5 ms·
I think it’s fascinating that so many Internet users really think “activists” are the true threat to freedom, when in reality activists have had relatively litt
by matthewdgreen 4y ago
I think it’s fascinating that so many Internet users really think “activists” are the true threat to freedom, when in reality activists have had relatively little influence outside of the Internets. What would actually happen is that someone would use this to enshrine their own political power, targeting the political opposition. They would pass laws to target vulnerable racial minority groups and gay people, perhaps even prohibiting teachers from teaching children about them, most likely using threats to “children and family” and “grooming and pedophilia” as their boogie man. This is what’s happened in Russia and several increasingly authoritarian nations, absolutely zero of which are run by irate Twitterati who care about “problematic speech” in the sense that I suspect HN readers understand the term. The surveillance aspects are also happening in western nations, and it’s rarely activists pushing these narratives.
I bring this up because somehow people act like oppressive government is some kind of science-fiction future that (conveniently) will be brought about by people they disagree with, despite the fact that those people don’t have much of a track record of achieving it. Meanwhile oppressive governments exist today and almost always follow a well-trodden path that we can study and avoid, if we stopped fantasizing about imaginary threats.
- krona 4y agoOP is imagining a far more likely Brave New World where the majority of society demands totalitarian obedience through coercive control, because its good for you and the stability and safety of society.
- car_analogy 4y agoYou don't think the people that drove the October and Cultural revolutions could be termed 'activists'? And it is folly to believe that because things developed a certain way in, say, Russia, they will develop the same where circumstances differ. For example, despite your dismissal of activists' influence, Scotland criminalized expressions of 'hate', even within private homes [1,2], and there are innumerable anti-discrimination laws in the US, that arguably conflict with the constitution's free association provision. Couple a law such as the Scottish hate crime bill with panopticon surveillance, and the results are chilling. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56364821 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56364... [2] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hate-crime-bill-hate-talk-in-homes-must-be-prosecuted-6bcthrjdc https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hate-crime-bill-hate-talk...
- the_only_law 4y agoActivist gives the vision of someone mostly working within a system to change it even if they have more radical sympathies. I’d just consider the aforementioned events done by “revolutionaries”.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoI think by the time you get to Lenin and (shudder) Stalin, you have reached something qualitatively different from what HN posters today think of as "activists". The Bolsheviks were not "intellectual activists gone wild." Rather they were the opportunists who took over in the place of activists only after a traditionalist regime had killed or imprisoned the less-effective intellectual activists, many of whom were analogous to the sort you see online today. And although the rhetoric of a Stalinist regime appears left wing, its actions follow pretty much the same playbook as every modern authoritarian regime: persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, policing democratic dissent, railing about external threats as a means to suppress internal political opposition, etc.
- vorpalhex 4y agoNo true Scotsman would ever persecute a minority or crack down on dissent!
- matthewdgreen 4y agoI think there is also a danger in saying "that man has a thick brogue, and therefore I suspect that they will engage in genocide like Angus McMillan." It's better to look at the patterns of behavior that lead to people (and groups) engaging in terrible behavior. Despite the panic I see on HN, I see are relatively few examples of people springing from "liberal speech policing [like e.g., what we see today on Reddit and Twitter]" to authoritarian rule, without lots of important intervening steps. Yet there are lots of real authoritarian governments in the world today whose path can be studied, in case you want to look for more real-world evidence of how the process typically happens.
- 4y ago