WHY LEFTISTS SHOULDN'T HAVE FREE SPEECH

by James Lawrence

I enjoy watching the Youtuber Sargon of Akkad, and in truth prefer his content to most of the explicitly Alt-Right content on Youtube. This is because Sargon, while a far cry from the vibrant Middle-Easterner suggested by his name, does a job that most of us jaded Alt-Righters are unwilling (if not exactly unable) to do. He rakes through the arguments and actions of leftists, measures them against the abstract principles of democracy, non-racism and individual liberty, and explains over and over again just how far the Left is deviating from these principles.

While I value this commentary purely for the sake of "holding the enemy to his own stated rules" (Alinsky Rule #4), Sargon makes it out of his sincere conviction that these principles are absolutely good and true, and that the Left can be pulled back towards them by constructive criticism and rational debate. Unsurprisingly, they have rewarded him for this service with the cup of hemlock, lumping him in with the 'Alt-Lite' and accusing him of being a secret agent for the Alt-Right. This despite the fact that Sargon - while frequently noting the defensive stance of the Alt-Right against leftist aggression - disavows both the modern Left and the Alt-Right on the basis of the 'horseshoe theory': that both sides are, as he puts it in a take on the recent Battle of Berkeley, "two sides of the same stupid identitarian coin", equally hostile to liberal values like free speech and rational debate.

My intention here is, first of all, to explain the reasons why the Alt-Right and the Left may appear similar or even identical from the perspective of liberalism. Then I shall put forward a proposition guaranteed to get the horseshoe theorists braying: that the Alt-Right should aim not just to lift the present restrictions on non-leftist speech, but to work its way into a position of strength from which it can actively silence the damaging subversion of the Left.

In other words, yes, leftists should not get to make use of the right to unconditional free speech in the event of their future removal from power. This view is, of course, purely my own: if people on the Alt-Right claim to defend free speech in the abstract, they are in all likelihood being sincere, although their perspective is surely coloured by the fact that it is their own speech presently being repressed and attacked throughout the West. It is true to say that the Alt-Right as a whole defends free speech, while the Left thinks only of how to repress it; but my position is that the Alt-Right is being naïve here and must take a harder line.

However, I am getting well ahead of myself. First we must establish the necessary context for the case against leftist free speech; so let's have a quick look at this horseshoe theory, and see how bent out of shape it really is.

I put it to Sargon and others that the "similarities" between the Alt-Right and the Left boil down to a very simple common characteristic: both groupings are dedicated to waging metapolitical war against their adversaries, defending and advancing particular communities, and aiming for certain strategic goals. They do not prioritise winning logical debates, acting as night-watchmen for individual rights, or demonstrating personal allegiance to anachronistic or impossible "principles". By metapolitical war I do not, of course, mean the physical violence and intimidation that is a tactical staple of the Left (the Alt-Right has nothing to gain from this, and no serious person on our side advocates it, however much we may enjoy seeing antifa bullies thrashed by their patriot "victims"). I mean nothing more or less than a style of organisation and action that assumes the existence of a political enemy and prioritises the practical necessity of defeating it.

As such, the horseshoe theory is moot. It stands to reason, of course, that two armies on the battlefield will resemble each other more than either side resembles the peaceable members of a gentleman's debating club; yet it does not follow from this that a home defence militia is "the same thing" as an army of conquering foreign hordes mixed with paid mercenary scumbags led by international oligarchs. A body of citizens too accustomed to civilised discourse to be capable of making a distinction here will not preserve any of their "rights" for very long, and the erosion of their free speech will be the very least of their worries.

Of course, one might bemoan the fact that a state of metapolitical war should exist in the first place, and I would find no reason at all to dissent. But we must remember that it was the Left who destroyed any notion of civilised and limited political discourse in the West, and that liberal principles utterly failed to stop them. The willingness of the Alt-Right to fight metapolitical war is a belated adaptation to circumstances, mostly by younger people who are fed up of seeing the Left bully and intimidate their way to victory while the mainstream Right debates and conciliates (and to tell the truth, some of us still don't really "get it" even now). To pretend that liberal principles are anything more than a mask for Cultural Revolution in the present day is like defiantly putting your faith in BBC-Pravda, out of nostalgia for the Reithian ideal of an objective news media.

However, we can still choose between the Alt-Right and the Left on the basis of moral principles. Who is constantly initiating violence, and gloating about it, and who merely acts in self-defence? If identitarianism is "divisive", who stirs up the very identitarian differences that can never be resolved (e.g. male-female, straight-gay, "cis"-"trans") and can only lead to endless conflict - and who upholds the one identity group (the European people) capable of achieving hegemony over Western society and resolving such conflict into harmony? Who is intent on filling the West with ethnic groups who have never created anything but despotisms, and who is defending the sovereign rights of the one ethnic group that created - for better or worse - the ideal of individual liberty? Who is struggling aggressively for world conquest and domination, and who is struggling for mere existence?

But in order to fully make the case against granting free speech to leftists, we must say a little more on the particular nature of the metapolitical war machine that is the Left. Whether it takes the form of SJW offence-bullies, antifa violence squads, or anti-white ethnic minority movements like 'Black Lives Matter', the organised Left can be defined in general terms as a domestic terrorist movement. Its role is to undermine and hollow out the liberal democratic nation-state from below, in conjunction with its Cosmopolitan paymasters and enablers in the government and corporate higher echelons who are busily doing the same thing from above. To this end, the Left seizes upon disadvantaged social groups and stirs them up to generate conflict, with the simple objective of using this conflict as a means to gain power. 

The Left experienced a significant change in modus operandi when it discarded the idea of using the native working class as cannon-fodder for its revolution, and decided instead to manipulate the interests of "marginalised social groups" like women, ethnic minorities, and assorted social dregs. The main effect of this transition from 'economic Marxism' to 'cultural Marxism' was that the Left could no longer expect to lead a violent revolt and establish a totalitarian political order, at least not until its new support blocs could be brought from the margins of Western society into its centre. The foundations for the revolution had to be laid gradually, with liberal democracy not violently overthrown but retained as a hollowed-out shell, and the majority of the people convinced by propaganda that the old principles and institutions were still being respected.

Thus, over a half-century during which the mainstream Right has mostly been studying lists of logical fallacies, trying to look "respectable", and shilling for corporate interests and Jewish lobbies so as to stay in business, the Left has been evolving all sorts of methods to hack liberal principles and institutions and make mugs of those who are unconditionally loyal to them. As of the present day, most of their "arguments" have nothing to do with truth or fact, and are better understood as acts of power-play, defamation or verbal abuse; however, this true nature must always be kept veiled, as the Left still needs to hide within the formal rubric of liberal principles and use them as a means of restraining its opponents. 

When you win a worthless formal victory over a leftist in rational debate, you are often losing a metapolitical battle at the same time. Take, for example, the leftist habit of erupting into hysterical anger on the slightest pretext during verbal exchanges with opponents. According to any rule of debate, the first side to spin off into unhinged emotional gibbering obviously loses; but take a second look at this famous video from the campus of Yale, and notice how quickly the reasonable and logical professor shuts up once 'Shrieking Girl' begins her tirade:

This is consistent with the leftist modus operandi discussed above, i.e. that of eating away at the innards of liberal democratic norms while retaining their hollow semblance for one's own purposes. A related point is that when the modern Left wish to abolish something, such as a national identity or religious tradition, they do not take the risk of doing it by direct government fiat; instead they will conjure up and weaponise some previously non-existent group, such as "Africans who want to be English" or "homosexuals who want to marry in church", and use this as an excuse for rendering the definition of the abolished thing meaningless. This sort of passive-aggressive, underhand, and quintessentially feminine social violence requires the formal rubric of liberalism to protect itself from retribution, just as the abuse meted out to a cuckold by his psychopathic wife can only go on within the framework of a nominal marriage.

Although entire books could be written on the topic of leftist power plays disguised as "arguments", for our purpose here we need only examine a broad leftist tactic that we shall christen the Overton Smack. The word "Overton" comes, of course, from the Overton Window, which represents the boundaries of acceptable opinion and which the leftist lunatic fringe constantly works to move in a leftward direction. The "smack" refers to the fact that, in this case, the deliberate shifting of the Window to the Left's advantage takes the form of aggressive verbal attacks aimed at individuals or groups on the opposing side.

The 'Overton Smack'

This usually involves projecting one's own evil actions and intentions onto others, in a  strategy of "defence by offense" - much as, to reuse a previous metaphor, the psychopathic wife might accuse the cuckolded husband of cheating on her. This sort of argument abuse tactic works brilliantly on the sort of opponent who approaches metapolitical battle as rational debate, concentrates on refuting factual errors, and stays loftily aloof from such "logical fallacies" as ad hominem and tu quoque. In a sense, we can say that the entire modern leftist view of Western society is an Overton Smack, as it projects the Left's own amoral jockeying for power onto society as a whole - however, specific examples will be more useful here.

Let us take the idea of 'white privilege' - an official leftist conspiracy theory that does not even come up to the standard of Fake News, as it contains no factual or pseudo-factual content that can be examined or refuted. We are invited (or rather ordered) to believe that, in the absence of any laws discriminating against non-whites and against a backdrop of official anti-white discrimination by many Western states, the entire population of ordinary white people are complicit in a vast informal conspiracy to hold down the socioeconomic level of non-whites. However, if you respond to this accusatory nonsense with factual and logical refutations, the bulk of the damage intended by the accuser has already been done - for white privilege is not an argument, it is an Overton Smack, and the only way to deal with it effectively is to throw it back at the Left.

There are many ways in which this can be done. For example, a majority of blacks in America are now supported by white taxpayers much as black slaves once supported white landowners, and blacks are a protected class in the West who are able to say and do things that would result in serious retribution for whites. Clearly, the word privilege can be applied here with substantial accuracy - but how many anti-leftist whites, even Alt-Right shitlords, would think to kick off a public "debate" with a leftist POC by referring offhandly to his/her/zhit's 'black privilege'? More likely, they would passively wait for the delusional accusations of 'white privilege' and shoot them down with hatefacts - but while this might be good debating form, it is bad metapolitical strategy, for it allows the Left to strike first and deepest in every confrontation.

Then there are the actual reasons for socioeconomic disparities between whites and certain groups of non-whites, which - as we on the Alt-Right are well aware - have much to do with hatefacts about mean group IQ and nothing to do with imaginary knapsacks of privilege. The Left has applied such an effective Overton Smack here, furiously accusing us of slandering other races, that even the most seasoned Alt-Righters feel the need to pen long justifications for opening one's mind to these well-attested facts. But it is the Left who are slandering people in the most disgusting way, by 1) accusing all whites of being complicit in a vast system of racial privilege and oppression, and 2) giving "redemption" to high-status whites who speak fluent PC (the RP of the new upper class), who agitate for redistribution of poorer whites' resources to non-whites, and who can afford to make magnanimous gestures towards non-whites (e.g. by giving up personal opportunities). No commentary on the violent consequences for ordinary whites of the non-white resentment engendered by this vile slander should be necessary.

Again, one could go on ad infinitum with such examples, but the readers of this site are more than capable of figuring them out for themselves. Let us turn directly to the issue of free speech, where the Left has again employed the Overton Smack to great effect - so much so that this "inalienable right" now exists for rightists only formally in the United States, and does not exist for us at all in most of Europe.

When one looks closely at the arguments trotted out by leftists for restricting free speech, instead of making knee-jerk reactions against them, one finds that they almost always apply in fact to the Left and not to the Right. If "hate speech" - i.e. speech intended solely to stir up hatred and its attendant conflicts - is unworthy of protection, then surely this applies to leftist agitation of every divisive identity group it can find (including the "oppressed fat class" and the "culturally Deaf"), and not to the reasonable desire for European self-defence against invasion? If "yelling fire in a crowded theatre" is not free speech, well, surely the Left is not so much yelling in the theatre as actually burning it down (while locking the exits, and witch-hunting anyone who notices the smoke and flames as a theatre-burning hater)? BBC-Pravda, which hunts British TV owners like brigands so that it can provide them with "objective reporting", sees fit to stir up hatred and suspicion against whites on the basis of "microaggressions in photos of Asian food" - surely this sort of thing is more worthy of restriction than the facts of child rape scandals covered up to keep the multiculturalist "peace"?

This holds true for the recent outbreak of manufactured outrage over "online trolling", which has been spearheaded by spoiled and politically powerful females crybullying ordinary people who dare to send them messages on Twitter.

A safe space for leftist free speech?

Although all of us, including myself, have a great affection for the free intellectual marketplace of the internet, we must concede that there is a case for punishing certain forms of insulting speech; however, this has little to do with subjective and easily-faked "feelings", and much to do with the risk of damage to reputations. While traditional epithets for deviant females are badges of pride nowadays, there is a certain set of insulting words that are generally used without much fear for the risk of slander, and which not only hurt victims' feelings but also lead to employment discrimination and violent harassment (indeed, one white girl tragically commited suicide in the expectation of falling afoul of them). They are, of course, "racist", "sexist", "homophobe", "transphobe" and many others - which implies that it is the vicious slander campaigns of the Left, and not the harmless insults of Alt-Right "trolls", that would face investigation in a just world.

Now, you might say that we are practically forced to uphold the inviolability of free speech, because producing arguments against it will only result in the Left taking advantage of them. However, while this argument correctly starts from an assumption of metapolitical war, it is strategically mistaken: "the logical outcome of a defensive war is surrender". Repeated leftist use of the Overton Smack, with no meaningful retaliation on the rightist side, results in an undesirable framing of each issue in which the dagger is always too close to our own throats. A quick Googling of the mainstream arguments for and against free speech yields a choice of a) total protection of all speech regardless of irresponsibility, and b) restriction of the speech of "Nazis", "racists" and "anti-Semites" - no suggestion is made to c) restrict the speech of those who throw such dangerous accusations around.

As most people are stupid, lazy and ignorant, they cannot be expected to look at the facts objectively, even when they are sincerely trying to work out the truth of an issue; at best they will aim for the middle ground between two extreme positions, which means that non-leftist free speech is bound to be eroded without significant public outrage if it is the only kind of speech ever placed in question. Someone like Sargon, who believes in the power of reason to convince people of the truth, would presumably be hard pressed to explain why the right to free speech is constantly being trampled on by the Left when the arguments in its favour are so strong. But when we shift our perspective from the haze of abstractions to the reality of metapolitical war, it is obvious that an enemy will beat you eventually if he is constantly able to try his luck raiding and conquering in your territory, while you are prevented by your own high-mindedness from ever crossing into his.

And this is the argument against granting free speech to the Left that I wish to emphasise above all others. Yes, leftists have almost nothing worth saying, and their mouths are stuffed with lies. Yes, the Left constantly stirs up hatred and division for no reason other than to profit from it, poisoning any society in which it gains a significant following. Yes, we are in the business of encouraging young European men to revolt against the paid thugs and lackeys of a powerful and sociopathic ruling class, and cannot in good conscience ask this of them if the only result of our victory will be to let the enemy regroup under state protection.

But more importantly than all of this, in the present situation in which our civilisation finds itself, it's simply a matter of us or them - "us", in this case, encompassing everyone who does not submit to the leftist metapolitical fighting machine, which shows no mercy to those who see themselves as non-combatants in its war on the West. Set yourself to do anything less than smash the Left utterly and silence them for good, and it will be you who gets smashed and silenced by them - inevitably so.

So what's it going to be? I've made up my mind. Fuck leftists' right to free speech, and furthermore, sinistra delenda est.