Liberals have found an interesting rationalization that allows reconciling support for free speech with the need to censor ideas outside that threaten liberal ideology.

The trick is to claim that the total sum of valid ideas falls within the liberal ideology. All the ideas that are contrary are therefore fundamentally invalid, and thus can be treated simply as noise.

This is why liberals love the fake news and disinformation narrative so much. In their mind, they’re not censoring valid ideas that are contrary to their own ideology, but are rather fighting against noise that has no fundamental value. Since these aren’t valid ideas to begin with, liberals don’t see censoring them as a form of censorship.

  • Water Bowl Slime@lemmygrad.ml
    64·
    2 years ago

    I think there’s also the fact that a lot of things can be understood as “censorship” even when we don’t normally call it that. Moderating, blocking, filtering, defederating, etc.

    Libs are so used to calling all the bad parts of liberalism by a different name that they really believe they’re not [doing the thing] while [doing the thing]. Like how they’re not concentration camps, they’re “immigration overflow facilities.” And they don’t sell weapons, they “provide lethal aid.” And they definitely don’t impoverish millions of people in order to incite war, no they uh “apply targeted sanctions” or something.

    They probably, genuinely, don’t see the contradiction in advocating for free speech while banning stuff instinctively. They categorically don’t see it that way, because they’re the ones doing it.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
      471·
      2 years ago

      On a related note, I’ve also noticed that we basically have a Darwinian competition between different world models. Different groups of people subscribe to a particular explanation of how the world works, and that becomes their ideology. Some people go through this process consciously, but vast majority just internalize the world view from people around them as they grow up.

      What’s interesting is that once somebody settles on a particular world view then it’s natural for them to reject conflicting views since there’s no way to prove whether one view or the other is correct in most cases. And I tend to think of this in terms of thermodynamics where people have complex graphs of ideas in their heads, and when any particular idea is challenged then the whole set of ideas associated with it has to be reworked as well. It’s easier to simply discard conflicting ideas than to go through the process of rethinking a bunch of things you’ve internalized over many years. This is why it’s typically very hard to change people’s ideas no matter how good your argument is. The cost of integrating this new information is just too high to bother in most cases.

      What typically causes people to go through this process is when they start seeing the drift between their world model and the material reality they experience. When mainstream liberals start experiencing a continued decline in their material conditions then it becomes difficult to continue believing that everything is getting better and that they’re living their best lives under the most enlightened system possible.

      Hence why a lot of people started questioning things after 2008 crash, and as economic disasters continue, we see more and more people falling out of the liberal mainstream. Unfortunately, as you rightly point out, many of these people end up on the right because the right ideology is very close to liberal ideology, so it’s much easier for people to internalize those ideas.

    • Sickos [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.netEnglish
      14·
      2 years ago

      Excellent analysis. My partner started out extremely liberal but by wedging a crowbar into their cognitive dissonance every time liberalism conflicted with reality in their life I’ve managed to drag them leftward.

    • Catradora-Stalinism☭@lemmygrad.mlM
      7·
      2 years ago

      This is great I love this. It also shows why the western left has such vast issues, because most of them carry over pieces of that framework into whatever other ideology they choose. The framework still exists, they’ve just moved the furniture.

  • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
    26·
    2 years ago

    I dig it. This explains how liberals can disengage from reasonable arguments by the left while pretending to have internal consistency.

    Also, I agree. This comment was good enough to be its own post.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    15·
    2 years ago

    Liberals believe any sane person will reach the conclusions of liberal ideology if given the correct information. They view all of their political opponents as either confused idiots or cynical liars seeking only power. They cannot rationalize someone opposed to liberalism for valid reasons, even if those people have been colonized, forced into poverty, or denied basic rights because of the consequences of a liberal market economy.

  • Catradora-Stalinism☭@lemmygrad.mlM
    10·
    2 years ago

    Liberalism is the ultimate slow death, the false critical thinking. They’re political sleeper cells that turn into the “authoritarians” they claim to hate whenever something challenges the worldview. They assume anything they say is fact, since other liberals are saying it. They believe the state and government on 90% of everything until someone from the news or government says not to. Its the ideology of a braindead follower.