26 Comments

This is good article to test the faith of those who express concern about modern-day censorship. I agree that Katbi-Smith should be able to express her views freely and that BDS should not have its freedom of speech restricted because of the content of its message. I have to swallow hard to get that pill down, but that's what it is and must be if freedom is to mean anything at all.

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A couple years ago, I was invited to join a socialist group here in Portland. I don't remember which one it was but it probably wasn't DSA because it looked like the numbers were too small.

I started by going to the FB page and scrolling down the events list. On the list was a Jordan Peterson talk and the description included things like "Let's try and get this shut down, we don't want him here." I NOPE'd right out of there. I'm not down with censorship, whichever way it's practiced.

My point with all this is: While I appreciate you profiling people like her and letting them speak for themselves, I would just be shocked at this point if she didn't have her own pro-censorship events that were either organized, promoted, or attended by her. Ditto for doxxing and all the other stuff she was complaining about.

I'm really sick of this game and I don't respect any of the players. The problem is that the Right can do it and get away with it easier because their people have a traditional history of censoring certain things (usually media b.s. moral panicking). The Left can NOT participate in this game and survive because Free Speech is our fundamental principle (and the best one). We're destroying ourselves.

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I'm glad that it's not only conservatives who are being targeted. Maybe some on the left will realize that this censorship of uncomfortable views is wrong. (Doubtful.)

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I enjoy these articles a lot! And I'm not trying to be snarky but I find it so interesting that "destruction of property is not violence" yet most of the far left will constantly assert that "words are violence."

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I'm a third of the way through, and 'destruction of private property is not violence' and then there's an 'invasion of privacy' lawsuit.

The "it's ok when we do it!!" defense is getting ridiculous, and I'll continue reading, but it's difficult to take this person seriously.

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It's funny that only people on the left feel they have dominion over who’s speech can be defined as hate speech. Wouldn't it apply equally to anyone that is targeted by hurtful words, like right wing, or white supremacist, fascists, etc...when they personally aren't a part of any of those groups?

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I have a lot of sympathy for Olivia Katbi-Smith's economic grievances and I oppose censorship in all its forms. But I find it sad to see language itself dumbed-down into "right" versus "left", "socialist" versus "capitalist", Proud Boys/Antifa etc. etc. boxes and all the reductive stupidity that comes with them.

Language is a tool. It needs to be clear, precise, illuminating, inspiring, meaningful and communicative. These labels don't do that. They distort and falsify, they obscure the legitimate human grievances these systems of reality paradoxically all share. Nearly every person wants a good life, parties, friends, prosperity, a good job, etc. How to get there is the debate of the ages.

Mathematics needed the idea of zero, of the differential (dx) and the idea of the square root of negative 1 to reach it's current expressive meaning. Those three ideas -- along with the Pythagorean theorem -- kicked doors of perception wide open and put a floodlight on nature's secrets.

There won't be similar progress in political economy unless words have more clarity. Censorship obstructs the evolution of language and the nearly alchemical process by which words evolve and gain meaning through human creativity and contemplation.

That's a bad thing to obstruct -- for all the supposed temporary gains it's two steps forward and three steps back.

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Thanks for this piece. As I've tried to explain to mainstream liberals, views from the more extreme or activist poles of both sides of our political equation are being removed from corporate platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Every time I hear a friend say that any reference from QAnon should be removed from view, I have to remind them that those moves always take down people like Olivia Katbi-Smith at the same time.

There are, however, a couple of ironies at play here:

1. I would be willing to wager that Katbi-Smith has been at the forefront of trying to self-righteously de-platform speakers, or have people banned from the same platforms she's having troubles with, doxxing perceived enemies, and engaging in, or possibly even starting, street violence with those she sees as her ideological foes. I'd bet very good money that, if you could have a look at her private message or email history, she's been engaging strongly in the behavior she's claiming to be a victim of here.

2. I think these young people who have mainly taken over formerly left spaces aren't even on the "left" anymore, and are as reactionary and forcefully authoritarian as the "far right" weirdos they've been engaging with daily. The DSA, and other organizations that meant something before 2016, have been taken over by twenty-somethings from big name schools who have taken to screaming about the word "guys" at a huge public event, or telling an old-school Marxist like Adolph Reed that his views are too class-based for the Black Live Matter era, and asking him to "debate" some snot-nosed yuppie kid during a previously scheduled Zoom lecture. Adolph Reed, being a black man who grew up in the Jim Crow south, as well as a long-term leftist voice teaching at the Ivy League level didn't seem to give any pause the newly minted "socialist" poseurs at the DSA.

I was among many who was very hopeful of the 2016 Sanders movement, but the youth movement that came up in his wake are working in very opposition of his goals. We've entered the era when the ACLU celebrates the banning of a book. If anyone here hasn't read Shant Mesrobian's piece on the failures of the new activist left, it's absolutely essential:

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/12/the-lefts-culture-war-rebranding/

My big worry about all of this is that we're going to soon see the internet become closed to everyone besides large corporations. They'll establish an FCC-like committee (maybe the FCC itself!) to "guarantee a community voice" to everyone, while in actuality, making the hurdles too high for anyone besides the mega-rich to play. We're seeing it play out before our very eyes. I'm sure if one asked Katbi-Smith if she felt that all mentions of the Proud Boys should be 100% scrubbed from the internet, she'd answer in the affirmative. We're seeing this battle play out in congress right now, where the two sides both want to censor the internet, but they just can't decide who gets to do the censoring!

If we're going to have free speech and free expression, we have to have it for everyone. Yes, everyone, including Katbi-Smith, but also her most hated enemies. (Someone should explain this to the "new look" ACLU.)

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There is never an excuse to have a black ops security detail unless you are a militant whether from the left or right. Same disgusting people.

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OK-S states that criticism of Israel is considered anti-semitic by IHRA but the link says just the opposite: "Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic."

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Excellent article Matt. Thanks for doing what you do. I appreciate this article because you allowed those often marginalized and smeared to tell their truth.

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Some of the arguments by Katbi-Smith and some previous comments are based on a ridiculously stupid "leftoid" conceit, that the brutality against the palestinians is zionist, and those who oppose it are anti-zionists.

That is quite wrong: it is quite reasonable to agree that whatever happened in the past the state of Israel should continue to operate, instead of being dissolved, and at the same time recognize that the politcs of the Likud governing party are of far-right brutality and that has nothing to do with zionism.

Jeremy Corbyn himself for example has been a hardcore zionist for decades, and at the same time opposed to the far-right politics of Likud.

It is indeed the far-right extremists of Likud who are keen to create a confusion between zionism, as the existence of the state of Israel is widely supported, and the far-right politics of Likud, which are much less popular.

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