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Assailed from both right and left, the social-media giants will face ever closer scrutiny

Jan 10th 2021

THE MEGAPHONE has been taken away. On January 8th Twitter, a social network, announced that it was permanently suspending President Donald Trump's account. Viewed in isolation, the two tweets that led to the ban were, by Mr Trumps standards, fairly innocuous. But Twitter said it had taken its decision in the wake of the riot at Americas Congress on January 6th, in which five people died as legislators offices were ransacked by a crowd of Mr Trump's supporters after Mr Trump had encouraged them to march on the Capitol. It said that continuing to give Mr Trump access risked allowing him to incite further violence.

Other social networks have taken a similarly tough line. Facebook has said that Mr Trump's account will be banned for at least the remainder of his term in office, which is due to expire on January 20th. Snapchat, a smaller social network, has likewise blocked the president's access. Besides defenestrating Mr Trump, Twitter also banned the accounts of Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell, two of the presidents dwindling circle of allies. And it promised to do the same for accounts dedicated to QAnon, a nutty but resilient conspiracy theory that holds that America is run by a cabal of Satanic paedophiles.

The suspensions mark the most drastic actions that social-media firms have yet taken to enforce their rules on what can and cannot be said on their platforms. Both Twitter and Facebook had said previously that politicians would be held to lower standards than ordinary users, on the grounds that their utteranceseven the sort of inflammatory or false ones of which Mr Trump was fondwere of wide interest. More recently, they had taken to labelling or blocking a greater number of untrue or potentially harmful posts. Twitter, for example, had pushed back on some of Mr Trumps wilder claims about the election by appending notices to some of his tweets, saying that their contents were disputed. But the outright bans prove that tech-company bosses such as Twitters Jack Dorsey and Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg feel there are limits to such indulgences.

Reaction has been split. Mr Trumps opponents, as well as many academics who study online media, welcomed the decision; some called it overdue. After his personal account was banned, Mr Trump used the official account of the American presidency to accuse Twitter of attempting to silence him, and of giving a platform to some of the most vicious people in the world. (Twitter later deleted those tweets, though it did not ban the account). Some prominent politicians from the Republican party, which Mr Trump leads, condemned the decision. Speech should be free whether you agree or not, said Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. We arent in China. Even Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader, weighed in (on Twitter) to oppose the ban, saying it set a precedent that will be exploited by the enemies of freedom of speech around the world.

Nor was it just social-media companies cracking down. Apple and Google act as gatekeepers to virtually every smartphone on the planet. In the wake of the riots both have banned Parler, a Twitter alternative popular with American right-wingers, from their app stores. Both firms said that some of the rioters had used the app to plan. Amazon quickly followed suit, kicking Parler off its web-hosting service, effectively removing it from the internet and causing an exodus of users to Telegram, a messaging service. Whether Parler's disappearance is permanent will depend on its ability to find a new host willing to stomach its reputation.

Disentangling principles from expediency is tricky. Like almost everything else in modern America, tech firms have been sucked into the countrys all-consuming culture wars. Republicans accuse social networks of censoring conservatives; the Democrats of allowing lies and threats to proliferate unchecked. Both have threatened regulatory crackdowns. Having lost the election, and with the Democrats due to take control of both the presidency and of Congress, Mr Trump is a lame duck. He is made lamer by the fall-out from the Capitol Hill debacle, with even close allies scrambling to distance themselves from him. The political cost of banning him is therefore lower than it has ever been.

All the same, it is hard to avoid the sense that the social-media firms have reached a point of no return. Disquiet about their power and reach is not confined to political partisans. Britain, Australia, Singapore, Brazil and the EU have passed, or are mooting, new rules designed to regulate social media. The banning of the worlds most powerful politician will raise the temperature even further. The firms in-house enforcement policieswhich are spotty and inconsistently appliedwill come under even more intense scrutiny.

So far, most analysis has focused on the implications for American politics. But the fallout from the decision could cause just as many headaches elsewhere. Critics of Twitters decision lost little time pointing out that the firm is apparently happy to continue to host Ali Khamenei, Irans Supreme Leader. Amid a wave of extra-judicial killings, Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, likes to boast about how many alleged "drug dealers he has personally slain. Facebook has been one of Mr Dutertes most important political tools.

One early flashpoint could be India, where Facebook is embroiled in the struggle between the left-wing Congress party and the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Both sides accuse the firm of favouring the other. Indian culture wars can be even more lethal than the American sort: anti-Muslim riots in Delhi last year that killed more than 50 people. Shortly after Twitter announced Mr Trumps ban, Tejasvi Surya, the president of the BJP's youth wing, tweeted that if they can do this to POTUS, they can do this to anyone, and suggested that the sooner India passed new rules regulating tech firms, [the] better for our democracy.

Editors note: (January 11th 2021): This story was updated after Amazon Web Services stopped hosting Parler.

See also: Far-right digital media paved the way for the riot in Washington (Jan 2021)

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The expulsion of Donald Trump marks a watershed for Facebook and Twitter - The Economist

The world was watching in shock and horror as a rightwing mob stormed the Capitol during the confirmation of Joe Biden as the next democratically elected president of the US.

On the heels of Democratic victories in Georgia giving Democrats control of the Senate (to go along with the House and the Presidency), armed Trump supporters broke through the police and interrupted the proceedings. Far from being a protest, this was a terrorist insurrection that struck at the very core of US democracy.

At the heart of this violence were Trump and his Republican colleagues who have been feeding his supporters lies about a stolen election and the need to resist. It echoed his entire presidency which was built on a virulent mixture of conspiracy theory, white resentment, and real economic suffering. His politics was one of mob rule and populist backlash with the need to Make America Great Again regardless of the political or human costs.

Yet the US also now faces a clear and profound choice. Will it finally face up to the root causes of this extremism: corporate power, growing inequality, and systemic racism? Or will it continue to try to treat the symptoms without curing the disease?

Throughout his time in office, there were ongoing questions of how serious a threat to democracy Trump and his voters actually were. While his rhetoric and behavior crossed all conceivable lines of political civility and democratic acceptability, there was still hope that his reign would end with a peaceful transfer of power. Any such illusions were shattered by the recent far-right assault.

However, this extremism has always been central to Trumps appeal and victory. He plays on fears and presents the nation as being in extreme danger, a crisis which requires an extreme response. He has cloaked his entire political ascent to a paranoid belief in the need to resist a corrupt establishment. It is with little irony that this corrupt business person born into wealth and privilege presents himself as the only person standing up to elites in defense of the people.

Ultimately, whatever claims he makes, his revolution is one of pure reaction. It is a channeling of anger against vulnerable populations and in the service of corporate interests.

Even worse, it is the trading of an entrenched oligarchy for a personal plutocracy as he has used the presidency, above and beyond all else, as a vehicle to enrich himself, his family, and his friends. Far from draining the swamp, he was trying to build the foundations for a gilded 21st monarchy, a Trump-branded dynasty that he could profit off of for decades to come.

Still, for those breaking into the Capitol, there was a desire for revolution, for genuine change and democracy despite it being driven by white power and nativism. Even as they concretely tried to disrupt and dismantle it, they were ironically doing so in the name of saving US democracy.

Watching from our homes the danger to US democracy was easy to spot and condemn in the right-wing mob overtaking the Capitol Building. Less visible but every bit as threatening to its long-term survival though was the decent status quo which was under attack by the very extremists they ironically helped to create.

Undeniably, the most urgent task is to top this literal far right assault on US freedom and popular sovereignty.

Yet this immediate responsibility must not come at the expense of dealing with these deeper issues fundamentally undermining democracy in the US and globally. The threat of authoritarian capitalism, widening inequality, and corporate imperialism will continue to give birth to extremism and destroy any and all democratic gains.

These existential threats to freedom and democracy are covered over by a politic of voting for the lesser evil and trumped out partisan divides. While there is an underlying pro-finance and pro-military census between mainstream Republicans and Democrats, this is too often hidden in media-friendly culture wars. Further, attempts to enact serious reforms are labeled as naive and politically impossible.

Trumpism arose from the corrupted soil of a democracy that was far more rhetoric than reality. This political oligarchy was matched by a civic and popular culture that promoted violence over deliberation, policing and anti-heroes over social movements, and collective attempts to create real change.

In the face of globalization that was rapidly leaving most people behind, a financial crisis with a recovery for the rich and not the poor, and endless wars with mounting casualties at home and abroad, people wanted to feel empowered and found little opportunity to do so democratically either politically or in the workplace.

The violence invading the Capitol is, thus, a reflection of the violence that has infected US society in the new millennium.

It is one where everyday people, especially Black citizens, face state-based violence of a militarized and largely legally unaccountable police force. It is the daily violence of people being allowed to go hungry, sick, and jobless while corporations are given ever-larger subsidies by the state. It is the violence of mass shootings and no serious gun laws due to the power of the gun lobby. And it is the violence of a military that regularly invades, attacks, and overthrow legitimately elected governments that challenge US corporate interests all in the name of preserving democracy.

The attempted coup reveals the nation at a crossroads. One path leads to the rise of even greater authoritarianism and social division. The other to genuine solidarity and progress. Just as the myth that right-wing extremism was harmless must now be forever disregarded, so too must we dispense with the centrist myth that we can return to the status quo before Trump and expect our democracy to survive let alone thrive.

What we are witnessing is the barbarism of far-right populism. But it sprung from the savage injustices of a respectable politics as usual. Without destroying the latter, the former will continue to rise and rise again. The hard work will come with revitalizing our democracy in our communities, workplaces, and globally.

Right now, in front the worlds watching eyes, fascism and hate are literally trying to overrun US democracy, something sadly it has done around the world with bipartisan support. We must put our energy into stopping this threat.

Yet tomorrow, the choice between change or the status quo has never been so obvious. For popular rule and freedom to be preserved and expanded, we must begin to choose justice over hate, equality over greed, and real progress over greater and lesser evils.

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Threatening Democracy: The Choice Between Progress and Extremism Has Never Been So Clear - The Globe Post

Will Arberys Heroes of the Fourth Turning was one of the most talked-about plays of 2019, and I fully intended to review Playwrights Horizons New York premiere in this space. Unfortunately, a family crisis made it impossible for me to do so, and the coming of the pandemic subsequently prevented regional theaters from taking up the play. Ive been crossing my fingers ever since that somebody out there would mount a webcast version. Now Philadelphias Wilma Theater, one of the East Coasts leading drama companies, has taped a fully staged site-specific production of Heroes of the Fourth Turning at a private location in the Poconos, turning the cast and crew into a closed quarantine bubble so that they could work together face-to-face instead of taping their performances separately via Zoom or green screens. The result, which looks more like a small-scale movie than an online webcast of a stage show, is a flawless, impressively well-cast production of a work of singular distinction, one for which the word remarkable is, if anything, an understatement.

The play, directed by Blanka Zizka, is set in rural Wyoming in 2017. It centers on Emily (Campbell OHare), Kevin (Justin Jain) and Teresa (Sarah Gliko), who are in their mid-to-late 20s and are meeting at the off-the-grid shack of Justin (Jered McLenigan), a somewhat older but like-minded man. The young people are all in the familiar process of discovering themselves, but there is nothing else ordinary about them: They are conservative Catholic intellectuals-in-the-making who have been girding themselves for battle in the coming culture wars.

Kevin and Teresa went to the same school, Transfiguration College, and have come to Justins house to meet with Gina (Mary Elizabeth Scallen), Emilys mother and Transfigurations incoming president, and tell her about their post-graduate lives in the age of Trump. Like them, Transfiguration is very unusual, a school where, as Teresa says, you got wilderness training, where you spoke conversational Latin and locked your phone in a safe for four years. Not surprisingly, it produces alumni who make casual mention in bull sessions of Martin Heidegger and my gal Flannery O (thats OConnor to you), ask each other questions like Hows your soul? Is it in peril? and believe it to be the destiny of those unwilling to do battle with the rise of postmodern secularism to degenerate into a throbbing mass of genderless narcissists.Everyone working for any business or public school will be frog-marched through diversity and inclusion training. It wont just be about tolerating, which we do, it will be about affirming their disorder. Which is a sin. Notwithstanding their avowed religious conservatism, though, the characters have mostly come to view Donald Trump with skepticism, even though they all supported him in 2016, albeit unenthusiastically (After I voted for Trump I vomited next to my car).

Part of what makes Mr. Arberys play so good is that its characters are portrayed on their own terms. No one shows up at evenings end to make these-people-are-100%-evil noises meant to calm the horrified audience. (I would love to know what Tony Kushner, a wholly different kind of playwright but one from whom Mr. Arbery appears to have learned valuable lessons, made of it.) While I feel sure that many of those who saw Heroes of the Fourth Turning in New York found the characters, not entirely without reason, to be potentially dangerous extremists, they are far more complicated and interesting than that, for life in urban America has nibbled away at their orthodoxies, and none of them now takes the carved-in-stone truths of Transfiguration College at face value. Not at all surprisingly, Mr. Arbery grew up in the kind of cultural environment he describes here, which makes it possible for him to portray it with the deep comprehension and distanced sympathy that give Heroes its dramatic power.

Heroes is a conversation piece that runs for 2 1/2 hours, and those with no appetite for intellectual talk will doubtless find it far too long. But it is a real play, not a pretentious gabfest, and Mr. Arbery is a greatly talented writer who has given us a drama as exciting and challengingnay, daringas any new play Ive ever reviewed. I intend to see Heroes onstage as soon as the pandemic ends and it starts to be produced by regional theaters. Dont wait for that, though: This is a play you must see, right now.

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Heroes of the Fourth Turning Review: A Culture-War Conversation Piece - The Wall Street Journal

Theres a high-level, widespread, and persistent fantasy that a President Joe Biden will calm this country down.

High-level, in that liberal moderate writers like The Atlantics Yascha Mounk believe it, writing in a Nov. 7 column titled America Won that Biden will assume it as a kindly grandfather who seems nostalgic for a calmer past.

Widespread, in that suburban Republicans longing for the days of Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney repeatedly voiced hope the culture war would end and order would return to our streets if President Donald Trump would just leave the White House.

Persistent, because no matter how many hard-left personnel and policies Biden promotes and pursues over a term as president, the century-old political pipe dream of a Return to Normalcy will continue, propped up by the kind of media outlets and politicians who work to fashion President Barack Obama as a great American uniter.

Biden made just such a move to the hard left this week, naming California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as his intended secretary of Health and Human Services the kind of position most Americans could not name before President Barack Obama nominated Secretary Kathleen Sibelius to lead the largest expansion of government power into private lives since the Great Society. Its also the kind of position that todays Democratic Party will use to close churches, shutter businesses, and separate families in the name of Science.

Far from playing the kindly grandfather of high-minded fairytales, Bidens pick has worked hard to establish a 33-year record on abortion, where he stands for taxpayer-funded child dismemberment until the moment of birth. His disdain for the lives of the unborn extends so far as to oppose punishing those who injure a pregnant womans child while committing a crime, and hes been rated 100 percent by abortion extremists.

After 24 years in Congress, he continued his war as attorney general of California, The Federalists Madeline Orr reports, charging the activist who exposed Planned Parenthoods disgusting organ negotiations, vying to force pro-life volunteers to promote abortion, and even targeting the long-suffering Little Sisters of the Poor.

What sort of culture war calming is this? Well, it isnt any at all, and none should ever been expected by serious people. So why did anyone?

Essentially, a failure to comprehend the culture, its sacred importance to the American working class especially, and the very real war being waged on both that culture and those who hold it dear.Its the same failure that caused so many to think Trump started the culture war when he simply dove right in.

Take, for example, the bald-faced lie that Obama was a unifying American figure. During his eight years in office, the left undercut the rights of the accused at colleges, promoted racial strife through Black Lives Matter mobs, assaulted trust in the police through the same, routed thousands of years of marriage law in the courts, targeted nuns in health policy, championed mens access to womens locker rooms with transgender policies, neutered the legislative branch through extra-congressional treaties and amnesty, and challenged the very idea of American citizenship as a privilege that must be legally earned. Is this unity?

Never forget that the same Obama so many seek to lionize as soaring above the viciousness of todays politics chastised Christians at our National Prayer Breakfast for riding a high horse while churches burned in the Middle East, and finished his presidency with illegal aliens heckling him while somehow his guests at the White House. Is this soaring above?

So why did Trumps four years seem so marked by cultural fighting? In short, because he actually pushed back on every front the left opened on Americans. While the Romneys and Ryans of the world wished to stick to entitlements, taxes, and the military, Trump didnt flinch from battle in our sports, schools, churches and streets. No longer was the fight relegated to internet complaints about Christmas Starbucks cups. What for over a decade had been a one-way march against American culture was finally resisted and became a real fight.

Finally, while the past year has truly exposed Democratic Party leaders view that religion is simply a traditional pastime, for many Americans, our culture and religion entwine with our families and patriotism at the center of our lives. And if Trumps contribution to our defense can be cited on one more ground, its giving an example of fighting courage in the fray. This courage wont be quickly lost.

Trump was elected president of the United States because he tapped into a growing rage building in the hearts of Americans who knew the political elites of both parties disrespect, resent, and even loathe them. In the years since, Antifa and Black Lives Matter have gotten a lot of energy out of their systems attacking civilians and police, but does anyone feel like that pressure building on the right has let off one bit?

No, Trump didnt start the culture wars. And if it wasnt understood before, let it be now: Joe Biden will not end them.

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Biden Nominee Proves He Comes Bringing A Sword To The Culture War - The Federalist

Should Cambridge University academics and students tolerate or respect the views of others with which they might disagree? Should we tolerate Millwall fans booing players taking the knee? Should gender-critical feminists who argue for the importance of female biology and reproduction in defining a woman be tolerated, or are such views themselves intolerant of trans women?

These are all very different discussions and debates. Underlying all of them, however, is the question of how we should understand tolerance and respect, issues that run through virtually all free speech and culture wars discussions. Too often, though, we fail to recognise how far their meanings have changed in recent years.

Tolerance as a concept has a long history and many slippery meanings. But, from 17th-century debates about religious freedom to recent discussions about mass immigration, a key understanding of tolerance is the willingness to accept ideas or practices that we might despise or disagree with but recognise are important to others. These might include the right to practise a minority faith or to possess beliefs contrary to the social consensus.

Today, however, many regard tolerance not as the willingness to allow views that some may find offensive but the restraining of unacceptable views so as to protect people from being outraged. Its an approach visible in everything from the claim that Charlie Hebdo should not publish cartoons offensive to Muslims to Twitters suspension last week of prominent Indian journalist Salil Tripathi for violating its abusive behaviour policy after he published a poem challenging Hindu nationalism. Regarding tolerance as the demand of those who might be offended, rather than as a permission for those who might offend is to turn the idea on its head.

The notion of respect is even more complex and multifaceted than that of tolerance. Originally, it was overlaid with a sense of deference, as something accorded to ones superiors, a sense that still survives today. Respect also denotes merit; I respect a person or an act because I value them.

And then there is a meaning of respect that has become highly significant in modern, more egalitarian societies: as regard for other people as human beings, as an acknowledgment that every individual possesses an equal standing in the moral community. Respect and tolerance here are complementary notions, one tolerating ideas, but not necessarily respecting them, the other respecting the person as an equal being, whatever their religion, culture, race, gender or sexuality, but not necessarily their beliefs or acts.

But as with tolerance, this aspect of respect has also shifted in meaning. Many now demand that we should respect not just the individual but also his or her beliefs. Since human beings are culturally embedded, the political philosopher Bhikhu Parekh argues, so equal respect for persons entails respect for their cultures and ways of life.

This conflation of people, cultures and beliefs is a dangerous move. It is what racists do in refusing, for example, to recognise the difference between criticism of Islam and hostility to Muslims. Drawing a distinction between people and ideas is essential both for the equal treatment of people and for the capacity to challenge and change ideas.

All of which explains why Cambridge University was right to tolerate differing ideas rather than being respectful of them. It explains, too, why we should tolerate the Millwall booing without indulging the boo-boys. Taking the knee is important to many footballers but its not a sacred cause that cannot be challenged. There is, however, a difference between the kinds of criticisms raised by QPRs director of football, Les Ferdinand, who worries that it has become a ritual without meaning, and last weeks chorus of boos. To pretend that the booing had nothing to do with racism but was some kind of pushback against Marxism is to be blind to the context. One can tolerate something while also challenging it.

We should respect trans women and men as individuals, acknowledge the ways in which they identify themselves, recognise the hostility they face, and defend their right to equal treatment. We should equally recognise that many feminists identify what it is to be a woman differently, and that their arguments are important to hear, rather than being summarily dismissed as transphobic, and the debate closed down. Being tolerant of disagreement is not the same as being tolerant of hatred.

Tolerance and respect in their older meanings were notions crucial to the creation of more open, more egalitarian societies, and key to furthering the rights of minority groups, often denied their humanity, whether black people, women or transgender. They still are. We should not so easily discard such principles.

Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist

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Ideas can be tolerated without being respected. The distinction is key - The Guardian