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The left is obsessed with suppressing anything that’s “dangerous” cause they think the lowly under-class can’t be trusted to review information and form opinion

The left is obsessed with suppressing anything that’s “dangerous” cause they think the lowly under-class can’t be trusted to review information and form opinions. If they had less authoritarian instincts, they’d realize that prohibitions generally spectacularly fail. I suspect any of the things they wanted to ban just got attention they never would have otherwise due to the Streisand effect.

joejohnson 6y ago
The left did not suppress this story, liberal media did. You’re responding to a post criticizing this suppression written by a leftist.
- akvadrako 6y ago
  In the USA liberal and left are closely related - it basically means votes Democrat.
  - joejohnson 6y ago
    This is incorrect. Just because the two party system has suppressed anything to the left of the democrats does not mean liberals are in any way “the left”; there are many leftist voices in the US (Matt Taibbi, author of the post you’re replying to and presumably read, being one of them) and they are often critical of liberals.
    - akvadrako 6y ago
      The terms are not well enough defined in common language to claim what you’re claiming. If you polled all Democratic voters, 90%+ would say they are left and liberal.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > If you polled all Democratic voters, 90%+ would say they are left and liberal. Or, in the real world, a bit fewer than half would say they are “liberal” or “very liberal”. Because that's something that's polled on quite frequently, so there is real data: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/17/liberals-make-up-largest-share-of-democratic-voters/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/17/liberals-ma... It's true that in popular, as opposed to politically sophisticated, conversation in the US, a one-dimensional spectrum where the left and right poles are liberal and conservative is popular, and it's true that partisans on both sides like to portray the opposing party as more ideologically unified and extreme on that axis than it is, so that if you polled Republicans, they'd probably come close to identifying Democrats as consistently both left and liberal.
        joejohnson 6y ago
        It would seem the commenters on this site are mostly Americans who don’t know that their two-party system only represents two flavors of pro-capitalist neoliberalism. But left and right political spectrum and the corresponding terms have meaning outside of the limited political window of centre-right US mainstream discussion.
        akvadrako 6y ago
        They don't have meaning in terms of "liberal media" vs "left media" though, at least how the poster you replied to was using the term. It doesn't do any good to introduce jargon to people who are unfamiliar with it without defining your terms.
        joejohnson 6y ago
        There is absolutely a distinction between liberal media (the NY Times, MSNBC, etc) and left media (Jacobin, Democracy Now!, Current Affairs, etc) and this distinction is made by Taibbi. Your ignorance on the subject is not shared by everyone.
        6y ago
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  Is there an issue with saying left-libertarian? Cause it's hard for me to believe that all these tech/media/etc employees aren't left, if it's reasonable to describe them as "progressive."
nextstep 6y ago
I think you’re confused about what or who “the left” is; corporate media and the liberal party in the US (the Democrats) are not leftist in anyway; a writer like Matt Taibbi is a leftist or has leftist leanings. But as is very clear from this article, there is clear disagreement between leftists and the party they are forced to vote with if they want any semblance of representation.
hackyhacky 6y ago
> If they had less authoritarian instincts, they’d realize that prohibitions generally spectacularly fail. I suspect any of the things they wanted to ban just got attention they never would have otherwise due to the Streisand effect. If that's true, why oppose censorship?
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  Because it’s a tool of authoritarians - and morally wrong? Would you say the same thing about the drug war? Just because it fails to achieve its goals, doesn’t mean I should support it. There’s destruction in its wake.

joejohnson 6y ago

The left did not suppress this story, liberal media did. You’re responding to a post criticizing this suppression written by a leftist.

akvadrako 6y ago
In the USA liberal and left are closely related - it basically means votes Democrat.
- joejohnson 6y ago
  This is incorrect. Just because the two party system has suppressed anything to the left of the democrats does not mean liberals are in any way “the left”; there are many leftist voices in the US (Matt Taibbi, author of the post you’re replying to and presumably read, being one of them) and they are often critical of liberals.
  - akvadrako 6y ago
    The terms are not well enough defined in common language to claim what you’re claiming. If you polled all Democratic voters, 90%+ would say they are left and liberal.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > If you polled all Democratic voters, 90%+ would say they are left and liberal. Or, in the real world, a bit fewer than half would say they are “liberal” or “very liberal”. Because that's something that's polled on quite frequently, so there is real data: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/17/liberals-make-up-largest-share-of-democratic-voters/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/17/liberals-ma... It's true that in popular, as opposed to politically sophisticated, conversation in the US, a one-dimensional spectrum where the left and right poles are liberal and conservative is popular, and it's true that partisans on both sides like to portray the opposing party as more ideologically unified and extreme on that axis than it is, so that if you polled Republicans, they'd probably come close to identifying Democrats as consistently both left and liberal.
      - joejohnson 6y ago
        It would seem the commenters on this site are mostly Americans who don’t know that their two-party system only represents two flavors of pro-capitalist neoliberalism. But left and right political spectrum and the corresponding terms have meaning outside of the limited political window of centre-right US mainstream discussion.
        akvadrako 6y ago
        They don't have meaning in terms of "liberal media" vs "left media" though, at least how the poster you replied to was using the term. It doesn't do any good to introduce jargon to people who are unfamiliar with it without defining your terms.
        joejohnson 6y ago
        There is absolutely a distinction between liberal media (the NY Times, MSNBC, etc) and left media (Jacobin, Democracy Now!, Current Affairs, etc) and this distinction is made by Taibbi. Your ignorance on the subject is not shared by everyone.
        6y ago
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
Is there an issue with saying left-libertarian? Cause it's hard for me to believe that all these tech/media/etc employees aren't left, if it's reasonable to describe them as "progressive."

nextstep 6y ago

I think you’re confused about what or who “the left” is; corporate media and the liberal party in the US (the Democrats) are not leftist in anyway; a writer like Matt Taibbi is a leftist or has leftist leanings. But as is very clear from this article, there is clear disagreement between leftists and the party they are forced to vote with if they want any semblance of representation.

hackyhacky 6y ago

> If they had less authoritarian instincts, they’d realize that prohibitions generally spectacularly fail. I suspect any of the things they wanted to ban just got attention they never would have otherwise due to the Streisand effect. If that's true, why oppose censorship?

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
Because it’s a tool of authoritarians - and morally wrong? Would you say the same thing about the drug war? Just because it fails to achieve its goals, doesn’t mean I should support it. There’s destruction in its wake.