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Comment by flukus | Hacker News Reader

> StackOverflow already took an "open-borders, anti-Trump, or get out mentality", so its not a stretch to say that any right leaning belief, or more acurately any non-extreme left belief will be under fire from more and more companies.

This approach is burning bridges and giving up on any attempt to convince the other side. They'll still hold their views and they'll be forced into a bubble where their views are reinforced and are likely to become more extreme. Next election cycle could very well have people asking "how on earth did Trump get re-elected?" and the answer will be this style of attempted thought control.

Even worse, it's burning bridges with people in the middle and in many cases even the ones that are on your side.

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People "in the middle" are not attending white power rallies.

True, but they do get turned off when people and politicians who are seemingly "normal" people get branded an alt right neo Nazi (Jake Tapper was accused of this for challenging Linda Saraour). So, sure, the voter in Wisconsin who voted for Obama twice and pulled the lever for Trump this time isn't listening to Richard Spencer podcasts and larping at white power rallies - but as the Left continues to paint in broader strokes I see the likelihood of Trump winning again increasing.

But there are people in the middle that believe in the constitutional right to assembly and association.

Few in the middle believe these rights obligate a private company to host objectional material.

I wholeheartedly agree that it doesn't obligate them, but many in the middle recognize that allowing a culture of intolerance (on either side) to take root and spread is not in our long term best interest.

Sometimes slippery slopes are slippery.

You would be surprised how many people do not understand that the First Amendment applies to the government. A former manager, a seemingly rational person, once started to rant about pro-liberal censorship on Twitter (during the time that Yiannopoulos person was banned) and how that is a violation of his First Amendment rights. It took a few assertions on my part to finally get it through his head that that was not a valid argument on his part.

When the only speech that is relevant has been reduced to that which is published or broadcast with mass media; and when nearly all such venues are policed by supporters of the left, in a private context; then the Democratic party only needs to set the narrative in order to discredit or silence their opponents in relevant venues. This to me, is a tactic to circumvent the first amendment, and is very much done so by a major political party. Perhaps it is you who actually does not understand.

That is an unfair and polarizing take on my statement. It is also whataboutism. Newsmax, Fox, Breitbart, Limbaugh, Storm Front, etc. have more than enough outlets for the right wing to have their safe spaces. When Reddit was accused of setting the narrative to discredit their opponents in relevant venues, Voat provided a safe space for them to continue.

The Democratic party has not controlled the narrative for a long long time. I know people sometimes need a bogeyman to have something to rail against but this isn't it.

Again, First Amendment is to stop the US government from suppressing speech. If Voat had been shut down and the yellow bellies behind Breitbart arrested, you would have a case. But that hasn't happened. Instead the constant whining about 'fake news' by the current administration has been a far sinister and much more effective attempt at speech suppression by driving people into their various safe spaces.

Oh please, those outlets you've mentioned have been marginalized and made the butt of every joke since the 1990s, just about as long as they have existed. They are the original echo chambers. Saying that one is allowed to preach to the choir is a straw man.

If you want examples about these things happening, YouTube channels like this one have had their money taken away by Google due to being "offensive" when it is actually just not on the same side of the political fence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DshdVX_MlSo

Again, my point with the First Amendment in my original comment stands, i.e. the government is not and has not been responsible for these alleged suppressions. You are making a point that you likely think is relevant to the overall thread and if so, please make it at the top level of the thread.

I strongly disagree that there is some vast left-wing/liberal conspiracy to suppress right-wing speech. I can concede that both sides do their part to ensure that the opposing side's viewpoint is suppressed, marginalized, and ridiculed (e.g. Fox News, Info Wars.) It pits people against each other for no good reason, causes deterioration in social well-being, and makes us unable to work together as a society. Maybe we can just agree that people are what they are and leave it at that.

> When the only speech that is relevant has been reduced to that which is published or broadcast with mass media; and when nearly all such venues are policed by supporters of the left, in a private context

The rise of the right and the general rightward shift over the past several decades has been largely driven by the right policing and pressuring the mass media (the Democratic Party shifting it's center of power from center-left to center-right in the 1990s helped); to the extent there is even a remotely defensible appearance that the right is not favored by the mass media it's because in theblast couple years the Republican Party has shot rightward faster than the media and public discourse has, outpacing the movement of the Overton Window.

Is someone depriving them of that right? All I see is a private company refusing to serve people that have broken an agreement they signed.

Assemblies and associations with names like "Nazi uber" and "Hate van"? No thanks. Shut it down.

You know, that's a really hard one.

On the one hand I don't want a bunch of hateful thugs running about rallying actual hate normally. I just have to imagine if I were in a non western country and they had hate rallies against westerners, for example.

On the other hand, say in Venezuela or Cuba where politicians rally (or rallied) around hate for the US and US citizens, I mean, hateful as it is, should I want that suppressed forcefully?

Maybe more worrying is who gets classified, do they go by the Dept of Justice tally? Or do they make their own assessment?

The constitution has very little to say about what assembly names are acceptable.

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