Twitter competitor Parler is back after having been de-hosted by Amazon, a salutary lesson om how unwise it is to make your business dependent on people who hate you.
Seems a good time to introduce a new Samizdata category: culture wars
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Parler is backFebruary 17th, 2021 |
 12 comments to Parler is back |
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Good to see it is back – although the struggle is only just starting.
A friend of mine said today “I am so tired of the Culture Wars” – well yes indeed, but (tragically) the Culture Wars are not tired of us.
The banks, the payment processors, as well as the internet providers, will all lean on companies such such as Parler to introduce “moderators” or “trust and safety teams”.
We will be told it is “just going to be used on racists” – but the first “racist” the Silicon Valley Cartel targeted was not a racist at all, he was just the rather loud and colourful figure at the head of “Infowars” (Alex Jones) – a man with many faults (as everyone has many faults) but NOT a “racist”.
Alex Jones was not a popular man (due to his habits of boasting and his reporting of wild theories that people just phoned into his show – often not really knowing who it was who was phoning in and telling him stuff, although to be fair he never used the words “THIS IS TRUE” it was just stuff someone had told him which he was repeating for the entertainment of his listeners) so few people went to his defence.
But then it became more and more people……
We now know that the internet cartel had made a decision years ago to gradually undermine Freedom of Speech – Alex Jones could have been a saint who never told a lie in his life, and they would have acted THE SAME WAY.
People who were passionate about checking their facts were still censored by the internet and media (general Corporate) – because it was OPIONIONS that mattered. If you do not support the leftist Cultural and Political Agenda – they would, eventually, come after you.
And it was CULTURE as well as things such as government spending, taxation, and regulations – if you did not support the Frankfurt School CULTURAL agenda (basically DEATH TO THE WEST) the Corporations will try and destroy you.
Now it is, yes, insane for the Corporations to try and destroy the culture (Western Culture) that created and sustained them – but that is where we are.
The education system has being going rotten for many decades – there was a big report on this 60 years ago (yes 60 years ago) – the growing power of the totalitarians in schools and universities.
But people just said “McCarthyism” (even though the late Senator McCarthy had nothing to with the report) – and NOTHING was done, and the power of the totalitarians just grew and grew in the education system, with the situation getting worse and worse. Both in the government schools and the elite private schools as well.
We now have a generation of Corporate managers and even billionaires whose core political and cultural assumptions are false – and evil. Yes – evil.
This is not a good situation to be in.
The mainstream media lie all the time.
I just finished watching a BBC show “Trump takes on the world” – its main theme was that President Trump never offered the Palestinians anything. This BBC claim (the central claim of their programme) was a LIE – as he did offer the Palestinians a lot, including areas of Israel that had been under Jewish rule since 1948 (and the Israeli government was prepared to give them this – in return for land where Jews live). Huge amounts of money were also included (I always hated the liberal, open handed, Trump approach with money – but then I am rather mean) – “economic aid” bribes for peace.
They turned it down FLAT – they would not even negotiate without preconditions (basically giving them everything they wanted – in return for nothing at all).
But there you go – about 1 in 100 British people (or “people in Britain” – I know that some people do not consider me to be British, and I am not going to argue the toss over that) know what I just typed.
The other 99 will nod with agreement with the blatant lies of the BBC – not because they are evil (they are not evil), but because they are badly informed.
Just today a I read an account of someone who withdrew his children from a very expensive school in California.
The school was teaching that the “planned economy” of the Soviet Union was superior to the “chaos” of America – and it was teaching this in 1989. His children were lucky they actually had a father who bothered to check (in detail) what was being taught to the school – rather than the normal approach of “this school is very expensive, and people from the RIGHT FAMILIES send their children here – my children will be able to NETWORK and go to a GOOD UNIVERSITY and then get a GOOD JOB with the Corporations or the Government”.
If that is what you want for children then the Marxist schools and universities do an excellent job – for vast amounts of money.
Meanwhile the “ignorant Rednecks” are hunting in the woods and learning how to do plumbing and other practical skills.
As for what the Classical World considered education – the last truly educated President was not Jack Kennedy (his Classical Learning was largely FAKE) it was Calvin Coolidge.
President Coolidge really could read and understand the Classics – and he translated them, to make what he thought were better editions. He also understood a lot about law and politics and economics (see his speeches) and had practical skills – he could survive in the woods, and was used to living in a house without electrical power. Although he could rig up a turbine or generator if he wanted to.
Odd to think there has not been a truly educated President of the United States since 1929. Even Herbert Hoover was not really well educated – as the lack of references, in his speeches, to the details of the Constitution showed.
FWIW, Hoover was classically trained. He (and his wife) translated Agricola’s De Re Metallica into English. The resulting work was published, and reprinted in 1950.
The only problem with Parler, to me, is that the people who I wish to snark at aren’t on it.
What’s the fun of tweeting at people who agree with you?
See also Gab and Minds. Although I do use both.
Thank God it’s back.
Paul:
I am glad you managed to watch the BBC’s programme on Trump. I did not, because I knew it would be hate filled propaganda from start to finish.
As to the Palestinians, they could have had a state of their own 30 years ago. They preferred not to. The Palestinian leadership is composed of anti-Israel maximalists. Unless they can have the entirety of the territory of the State of Israel, they are not interested. No sort of compromise is acceptable to them. And as they lead a very comfortable life sustained by wealth transfer from the EU, they have no incentive to change.
In a way, this is perhaps a good thing. The example of Gaza has shown that, left to itself, a Palestinian state would soon collapse into civil war and islamic tyranny. The “oppression” of the Israelis might be the best that ordinary Palestinians can hope for.
I am not tempted to be on it, to be honest. In fact I need to reduce my use of social media in general.
Yes, @Paul Marks, I get that although I am bored of the culture wars, they aren’t bored with me. Given how I make a living, I am more affected by it than you might think. During my day I am bombarded with all manner of emails and press releases pushing “diversity”, “sustainability” and suchlike claptrap.
But to preserve mental health it is important not to let the topics of “wokeness” or whatever fresh intellectual snake oil is out there to dominate our minds as much as it does. So I am trying to cut down the noise level.
Parler has come back based on another web host who with sufficient peer pressure will boot them again.
They should have built from the ground up like Gab.
But Parler is simply an engine for the Mercers to gather data.
J.P. – not a nice position to be in.
JohnK – yes. But to be fair the programme was not as bad as I thought it would be – Donald John Trump was shown speaking a few times, and he (and others) managed to get their point across (in spite of the sneering context of the presenters – who, for example, presented the killing of an Iranian terrorist commander as an election stunt by “Trump”).
Rich Rostrum – I did not know that President Hoover had published that book, thank you for your correction.
As he got older I am told he started reading the Constitution and the Founders – but, tragically, he did not govern that way as President. He was very much “Herbert Hoover – the Forgotten Progressive” the wage fixing deals of the 1930s (that meant MASS UNEMPLOYMENT) date from the Administration of Herbert Hoover they were just carried on by Franklin Roosevelt (in different forms) – they only broke down during World War II when the government wanted to pretend that official prices were real (i.e. that inflation was not happening) and so Real Wages (against real “Black Market” prices) fell – and unemployment fell away.
Flubber I fear you are correct.
The approach of Gab (basically “trust no one – for no one is worthy of your trust”) appears to be the correct approach, build your own systems.