Wow. People are whining about 1984 because the Carrot Caligula got kicked off twitter.

Here's something I learned both 1) in high school civics, 2) college constitutional law class, 3) lifetime of being on the internet since before social media:

READ THE TERMS OF SERVICE.
1/

You will see two things:
1) that your social medium of choice is A BUSINESS, OWNED PRIVATELY. No, public trading doesn't make it publicly owned.
2) that said business has the right to DENY SERVICE TO ANYONE.

Which is legalese for "play nicely and we won't boot your ass"

2/
The First Amendment only protects you from the government censorship.

NOWHERE DOES IT PROTECT YOU FROM CONSEQUENCES ON A PRIVATELY OWNED PLATFORM.

Moreover, incitement of violence has never been protected speech.
3/
The "fire in a crowded theater" is court precedent.

So your so-called "rights" have never been absolute.

The other thing that everyone seems to forget:

NOBODY IS REQUIRED TO LISTEN TO YOUR SHIT.
You can't force people to be your audience.

4/
They can deplatform you. Fire you. Walk out on you. Cancel your contract.

This is protected in the 9th Amendment, which states that no one person's rights shall be used to infringe upon another person's rights.

So when you lose your account, your contract, etc...

5/
... these are direct consequences of your actions that have nothing to do with "the gubmint" or 1984, or anything.

It's just that nobody wants your ass.
And nobody is obligated to listen to your bullshit.
And this is people telling you to shut the fuck up already.

6/
And the right of @facebook, @twitter, etc to do this is outlined in their terms of service.

But hey. Don't even go that far. Anyone who was ever on LiveJournal, or on AOL, or on a topic forum in the early 2000s, knows all this already.

7/
Fact: nobody actually wants, likes, or gives a fuck about the Fanta Fascist or his legion.

It's just that the world is finally showing these assholes the door.

And all this whining is simply out of this being the very first time they had to deal with real consequences.

8/
What's that they used to say to us? "Snowflakes need a safe space".

Well, let them go to Parler. They're so fragile they need their own safe space because heaven forbid they are held accountable for their shit once in their drab little lives.
@threadreaderapp unroll

More from History

You May Also Like

I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x