As more mainstream libs are discovering Lemmy, we’re seeing a pattern of complaints that opinions outside the ones they deem acceptable are allowed on the platform. We’ve even seen instances defederating because their userbase does not wish to be exposed to these views.
Interestingly, these are the same people who level censorship and control of free speech as their main critique of communists. What we’re seeing is that these people absolutely don’t care about free speech. They understand the necessity of censorship and actively advocate censoring opinions that they find dangerous. Yet, when societies based on values different from their own use these same tools they screech about authoritarianism.
Turns out it’s not authoritarianism libs hate, but that they consider their views to be the most enlightened and think that all other viewpoints should be shut down. What really offends them about places like China is that it’s their ideology that’s being suppressed there.
It’s ironic how liberals yell authoritarianism every time China’s brought up on fediverse. One of the few criticisms I have of China is that they’re letting liberals run too free in Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. but that’s still not enough freedom for liberals who really just want to suppress other opinions so that it’s outside the realm of acceptable discourse.
As communists, we’re open about the fact that we think certain ideas are harmful to society and need to be suppressed. We have a clear rationale for why we consider ideologies such as fascism and liberalism harmful and why we wish society to function a certain way.
Liberals have found an interesting rationalization to reconcile their support for free speech with the need to censor ideas outside the liberal bubble. The trick is to say that the total sum of valid ideas falls within the liberal ideology, and that all other ideas are fundamentally invalid. This is why liberals love the fake news and disinformation narrative so much. In their mind, they’re not censoring other valid ideas that are contrary to their own ideology, but are rather fighting against misinformation that has no fundamental value.