Information Fascism: How the Open Web was Betrayed by its 'Advocates'

Conversations online involving politics and/or religion are frequently associated with the weird and the dramatic. The nadir for many such exchanges tends towards accusations of  being a "fascist" or "racist" or some other fashionable political pejorative being thrown around. I particularly find the term "fascist" to be the most laughable, mostly because people tend to be hopelessly liberal with the term for the sake of spiting someone they don't like. As George Orwell wrote in 1944:

"the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'".

Scholars and historians have a hard time defining what is or isn’t fascism. Ordinary people tend to label people they dislike as fascists. In many cases this name calling does not escalate beyond an online skirmish. But, in recent times, some of these name callers have begun to implement their belief into actual social policies in the real world: we’ve begun to see some of the biggest advocates of the open web and web technology: tech companies and statesmen and women in Liberal Democracies and Republics, openly endorsing the idea that perceived fascists should be openly censored without any means to defend or appeal. This is whole new level of political stupidity coming from the powers that be, and a dangerous trend that may threaten to turn the whole web into its censored, state-sponsored Chinese equivalent.

The recent collective ban imposed on InfoWars by many of the major tech players online is but one example of this growing trend. I venture to say that we are seeing the beginnings of a general endorsement of methods/tactics that can be collectively labelled as "Information Fascism", the total ban of anything deemed unacceptable by these tech giants and the ilk who blindly support/petition them (the governments of Europe and America in particular).

But hang on, didn't we just say that it is hard to define Fascism? And besides, surely banning things such as hate speech, outright bigotry, and enforcing an atmosphere of diversity of thoughts and ideas is a good thing? Indeed, that is probably good. However, diversity movement has become increasingly cynical with regards to its views on permissibility of speech, which I find to be abhorrent. The movement's insistence of rights based on class is in conflict with basic egalitarian values, rule of law and human equality. It is no surprise that there has been a backlash, offline and online. A backlash that has resulted in the some of the movement's adherents advocating for complete censorship of characters and ideas that openly challenge their severely flawed and inconsistent class and identity politics platform. And if that isn't enough, we have the Antifa group, an aggressive group that prefer to argue with their fists than anything else.

Censorship backed by violence happens to be a fundamental quality of an intolerant, fascist society. The diversity is rendered meaningless if people are threatened and "de-platformed" for speaking out their minds against the intolerant "cultural establishment". While Antifa is perhaps limited by its numbers and ideology (despite the abundance of misguided sympathisers), the adoption of online censorship without appeal by states and tech giants undermines and betrays the spirit of the web and affects our entire civilisation. We have basically turned the whole web into the Chinese web.

What difference is there between the Chinese social web and the rest of the world in the Era of Censorship?

Good intentions almost always have second order, sometimes negative, consequences. Empowering tech giants with the unspoken right to censor and ban without appeal, people online on platforms that can arguably be called "social public goods" introduces the possibility of creating a national community of privileged, dominant bullies who can potentially lead the rest to destruction, simply because they fail to consider other lines of thought. The Internet via social media has a tangible effect on our laws and governments. Therefore, it is important to not rob people of the right to freely express their honest thoughts simply because certain influential people (the "cultural bourgeoisie") find their ideas detestable.

The Internet's giant platforms have the power to shape the conversation, and thus people. Tech giants are arbitrators that should not exist ideally. But they do exist nevertheless. Their influencing the conversation will potentially allow the state via co-operations to create truly fascist communities via unilateral censorship. Here we discover the fundamental definition of Fascism, with help from classical liberal economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek:

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”

You could replace "communism" with "Californian utopianism" or "Silicon valley utopianism" or even "techno-utopianism". No utopia can survive criticism or true diversity of ideas. And that is why utopians would rather censor and ban ideological dissidents so they can unite people in their state-sponsored, corporate dream of apparent utopia. And in the process of creating a "safe" social utopia online, tech giants risk creating the very society that they claim to fight against, through information fascism.