The Blog

2021-

2021-01-19 i
FASCISM IN AMERICA
"The basic concept of fascism is that everyone marches in the same direction, everyone thinks the same way, and everyone says the same things, all in the name of safety and productivity."

Don’t Worry, It’s Just Corporate Fascism

Censorship is censorship, whether committed by the state or anyone else.

For over a decade now, the left in the United States has been cultivating a pernicious lie. They claim that censorship exists only if it is done by the government. Through a facile reading of the First Amendment, they have concluded that schools, corporations, publishers, theaters, and cable providers are not engaged in censorship if they ban certain speech, they are merely private entities making choices. It’s a lie.

Censorship can be committed by any institution, even by individuals if they have enough power. Today the greatest threat to American freedom comes not from the government but from corporate actors who seek to control the actions and beliefs of American citizens by withholding goods and services from those with whom they disagree. And the left, which once abhorred certain views but would fight for your right to express them, now just abhors them and you can go to hell.

It is not hyperbolic to call this phenomenon the greatest threat to American liberty in a generation. Say the wrong thing, and the private owners of our public squares online will ban you. Join the wrong club, and our hotels and airlines will deny you service. Express the wrong politics, and those in power will ban your news outlet. This is not a slippery slope; all of these things have already happened. American liberty is at the bottom of the slope. In fact, it has crashed into the ski lodge and broken its legs.

... While it is not the only one, there is no better example of corporate fascism than Big Tech. When Amazon flexed its muscle to destroy the social media platform Parler, it sent a clear message that everyone had better get on board with groupthink. Together with Alphabet, Apple, and Twitter, Jeff Bezos’s illiberal monster company controls our society’s discourse in ways that no entities in history ever have, and the results are alarming.

This is not the first time America has faced powerful corporations that seek to block and destroy competition. We have busted trusts before but never quite like this. Neither the railroad barons nor Ma Bell had dark, dystopian visions for our future in which we sit alone at home staring at screens while machines bring us sustenance. Does that sound familiar?

At the end of the day, Americans are either a free people or they aren’t. It doesn’t matter if we are silenced by our government or by the billionaires who give us our tinker toys. Being silenced is being silenced.

... Be curious. Read something offensive today. Look at some degenerate art. Do not go gently into the darkness of corporate fascism. Be free. (read more)

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