The left’s censorship of conservatives has now kicked into high gear.
Google has now placed at least 21 videos from Prager University – an educational nonprofit designed to tell young people about conservative issues of interest – in “restricted mode,” preventing young people from seeing them. Google admitted that they “take into consideration what the intent of the video is,” meaning that they’re happy to shut down anyone who presents political positions they don’t like.
Meanwhile, Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley investment guru who spoke at the Republican National Convention, has faced serious backlash. Calls to oust him from the board of Facebook have grown over the past few weeks. As The New York Times reported, “The news last weekend that Mr. Thiel was giving $1.25 million to the Republican’s campaign is provoking outrage. And tech executives who work with the billionaire investor are being forced to explain why they plan to continue to do business with him.” To his credit, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a hard-core Democrat, defended Thiel: “We care deeply about diversity. That’s easy to say when it means standing up for ideas you agree with. It’s a lot harder when it means standing up for the rights of people with different viewpoints to say what they care about. That’s even more important.”
But that’s what prominent leftists will say publicly. How many of them will continue to do business with Thiel without external pressure forcing them to do so? How many of them will quietly kill business deals? How many of them will shut Thiel out, making him an outsider in his own industry?
Leftists have been doing this for years. That’s how Mozilla Firefox CEO Brendan Eich ended up ousted over supporting traditional marriage. It’s why Democratic mayors from Boston to Chicago threatened Chick-Fil-A for its ownership’s support of traditional marriage. It’s why Hollywood Republicans get blacklisted for even the mildest form of conservatism. It’s why speakers like me get banned from college campuses. The left is fascistic in their approach to interpersonal relations – it’s not enough to disagree with someone, that person must be excised from polite society.
The right must fight back. There are two ways to do so. First, give to organizations like Prager U that have been victimized by the left. Second, turnabout is fair play – leftists must feel the pain of mutually assured destruction. This second tactic is something Republicans are always loathe to do, since it’s something with which we fundamentally disagree – but if the left isn’t made to understand that a polite society relies on a basic agreement between parties not to destroy one another based on political differences, they’ll continue to destroy the right while the right pays them to do so. The right has been using its market power to fight the left by turning off the TV with regard to the NFL. Conservatives can do this more broadly and more specifically. It’s harsh, it’s nasty, but it’s necessary in a world built by the left and — yes — rigged to the detriment of those who disagree.
