This week, Paypal froze the accounts of Toby Young, a British right-wing journalist and bête noire of liberals. Affected accounts include the Daily Sceptic (a website) and Free Speech Union (a body which campaigns for free speech), Young being a founder of both. Seemingly, Paypal took the decision on political grounds, the firm not contradicting reports. British right-wingers have
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.
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.
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??
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 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.
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??