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Hail Caesar (PATRICK PLEUL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
In 1515, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull stipulating that all published material translated from Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Chaldaic into Latin, or from Latin into the vernacular, should be moderated by sensitivity readers. Without such precautions, the document declared, harmful content and fake news would flourish. Printers would be free to pollute the reading public with books “which not only fail to edify, but promote errors in faith as well as in daily life and the mores”.
Back in early 2020, media pundit Jeff Jarvis cited this moment in a critique of the UK Government’s proposed Online Harms Bill. “I value freedom of expression,” he tweeted. “I value voices too long not heard in mass media, finally able to speak. I value new perspectives.”
This enthusiasm for freedom of expression, new perspectives, and the amplification of unheard voices has travelled some distance in the intervening time. When Elon Musk launched his hostile takeover bid for Twitter last week, he explained that he was motivated by a desire to protect the platform as an outlet for “free speech”, which he views as “a societal imperative for a functioning democracy”. In response, Jarvis compared the site to a glittering bubble of freedom, on the eve of fascist rule: “Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany”.
No one could be faulted for experiencing mild whiplash here. For until recently, enthusiasts of digital culture thought of the internet not as a monster liable to turn fascist if left uncontrolled, but as another loosening of the strictures on knowledge and belief, a long easing that began with the Gutenberg Bible..
The story of that era was a growing pluralism of viewpoints, and the attendant democratisation of politics. When Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand declared in 1987 that “information wants to be free”, he drew on several centuries’ worth of knowledge overcoming censorship, in the interests of open discussion. As part of the same process, too, the Church’s failure to control doctrine resulted in a proliferation of religious dissent, which morphed over time into a growing body of resistance to the idea of faith full-stop.
But today, with observant Christianity in precipitous decline across the West, the kind of censorship Leo X sought to impose in the name of that religion is back with a vengeance — powered by the same liberals who not long ago cheered its decline. For as Covid has accelerated our transition from a print to a digital world, it is becoming increasingly clear that online publishing isn’t a push towards ever greater freedom of information. Rather, as the hyperabundance of opinion on the internet produces increasingly lurid real-world political effects, progressive public intellectuals are rushing to fill the moral vacuum left by the death of God. In other words: imposing order on the torrent of ideas.
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SubscribeAs usual, another fine essay from Mary Harrington.
I must admit I didn’t know that journalists congregate on Twitter (probably because I spend less than 10 minutes per month on Twitter and that only because I have a couple of friends who use it). What on earth do journalists do there? Spend all day screaming their outrage? Surely that’s not where they get story ideas?
I have repeatedly complained that few writers address the thorny issue of how to push back on progressivism. Even on Unherd most articles about progressivism describe the phenomenon without suggesting what to do about it. My sense is Musk acquiring Twitter would be a sort of Black Swan event that would start to put a dent in woke progress–which, of course, is why the Twitter crowd are so alarmed.
Sad we’ve reached the point where we have to rely on the world’s richest man to (perhaps) ride to the rescue of freedom of expression.
I think that reading Twitter is where a lot of journalists decide ‘what is newsworthy?’
As Laura suggests, the news you get from other media has already been curated on Twitter. All the way from selection of what is actually newsworthy (and what should be ignored or derided) to what angle one should take on it.
Tucker has done numerous hysterical video collections of all leftist media and politicians suddenly adopting the same names and adjectives to describe a current event, be it “mostly peaceful”, an “insurrection”, etc Twitter is where they coordinate and field test the descriptions – this won’t change if Twitter becomes free speech but the common-sense pushback will be allowed to a greater degree.
The reason that people go to Twitter is that you can follow someone and hear his thoughts that haven’t been filtered through corporate media. Well that was the original idea.
Which is exactly why the censoring by Twitter is so unacceptable.
I don’t use Twitter because when it started I thought to myself: Do I really want to read what some idiot is writing while sitting on the toilet?
me too!!
They aren’t directly censoring Musk yet… it is delicious. I don’t think they dare. He is yanking their chains and it is effing fabulous. Tell me how else you would get quickly to exactly what he is thinking besides a rubbish corporate media take or a long interview?
And how do I know where you are sitting when you type your 3 lines hmmm? I’ll never look at you in the same way again…
Using Twitter is lazy journalism. It is better to interact with real people in the real world, than to interact with their avatar personas.
‘Far better, as one commenter suggested, to have Twitter’s ownership in the hands of hedge funds than under the control of “one ultra-rich white guy”.’
The assumption here is that BlackRock is run by and for its shareholders or investors. That’s patently false. As the poison pill defense of Twitter’s Board shows, publicly held companies are not run in the interests of the shareholders, but in the interest of the “stakeholders.” In other words, the Board and employees come first. The shareholders would have benefitted greatly from Musk’s above market offer. The Board blocked it to preserve their own jobs, but they continue to run Twitter in suboptimal fashion. Twitter’s policy of canceling hundreds of thousands of conservative users absolutely destroys the value of advertising they could have sold with a wider audience.
It’s clear that the Twitter Board, and other Big Tech oligarchs, are doing political censorship to please themselves, or perhaps potential government regulators, not their shareholders. There’s nothing principled about the resistance to Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. It’s all politics. The calls to preserve “our democracy” through content “moderation” are Orwellian. They show the left to be the tyrrants the right told you they are. The extent of the meltdown shows that the left doesn’t believe their arguments can survive in uncensored competition with the rational right.
The Babylon Bee pointed out the greatest irony. Musk was born in South Africa. The left is discriminating against an African American businessman, based on race.
Not sure why the author describe Musk’s bid as ‘hostile’. The board hold a very small proportion of shares and the offer was nearly double the the share value when made. ‘Generous’ would have been more accurate.
‘MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, meanwhile, said the quiet part out loud. Her concern was that Musk might use Twitter “to control what people think” — and that, she said, “is our job”.’
Well, she hasn’t learned her lesson: I actually saw a video clip back in 2016 of her saying virtually the same thing, except about then Presidential candidate, Donald Trump. I fear she really believes it.
I followed the link and noticed the first comment was “do these people hear themselves?” I think the next one was also derogatory.
I don’t do Twitter, but take from that, that it isn’t completely monolithic in its opinion forming.
It’s just not MSNBC journalists. It’s almost everyone with a degree. There is a belief in the US that possessing a college degree makes you superior, both intellectually and morally, to those without one. As such those without a credential are given very little opportunity to have a say in political or cultural matters unless, like those that joined BLM, they somehow further a progressive cause.
Despite their claims of speaking truth to power, most of what progressives want is to have power over truth, which is why they are now going into paroxysms about Elon Musk’s possible takeover of Twitter.
And the irony is those very same people imagine themselves to represent and champion the cause of those they hold in contempt.
There are exceptions. I have two Master’s degrees, but identify as a redneck. At that point, commenters seem to doubt that I really have the degrees, because I’m a Republican who voted for Trump.
I’m in the same position, except I’m more British council estate than redneck. I have, however, lived in a very rural redneck part of the South for a long while and really enjoyed it. Became a US citizen a few years ago and promptly voted Trump. Will vote for DeSantis in 2024 if he throws himself into the presidency.
All true but what about not using their vocabulary when describing them.
There is nothing “progressive” about their views and politics.
You can see this clip on LibsofTikTok – it would be funny if she wasn’t serious. And stupid of course.
It appears to be the same clip and not about Musk at all. It’s a valuable and revealing clip, but for writer to say it’s talking about Musk is careless when a cursory investigation reveals it isn’t.
Yes, it does seem lazy to not recognize that the info was incorrect, and it was manipulative of the original twitter poster to incorrectly attribute it as a comment about Musk. The clip would be relevant enough if it were more clear, but every instance where the truth is obfuscated leads to less trust in each other on the whole.
I thought that was an actual recycled clip from 2016??
Great essay. The most important thing Musk has proposed is simply to publish the moderation policies and the algorithms used for automatic moderation. Possibly the most pernicious aspect of modern content moderation is its opacity. By making the policies and algorithms open, it’s possible to trust what’s being done. But of course, openness also means the loss of the power to apply arbitrary control and so will be fought tooth and nail.
Arbitrary control is the entire issue. Only moderating conservative or non-leftist information is hypocritical at best and malignant at worst.
If they really wanted you to comply, they would publish guidlines, or at least more meaningful error messages. “Your post violates our guidelines,” tells you exactly nothing about what to do to fix it. “Hitler, Nazi are prohibited words,” tells you how to fix it.
This was rather complete and insightful – thank you. I’m not sure I take the final dichotomy as a conclusive one, perhaps it comes down to what the aim of progress is. Is it the perfectability of human nature? One thing I often notice here is that, in polite circles, it’s not possible to highlight that Nazis were progressives. Despite how many progressives see Nazis as Bible thumping conservatives, Nazi leadership was a firm believer in social Darwnism and thought themselves as following “the science”. If Nazis were progressives, then where’s progress headed would be my question in the context of this article.
Quite right. I have yet to meet someone in America who can tell me what the “z” in Nazi stands for.
Okay, I give up. What does the “z” stand for?
James Volk is the best Volk 🙂
It doesn’t stand for anything. “Nazi” is a slang term for:
“Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)”
Wikipedia has it that “the first use of the term “Nazi” by the National Socialists occurred in 1926 in a publication by Joseph Goebbels called Der Nazi-Sozi [“The Nazi-Sozi”].
NAZI is an acronymfor ” nationalsozialismus”. The z in German is pronounced like the “ts” in cats. “GESTAPO” is an acronym for “geheimestaatspolizsei”.
It doesn’t stand for anything. “Nazi” is a slang term for:
“Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)”
Wikipedia has it that “the first use of the term “Nazi” by the National Socialists occurred in 1926 in a publication by Joseph Goebbels called Der Nazi-Sozi [“The Nazi-Sozi”].
Exactly. Nazis are usually painted as right wing. They were anything but. Some will say they were the rightists fighting the leftist Soviet communists. But that was really an internecine squabble between National Socialists and International Socialists.
Extreme nationalism is usually described as Right wing. Some parts of the NSDAP were more (national) socialist inclined, especially the SA under Rohm; this cannot be said of Hitler in power. You may recall what happened to the SA and the ‘Red’ Nazis in The Night of the Long Knives. Hitler knew he had to accommodate big business and the Army, which threatened to overthrow him if the SA street thugs were not controlled. Hitler was also very uninterested in economic affairs; they were entirely subordinate to his aims of domination of Eurasia.
Progressivism never stands still. To me, it just keeps moving on to the next red herring, all the while keeping people in the dark and unmoored to anything, which makes them easier to persuade.
Yup, the Nazis were a type of progressive taking the latest progressive insights related to Eugenics, as they interpreted it, to its logical conclusion.
It serves the cause of the progressives to try and lump right-wing thought in with the Nazis, but there is a whole separate tradition running back from Carlyle through Jouvenel and de Maistre and Evola. Academic Agent is your hub for this kind of thing.
Perhaps journalism was better – and more professional – when they congregated in wine bars rather than Twitter ?
Others have no doubt also noticed the explosion of basic spelling and factual/historical errors in modern journalism. The error rate was much lower in the days of lead typesetting when automated spell checking was not available …
Modern media seems to be more about quantity than quality – Phil Space (Private Eye) got there first !
I found myself re-watching Alan Partridge’s “Monkey Tennis” sketch earlier today. Many of the increasingly ludicrous program ideas he came up with were actually made later …
I suspect there are only a quite limited number of top quality journalists around at any one time (shall we call them “Harringtons” ?) and the expansion of media space to fill makes a decrease in quality and professionalism inevitable. As well as creating openings for agenda pushers to pose as journalists.
I don’t remember TV presenters and newsreaders in the 1970s ever explicitly making their personal views known or pushing some political agenda.
Final point – please can we stop using this meaningless term “progressive”. It doesn’t really mean anything and is just used to try to discredit other groups. It’s a perversion of language worthy of the the Bolsheviks.
Yes, but the same factor applies as has been observed in the comedy space: the traditional broadcasters who used to commission, fund and develop comedy shows at considerable effort suddenly found themselves in competition with kids able to make a clip in 30 seconds and get it round the world in a day.
The reason journalists rely upon Twitter isn’t just because they may be lazy or determined to discover the liberal-orthodox position on any issue as opposed to a rounded view (although they may well be those things as well): it’s also that the budgets of news outlets for old-school investigative journalism have mostly vanished in the modern age where information is almost entirely digital.
As the old saying goes, you can have something that’s good, quick, or cheap – choose any two of those, but you can’t have all three.
Partly agree.
However, there’s plenty of very high quality, well-researched stuff on YouTube which clearly has not had a lot of money thrown at it.
It also doesn’t go through a whole load of editorial moderation, which often just raises the cost and lowers the quality.
My own experience is that start-ups (I would include mnany YouTube creators here) don’t carry the overheads of large legacy organisations like the BBC and consequently their productivity can be 10x (or more) greater. You see exactly the same with tech startups – I know, I worked for one. If you want innovation and speed, go small. Forget HR, diversity and all that stuff. Just do it.
The problem is that Youtube will contain “high quality, well-researched” content that appears to prove conclusively one of either side of any controversial debate, and there is no obvious means of deciding which is correct other than being smart enough oneself to discern fact from fiction.
This is why the degradation of the BBC from its position of trust is such a tragedy, among other things.
Dear Mary, your final para suggests you’re fence sitting! Personally, I’d far prefer a single strong minded individual to hold the ring at Twitter, than a bunch of faceless and unaccountable hedge fund managers. At least then I’d know who to throw rocks at when he effs it up, if he did. And as for shareholders controlling Twitter, who are they? It turns out Saudis may already hold a larger share of Twitter stock than Musk. What control are they exercising, and why?
Yes, great editors make for great news.
Yet another wonderful article by Mary Harrington who combines fine writing with incisive analysis. But perhaps the issue is not only “individual human authority” vs. “consensus” but the perceived qualities of that individual. If Obama or other progressive noteworthy bought Twitter (with debt serviced by bestowed tribute (“book deals”)), the present howling would change to an angelic chorus. One only need to look at the “consensus” acceptance of other individual billionaires involved in media who give little concern to the NGOcracy: Zuckerberg, Gates, Bloomberg, Soros, Buffett, Bezos….. But Mary’s central point is absolutely correct. Our culture has been moving away from having somewhat accountable authority to having authoritarianism. While Musk is not without warts, he is a refreshing tonic to that drift.
I think her central point was accountability, just as it is Yarvin’s. If a monarch is in charge you know who to blame, if the cathedral is in charge where do you go?
It’s too late. The cat is out of the bag as far as information is concerned – modern experts and scribbling classes will have to live with the idea that people might do their own research, in the same way clerics had to come to terms with people who read the Bible themselves and came to their own, rather than canonical, conclusions.
Ownership of Twitter is pretty irrelevant in the scheme of things, given the tide-streams of information flowing through other media. But it’s symbolically important, as it represents the home of the media clerks who thought they owned the interpretation of the news. If Musk doesn’t buy it, it still has to change or it ends up strangled by its own moderation culture.
I hope that you are right, but I doubt it. Most of us do not do our own research.
Well, we read and comment on UnHerd, which is perhaps a start
The important part is that some people do, and more can, and so expertise has to stand on its merits, not on its authority.
I agree with you.
Whilst Pope Leo X was obsessed by censorship in 1515, further north things were far worse.
In that year Geneva managed to burn 500 witches in a mere three months.They only stopped because they ran out of fuel.
…when does the new season start do you know?
One wonders.
An interesting piece and I love the coinage NGOcracy. But I disagree with the conclusion. The trouble with Elon Musk is not that there is only one of him, it’s that he is “problematic” – i.e. a conservative.
Maybe.
“A conservative is a liberal who got mugged the night before.” – Frank Rizzo
What makes him “conservative” to The Cathedral is that he is liberal — he believes in the marketplace of ideas.
Perhaps they are afraid of Musk becoming what Bezos is to the WAPO. Can’t have that, can we?
Musk is socially liberal and fiscally conservative… exactly my roots.
Excellent article.
There is one thing I want to say though, and it’s only tangential to the theme, but still vaguely relevant. A few years ago the Daily Telegraph ran an April Fool story about how you could power your home for a whole day off a potato. They also made it especially easy to guess that it was a spoof by describing the inventive step as a Flair Loop electrode that was to be plugged into the potato.
It was one of the articles that permitted reader comments and, sadly and predictably, there were quite a few responses that appeared to take it all seriously alongside the usual climate-zealotry that often attaches to anything related to energy use.
The thing is, I’m not convinced that climate zealots are all this stupid (some, maybe, but not all or most), and I have to conclude that what was really happening here is that there are teams of people whose job it is to find articles on the web from any source and peddle the standard agitprop in response without really bothering to read the articles at all.
Elon Musk is exactly the kind of innovator who would be able to combat this ludicrous debauching of the core purpose of online debate through clever innovation that would permit people in general to identify trolling without having to be experts in the subject at hand. Personally I hope he takes these bastards to the cleaners: they are well overdue to take a serious soaking.
The purveyors of the “information” are not stupid. The consumers of the “information” are. That is the entire point.
“Vox populi, vox Dei,” the voice of the people is the voice of G_d, used to be a liberal slogan about the superiority of the people to the divine right of kings in the early 1700’s. Today, even with almost universal education, the cult of the “expert” says that the people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves. “Experts” must make decisions for them.
The cult of the “expert” is profoundly anti-democratic. It says that government by the consent of the governed is impossible, because the governed are too ignorant and stupid to give informed consent.
“Experts” are not bound by the rule of law or any Constitution, written or unwritten. As a result, rule by “experts” tends to be chaotic, because “experts” have trouble making up their minds.
Anglo-Saxon law has developed over hundreds of years to protect people from over powerful government. The cult of “experts” asks us to throw it all away, because they know better. It’s a big hoax. The “experts” just want unlimited power for themselves.
The richest man in the world is taking a stand for individual freedom and the rights of ordinary people. The left is aghast. If Musk were American born he could get elected president.
I think he’s aiming to be King of Mars, which seems all of a sudden to be quite plausible.
As an African-American, you don’t need to be President to still be King. We shall see.
Social media is really Plato’s ‘ship of fools’. Those who can manipulate the ‘swarm’ and the foolish ship owner are exalted and rise to the top – those who speak of the knowledge of storms, tides, navigation and the discipline need to run a complicated ship are all but ignored. I don’t know about anyone else but i’ve got a bad feeling about where this ship’s headed.
Something has to break the way of freedom of information, or UnHerd is going to be the only place we can go. Hopefully some major outlet will get it.
Reason magazine and website reason.com is pretty good.
It’s quite rich that progressive journalists revere the “Progressive Hierarchy” (curating and curtailing the central information exchange) that they’ve established in Twitter land. They have their assigned virtual desks and blue checks and lines of authority. And one must not question their Hierarchy – this is blasphemy of the highest order that results in one being cast into Outer Darkness as a spawn of Satan.
Goes to show you can take the progressive out of the “Patriarchal Hierarchy” but evolution dictates they’ll just make another dastardly hierarchy in its place.
Musk is suggesting that he’ll cleanse the temple grounds of the moneychangers. Maybe make the censoring and ranking algorithms visible to everyone to level the playing field. Toss out the high priests and priestesses so that they’re no longer in their safe-space hierarchy filled with self-affirmation.
With their privilege and hierarchy gone, these progressives will need to pick up their soapbox and compete in Hyde Park for followers just like any other preacher. And this scares them more than anything. They might just have to compete in a virtual world chock-full of ideas where their ideas are really quite ordinary…mediocre even.
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
― Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
“For democracy to survive,” Boot believes, “we need more content moderation, not less.”
The most revealing quote ever.
Really strikes home that the redefinition of democracy is complete. The democracy Boot dreams of has no conservative voices to compromise with. He imagines the mob to be of one opinion, his.
I like how Mary Harrington makes me think about issues a lot deeper. Thanks, it’s like training up a disused muscle — pampered by too much traditional media.
When the Arc of History doesn’t seem to be bending to the left, liberals as a group break out the crowbars.
Well said.
A simple summary for both corporate and government democracy: can owners control their agents or will the agents take increasing control? Since the big 5 index funds funds control corporate America and their fund owners have no real stake in individual company outcomes we already have the Caesars at the door.
Of course it is not forming a political consensus, it is establishing what the elites are willing to accept enabled by the journos who go on to report it. The political consensus only has one chance every five years or so to be visible as it was for the anti-votes of Brexit (didn’t want elite Brussels) and Trump (didn’t want more woke corrupt Democrats). I’m sure these “mistakes ” will not be allowed to happen next time. What will happen when the public feel powerless against a few hyper-rich, arrogant, superior, elites trying to control them ?
“Mistakes will not be allowed to happen next time.” Mistakes by who? Who “didn’t want elite Brussels”? I presume you mean those who voted for Brexit. But if so, why a mistake?
How is this any different than Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post? If Elon does what he claims — and he has always been forthright (good, bad or indifferent) — he will install a Board, management team and company policies that enable free and transparent operation of the Town Square. His PE investment partners will likely re-float the company ASAP with greater valuation, doubling demand with investors who currently feel marginalized by Twitter policies. This is not about a Caesar imposing his own will. It’s about a benevolent leader who wishes to lead society with sustainable energy, space exploration and truly Democratic, free speech.
Many people think he is on the autism spectrum – very high functioning without certain filters which makes him the forthright genius that he is. If I were younger I’d have a pitch at him.
Rather like the original Gaius Julius Caesar, it must be said.
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, meanwhile, said the quiet part out loud. Her concern was that Musk might use Twitter “to control what people think” — and that, she said, “is our job”. WOW!! That arrogant statement says it all. Well. Not quite. Add “For democracy to survive,” Boot believes, “we need more content moderation, not less.”
Well, I suppose that last evening in the Berlin nightclub was in a smoke-free one. Maybe he meant that. Are they non-smoking? I don’t think they had been in 1932 or thereabouts.
The fascinating element to Musk is at to how he has, like some latter Pied Piper of Hamlin, ” persuaded” the entire investor community and thus capital markets industry to abandon, or perhaps circumvent all financial yardsticks of valuation, debt rating, asset, and profit, metrics. Tesla is this deemed to be some way more ” valuable” than Toyota, that sells many more cars, at vast profit, has a huge cashpile, and stellar credit rating.
He has literally persuaded the world that a 50 cent coin is more ” valuable” that a $5 bill……. It is disturbing delusion….
Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay. Therefore, Tesla stock is valued at what the market is willing to pay. In all honesty, I think the price is absurd, but I also thought Google and Yahoo’s stock prices were absurd at one point. I am poorer as a result. I also think $30 trillion in debt is absurd, but we keep printing money.
Another Robert Maxwell MC, perhaps?
His businesses’ value is very-much determined in a political marketplace, which makes his interest in controlling that marketplace through Twitter all the more comprehensible.
“But if the reaction to Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter tells us one thing, it is that our emerging postmodern priesthood rejects out of hand the legitimacy of any individual earthly Caesar.”
Is it simpler? The postmodern priesthood’s ideology is subjectivist and thus essentially incoherent at its core. Its’ nihilism, clothed in identity politics, is not new. When allowed to flourish in the past it has bred chaos, violence, and death. To end the chaos a dictator has always arisen and a new power structure stabilizes.
Perhaps some want to get ahead of this recurring historical pattern via illiberal controls, aka a strong man. This also won’t work well.
I get that Mary may not know or want to say “let’s do this” but she and we will lose the right to dissent if we don’t stop the navel-gazing and start working these problems out. We can do it!
Musk has been incensed at Twitter’s efforts to define and remove any dis/mis/mal- information. We can see important information is being treated as such. Some things that were conspiracy theories suddenly become actually true. Important voices are silenced because they dared to mock certain incongruent thought of the left, mockery is the tool of the left. The new Twitter CEO seems intent on shrinking the platform which may harm it’s future.
Given Musk’s ability to innovate perhaps he can find a way to make Twitter profitable which expanding the platform. Perhaps he can find less ideologically driven fact checkers. Perhaps he wants trolls managed like they were managed in the days of Usenet newsgroups. I wish him well. A noble quest.
Better Musk than Dorsey.
When JournoList was uncovered and shut down, it just migrated to Twitter.
Big Brother would probably approve of death by algorithm.
‘So the deeper battle over Twitter isn’t about free speech at all. That ship has long since sailed. Rather, it’s a fight for control of a key crucible of political consensus-formation, between those who prefer power to be vested in named individuals, and those who prefer to be ruled by self-organising swarm.’ I disagree. There are hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of Musks, most of them quite poor like me. Far from some weird adherence to a ‘power of named individuals’, we want our democratic traditions, traditions of freedom and intellectual honesty and the rule of law, to be maintained. The ‘self-organising swarm’ of which you speak is a huge criminal conspiracy to replace nation-states and proper governments with a self-appointed cabal of know-it-alls and better-than-yous who have been tasked by the woke borg to run everything ‘for our own good’ because we’re too stupid and selfish to do it ourselves.
“The artist formerly known as democracy” now there’s a quote we all wish we had come up with.
But there is definitely a problem with equating Brexit with the election of Donald Trump.
In fact there is a problem with referenda and democracy in general.
When Trump was elected 4 years later democracy got another chance and he was voted out.
After Brexit, how long will we have to wait for democracy to get another chance?
The same problem exists with the Scottish independence campaign. 20 minutes after the result was confirmed the Scottish separatist movement was demanding another referendum because “things have changed”.
Should we have a referendum every 20 minutes? Clearly not. But clearly, also, there is a democratic deficit contained within referenda in that there is no specified time for democracy to get another chance.
Agree there is a problem with equating Brexit with Trump but my beef is that some believe they are related because they were derived from the same forces. Not so. To think otherwise, especially if you and Mary believe the Brexit outcome was not democratic, is proof of remaining to be remainders. The main thing Brexit and the election of Trump have is common is that they were both the result of democracy in action.
Democracy only works when you agree with the outcome. Otherwise, it’s undemocratic.
“After Brexit, how long will we have to wait for democracy to get another chance?”
What about circa 35 years?
That how long it took to have another referendum on EU membership.
Your views are similar to my Guardian reading acquaintances.
They believe in Democracy when they are in control.
How do you know that Trump was actually voted out, rather than being declared the loser by the process?
On every single non-ballot metric Trump was the winner, and yet he lost. Biden’s victory broke new ground in all sorts of ways, fewest counties, lowest voter registrations, smallest crowds but yay! still the biggest vote. Voter swing towards Trump amongst African-Americans and Hispanics everywhere across the country except for Democrat controlled cities in swing states.
There’s real grounds for wondering about the 2019 result, and there’s been no sort of investigation to fortify belief in the result.
A fight is on between those who would curate expressed opinions and what is and isn’t allowed to be said as the author is describing, and those (like me) who would let all free speech rip, in any direction anyone chooses, no matter what the cost, no matter how much it distresses swathes of humanity. But it is not clear to me that we lose to the neo-religionists – we are fighting this right now, there are not a few of us, and we ain’t dumb. This enclave of UnHerd is proof that we have platforms to fight this, and we have access to the same technologies and automated scaling as do the mass platforms who have in effect been forced into the role of defacto thought police, and a mightyly poor job they are making of it, because they are instinctively loathe to lose the buy-in of any potential groups of customers as of course that runs counter to making money off those people. I clarify that I’m talking about the West here, and not places like China, where technologies just make the job oppression a lot more efficient – at least for now.
But there is a more fundamental reason why attempts to control opinion formation are ultimately set to fail – it is innate to the nature of all information that it will inexorably proliferate. Although that does not of course mean those who want to create new orthodoxies and coerce others into buying into them, can’t inflict pain on the rest of us for years in the meantime.
Very good article.
Best thing you’ve written on this site. You’ve digested such a wide range of arguments and then you crystallise the issues for us in words that make sense.
Thank you.
Um, I see, so this has nothing to do with ideology and politics at all. Harrington elegantly circumvents the problem of elite power, the only thing that censorship serves. I agree this is not about “free speech”, but it is very much about politics, or, to be more precise, the fear of a Donald Trump comeback that Elon Musk’s takeover would automatically mean. They know that they can’t afford Trump mass building, which is why elite/legacy media lived so comfortably in the last two years. Musk’s hostile takeover could change all of that.
I don’t really agree with this – I think if Elon Musk was signed up to wokeness they wouldn’t have a problem with him. It’s the fact that he mightn’t carry on the current policy of banning/limiting the reach of “conservatives”/non-woke and of deeming the expression of certain ideas “hate speech” etc. that really bothers them.
On second thought, I had a more appropriate comment. The problem with twitter is that it trivializes public discourse.
The very important issues of our time . . . say, how to deal with Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, cannot be effectively analyzed in 280 characters.
Viewing twitter occasionally may be helpful for noticing which way the wind blows, but probably not so helpful for solving the real problems of several billion people inhabiting a small sphere.
For instance, consider the prospect of achieving a workable consensus about how to collectively minimize the pollutants that we constantly spew into the atmosphere. This is a project that would be more effectively governed by persons and institution who are actually gathering the data upon which our strategies are decided.
I would not trust Twitter to be helpful in achieving a working strategy to minimize planetary emissions.
Unless the tweet is: Give a hoot; don’t pollute.
Which could also be read as: buy an electric car.
So Trump and Putin are equivalent? Based on what exactly? The Steele Dossier and the Alfa Bank allegations that Durham is ready to prove that the Clinton Campaign fabricated? Two impeachments that had no evidence admissible in any federal court? Anonymous rumors that have yet to lead to a single indictment, even though the “walls are closing in” for the last 5 years? Trump ran and won, then he ran, Democrats changed a lot of election rules, contrary to state law, and supressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, and he lost. You can claim that the 2020 election, with lots of Zuckerberg’s money buying get out the vote in Democrat areas in swing states, was the most perfect election in history. Other opinions differ. But Trump left office. So what’s your problem?
I think for Christianity to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.
yes – thanks for the correction.
There is truth in that statement, but perhaps not the truth that your detractors read into it. Or perhaps that you intended.
He could be agreeing with you: All dogmatic forms of thought, including religion and progressivism, need content moderation if they are to impose themselves upon us.
Good point
Sending a human to earth to deliver your message is an extremely stupid way for any “GOD” to behave.
But pretending you have been sent by “GOD” is a very clever way for humans to behave who want to convince the rest of their people that ‘GOD’ has sent them to deliver his message and that everybody should listen to and follow them.
If we’d had content moderation a couple of millennia ago we might have saved ourselves a lot of problems.
Sure. The message of love your neighbor as yourself, and of redemption, has led to so many problems for the kings and rulers throughout history.
Actually…the change from the old Covenant to the new Covenant was from a rules-based system to a heart-based system.
Rules are no good at controlling things, you have to teach truth and put across good arguments and change people’s hearts – and not be too concerned if people do not agree with you.
And just exactly how does the heart acquire its rules? The rules by which it operates a “system”?
Thinking about that question will lead you to the reasons why we need content moderation.
A sensible article from Harrington for once. She needs to spend more time away from the anti-trannie cool aid.
NGOcracy is a new one to me and I’ll be using it.
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Although NGOs are unelected and possess nudge power on governments at least they are supposed to be experts trained in whatever particular field as opposed to politicians who know nothing apart from what their unelected advisors tell them.
The secular Cathedral is a response much like the medieval Church’s after some of the individual popes of the medieval Papacy.
Better that the Curia rule than one man, especially because one man can be taken captive.
Dostoyevsky: Better the Inquisition than the Gospels, especially if Christ should suddenly show up in town.
“experts”. Now that’s a good one. Another word is “science”. Both have completely lost their meaning in the last 2 years.
The test for success as an NGO is not actually expertise, it is something more like convenient for the regime, given how much of their funding comes from government these days, or just possibly how sympathetic the ignorant general public finds their message to be.