18A033 They're Desperate by Jim Davies, 8/14/2018    

Whatever you like calling them - Statists, Archists or (like Kent McManigal, who's fond of syllables) Archators, they are running out of defenses. For now they still have their guns and badges and courts and prisons and newspapers and FCC-licensed radio and TV, of course, but they're real short of decent arguments. In the battle of ideas, they're in full rout.

I began drafting this edition of the ZGBlog prior to August 6th, the date on which, by an amazing coincidence, five large social-media corporations - Apple, Facebook, Google/Youtube, Twitter and Spotify - simultaneously announced they were banning certain writers with whose views they disagreed; who violated "community standards" in their opinions. That's NewSpeak for "majority views" or "Political Correctness", and means that on those media, only those views will appear that are consistent with what the flock is bleating.

Proof positive of this bias came from Twitter member Candace Owens. She re-tweeted some rabidly racist posts by the NY Times bigot Sarah Jeong, changing only "white" to "black" or "Jewish." Jeong had been given a free pass for her rants; Owens was promptly suspended for 12 hours. Story here.

In 1933 the new Nazi government in Germany ordered that all newspapers must promote Aryan beliefs, and bullied any that did not until they sold out on the brink of bankruptcy. The current desperate crackdown is a sure sign that they cannot counter the unorthodox opinions being offered. Patriotism may be the last refuge of scoundrels, but censorship is the last refuge of those devoid of rational argument.

Perhaps in the coming weeks evidence will appear that the sudden move was triggered by the FedGov, but I've not seen any yet; obviously there was collusion and deliberation, because all five took action the same day, but so far I can't assume they acted under orders. Like newspapers before them, they went with the flow; PC is what most people want to see, so PC shall be what they get. It could very well have been simply a marketing decision, and while we deplore the majority viewpoint, the job of changing it is ours, not theirs. They are just enterprises, acting in the hope of maximizing profits.

It does seem very curious to me that they would judge their profits to be maximized by deliberately aggravating a large minority of their customers. Possibly, factors affected that judgement to which we are not privy; juicy government benefits of some kind, for example. But that judgment is clearly theirs, and if they are wrong it spells opportunity for new rivals to enter the market and take advantage.

That majority viewpoint has been cultivated carefully over a very long period. Columnist Walter Williams wrote a fine piece about the evil that colleges do to foster PC, and the whole "educational" monopoly is striving to promote archism in any or all of its forms. We know this; it should come as no surprise. How is it to be countered?

It is being countered, by a range of good or somewhat good think-tanks and media ventures, such as the Voluntaryist, FEE, the Independent Institute, CATO, the Mises and Molinari Institutes, and several others. They all help. They're a bit outgunned; all the huge, stolen resources of the State are massed against us. Is there a Libertarian "Facebook"? Would it help if there were? - perhaps. Libertarian geeks, with what can you come up?

Regular ZGBloggers will know there is one way that certainly will work, as rapidly as individual freedom seekers choose to use it: The On Line Freedom Academy. It is not vulnerable to hostile action, because it is wholly decentralized; one of the first things a student does is to download the whole interactive course to his own computer - and when finished, he can give a CD of it to each friend he introduces to take it after him. The site (TOLFA.us) may eventually be taken down, rather like Infowars etc were banned from Big Tech on August 6th, but it won't matter - it will then be wholly Off Line, but the acronym will not change. Millions of copies of the course will already be out there in students' hands. My Transition to Liberty imagines what government might try to do so as to suppress it, but I can see no trick likely to succeed.