The assault on the first amendment (and the return of McCarthyism)

Biden won't ever be in charge of anything anymore, but the teams of people who were around him were made up of a lot of young and middle aged operatives which will certainly (at least a portion of them) have important roles in any future democrat administration.

So unless i see some serious attempts from democrats to change course completly and admit the horrors their own operatives unleashed on the american population with regards to censorship, i am not going to be too worried for something which is less than 1/1000th of what democrats did, given the options are 2, it's still pretty obvious republicans are dramatically better for free speech than democrats could be.

Could republicans be even better? i guess. Still not a big problem , *especially given Kimmel can speak* which is the part you seem to disregard. Kimmel can go and open an antitrump podcast capitalizing on the recent publicity and make a killing, or stuff like that.

People censored by democrats during covid couldn't. They just got deleted from the conversation like it happens in China. It was horrific.

There are no "accusations". There are legal statements which i linked by alphabet lawyers under subpoena (so at risk of perjury) about what the biden administration did wrt censorship attempts.

So what? You think lawyers don’t make bullshit claims ever? So when two lawyers are going at it in a case they both agree on the facts?

Perjury requires malicious intent. Lawyers can make statements that are plausible and that’s all that is required to thwart perjury. They also tend to have leeway with arguing vociferously for their client and try to minimize harm as much as possible.

Again I have to read the actual evidence and not just trust it because it came from a lawyer.

It was "horrific" that some people couldn't make posts on a few internet sites, in a medium that didn't exist 30 years ago. While there were still many websites they could use, or they could have made any other new websites/platforms they liked, as was soon done with Truth Social. They also still had any form of speech that actually existed when the Bill Of Rights was passed, plus things like radio and television, or even email.

You think it's relevant that Kimmel cold start a podcast - guess what? Any of these "people censored by Democrats" could also have started a podcast! So they weren't even censored at all, right?

The claims are written by the lawyers but are statements the company they represent take responsibility for (legally), under subpoena. It's the version of the facts they are willing to put on record and willing to stay behind if accused of perjury. It's a legal commitment by the company.

It's not "a case". It's a subpoena.

no *they couldn't*, the ban lists were shared by all platforms under biden admin supervision (FBI and other entities). They actually coordinated banning from all digital media, do you understand that? it was actually horrific. some also got debanked, banned by paypal and so on. It was actually horrific, again, like in China.

That those platforms didn't exist before isn't particularly relevant, what's relevant is that they were the places where all conversations happened.

Then I hope you'd agree that if Marx were alive today, he wouldn’t say our technology and productivity levels are anywhere near what’s necessary for a communist society to function.

I'm really not seeing anything that you are saying that is staunchly disagreeing with me - or at least what AI was saying for you.

You asked me if communist liberals have any power right now. I am not answering that.

AI mentioned for you that there has never been a society that actually followed Marx's blueprint for communism in its full sense while I literally said that you can say that it fell short of true Marxist Communism.

You, yourself, mentioned that the goal of communism is noble, which I agree and said similar.

You, yourself also mentioned that it's unrealistic and will likely never be achieved which I agree and it's what leads to the #1 most important reason (imo) why these discussions are important.

You say you don’t want it, and I agree. But the reality is, is that we have a much better understanding today then we did 100 years ago of economics, governance and human behavior, and the fact that we live in a global economic system and we understand why such systems, well intentioned or not, have had the results that they have had.

The meme doesn't fit.

Did anyone in here say communism was good?

What are we doing in this thread? Honestly.

lol... ok, why not?

I really didn't need a play by play of our exchange. You've made yourself clear, but you're being weird in direct questions for some reason.

Exactly... this whole debate is fkn stupid honestly.

Huh, so Joe Rogan didn't have a podcast then? Alex Jones wasn't making his views known?

I guarantee no one was banned from all digital media. They couldn't email each other? Were they banned from listserves? From Reddit and 4chan?

Feel free to share any evidence that anyone was completely banned from sharing their opinions via the internet.

Then why are you leading it?

banned from major platforms.

Joe Rogan and Alex Jones owned their own platforms ffs.

Rogan btw was a leftist till COVID basically.

when Joe Rogan got platformed by Spotify with the famous deal, he got censored (!!!!!). he had episodes removed for "misinformation".

the most successful podcaster in the world, censored, again by the same coordinated efforts of the Biden administration under threat of state violence to the platform.

Alex Jones notoriously got sued into oblivion by a defamation lawsuit, which you should decide if it is a violation of the 1a or not, because you appear uncertain about it (it isn't for me, but the same is true when trump sues).

That was before Biden came in to office, no?

He really wasn't. I enjoyed Rogan pre covid. He was for legalizing certain drugs and gay marriage pro-choice (I think) but he was also pro gun rights, pro cap and he was mostly pro military.

Yes, they owned their own platforms, and so could anyone else.

Alex Jones was not sued into oblivion. He still has a radio show, and I believe that he hasn't even paid the judgements against him.

I think the communist ideal is great. It basically describes what we know now as a techno world with robots, where people work in the way doctors would still want to take care of people, scientists would still want to discover things:

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of individuals under division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”—Marx

But in terms of favoring doing that now, he wouldn't even be. If Marx were elected POTUS today with full majority, he wouldn't seize the means. He'd probably see the maturity of capital as idk 10-20 years off. That's when he thought the fireworks would start as capital consumed itself into productivity and ownership might need be taken by force.

It was Lenin who thought what Marx saw as a kind of organic evolutionary process could be rapidly accelerated, i.e., seize the means now and then create socialism. I think it's that Marxist-Leninist socialism that gets used as a meme for communism. Marx didn't go too much beyond “dictatorship of the proletariat” in terms of structure, which I doubt he meant literally. Engels thought the workers could gain power in the US and Britain through constitutional means.

I'm not. I responded to stupid comments.

And I was agreeing w/ what you said. The discussion is epitomized in what Luci said... the right-wing believes communism has happened by Stalin and Mao, and it's caused great harm, so don't even try to understand it. And liberals or whomever just say it was never fully realized, just to avoid acknowledging it's failed. According to Luci, right-wingers can just say fascism never happened by adding something else to qualify it. It's just beyond sophomoric reasoning. It doesn't warrant more discussion.

And that's all I'll say about that. 😀

See my post here:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showp...

It was just a lighthearted meme, calm down. Besides if you say communism bad you get to be in the good side of the bell curve (or bad depending in your opinion of yourself)

No it's not. You can't claim communism failed because the socio-economic conditions necessary for communism to function as laid out by Marx have never occurred. All you can say is the systems put in place by others to create those conditions failed. So what "the right-wing believes" is false and what "liberals or whomever" say is true.

This is a pretty effective graphic in my estimation. It's clever, but your numbers just aren't adding up. What you have as the most common opinion is actually a fractional minority opinion and those who hold it are unquestionably on the higher IQ side. I mean, why can't we just be honest about these things? We aren't practicing politics in here. No one is being influenced. You know the commie in your class got a 5 on his AP English and was done 45 minutes early. The forum is funner to me when just being honest.

This distribution of opinion overlaying IQ would be far more accurate for attitudes about the covid vaccine. For the quotes I would have the idiot say "vaccines cause autism", the average guy say "I've got to go with the science", and the intelligent quote be like "This is not science actually.".

English maybe, not math. The latter are the brightest but also seem like a pretty passive and somewhat apolitical crowd. Then again by most accounts sounds like Robinson may have been part of that crowd.

On the other hand, the battleground of modern Marxism at least in the West is hardly about economics anymore and mostly about linguistics. That’s why so much of what passes for radical theory today comes straight out of Ivy League linguistics and literature departments, where redefining terms passes for praxis. Change the connotation, and eventually the denotation tags along. That’s how “critical theory” pretends a dictionary edit is a cultural revolution when in reality it’s just the creation of a bunch of babbling idiots as all this stuff gets trickled down. But I have to give them credit because they sure scared the establishment. But like they say, you take a shot at the king you best not miss. Now here comes MAGA with the bulldozer.