{"id":4994,"date":"2021-03-31T01:17:24","date_gmt":"2021-03-31T01:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=4994"},"modified":"2021-03-31T01:17:34","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T01:17:34","slug":"liberals-want-to-blame-rightwing-misinformation-for-our-problems-get-real-thomas-frank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/31\/liberals-want-to-blame-rightwing-misinformation-for-our-problems-get-real-thomas-frank\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberals want to blame rightwing ‘misinformation’ for our problems. Get real | Thomas Frank"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Also available Matt Taibbi interviews Frank<\/a> about this article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What all this censorship talk really is, though, is a declaration of defeat \u2013 defeat before the Biden administration has really begun. To give up on free speech is to despair of reason itself. (Misinformation, we read in the New York Times, is impervious to critical thinking.) The people simply cannot be persuaded; something more forceful is in order; they must be guided by we, the enlightened; and the first step in such a program is to shut off America\u2019s many burbling fountains of bad takes.

Let me confess: every time I read one of these stories calling on us to get over free speech or calling on Mark Zuckerberg to press that big red \u201cmute\u201d button on our political opponents, I feel a wave of incredulity sweep over me. Liberals believe in liberty, I tell myself. This can\u2019t really be happening here in the USA.

But, folks, it is happening. And the folly of it all is beyond belief. To say that this will give the right an issue to campaign on is almost too obvious. To point out that it will play straight into the right\u2019s class-based grievance-fantasies requires only a little more sophistication. To say that it is a betrayal of everything we were taught liberalism stood for \u2013 a betrayal that we will spend years living down \u2013 may be too complex a thought for our punditburo to consider, but it is nevertheless true.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/mar\/19\/rightwing-misinformation-liberals<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Also available Matt Taibbi interviews Frank about this article. What all this censorship talk really is, though, is a declaration of defeat \u2013 defeat before the Biden administration has really begun. To give up on free speech is to despair of reason itself. (Misinformation, we read in the New York Times, is impervious to critical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-1iy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4995,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4994\/revisions\/4995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}