pols have on the bottom line. Remember when non-Americans decried the Coca-Cola-ization of the world? Seems quaint now.
I don't think that they have an option. If they want to continue trading.