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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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Honestly I don’t think you are being intellectually honest saying your fine with those people having free speech.

If the commies were in position to actually win and their numbers just went from 20 to 30% and you knew in 5 years they would succeed taking over every institution and you would suddenly being living in Mao China then you would not say you support free speech for them.

Let’s say you are Musks. You own twitter. You can hit a red button let’s call it the deplatform button. If you hit it the commies lose momentum and disappear. If you don’t hit it then you live in communists china in 5 years.

"Imagine you are richest man in Russia who (among other things) owns largest network of newspaper kiosks in St. Petersburg in April 1917. Would you stop selling Pravda if it is the only way to stop the dastardly commies?"

This is hypothetical scenario unconnected to real life.

1/Nowhere in history communists won due to "free speech" , nowhere communists won by convincing majority on free marketplace of ideas that communism is the best thing since sliced bread. Countries where communists prevailed were countries that practiced heavy censorship (at the time), it did not helped.

Closest example is possibly Czechoslovakia after WW2, but it was heavily managed "democracy" with only four political parties(and their newspapers) alloved and all criticism of Soviet Union treated as fascist treason.

2/ In situation where communists are in such ascendancy and ready to take power, they now have their political party, trade unions, organizations of all kind (including well armed militias) and their own newspapers, radio, TV stations and, in modern conditions, their equivalent of Twitter.

Speech = win battle of ideology = win power = enforce their ideology on you

Does Elon have any comprehensible "ideology"? He is against long list of things (that changes every week), but what exactly is he for? What he wants the world look like?

I think his core is what I’ve heard to as Victorian ideology. Striving to still do great things. I think he probably has a great deal of HBD realism probably even magnified by his experience in S Africa and it now being a failing state.