to circle back and chew thru this, eh idk. i feel like on a micro level daily i bear witness to scores of people wasting time engaging with what are clearly specious arguments, a pantomime of bullshit, time that would be better spent advancing better ideas
no argument that lots of time is wasted on social media, including arguing or "debating" assholes who cannot be persuade and communicate in bad faith!
no platforming is very effective but it’s only ever applied to ideas that threaten the status quo. dunno what’s actionable in there beyond “most punditry & policy debate is bullshit”
to the degree it is effective, yes, the people who own the platforms will be most effective at it. which gets us back to @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com's original point, some progressive version of "we" imagined that we governed, controlled in some sense, the platforms so it could work… 1/
but it turns out that fascist plutocrats do, and the old "free speech" story that people at the bottom of social hierarchies are most vulnerable to gatekeeping do hold some water after all. /fin
i suppose the fantasy was that ppl who spent a lot of time defending liberal ideology would not immediately crumple the second their self interests were threatened even a little
right. there was this neoliberal intuition that corporations could be forces for good. they are managed and dominated by educated professionals! Marx i think has been vindicated a bit. as power shifted, the same corporations that boycotted North Carolina now build their new data centers in Texas. 1/
capitalist corporations are not moral actors, and it was foolish of liberals to imagine that they could be other than by ensuring that their financial incentives were always to be. /fin
it was foolish to spend two generations boosting their power, and the power of their shareholders, and yet even now people in “our” coalition are allergic to doing anything about it
recently i was worried i was going to appear on a panel with some transphobes, and a friend cautioned me against it because "i shouldn't give those ideas legitimacy". i should just resign my slot instead. but the thing is i don't think they need me to give them legitimacy at this point!
like they are *out there* already, filling the airwaves, selling their ideas to whoever will listen. not showing up, on my part, wouldn't be denying them airtime--it would be denying *myself* airtime. this is what i mean about how we do in fact have to slug it out in the court of public opinon
i'm also frustrated with the tactic of "it's not my job to explain that to you." sure, sealioning is annoying... but if i am out here supporting X, arguing for X, then yes it very much is my job to explain X to you. not least because if i don't, the reactionaries are *eager* to explain Y instead!
I think a good way to think of it is “Is there an potentially convincible audience viewing this debate, even if the guy I’m directly talking to is a bad faith bastard?”
Come to think of it, Issac Chotiner interviews might be a useful model here; only engage if you *know* you can make the fucker self-immolate on livestream.
all of these moves, to me, feel like they come from a place of assumed superiority in discourse power--where we simply already possess the ability to set the terms of allowed discourse, the ability to simply exclude from debate ideas we don't like--a power which we OBVIOUSLY lack!
as @phillmv.bsky.social points out, though, part of the problem with engaging sea lions is they will just waste your time. 1/
i think "no platforming" and gatekeeping is a failed project, and it is absolutely on us to engage the public in opposition to viewpoints and ideas, and outright lies and propaganda, they won't in any sense be protected from. 2/
but it is on us to be strategic about how we engage. often taking the bait to debate is a poor use of our time. 3/
i was listening to the recent "Know Your Enemies" podcast on minority voters moving right. know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com/episodes/w-d... 4/
more deeply i worry about these strategies of discourse-power. one of the things mill emphasizes in his defense of free speech is how ideas that go unchallenged ossify into dogmas--until their nominal adherents can no longer remember why they are important, and they shatter at the first challenge--
The "Because I Said So Mandate" is seductive and corrosive. Morality Dispensers demand it and use it and are destroyed when it begins to fail them.
a situation one might think has some relevance to our current situation
indeed. "This. Is. Not. Normal!"
re: your panel @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com it depends on the debate! i recently saw a promoted debate b/w curtis y*rvin and some presumably non fascist philosopher over whether we ought to be ruled by a despotic CEO or have some kind democracy & the framing felt stupid & insuperable
The status quo can't be deplatformed because being the status quo is the biggest platform there is. Like, deplatform heterosexual marriage. Debating them is a dishonest waste of time but we have to engage with what's happening.