Recently I found myself apparently guilty of 'hate speech' in one of my own administered Facebook Groups (as if its members were not all known to me and sophisticated adults). It was, of course, nothing of the kind (see below). I have had similar experiences with the comments allowed (or rather not allowed) on The Guardian and Financial Times. Others have had similar experiences here on Blogger. In my most recent case, this was expressed as a threat to the very existence of the Group. Nothing happened of course, the 'offending' item simply disappeared, murdered by either an algorithm or some young under-paid dim-wit in some back office but the threat got me thinking about the 'chilling effect' on freedom of speech from such implied threats.
Perhaps the 'West' may not be a patriarchal authoritarian 'tyranny' like China or Russia (at least as they are seen in our popular mythology) but is instead becoming a manipulative matriarchal variant. Perhaps it is deviously in the process of becoming more totalitarian by stealth than its 'evil' (apparently) rivals. Instead of having clear rules with clear punishments (which I can deal with) we have the mauvaise foi of desperate attempts to tell us we are all free (which is only a half truth at the best of times) and then exert social control through hints and passive aggression, weak threats and subtle pressures to effect behaviour change. In psychological terms we have the worst of the traditionalist masculine in one bloc replaced by the worst of the traditionalist feminine in the the other.
Our authorities seem to be too weak to control us directly. They do it through pressure exerted through corporate mummies and institutional set-ups. Daddy is a coward so Mummy has to be brought in to exert discipline over the kids (that's us, folks!). Like good little children in a conservative household, we are shamed into compliance or made guilty after the fact or (if we are to have any fun or freedom or learning experience) we have to become devious law and rule breakers hoping to get away with a bit of naughtiness and not get caught. It is not only our behaviour and language that is controlled in this way within a rather weird liberal/progressive pseudo-theocracy but increasingly our thoughts (something the 'tyrannies' actually do not tend to tamper with).
We have to be right thinkers in order to ensure right speech and right behaviour because Daddy (the State) is too weak and cowardly to wield the whip and impose good behaviour let alone good speech on us. In the eyes of our political culture we are not adults but children who have to be frightened, cajoled, rewarded and lied to in order to ensure that we do not go wild and ask all the questions that developing children should be asking about authority and our environment. Our punishments are generally light - exile, isolation, exclusion - rather than the Gulag. Everybody just takes it on the chin not realising that they are frogs slowly being boiled on the hob. The Western State is the ultimate bad parent no less than the Eastern tyranny - in our case, the absent father who relies on the corporate mother to bring up the children.
In fact, there was probably no immediate danger to the Facebook Group in question although I am
sure there are people (including the usual suspects in the psy-ops fraternity) who would love to close the Group down. What was happening was a 'warning' designed to weaken the force of inconvenient debate and to confirm that our freedom existed on sufferance and not by right. The Group in question consistently challenges the given narratives about events in the bloodlands to
the East whose mismanagement threatens us all with nuclear immolation. In fact, much of that debate has, in any case, shifted to Telegram which, of course, Keir Starmer wants to close down as a 'progressive' (God help us!). Perhaps he thinks Number Ten is a walk in if only he can appear more conservative and authoritarian than the failed and confused Conservatives. Depressingly, he may be right. Most voters seem terrified of real freedom.
Perhaps
I should suggest caution in particular uses of emotional but still non-harmful language and let the
algorithms train us like a dog owner trains its hound but I am disinclined to give way. If my Group members are courageous enough to defy the imposed narratives about (say) the 'War' as other Groups' members in my territory are courageous enough to defy given narratives about politicised science and art, diversity and even equality or gender and identity, because they think for themselves in reasoned and intelligent ways, then I am 'd----d' if I am going to act like Mummy's proxy. I would rather kill off the Groups entirely when that day comes, stick to Telegram until they destroy that too, cultivate my garden and wait for the whole system to implode as all sclerotic cultures eventually do. I am old enough not to care over much if Western civilisation collapses under the weight of its own malice and ineptitude.
As I say, there was
no hate in the relevant comment. It simply made the point that I opposed
conscription by any Government under all but the most extreme circumstances and
possibly not then. I made it clear that I would be personally protective of
anyone evading conscription if at all possible no matter which country they
came from. Facebook may simply have taken exception to a standard and rather mild British expletive (never forget that Facebook comes out of an American psychological and cultural
bubble) which was directed at State entities and certainly not at individuals
or identity groups. It was a mild expletive found elsewhere on Facebook without effect so perhaps suspicions should be roused about another agenda. To be fair, the algorithms do not seem to be very bright (although in saying that perhaps that I am demonstrating hate speech towards algorithms!). AI is unlikely to improve things since the people who are programming AI are the people trying to control our mental mapping.
Be aware that all the big social media sites except perhaps Truth Social and Twitter (and this last is looking uncertain after the latest CEO appointment) are running scared at the moment as the European Union and the British Government are intending or undertaking major legislative campaigns to 'control' what information we can have access to. This is not such a problem in the US with its First Amendment although those freedoms are also under constant lawfare pressure from 'liberals' and the Federal State. There is a tinge of Emergency Powers legislation lurking in the anterooms of some of these campaigns since we seem to be positioned in a 'phoney war' situation that could turn into a shooting war at any instance without any of us having much of a say in the matter any more than we did in 1914 or 1939.
Elites know that there is substantial doubt about where we are heading and a lot of resistance to the narrative that they wish to promote. The mainstream media, of course, are broadly on side with that narrative as they were on, say, Vietnam for the bulk of that war. This time around, social media provides an alternative narrative that almost certainly reflects social reality - society in general is quite simply more indifferent to claims about Ukraine and Russia than people like Ben Wallace and Tom Tugendhat would like. There are larger oppositional minorities at this stage in the context between our empires than at the equivalent stage of (say) the Vietnam imbroglio.
The evident fear in the
system is that populations could switch from a large majority for the elite
narrative to a large majority against it (which is exactly what happened in the Vietnam War in the US) and so destabilise a system
that was put in position in stages over some seventy years to benefit large-scale capital and a self-reinforcing political caste and which is now failing
abysmally in terms of both cultural governance and economic stability. Controlling social media and encrypted communications like Whats App, Telegram and Signal are becoming of vital importance to established political elites as Starmer's outburst in the Commons has indicated.
That switch in sentiment in the Vietnam War, in a country where free speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment, took place in barely nine months and changed history without benefit of social media so we can see why they are rattled in the White House, Brussels and Whitehall. The existing system in the UK and Europe has a great deal at stake in using any weapon at its disposal to ensure that it does not lose control of power or policy, citing in an exaggerated way both disinformation and particular and real but still often marginal forms of abuse as excuses for increased social control of the free social media.
Instead of Daddy moving on on the abuses directly (after all, it is a bit rich for the British State to claim moral guardianship after its sustained failure to deal with care home child abuse or widespread fraud), the legal framework is created to frighten Mummy into doing the job for it. Major platforms have
to be complicit in this because they are businesses and not public services.
The legislative and regulatory power of existing elites is sufficient to
seriously affect their profitability and a recession may well be on the way. They have no option in the game of survival.
Certainly, as Mick Lynch pointed out today, the working population and even the lower middle classes are getting much poorer even as the asset rich get richer and while large corporations make ever-increasing profits on high inflation and war booty. Algorithms too are just defensive blunt instruments that can be designed to be 'conservative' (in fact, 'conservatism' is the cultural liberal agenda and the 'progressive' business-friendly politics that got us into the mess we are in in the first place) and defensive of corporate interests.
In short, you cannot take your freedom of expression for granted nor your ownership of your invested information on social platforms nor that arbitrary power will not be exercised to exclude you from a platform if you cannot behave along prescribed lines. If I get censored again (I do not intend to be deliberately provocative but I will never hide my honest opinon reasonably expressed), then you know it is political.
