Smug: Censorship, canceling, scolding, and pigeonholing for idiots
Pretending cancel culture never existed
Let’s start with a terrible take from a terrible source: the article The big idea: what do we really mean by free speech? by Farrah Jarral (Guardian) writes,
“What the right calls cancel culture, philosopher Arianne Shahvisi writes, “is often just the supersized celebrity version of what the rest of us experience all the time: consequences for our mistakes and bigotries. You do something shitty and people distance themselves from you, especially if you refuse to acknowledge your wrongdoing and make amends.””
This is why the Guardian is utter trash: they cite a philosopher, who expresses such a lowbrow analysis to reassure everyone that even philosophers agree with the dumb-ass, super-simplistic, and obviously wrong interpretation that they’re going to present. Do you want to be the dumbass who disagrees with a philosopher, whose job it literally is to think for a living?
The problem that reasonable people might have with cancel culture isn’t that they might be ostracized for doing “something shitty”. Obviously, that’s how people work—and how they’ve always worked. No-one wants to hang around shitty people who annoy or enrage them.
The problem that is of more concern is when people are ostracized for having the wrong opinions, ones that are perfectly legitimate to have. Everyone has a different idea of what they consider to be “firing offenses”. Some would think you should get fired for not supporting Israel hard enough. Is it being shitty to not support Israel? Is it being shitty to not support Ukraine? Is it being shitty not to care either way?
The article is just another in a long line of articles from a supposedly left-leaning periodical by a supposedly left-leaning author citing what is almost certainly a philosopher who considers herself to be left-leaning, all of whom espouse principles about freedom of speech as they would be understood by a first-grader—and that would be have been right at home in Khmer Rouge Cambodia or the Cultural Revolution in China. Get the f@&k out of here with your utterly simplistic analysis, Guardian. You’re trash.
I didn’t bother reading the rest of the article because what’s the point of wasting even more time when it starts like that? If it redeems itself later, then congratulations for burying the lede, I guess.
Pro-censorship is the obviously left position now
I’ve included the 25-minute video Facebook & Content Moderation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) by John Oliver (YouTube) as a link but not as a playable video because I don’t think that this show is really worth watching anymore. It was already very hit-or-miss—and kind of always has been—but it’s just far too superficial and supercilious now.
Now that Trump is in office, Oliver and staff don’t even really have to try anymore—and they are showing all signs that they won’t. They’re seemingly content to subside into the same mud-pit where you can find Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel, all of whom used to be much more subversive and interesting than they are now. Now they all cheerily kowtow to Empire.
In the video linked above, Oliver takes pains to convince his audience that Facebook never really censored anything while simultaneously lamenting that, without censorship, Facebook will become a cesspool.
Who does Oliver think is to blame? Zuckerberg, kind of, but it’s really all Trump’s fault. Whereas Oliver explains that the Biden administration didn’t influence Facebook at all—or not really, not the way it’s been portrayed by that dastardly right-wing media, which comprises anyone reporting anything that Oliver and his PMC clique don’t already believe—Trump has completely changed how Meta is running one of its major properties.
It couldn’t possibly be because (A) Facebook’s user base skews toward 60+, (B) older people skew rightward, and (C) they all believe they’re being censored. Maybe changing how they censor was just pure financial calculation on Facebook’s part to keep its user base? Or, maybe, it really was a belief that moderation couldn’t be what it had become, which was prophylactic censorship that kept PMC prudes like Oliver delighted because they never, ever saw anything that might offend their delicate sensibilities. This includes not just right-wing stuff but also—and crucially—left-wing stuff. Progressive and true left-wing organizations experienced the most brutal censorship and will almost certainly continue to do so.
How do you even choose what to censor, FFS?
Almost no-one is will to consider that the most adult way to discuss the issue of censorship is to ask how we determine what we thinks needs to be censored. The tendency has been to censor unwanted political opinions, as noted above. That makes it quite easy to then censor things that you don’t like: first deem a group or organization fascist or extreme right-wing or even nazi and then you’re free to just ban all of that group’s posts and no-one would care because, well, what are you, a nazi-lover?
People are so banal and superficial in their opinions in that they have to constantly be reminded why censorship is bad because, unless they realize that they are being actively censored or that they are aware that information that might be interesting to them is being censored from them, they simply don’t care because they just assume that bad people are not getting their bad information.
People are so shockingly anti-intellectual that the discussion pretty much stops there. If they stop thinking about it for a second, then they completely forget that censorship is even happening. They literally have no object permanence. That’s how dumb they are. For a similar albeit more polite discussion, see survivorship bias and the algorithmic gaze: you can’t see what you can’t see by Etymology Nerd (Substack).
COVID message discipline broke people
Part of the backlash against censorship in the U.S. and Europe comes as a reaction to a disastrous COVID-information policy, during which information was brutally controlled, with the narrative shifting all over the place. Some opinions that were consistently blocked as misinformation turned out not to have even been misinformation. This matters even were you to believe that censorship is okay when the information is incorrect. I personally don’t because you never really know, do you? At any rate, people are pissed off and the AFD in Germany counts the backlash against the state’s COVID propaganda as a big reason for their success.
Joking about a different genocide
I will take John Oliver more seriously when he says the word Palestinian on his show even once. The genocide is well into its second year and comprises three seasons of his show and he’s never shown any indication that he will make a single show about the Middle East or Israel. It’s a bit weird, right? It’s almost like he has no principles. He did manage to mention a genocide in this most recent show but it was a reference to the Myanmar genocide, which Facebook was apparently alone responsible for. Or Trump was, I can’t remember.
I was shocked to hear people in the show’s skit talking about a genocide and then even more shocked to realize they were joking about a genocide that happened years and years ago, without mentioning the brutal information management and censorship surrounding Israel’s ongoing genocide. You can currently express whatever support for Israel on Facebook and Instagram that you want—and you can say the most horrific things that you want about Palestinians—and none of that has ever been censored.
There were so many, many Instagram videos of IDF soldiers committing war crimes that they themselves posted—and none of it was ever censored, even when Meta was still censoring information. John didn’t mention that censorship cutout, oddly enough. Still, maybe that kind of stuff will get a community note now? Nah. I bet those will also be suppressed.
And none of this should be suppressed! It’s all free speech. But that also means that speech that condemns a genocide is also free. And yet, Facebook continues to censor exactly those voices.
And now, the Trump administration has revoked the permanent residency and had ICE arrest of a permanent U.S. resident for having supported Palestinian rights. I am dying to know how Oliver is going to square that circle: will he just ignore the whole thing? Or will he find an angle to bang his drum about Trump taking away people’s rights without mentioning why the guy was picked up? He’d have to be really careful to avoid having to take stance on what Israel is doing. Oliver has supposedly moral bona fides to protect—but he also very clearly has paymasters who are calling the shots about which segments he’s allowed to run. I doubt he’s going anywhere near that third rail, but I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
Pigeonholing, then canceling
Finally, the article The Right Wing Politics of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi by Chris Green (ZNetwork) exhibits another form of censorship and suppression: pushing people with unwelcome opinions into filthy pigeonholes and then discarding them down the memory hole for being the thing they’ve been labeled as.
As you can well imagine, you don’t actually have to read or view anything that those people produce; all you need is a grudge and a lot of fellow travelers willing to spread you opinions without checking up on them at all. The author of the link above writes,
“At present Greenwald hosts a podcast called System Update on Rumble, the right-wing video platform in which the reactionary Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel has been a heavy investor. Thiel’s company Palantir was involved with the American national security state during the Obama administration in secretly digging up dirt on persons involved with supporting Wikileaks and Edward Snowden—this was, of course, before Greenwald made his right-wing turn. It should be noted that although Greenwald’s podcast substantially panders to right wing audiences, he has also used his forum to righteously attack Israel for its genocidal war on the people of Gaza.”
It’s nice that they at least seem to acknowledge that Greenwald—completely unsurprisingly for those of who actually listen to him—is on the right side of history, as far as the genocide of the Palestinians is concerned. They didn’t mention that he does occasional System Pupdates, in which he introduces the backstory of one of the hundreds of dogs that he has living in or near his house.
After having first heard him on This is Hell!, I guess this Eoin Higgins guy’s book is gaining a lot of attention. I like how everyone I’ve heard talk about it, including this review, seems not to have watched a second of Greenwald, or read a page of Taibbi before calling them right-wing cucks. People are just not interested in accuracy because it’s not necessary in order to gain popularity with the people whom they consider to be the cool kids.
Read through the citation above. Notice the phrasing. Rumble is not just a video platform, but a “right-wing video platform”, an accusation made again and again not because its purveyors are right-wing, or because only right-wing content is allowed on it, but because the site doesn’t censor the things that these censorious snowflakes can’t stand having exist in their world.
These people are smug scolds of the worst kind, who cannot understand that one would be horrified that the state would persecute someone like Trump for a complete bullshit like Russiagate because, to them, the target is the important thing, and not the reasons you’re shooting at it. To them, they already know that someone like Trump is bad, and so it doesn’t matter whether a given accusation is accurate; he deserves whatever you can throw at him because he is the devil incarnate.
It’s why the author can cheerfully call Peter Thiel a reactionary, just throwing out words without even understanding what they mean. The important thing is that the audience understands which words have negative connotation and will cry and cheer, calling for blood. Thiel is an execrable radical; there is little that is reactionary (extremely conservative) about his mission to take the world apart to suit his personal needs.
This unfaithful relationship with truth and meaning leaves fools like this author to write about things like Russiagate without once mentioning that it was a complete scam, a hoax that deluded a nation and turned an entire supposedly left-leaning liberal class into rabid warmongers who still haven’t woken up from their nightmare.
As usual, anyone who associates with anyone who is not pre-approved is considered not a journalist going after a story but a fellow traveler, guilty by association. Anyone who dared go on Tucker Carlson’s program to spout socially left-wing talking points was immediately written off as a traitor.
This is how these people think. It’s not even really fair to call it thinking, as that’s unfair to people who actually do think. It’s small-minded, mean-girl-clique bullshit that should have nothing to do with national discourse, but instead positively dominates it.
Philosophically, most people wholeheartedly embrace George W. Bush’s dictum, that “you’re either with us, or you’re against us.” They double down on this attitude by ostracizing as a heretic anyone who doesn’t believe everything they’ve been told to believe with the fervor that they’ve been told to believe it, banishing them to a wilderness filled with so-called fascists and so-called right-wingers.
That Greenwald tempered his attitude toward idiots like Alex Jones is not a bad thing. There’s a lot to learn about why Jones has appeal to so many. He is obviously unhinged but he’s also built an enormous media empire. People like Higgins and the author of this piece are completely uninterested in finding out why that is, because they’ve long since determined that they will censor people like Jones out of existence using state and corporate-media power rather than figuring out how he ticks and why people gravitate toward him.
If they were to invest the time and effort, they could perhaps address the problem of people following uninformed demagogues through education rather than punishment. But that’s not their style, because they’re also convinced that anyone who doesn’t already agree with them about everything is too stupid to do so. Or too racist to do so. Or whatever.
I only skimmed the remainder of the article (2/3 or so) because it went on to document how horribly right-wing Matt Taibbi is, a claim that is belied by simply reading anything that Matt Taibbi has written or watching five minutes of him on an interview or podcast. Taibbi’s great crime is thinking that free speech applies to everyone, rather than just people like Higgins, the author, and the opinion elites that they worship.
Official State Historians posing as revolutionaries
The article March 5, 2025 by Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American) is by an author whom I’ve seen gain no small amount of prominence in my newsfeeds since the ascension of Trump II. She writes,
“This system enabled leaders to avoid the censorship from which voters would recoil by instead creating a firehose of news until people became overwhelmed by the task of trying to figure out what was real and simply tuned out. Essentially, this system replaced the concept of voters choosing their leaders with the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.”
If you didn’t know that this lady’s entire essay had been about Russia so far, you would think that she was describing the last 30 years of U.S. politics. She doesn’t mention the coincidence at all, which leads me to believe that she doesn’t notice it.
Similarly, when I read a prior paragraph, I kept waiting for her to mention that this view of the U.S.‘s so-called democracy was flawed, at best, and wildly unjustified, at worst. She wrote,
“When the Cold War ended with the crumbling of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, those Americans who had come to define the world as a fight between the dark forces of communism and the good forces of capitalism believed their ideology of radical individualism had triumphed. In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukayama famously concluded that the victory of liberal democracy over communism meant “the end of history” as all nations gravitated toward the liberal democracy that time had proven was fundamentally a better system of government than any other.
“Forty-five years after Churchill warned that the world was splitting in two, it appeared that democracies, led by the United States of America, had won. In that triumphant mood, American leaders set out to spread capitalism into formerly communist countries, believing that democracy would follow since capitalism and democracy went hand in hand.”
Again, I was left wanting, as she didn’t indicate in any way that this isn’t her actual viewpoint, held by an actual adult, and one who purports to be a historian, no less. This woman is being cited from all over the liberal mediasphere, completely without irony and completely uncritically. They consider her to be a beacon in the darkness. I feel ill.
I fear that her wildly inaccurate characterization of Ukrainian history is what counts as the standard view in her sphere, despite none of the main points lining up with the facts, particularly Paul Manafort’s involvement, which was part of the Steele Dossier, which was made up out of whole cloth by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. None of this is controversial and yet none of it is known in elite circles, for whom I can only imagine Richardson’s letters are intended.
Being a glutton for punishment, I persevered.
“To resurrect his political career, Yanukovych turned to an American political consultant, Paul Manafort, who had worked for both Nixon and Reagan and who was already working for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. With Manafort’s help, Yanukovych won the presidency in 2010 and began to turn Ukraine toward Russia. In 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power and he fled to Russia.”
There is, to no-one’s surprise at this point, any indication that Ukraine suffered an unconstitutional coup—just that they “ousted” their president, as you do. In democracies, a president fails to be reelected, and is not “ousted”. It is clear that Richardson—along with anyone who holds the worldview she represents—only cares about details like this when she’s been ordered to deride a country that has been designated an official enemy.
There follow several paragraphs of a tired re-hashing of the standard Russiagate fare that I skimmed rather than read in detail.
As usual and as expected, she spends an inordinate amount of text condemning Trump for his lack of decorum. That his predecessors were also violent warmongers—far more so than Trump (so far)—doesn’t matter because it’s the language of violence that matters, not the effects of actual physical violence.
Since I’d seen this lady mentioned a few times, I decided to give one of her missives a shot, although with obvious trepidation. I was ready to be pleasantly surprised but instead I’m disappointed to find that a bunch of people I’ve been following for a while are now absolutely quaffing this kind of uninformed tripe posing as scholarly research and analysis—all day long and with gusto.
Nowhere in the entire missive does she take Trump to task for the actually evil things that he’s doing, like gleefully helping Netanyahu stomp Gaza even flatter. No, instead, she condemns Trump as a traitor for trying to end the war in Ukraine. i have neither the time nor the patience for such stupidity and obviously self-serving ignorance. You can take issue with Trump’s methods but, if you don’t start by acknowledging that bringing this war to early end is a good thing, then you’re a criminal and a fool who has no idea what’s going on and no moral footing.
The modern liberal lives without Irony
Finally, there’s the post One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Jason Kottke, which is published by a fool—who also recommends Cox Richardson at every chance he gets—recommending the book of the same name as the article’s title by Omar El Akkad.[1]
This is from a guy who hasn’t written about Israel even once because he’s terrified of losing his upper west-side and upper east-side subscribers from New York City. This is, in fact, the first time that I can recall him even obliquely referring to Gaza, although he calls it the “war in Gaza”, which is exactly what the NY Times—which he also reads religiously—wants him to call it, if he’s to refer to it at all.
He literally seems to have no idea that the entire book is about people like himself who are easily capable of ignoring a genocide until it’s safe not to ignore it.
The full title, of the book is,
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
I think Kottke thinks that the book refers to Trump, which would be hilariously missing the point, but its just tragic. It’s the same kind of mistake that so many other people make—people whom so many look up to as thought leaders.
Uplifting Coda: Omar El Akkad
Omar El Akkad is an amazing person and I can only imagine that his book—the perfectly titled One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This—is equally amazing. See the 1-hour interview with Chris Hedges below. He very much takes people like Kottke and Richardson and Higgins to task, for example, when he devastatingly sums up their worldview with “[s]omebody who is served by the system doesn’t have to imagine anything else.”
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (w/ Omar El Akkad) by The Chris Hedges Report (YouTube)
At about 09:42,
“All of this sort of stuff, I think, makes perfect sense if you believe in a world where there are only two options: you are either wearing the boot or you’re having your neck stepped on. And, so, to speak up on behalf of anybody who’s having their neck stepped on is immediately assumed to mean, ‘oh you want to step on my neck.’ Those are the only sort of world views that are acceptable under that ordering of the world.
“And it’s disastrous […] because the obligations put on somebody who’s trying to imagine a better world are unlimited. If you and I both want something better than this, I guarantee you, within 5 minutes of talking about it, we will have some kind of disagreement as to what ‘better’ looks like, because the imaginative obligations placed on us are infinite.
“Somebody who is served by the system doesn’t have to imagine anything else and so can safely live within the confines of this fantasy where, yes, either these people be killed or those people will be killed; either this genocide happens this way, or an even worse genocide is going to happen. And it is such imaginative poverty. And it’s applicable to virtually every facet of life under an empire. It has to be this way because somebody has to do the killing and it may as well be us.”
At about 20:00,
“[…] when I wrote the the title of this book—when I was first thinking about it—I wasn’t thinking in terms of weeks, or even years. I was thinking, if I’m fortunate enough to live the average lifespan in this part of the world, by the end of my life, I’ll be watching a poetry reading in Tel Aviv that begins with a land acknowledgement.”