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There has been another clash with the Speech Police in Canada over the use of illegal pronouns. First it was psychologist Jordan Peterson who became famous for defending free speech against Bill C-16. Now it's grad student Lindsay Shepherd, who merely played a TV debate involving Peterson for her grammar class. Read her story here. Shepherd, a TA at Wilfrid Laurier University, wanted to expose her students to the ongoing debate over using "they" as a singular pronoun, referring to one person only. And for this sin she was summoned to the newly formed Diversity Inquisition and reprimanded for general evildoing. Thankfully she recorded the meeting, so we can experience firsthand the nonsense she endured at the mercy of the Speech Police. Apparently a trans student complained about the Peterson video and felt "their" rights were violated. The Inquisition agreed and accused Shepherd of harming the student. Shepherd said students should be taught to be strong enough to deal with opposing views. But then she retreated after an inquisitor implied that she was calling the complaining student weak. Shepherd is a confused liberal, and not a very good defender of free speech. But the hardened advocates for censorship and safe spaces have become so ridiculous and absurd that even emotional, non-intellectual grammar TAs look good in comparison.

Since the 2016 election I've been watching the alt-Right on YouTube. I believe Matt Christiansen is more libertarian/conservative than far Right statist, so he fell off my radar in the last year or so. But he recently made waves for saying the Ukraine whistleblower's name on his moderately successful show, Beauty and the Beta, and being censored by YouTube. The hosts of Revenge of the Cis, a far Right talk show, made fun of Christiansen for complaining about censorship when he didn't defend certain alt-Right figures when YouTube started censoring their speech years ago. The hosts, Royce Lopez and Mersh, are a couple of comedians who also made insulting jokes at Christiansen's expense. Still, Christiansen asked to go on their show and talk about it. If you're interested in the details, you can watch the exchange here. https://youtu.be/mZTSDGGJZe4 Basically, the alt-Right trolls, one of whom (Mersh) refers to himself as a "light fascist," spent most of the interview shouting over and making fun of Christiansen. Christiansen looked like the civil, rational one simply by taking the conversation seriously. And it might seem like he won the argument. But if you take a step back, you might see how he utterly humiliated himself and ultimately betrayed his own principle. First, Christiansen started off by trying to appease Lopez and Mersh, asking which boxes he needs to check in order to prove that he meets their standard for being sufficiently pro-free speech. Then, after their relentless verbal abuse, he accuses them of having no standard or principle. He claims to be the serious one with principles and looks like the adult in the room. But near the end of the interview, Mersh asks if Christiansen would invite Nick Fuentes, a controversial alt-Right conservative figure, on his show. Christiansen hesitates at first, saying that that's not how he runs his show. He's not against inviting Fuentes, but he needs to discuss it with his co-host first, he doesn't like to announce invites until the guest is already booked, etc. Then Mersh says that Fuentes has an open invite to appear on Revenge of the Cis. So now this is clearly a box that he expects Christiansen to check in order to prove his loyalty to the cause. Christiansen then quickly caves and agrees to offer Fuentes an open invitation, perhaps not realizing that he just proved his own spineless hypocrisy. He just violated his own rule in order to appease a couple of alt-Right trolls who clearly have zero respect for him. The trolls rely on people tolerating them. They see people whining about free speech, and they say, "Well, you're not really for free speech unless you defend our speech and let us talk on your platform!" And since people like Christiansen don't actually understand rights, they adopt the troll's position, which is based on destroying the freedom of association. The trolls don't actually care about free speech. They want to control people and their platforms.

You might be aware of Vox Media's problem with Steven Crowder. They are trying to convince YouTube to crack down on Crowder and everyone else who engages in "hate speech," particularly against "marginalized groups." Vox claims to support free speech, but by that they mean speech that doesn't include "slurs" or "harassment" of certain people. They connect Crowder's slurs of Maza to his fans harassing Maza. I suppose they consider Crowder to be a Manson-like cult leader who's responsible for the actions of his followers. This might be true, if Crowder told his audience to harm or harass Maza, but I don't see how he's done that. No, it appears that the crusaders at Vox simply hate being hated, and instead of dealing with the actual harassers, they've decided to whine about being called names, like a bunch of little children. Crowder is mostly a goofball with regurgitated conservative talking points, which is why he resorts to base name-calling for cheap laughs on his show. Vox is exploiting this situation to push their agenda of identity politics and "hate speech" codes, and to compel YouTube to pick a side in this culture war.

The current debate over free speech on the Internet offers us a prime example of how different strands of collectivists play ping-pong with each other. It begins with a serve of the ball. For example, companies like Twitter or Facebook or Google convince people that their social media sites are "communities." They say this in their TOS and use it to justify forming "community standards" of behavior. And when prominent people start suffering from demonetization or deplatforming because of their speech, the users send a sharp volley back to the server. They accept the notion of "social media as community," but follow the premise to its collectivist conclusion: social media is public space. This game continues back and forth until both sides settle on a compromise: an Internet Bill of Rights. Of course such a Bill of Rights is based on the false premise that social media is a community, when in reality it's only media. If you watch prominent Internet talk show hosts like Joe Rogan or Dave Rubin, you'll see them struggle to integrate free speech with property rights, because they still hold the collectivist principle. They see humans as primarily members of a group, instead of primarily as individuals. And so any form of media is primarily group-owned, communal property. The concept of "community" has been thus pilfered and abused by collectivists. Its genus used to be actual people. People living together. Now it includes products. People and their online products together. This is a contradiction. And since it cannot exist, people evade the fact that they don't actually live on the Internet together. They must evade or compartmentalize this fact in order to accept "social media as community" and continue playing collectivist ping-pong. Unfortunately for us individualists, it's a game that increasingly opposes individual rights until the most skillful collectivist wins. If we can't convince them to stop playing the game, we are doomed.

I'm curious as to this upcoming protest, which seems to at least have a somewhat coherent message: Truck Drivers For the Constitution, and their website but I'm even more interested in how it relates to the law, and the actions of two companies, Facebook and Twitter. *Their Facebook about page(which was recently shutdown by Facebook, and then had to be reopened) reads: "The American people are sick and tired of the corruption that is destroying America! We therefore declare a GENERAL STRIKE on the weekend of October 11-13, 2013! Truck drivers will not haul freight! Americans can strike in solidarity with truck drivers!" My question is about the legality of this planned protest in relation to how the Right to free speech is limited when it infringes on others, if it is illegal to obstruct and block traffic then also,too, it's as I understand, illegal to plan to stage an obstruction of traffic? Would it have been/is illegal for Facebook to keep this page up? Morality and legality are often in opposition with our unprincipled government, so, does an illegal activity such as this intentional slowly of traffic deserve sanction today? A wrong(limitless Gov control) does not justify another wrong(obstruction of traffic on Gov highway). As I understand, censorship is and only is when the Government restricts ones speech. Now, both companies, Twitter and Facebook have acted to stop this planned protest, which is just fine if they think sanctioning this group is "cutting their own throat". Twitter has suspended "Truckers Ride for the Constitution" and Facebook had closed their initial Page, which is now reopened, for now at least. As for drawing a parallel, how is this act different than Dr.King's lead of peaceful, sit down protests?