Leftist U.S. politics (and maybe leftist politics elsewhere) has for at least the past 100 years been hyper-partisan and abused every method to silence dissent. Even the classic leftist whataboutism to distract from leftist censorship, McCarthyism, is itself some of the best evidence of leftist censorship. Senator McCarthy headed investigations into state department officials to find soviet spies and communist sympathizers. He listed names of officials for whom there was reasonable suspicion of being a soviet spy or communist sympathizer and recommended the state department to investigate. The large majority of suspected officials he forwarded to the state department were fired. McCarthy was then consistently slandered in the senate and in the news media with provable lies until he was unable to even perform his senatorial duties.
No leftist will actually argue the historical accuracy of the prevailing McCarthy myth, rather they do nothing but assert that McCarthy never discovered any communists and that even if he did he was somehow wrong to do so.
The main difference in modern times is that a much larger portion of the populace has the power to successfully use the tactics of slandering and canceling their enemies. There are more journalists than ever before, many more people with the ability to publish slander in the public sphere. And because of this the rate of canceling has gone up.
The left and it’s relation with proper epistemics hasn’t changed, the only thing that’s changed is the amount of people with the ability to use their poor epistemics to harm others.
Leftist U.S. politics (and maybe leftist politics elsewhere) has for at least the past 100 years been hyper-partisan and abused every method to silence dissent. Even the classic leftist whataboutism to distract from leftist censorship, McCarthyism, is itself some of the best evidence of leftist censorship. Senator McCarthy headed investigations into state department officials to find soviet spies and communist sympathizers. He listed names of officials for whom there was reasonable suspicion of being a soviet spy or communist sympathizer and recommended the state department to investigate. The large majority of suspected officials he forwarded to the state department were fired. McCarthy was then consistently slandered in the senate and in the news media with provable lies until he was unable to even perform his senatorial duties.
No leftist will actually argue the historical accuracy of the prevailing McCarthy myth, rather they do nothing but assert that McCarthy never discovered any communists and that even if he did he was somehow wrong to do so.
The main difference in modern times is that a much larger portion of the populace has the power to successfully use the tactics of slandering and canceling their enemies. There are more journalists than ever before, many more people with the ability to publish slander in the public sphere. And because of this the rate of canceling has gone up.
The left and it’s relation with proper epistemics hasn’t changed, the only thing that’s changed is the amount of people with the ability to use their poor epistemics to harm others.