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Graham Cunningham's avatar

Two thoughts on this:

1) Yes these violent riots were down to ugly people drunk on their own nasty personality traits and substances. But I think similar things about many of those who go on 'mainly peaceful' protests in liberal Western countries. Many of them too seem to me to be drugged up...in this case on their own wilfully ignorant self-righteousness. The difference is a matter of degree. Nobody goes on a protest in Iran or Afghanistan for the fun of it....for an edgy day out with their mates.

2) I despair of the current wave of 'misinformation' discourses coming from all sides of the political spectrum. The very meaning of the word is riddled with imprecision and tendentiousness. For example when a 'news' broadcaster picks from the vast array of events unfolding around the world on that day - which highly selective bits they choose to amplify as important and which bits to ignore - is that 'misinformation'? If so 'misinformation has been the overwhelmingly dominant character of mass media right from its inception.

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Rajiv Sethi's avatar

Excellent and timely post Dan. I agree on all points.

But some anti-censorship crusaders treat counterspeech itself as censorship, and this has led to the malicious demonization of people like Renee DiResta. Flagging misinformation can lead to content moderation decisions by platforms but the flagging itself is counterspeech and perfectly legitimate.

I mentioned the Powell speech in passing here, along with some precursors to the current unrest:

https://open.substack.com/pub/rajivsethi/p/two-lives-in-one-day

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