Mycket angeläget och bra av den ofta helt vettige Håkan Boström i GP. Detta ständigt pågående fascistoida tafsande på demokratin av dessa maktens kreatur som påstår sig försvara den när de i själva verket anstränger sig för att avveckla den. Maktens skräck för det suveräna folkets fria åsiktsbildning.
Citat:
Tämligen obemärkt gick nyheten förbi. Den statliga myndigheten Vinnova ska tillsammans med ledande medieföretag, däribland SVT, Bonnier och Schibsted, ta fram olika digitala faktagranskningsverktyg för att motverka ”falska nyheter” och ”filterbubblor”.
Initiativet kan tyckas harmlöst. I själva verket berör det vad som är vår tids demokratiska ödesfråga: Kontrollen över informationen. Att vi skulle leva i ”filterbubblor” är i hög grad en myt (se till exempel Forskning och framsteg 16/11). Möjligheten att ta del av olika sorters åsikter och information är idag större än någonsin och de flesta utnyttjar också den möjligheten.
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Att ”falska nyheter” skulle vara ett stort problem har inte heller stöd i forskningen. Ändå upprepas dessa påståenden närmast dagligdags. Intrycket är att etablerade medieägare och politiker känner sig hotade av att tappa kontroll över informationsflödet till nya sociala och digitala medier.
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Av projektbeskrivningen framgår att ett digitalt verktyg ska tas fram i syfte att ”minska risken för att falska och irrelevanta fakta når publiken”. Grunden för all journalistik – nyhetsvärderingen – ska alltså ersättas av datorer. Som om det inte vore en omdömes- och värderingsfråga vad som är ”falska och irrelevanta” nyheter. Projektet ska även ta fram en ”personaliseringsmotor”, det vill säga ett individuellt anpassat verktyg som ska erbjuda ”nya och alternativa perspektiv i avsikt att slå hål på filterbubblor”. Information ska med andra ord riktas till medborgarna i akt och mening att påverka deras världsbild, och i förlängningen deras politiska värderingar.
S-politikern och IT-entreprenören, Sebastian Merlöv, var nyligen inne på liknande banor i Aftonbladet (20/12). Hans innovativa idé var att etablera ”digitala fartkameror” som automatiskt bötfäller människor som bryter mot lagen på nätet. Domstolens bedömning av yttrandefrihetsbrott skulle alltså skötas av en dator. Allt i syfte att jaga ”troll”, dessa aldrig definierade sagovarelser.
Kina håller just nu på att ta fram ett övervakningssystem för samtliga sina medborgare där individen poängbedöms bland annat beroende på surfvanor på nätet.
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Vi har lätt att se de auktoritära mönstren på bortaplan. Många är dock blinda inför liknande tendenser här hemma. Grundläggande demokrati- och rättsprinciper väger ytterst lätt när de ställs mot förment goda syften – definierade av makthavarna eller tillfälliga majoriteter. Det är häpnadsväckande. Varken makthavarna eller deras datorer ska leka domare eller bestämma vad som är sant och relevant i en rättsstat.
http://www.gp.se/ledare/det-fria-ord...rige-1.5006055
Men som tur är börjar även den intellektuellt hederliga delen av vänstern vakna och bli varse faran med den totalitära "godhetens" framfart mot de demokratiska grundpelarna yttrandefrihet och fri debatt.
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In brighter times, the reprimanding of Lindsay Shepherd at Wilfrid Laurier University would have found strong condemnation among left intellectuals. Instead, left publications largely chose to ignore the issue. You will find no pieces on Vox covering Wilfrid Laurier or Bret Weinstein’s clash with overreaching faculty at Evergreen, nor will the incrimination of BDS activism by US lawmakers find exposure outside of niche outlets like The Intercept. The free speech debate, in other words, has become too partisan.
When Lindsay Shepherd revealed that Jordan Peterson’s fears about Bill C16 were well-founded, and that pointing out that sex differences exist was considered by Wilfrid Laurier’s administration to be comparable to Adolf Hitler, the response of left publications was either disinterest or full-throated attacks on Peterson as a reactionary monster. If one sought to hear out Lindsay Shepherd, the outlets willing to speak with her were mainly conservative or libertarian YouTube channels belonging to figures like Stephen Crowder and Stefan Molyneux. The perception, understandably, follows that the right is in favor of free expression, and the left has become wholly illiberal.
But the hyper-partisan atmosphere surrounding free speech has ignored many left thinkers who have defended liberal principles relentlessly for years. There remain many on the left who stand for free expression and an open academy.
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Chris Hedges has also written forcefully against the idea of Nazi-punching as a political practice, and rejects Antifa and black bloc tactics. Angela Nagle has written objectively about the alt-right from a left position, seeking to understand web culture rather than ask for the censorship of unruly demons. Greenwald, Fang and Jilani at The Intercept routinely push back against leftist calls for censorship, and do so from their own understanding of left principles. And Jesse Singal at New York Magazine has pushed back on nonsense arguments equating free speech with violence.
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Much of the commentary surrounding the regressive left traces its frustrations back to postmodernism.
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But recall that Noam Chomsky himself, a titan of left thought, rejected postmodernism for his entire life, and debated Michel Foucault in 1967, dismissing the blank slate and Foucault’s naïve argument that there was no defined human nature. Chomsky traces much of postmodernism to the peculiarities of French intellectuals in Paris, condemning them by noting that many were “the last Stalinists, if they weren’t Stalinists they were Maoists…Kristeva happened to be in the mid-70s, a flaming Maoist.”
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He was a modernist, and represents the rational left, which has always rejected postmodern assumptions about science, human nature and language.
Chomsky praised Alan Sokal, the professor behind the famous Sokal hoax, and he has spoken unequivocally in favor of free speech, especially for the most abhorrent elements of society. Chomsky said: “If someone calls you an anti-Semite…if someone says you’re a racist, a Nazi, you always lose. The person who throws them out always wins, because there’s no way of responding to such charges.” Understanding the nature of propaganda, one of Chomsky’s most famous quotes follows: “Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
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Just because there is a dark era in the state of our public intellectuals right now does not mean that new forces are not thriving on the margins, and seeking eventually to create a new left culture. Especially if the upcoming Generation Z is expected to reject identity politics, contrary to the millennials, a left understanding of history may be reborn entirely from its slow death in the 2010s at the hands of radical identity politics and the end of Obama’s broad but ultimately ineffective coalition to stop Donald Trump.
Shifting its ideas along with the left, figures on the right and in the center have also become increasingly critical of centralized corporate power.
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In order to hold big tech accountable, and prevent humankind from transmuting itself into censored machinery designed to click on ads, the left and the right can and should cooperate to create a free and open internet. If net neutrality is dead, decentralization should follow – not the consolidation of speech on an increasingly few number of privately owned and centralized websites.
Libertarian attempts to create a decentralized internet, such as Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin’s ongoing Urbit experiment, strike me as necessary and interesting. I may disagree with Thiel, and Yarvin’s politics strike me as utterly abhorrent, but a dogmatic attitude that people we dislike and disagree with are incapable of contributing to the future will only cripple our ability to engage with reality. Decentralizing tech, or creating an individualized internet not subject to single social media leviathans whom we never consented to be ruled by, are promising goals if we hope to preserve a future of open discourse.
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We should follow Jordan Peterson’s Jungian advice in times in these – we have elements of our culture that we must preserve, such as individual dignity, human rights, free expression and opposition to censorship, and we must fight for that against both Donald Trump and the postmodern left. But how best to do that, and how most effectively we can translate the decaying political sphere of 2017 into a vibrant new renaissance, remains to be seen.
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After all, that is the ultimate goal of all free and open discourse – to reach a higher vantage point through discussion than two eternally conflicting, isolated sides can ever achieve on their own.
http://quillette.com/2018/01/02/free...s-still-exist/
