Big Tech's speech war not movie
Big Tech censorship of conservatives and the battle for free speech raise timeless issues. Struggles against tyranny and warnings that appeasement offers only illusory resolution can be found in world history, yes. But also in popular culture.
To illustrate, I've made slight amendments to these words from Roger Corman's 1958 War of the Satellites.
A U.N. aide reads a message sent to the body: "We the Big Tech Masters have been observing your actions. We look with disfavor upon your persistent efforts to speak freely and infect other users of social media, including potential voters. We have therefore set up deplatforming measures to ensure that this ideological contamination shall not be allowed to spread. We shall frustrate your every attempt at conversation in the future, as we have those in the past...All such efforts to communicate unfavorable ideas shall from this moment be stopped."
A U.S. delegate responds. "Mr. President, honorable delegates to the General Assembly: I speak for all men, everywhere, when I say that Big Tech is wrong. That conservatives cannot be dismissed as a disease, or a growth that infects public conversation. Our hopes, our aspirations lead us to communicate and network. And no other ideology has the right to deny us that journey."
These next words assume particular relevance, given the loud applause of Big Tech censorship by some mainstream conservatives. Their ill-considered reasoning seems to be so long as they aren't 'extreme,' no jackboot shall befall them.
But by encouraging the clampdown, they're helping set a precedent. And ensuring that their day will eventually come.
"Gentlemen, you do not survive by abject surrender," another U.S. representative insists, in a later dramatic moment. "If we give in now, moderate our utterances, give Big Tech full control over our lives and actions for mere survival, won't they decide to take even that away from us? ...They consider us a danger to them."
Make no mistake. When Big Tech exploits its world-impacting power to unperson speakers, destroy livelihoods, and brand political ideas as dangerous and forbidden, survival is most certainly the issue.
And we can't get up and walk out.
To illustrate, I've made slight amendments to these words from Roger Corman's 1958 War of the Satellites.
A U.N. aide reads a message sent to the body: "We the Big Tech Masters have been observing your actions. We look with disfavor upon your persistent efforts to speak freely and infect other users of social media, including potential voters. We have therefore set up deplatforming measures to ensure that this ideological contamination shall not be allowed to spread. We shall frustrate your every attempt at conversation in the future, as we have those in the past...All such efforts to communicate unfavorable ideas shall from this moment be stopped."
A U.S. delegate responds. "Mr. President, honorable delegates to the General Assembly: I speak for all men, everywhere, when I say that Big Tech is wrong. That conservatives cannot be dismissed as a disease, or a growth that infects public conversation. Our hopes, our aspirations lead us to communicate and network. And no other ideology has the right to deny us that journey."
These next words assume particular relevance, given the loud applause of Big Tech censorship by some mainstream conservatives. Their ill-considered reasoning seems to be so long as they aren't 'extreme,' no jackboot shall befall them.
But by encouraging the clampdown, they're helping set a precedent. And ensuring that their day will eventually come.
"Gentlemen, you do not survive by abject surrender," another U.S. representative insists, in a later dramatic moment. "If we give in now, moderate our utterances, give Big Tech full control over our lives and actions for mere survival, won't they decide to take even that away from us? ...They consider us a danger to them."
Make no mistake. When Big Tech exploits its world-impacting power to unperson speakers, destroy livelihoods, and brand political ideas as dangerous and forbidden, survival is most certainly the issue.
And we can't get up and walk out.
posted by DC Larson at
May 06, 2019
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