by Playaguy
What is the purpose of controlling speech?
Controlling thought.
What’s the purpose of censorship?
To make it seem that you are the only one with that viewpoint.
via thefederalist:
There will be no opting out of the Black Lives Matter movement. You’re either for BLM or against it—and if you’re against it, you’re a racist. You will either support BLM publicly and enthusiastically, or you will be harassed, shunned, and shamed out of mainstream America. If you dare to speak a word against BLM, you will be targeted, mobbed, and probably fired.
That’s the message coming through loud and clear, not just from protesters but from corporations and institutions desperate to seem woke enough to escape the wrath of the BLM movement.
It doesn’t matter what your job or profession might be. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a position of power or prestige—in fact being in a position of power might make you more of a target. The only thing that can protect you from the BLM movement’s punitive rage is fealty. Bend the knee, and you might be spared. Then again, you might not.
The list of people who have lost their jobs or been suspended for criticizing or even questioning the BLM movement is long—and growing daily. Most prominent on the list is erstwhile New York Times opinion page editor James Bennet, who “resigned” under pressure from woke NYT staffers after he ran an op-ed by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton that made the uncontroversial case that the U.S. military should be deployed if police can’t get riots under control.
Then there was Stan Wischnowski, top editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, forced to resign over a headline of an architecture column that read, “Buildings Matter, Too,” which ran after scores of buildings in downtown Philly had been destroyed by rioters.
Bon Appétit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport stepped down Monday after a piece he published genuflecting to BLM was deemed insufficient by staffers who claim there’s a discriminatory culture at the magazine. Also, someone posted a 13-year-old photo of Rappaport in a Halloween costume that some people thought was offensive.
Claudia Eller, editor-in-chief at Variety, was forced to take administrative leave after she got into a Twitter spat with a woman of South Asian descent who thought a piece Eller wrote lamenting the lack of diversity at the magazine wasn’t obsequious enough.
On and on it goes. NBA announcer Grant Napear was fired from his sports talk radio program and resigned as the Sacramento Kings announcer after tweeting “all lives matter.” A professor at UCLA was placed on leave after refusing to cancel a final exam following the death of George Floyd. A reporter in Wales was forced to step down as Wales Book of the Year Judge after complaining that a BLM protest violated the government’s social distancing rules.
A cast member for MTV’s reality competition series “The Challenge” was fired after writing “people die every f–king day” in response to an Instagram comment about George Floyd. Professional soccer player Aleksander Katai was “released” by the LA Galaxy not for anything he wrote or said, but because his wife criticized BLM on Instagram. A former Canadian cabinet minister lost three jobs after saying on television that he didn’t think Canada was a racist country.
That’s just a partial list.
BLM Isn’t Interested In Free Speech, It Wants Power
Black Lives Matter as a political movement—as distinct from, say, thinking that black lives matter, which most Americans do because they aren’t racist—isn’t interested at all in ameliorating the state of black America, or fighting actual racism, or expanding liberty and justice for all under our constitutional system. This isn’t an evolutionary movement but a revolutionary one. It doesn’t draw on our tradition of constitutionalism but on Marxism. Its model isn’t the American Revolution but the French Revolution—hence the purges, which for now are confined to the workplace.
It’s fair to say the movement’s power and influence are based on ideological purges. Exposing supposed racists is its modus operandi, and what began on campus has now percolated through into the mainstream of American life.