TRR STAFF
The banning of Nick Fuentes from YouTube is generating a great deal of discussion across the broader internet about the future of free speech online and censorship. There are two types of people that you will commonly see during high profile bans like Fuentes’s, which we will refer to here as “Cynical Libertarians” and “Free Speech Warriors™”. Understanding the behaviors of these groups of people is important so that dissidents can properly respond to them and future bans like the one that happened to Fuentes.
Cynical Libertarians (CLs) are a mostly harmless group of principled pricks. A CL is a staunch opponent of censorship and a strong supporter of free speech, but cannot do so without self-aggrandizing or making petty attacks on the censored. When an individual gets censored, CLs are quick to condemn the censorship and celebrate their own consistency and/or invoke qualifiers about the beliefs or lack of support for free speech of the censored before defending them. At best, this behavior is vapid virtue signaling, but at its worst, is an attempt to poison the well, attack the censored, and lends legitimacy to the censorship. Consistently supporting other people’s free speech is no different than refusing to execute gay people by throwing them off buildings, it’s not something to be celebrated, it’s doing the bare fucking minimum! As for CLs that criticize someone’s beliefs before stating they would defend them, it is a cynical maneuver (hence the name) that allows them to wash their hands off after masturbating to their own morality. It, like this metaphor, is dezzgusting and needs to stop.
Where the Cynical Libertarians act in good faith for egotistical reasons, the Free Speech Warriors™ (FSW™s) are dishonest and badly motivated for their own financial reasons. As censorship by big tech and other groups have intensified over the past several years, support for free speech has become an increasingly popular marketing gimmick. Otherwise unremarkable businesses like Gab.com have raised millions of dollars by branding themselves as providing people “Free Speech Software”, only to change their definition of free speech when allowing things that go against their owner’s personal beliefs and access to new credit card processors were on the line. Meanwhile individuals like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro have made being censored FSW™s a central part of their brands, which has netted them millions of dollars, but time and again, they failed to live up to their reputations when push came to shove. Far worse, FSW™s will often repeat slanders that would get people censored, then proclaim their opposition to censorship when the targets of the smears eventually get censored. Successful gaslighting by FSW™s is incredibly difficult for casual and even seasoned observers to properly detect, diagnose, and criticize. FSW™s are often able to proclaim their opposition to murdering Murray Franklin on his Live Television set, despite repeated past statements of “You get what you fucking deserve!”.
The differences between Cynical Libertarians and Free Speech Warriors™ requires different responses from dissidents if they wish to advance their respective causes. Dissidents encountering CLs should see them as future allies that should be corrected by pointing out that they are virtue signaling, which should be enough to shake them out of their narcissistic state. FSW™s are the inverse and should be condemned as enemy Pharisees loyal only to themselves and their bank accounts. Additionally dissidents should seek to avoid attacking fellow dissidents except under the most extenuating of circumstances, as their foes have very scientific methods of undermining broader movements by creating or encouraging infighting over minor points that prevents the formation of united fronts on major objectives.
Featured Photo courtesy of Chris Emerson
