The discussion of other governments will probably lead this thread into a swampy delta and it will lose its motive force.
In the past, I would have said that Posse Comitatus would have prevented such behavior from being directed toward American citizens, but after seeing the mutual-law-skirting nature of the Five Eyes approach, as well as the presence of Federal troops in law enforcement roles in US cities over the past year, I'm no longer confident.
Get back to me when twitter can order an airstrike against an minor and enjoy qualified immunity.
If these allegations are not true, then the public conversation has been censored & the story of censorship overshadows investigation which would absolve the innocent parties.
Either way, the public deserves to have direct access the truth.
The very same sorts of people with the very same views are also in government institutions in abundance, as we've seen in recent years with the descent of the various left-wing elites into conspiracy theories about Russia - theories that were then used to try and effectively block implementations of public votes, on the belief that surely the public could not possibly reject their enlightened governance unless they were being manipulated.
This isn't purely a US thing. The UK has the same problems. Recently one of the government's advisors on COVID was complaining (on Twitter!) that the BBC had agreed to unfairly rig a debate she was involved with, but hadn't properly enforced that rigging:
https://twitter.com/SusanMichie/status/1311234012283899904
A lot of the British political class lost their minds over Brexit. You saw incredible things, like politicians running as candidates of the party saying they'd implement the decision, and then switching post-election to the party with saying they'd void the vote and never leave. They had flat out lied to voters about their intentions. That happened quite a few times. There were many other tricks deployed too. They fundamentally didn't believe in the legitimacy of their political opposition and were willing to manipulate the electoral processes to try and "win" despite having lost at the ballot box.
Those two things aren't remotely the same. The legitimacy of the right in the U.S. is an open question when they participate in direct voter suppression, gerrymandering, continually lose popular votes but still gain controlling power of the strongest apparatus of the government, have used that power to appoint (shortly) 16 of the last 20 SCOTUS Justices going back to 1969 using rules they are quite literally making up on the spot. "Consent of the governed" is a valid question under these scenarios.
But you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist." You're using some very strong language based on very weak arguments.
The fact you, presumably, pass off things such as Russian interference in fair and free elections as "conspiracy theories" should, god willing, be absolutely damning to your credibility. Or that "herd immunity strategies," as mentioned in the tweet you link, should be presented as a valid and equal alternative strategy to NOT LETTING PEOPLE DIE; you're arguing flat-earthers should be given equal footing in a debate with NASA.
At least one very recent example: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/12/keith-olber...
> "The hate he has triggered, the Pandora’s box he has opened, they will not be so easily destroyed,” he said. “So, let us brace ourselves. The task is twofold: the terrorist Trump must be defeated, must be destroyed, must be devoured at the ballot box, and then he, and his enablers, and his supporters, and his collaborators, and the Mike Lees and the William Barrs, and the Sean Hannitys, and the Mike Pences, and the Rudy Gullianis and the Kyle Rittenhouses and the Amy Coney Barretts must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society while we try to rebuild it and to rebuild the world Trump has nearly destroyed by turning it over to a virus."
The implication "should not be allowed to exist" is very different from "prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society." So even taking a marginalized voice talking from his YouTube channel, arguing that the left believes the right "should not be allowed to exist" is a ridiculous stretch.
You need to read more than just the headlines.
you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist."
You literally start by saying:
The legitimacy of the right in the U.S. is an open question
Perhaps you're using an odd definition of legitimate, but generally for a political movement to be recognised as legitimate means it is allowed to take part in the political process, to be supported by people without suppression and so on. Terrorist groups are not politically legitimate, political parties with voters are. It gets tricky in the unusual cases where political parties and terror groups become closely related, as was seen with Sinn Fein and the IRA.
You yourself are now arguing that maybe the right isn't legitimate because of a bog-standard list of leftist talking points, none of which are obvious or uncontroversial, for example what you call "voter suppression" is more obviously interpreted as enforcing existing laws that define who can vote; calling this "suppression" implies that no such laws do or should exist. But nobody is arguing that, are they?
But you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist."
This thread is literally about Twitter shutting down a conservative newspaper that has reported news relevant to an election in which conservatives are competing. The NY Post and the story it reported no longer exists on Twitter. How much clearer a piece of evidence do you want?
And again - hold a mirror up and look at the reflection. Your post ends by saying that I should not be given "equal footing in debate" i.e. that people with those views should be (debate-wise) wiped out, not allowed to exist at all. You are the embodiment of what I'm talking about.
By "not allowed to exist" I don't mean literally executed in a mass genocide of half the voting population. Using such an interpretation is very bad faith, assuming that's what you're getting at.
I mean not allowed to be visible, to play any part in the public sphere, not allowed to "exist" in the sense of mattering to the structures of power in a country. Being forced to be invisible, forgotten, erased from the written and spoken record. And with that far more rational interpretation you can hopefully see that your views definitely qualify.
We're discussing western first-world governments for the most part, and short of some crazy world-altering event or war, they most certainly do not have the actual power to do this.