Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
As I reported yesterday, Facebook recently announced a largely ineffective policy change intended to keep “Fake News” outlets off of users’ newsfeeds by banning such purveyors of falsehood from using their advertising service that few if any ever used anyway. Also this week, the other big social media platform, Twitter, announced some big changes intended to keep purveyors of falsehood off their service by banning the accounts of a handful of leaders of the so-called Alt-Right movement.
For those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the term, the “Alt-Right” is an embarrassing political movement within the United States that has managed to convince itself that the government isn’t doing enough to protect the interests of white people. In the brash, politically incorrect and tough-talking Trump, they found something of a messiah – no, not all Trump supporters are Alt-Right imbeciles, but all Alt-Right imbeciles are Trump supporters. As the election season wore on and the level of national rancor increased, the Alt-Right movement flourished. What anyone sees in their “message” is beyond me, however.
One of the highest-profile deletions was that of the account belonging to Richard Spencer, who had his personal account as well as that of his “think tank” the National Policy Institute and his online magazine all whacked by Twitter. Naturally, he lost his shit in a display of hyperbolic effusiveness.
“’This is corporate Stalinism,’ Spencer told The Daily Caller News Foundation. In a YouTube video, entitled Knight of the Long Knives, an apparent reference to the purge of Nazi leaders in 1934 to consolidate Adolf Hitler’s power, Spencer said Twitter had engaged in a coordinated effort to wipe out alt-right Twitter,” wrote Jessica Guynn for USA Today.
I mean, there is something somewhat poetic about a shitlord referencing Hitler and Stalin while whining that a private company, Twitter, asserted its property rights over whose 0s and 1s take up space on their servers.
And yes, that’s essentially what Twitter did in removing the account of a man who has publicly and repeatedly called for blacks, Asians, Jews and Hispanics to be removed from the United States, according to USA Today. They also removed the accounts of several other “thought leaders” of the Alt-Right in an effort to purge its service of white nationalists. Again, Twitter is within its rights to do so, but the effort is doomed to fail.
“White nationalist Matt Heimblach said the purge of alt-right accounts was politically motivated and accused Twitter of restricting free speech.
‘There is a lot of concern over them trying to stop us, whether it’s the establishment or whether it’s these multinational corporations like Twitter or Google, but I really think it’s too little too late. This political revolution that we are seeing has already begun,’ Heimblach, chairman of the Traditionalist Worker Party, said in an interview.
For every account that’s banned, new accounts take its place, he said,” Guynn wrote.
That might be a bit of an exaggeration, that two new accounts will replace each deleted Alt-Right account. Twitter is small compared to Facebook, having 317 million or so users to Facebook’s nearly 1.8 billion, and there very simply cannot be that many people left in the Alt-Right movement who can read and / or write the English language. If we assume, however, there are still plenty of shitlords-in-waiting to take the fight for white nationalism to Twitter, then the social media platform is really going to have its hands full; essentially playing Whack-a-Mole as each new toothless imbecile pops up and starts popping off.
That is both a waste of time and resources and a bad strategy for dealing with the Alt-Right movement.
As is so often the case, despite the words having been written decades ago, the great H.L. Mencken offers the best advice. In this case, he’s speaking of superstition – which, intellectually is on par with racial pride and nationalism and therefore applies here:
“The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame. True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.”
So yes, let’s not ban the Alt-Right idiots from the social media platforms they inhabit; let them bring their own hideous follies out into the light of day so that the rest of us may tackle it with all arms and so rout and cripple and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. It isn’t as if the Alt-Right presents a compelling argument for a good idea – they have no argument to support their idiotic ideas. So, let’s debate them. Openly. Banning and suppressing them only feeds their precious narrative of white people being oppressed and their rights violated. Therefore, if anything, this only serves to make them more “dangerous.” Let them “debate” their “ideas” among adults whose IQ runs to three digits. They won’t last long past that.
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