In the year 2002, then US-President George W. Bush did something historic: He became the first sitting US President in decades to see his party gain seats in midterm elections.
This came, at the time, as something of a shock to the still-dominant and still reliably liberal mainstream news outlets in the US. The punditry, as the votes rolled in, was one of shock and surprise and “how could this have happened?” – scenes that would be repeated on election night two years later, and then taken to their absolute extreme in 2016 as Donald Trump consigned the First. Woman. President. to an electoral footnote.
Anyway, that election night has always stuck with me because of an exchange that took place on, I think, CNN between Democrat political advisor James Carville and Bush advisor Karl Rove. “Democrats just didn’t get their message out this time”, intoned Carville, somberly. “No”, replied Rove. “You guys always say that.” “The problem is not that you didn’t get your message out, it is that you did, and people didn’t like it”.
That particular exchange has come to mind in recent days watching the latest round of the twitter/X wars. Yesterday, Una Mullally took to the pages of the Irish Times to become the latest liberal pundit to denounce X. Over in the UK, there is talk of a ban. An internet blackout, of sorts, in a democratic country, preventing the public from accessing Elon Musk’s digital playground. Similar discussions are apparently happening in Australia, Canada, and of course in Brussels.
The official reason is of course that people are shocked, shocked to discover that there is porn on the internet and that AI tools are capable of digitally altering images to remove people’s clothes (I consider myself fortunate enough that nobody would ever wish to do that to me, for the sake of their eyes). But there’s an unofficial reason too, and it’s openly admitted. Here’s Una:
“Politicians need to realise that X is not Twitter. Under Musk, X is a vast disinformation network, a hotbed of racism, hate, extremism and dystopian delusions. It is a radicalisation tool, an arena of harassment, and yes, its chatbot is a creator, publisher and distributor of awful material.”
Note the “and yes” there at the end before she gets to Grok. It’s as plain an admission that you’ll see that the AI porn problem is an ancillary reason, not the primary reason, why politicians should be taking action. The primary reasons are set out in detail before hand: Disinformation, racism, hate, extremism, and something called dystopian delusions.
(Seriously, one might have thought the notion that governments should ban online discussion forums to save democracy from the people was a “dystopian delusion”. Evidently not.)
In any case, the charge is clear: Just like on CNN 22 years ago, the charge is that our liberal friends can’t get their message out on X, through the swamp of evil right wing misinformation.
I don’t think that’s the problem: I think the problem is that their message has gotten out, very clearly.
What is that message? More people than ever now know, I think, what the mainstream progressive positions are: On immigration, they largely favour uncontrolled (perhaps unlimited is a fairer word) access to western countries for anyone who wishes to migrate. On climate change, they largely favour ever higher taxes and ever less consumption. On gender, they largely believe that having a penis or a vagina is incidental, and that masculinity and femininity can be chosen at will. On international affairs, a great many of them sympathise openly with the Mullahs in Iran and the crackpots in Caracas, while loathing the United States, Israel, and the former Imperial Provinces of the British Empire (this one excluded).
These are all, I think you’d agree, fair charges, even if they do not apply to every individual progressive. But they certainly apply entirely, in Ireland, to the most progressive parties, like Sinn Fein, and the Social Democrats. X is the tool via which the exposure of these positions has become mainstream. It has damaged the left.
As a consequence, they wish to ban the tool they see as responsible for most of that damage, and will use any pretext to do so. It is an interesting case study in what Una calls “dystopian delusion”: A Government that must openly resort to hiding content from the public is not likely to be trusted more, but less.
The problem for progressives, if only they could admit it to themselves, is not that their ideas have been swamped and distorted by unlimited right-wing propaganda. It is that the ideas themselves are deeply unpopular.
Progressives are fortunate, I think, that X exists, since in recent years it has allowed so many bad habits to fester on the right. It has been fascinating to watch, in fact, as unpopular progressive ideas are first challenged, and then replaced by ludicrously unpopular right wing counter-ideas, like the chap yesterday who got over a million views for a tweet arguing for a ban on inter-racial marriage, or by Candace Owens’ ongoing descent into apparent mental impairment. X thoroughly exposed the insanity of the left. Now it is increasingly exposing insane instincts on the right.
That might suggest that the problem is not the platform, or which side is censoring which. The problem might just be human nature. In any case, the problem for progressives is not that they’re being silenced. It’s that their opinions are being clearly understood for the first time in decades.