woman sitting on cliff raising both hands
I told you the other day that I was doing less on the social media website formerly known as Twitter and more on a social media website called Bluesky. I’m part of a great migration, as it were, of millions of people, notably liberal types, who have decided to leave.
At Bluesky, I have found no Nazis and no bots, no ads for crypto or gold bullion or dildos. I have found a community of like-minded people who share my interests, especially democracy and the common good. (I have also found folks who love boxing, jazz and food, but I digress.)
It is not la la land. Already, I have gotten into passionate arguments over government policy with people with whom I’ll probably never agree. I have encountered assholes, too. (They are everywhere, alas.)
But I’d say most people are interested in debate in the sense that it reveals something important to them. They’re not interested in winning, as if debates were a game. People stick with the facts as they understand them. They do not, in my experience so far, flat-out lie. They do not mob you with half-truths, insults, smears and bullshit.
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I’m saying this in response to an opinion I have seen spring up since news broke of the tens of millions who have moved over to Bluesky. This opinion is tired and familiar, but nonetheless popular among certain op-ed writers. And I don’t see the pushback it deserves.
This opinion claims that liberals are afraid to argue with people they don’t like or don’t agree with, making them just as bad, or nearly as bad, as the people they dislike. It believes in “the marketplace of ideas,” which is to say, it believes that ideas must be tested for merit through rigorous competition. It stakes a claim on the “true” meaning of liberalism while implying that some liberals can be quite illiberal.
This opinion deserves a pushback not only because it’s popular among certain op-ed writers, but because it’s popular among people so influential that they elevate it to the level of conventional wisdom.
Mark Cuban, the billionaire television personality, asked why supporters of Donald Trump are not wanted on Bluesky. “You don’t have to follow them,” he said. “You can block them. You can filter words. Don’t you want @bsky.app to have all perspectives? I certainly do. As long as it’s civil, why not welcome different viewpoints.”
From the outset, what makes this opinion so frustrating is the fact that communities that have formed on Bluesky are already doing what Mark Cuban and other influential voices say they should be doing.
You can find AlterNet on Bluesky here.
There’s already openness to new ideas. There’s already engagement with different viewpoints. There’s already heated debates that are civil but that nevertheless reveal junctures at which opposing sides will likely never agree. There are already assholes on the website. (Alas.)
The question isn’t whether the thing that should be happening is happening. It is. The question is why that’s so difficult to see.
Part of the reason is the mistaken belief that communities, or even a democracy, can’t really be good and just without the inclusion of everyone, even people who voted for, or at least didn’t mind that much, a candidate who campaigned openly on bigotry and hate.
This is a mistaken belief because it makes a huge mistake – it believes that excluding people who are hateful is itself a kind of hatred.
It isn’t.
It’s an act of liberation.
There’s probably some room to debate some people who voted for Trump. Some of them really believed, though it confounds me, that the president who tanked the economy during the pandemic with his negligence and selfishness will revive it now that we’re out of it.
Otherwise, there is no room. Why? Because rightwing politics isn’t interested in debating points of fact and logic and interest. In the public square, its singular focus is shutting down its enemies.
In a civil debate, my opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s, provided that my opinion is grounded in something beyond the subjective. In rightwing politics, however, that’s not the case, because that can never be the case. Donald Trump is the only one who has the right to say what’s true and what’s false. He is the sole and ultimate arbiter of reality. Anyone who stands apart from that forfeits the right to exist.
In civil debate, everyone understands what it means to disagree. But in rightwing politics, there is no such thing as disagreement. There is victory and there is annihilation – and that’s it. Disagreement requires deference to the authority of facts, reason and mutual self-respect. But why would I respect your interests or your legal rights or even your humanity when such respect inhibits waging war against you?
Though rightwing politics does not recognize the rules of debate, it pretends to in order to lull enemies into believing that rightwingers can be persuaded. That’s where liberals, Democrats and serious people make their first mistake, in trusting the fundamentally dishonest.
In fact, it doesn’t matter what the debate question is – whether it’s “illegal immigration” or climate change or taxes. They won’t recognize the question as a problem, because the real problem is you. And if you are the real problem, what’s the real solution? Silence or annihilation.
For them, this is a warfare, not a civil debate, and failing to understand that will only make liberals, Democrats and serious people feel insane.
Which is why forming communities on Bluesky that exclude people who are fundamentally dishonest – whose only interest is wearing you down to the point of submission – isn’t just as bad or just as hateful.
The marketplace of ideas literally can’t function when mobs of liars, cheats and demi-tyrants attempt to colonize the minds of honest people who are interested in seeing the best ideas rise to the top.
Excluding them isn’t illiberal.
It’s an act of liberation.
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