The left loses it
The left loses it
On the establishment uprising against Twitter under new ownership, the selective politicization of disinformation, and the Canadians who are in a rush to import another artificial U.S. culture war.
This has all been amusing, has it not?
The billionaire green-tech evangelist and free speech absolutist — who also happens to be bright enough to send things into orbit — finally staked his claim to the internet’s public square and all of that otherworldly mess that comes with it.
The reaction, of course, has been predictable along ideological lines. To the increasingly-censorious establishment left (you’re free to insert your own inverted commas around “left”), and those who benefit from their new form of orthodoxy, the enemy is no longer at the gates, he’s on his way down to the dungeons with the master key.
Not only can he let slip the sh*tposting dogs of war (and even the greatest internet troll of them all, the 45th President of the United States), but suddenly, Musk even has the power to read collusive DMs.
On the middle, the right, and in the shrouded forests of libertarian Twitter, or beyond those haunted woods to the far fringes of rocky shores, where the gonzo humour gets particularly bizarre and often worthy of consideration on the spectrum, the popcorn has been popped, and the howls of laughter are so profound that they can likely be heard even from space, where the lonely bells and whistles inside an AI-manned SpaceX rocket prepare for that carefully-choreographed reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, and, unbelievably and eventually, that parallel parking job on the launch pad.
As a far more entertaining place to spend time, I often find myself in those Tolkien-esque misty mountains and haunted woods to join in on a bit of the laughter at the expense of those who forgot how to take a joke long ago. Spend one minute on your average Resistance Twitter account, say, a Brooklyn Dad Defiant, and if the weaponized midwittery doesn’t get you down, the self-seriousness will.
Everything is always the end of the world; every Republican comment the makings of a coup; every bump in the night a chance to pledge fealty to the Stacey Abrams of the world.
When they’re not taking every opportunity to dunk on Sean Hannity (which is extremely easy), they’re casting Democrat-critical journalists as Russian assets (which is extremely lazy).
Only now, those paid and unpaid political assets have something to actually worry about for the first time since they attempted to turn the undeniable embarrassment of January 6th into QAnon Pearl Harbour.
The Big Tech, big government backdoor is real. And, while I’m no sycophant for Musk, and expect Twitter to become freer, but not some best-case-scenario common-sense utopia, the new CEO is rightly not the type of guy to let something like this go.
It’s one thing for regime-adjacent reporters and news agencies to outright forgive or ignore the strangeness of a Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post, where they still claim to be fighting the good fight, lest “democracy dies in darkness,” it’s another thing when a more-outspoken and politically-oriented billionaire purchases the defining social media company of the 2010s/2020s. Unlike the Post, where the paper and its editorial slant are the product, on Twitter, the product is the people, and they just became a whole lot harder to control.
How embarrassing, but sadly unsurprising, to see the importation of this latest U.S. culture war to Canada, even though it’s only still in its infancy stages.
Beset upon by the undeniable reality that wartime measures were needlessly exploited to clear out protesting Canadian truckers and their many supporters, where a little dialogue, a normal application of the law, and a few tow trucks would have handled the job just fine, the usual spin doctors and the professionally-aggrieved would rather build a populist boogeyman than admit to even a single solitary mistake.
Such deflection has even trickled into committee meetings, as the Trudeau/Singh alliance presently tries to extort publishers, creators, and consumers using the might of two widely-condemned and communistic pieces of legislation that no one but friends in legacy media were asking for, Bills C-11 and C-18.
That’s right, anyone who raises questions about the CBC, Canada’s Liberal-funded state broadcaster, can now find themselves slandered as an “extremist” before the government. And now that Twitter is under new ownership, suddenly Big Tech has an even broader and deliberate “appalling disinformation” problem. Of course, the only solution on offer is far-left legislation meant to save us lowly and dim-witted Canadian proletariat from those evil right-wing ideologues.
“Just be a good corporate citizen, and pay no attention when we’re the ones spreading the disinformation, OK?”
Given that I don’t speak NDP bafflegab, I’ll still ask you to turn your attention to exhibits A)
And B)
Yes, that’s the same state media who created, conflated, and outright concocted second-hand hoaxes over a one-to-two-week period, in order to help paint the Freedom Convoy with a broad enough brush to warrant a different breed of outrage and crackdown.
And yes, those are two key Liberal staffers colluding with media, attempting to maximize the political potential of a wholly-fictional version of January 6th, and even working to keep the lesser fringe elements on the ground on Wellington Street, so that they may be goaded into doing something reckless and dangerous.
Who are the “crazed extremists” spreading “disinformation” again? I’m not quite sure it’s the man who has done more for the planet by revolutionizing the production of electric vehicles, or implementing high-speed, low-latency internet in remote and rural areas, than those who believe in taxing the working poor to change the weather.
When brazen, unserious, opportunistic adults are so used to controlling the narrative, and getting by on a version of the status quo that works for them (and they alone), what’s left but to play the victim when the world turns?
If Alexander wept for there were no more worlds to conquer, this latest panic strikes me as a similar phenomenon. If you’re a revolutionary who runs out of real revolutions to fight in, comrade, I’ve got bad news, you’re now the establishment. And what would an establishment do when it’s threatened? They’d defend a blue-check caste system, or work to entrench the government’s power to control all that actual “workers of the world” see and hear online.
Like a prime minister not realizing that he’s protesting his own lackluster response,
or the warm and welcoming fans of government brutality when it suits their cause,
we can at least say that we are blessed — or cursed, to borrow from an ancient Chinese proverb — to live in interesting times.
I say, if nothing else, in losing that added ability of narrative enrichment, for the first time in far too long, the right people are nervous.
They just so happen to be on the left.
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