July 20, 2007

Little Gulag On The Leftosphere

One of the things I love about the blogosphere and most forums is that they are open for discussion and debate. Among those of us on the Right, we tend to be pretty open about allowing comments from all points of views where comments are allowed. Even some of the more annoying parts of the Leftosphere are pretty open to diverse discussion.

That's why I find the RevLeft.com leftist discussion forums to be a really disturbing place. Not content to be a wedded to an anti-freedom, anti-human rights collectivist ideology (though in an attractive, neatly set up and easy to navigate forum), this place actually has its own Gulag set up to marginalize and silence anyone not sufficiently Leftist for them. They then claim that they are having "in-depth discussions" of political ideology and philosophy while shutting out anyone who might offer a dissenting view or perspective. If anything demonstrates the failings of the bankrupt ideology that they claim supports freedom, that would be it.

Posted by: Greg at 06:01 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 Dear Sir,
I'm not sure if you will post this comment or not (and if you don't surely that would mean that you are violating your own principles by not letting me have a place to rant!), but I will try anyway.

Firstly you describe the ideology of RevLeft as "anti-freedom, anti-human rights collectivist ideology", which is patently false. There are a variety of different ideologies represented on RevLeft, from individualist anarchists (who could hardly be called collectivists..), to communist anarchists, various Marxists (including Autonomisms) and so on. Most of these aren't anti-freedom (indeed the various anarchists would get quite upset with that characterisation), or anti-human.

Secondly this "Gulag" as you call it, does "marginalize" those who aren't welcome on RevLeft, but it hardly "silences" them. The point of this Gulag is to prevent people who aren't Leftists from interrupting debate. Imagine a forum dedicated to free market capitalism which then had to put up with various leftists coming in and moaning about how capitalism doesn't work and citing various false studies to prove their point. On most forums such trolls would simply be banned! On RevLeft, they are restricted.
And of course, being a rightist, you shouldn't really be complaining. The board is privately owned and run, and banning people from such a place is equivilent to the real world shop asking certain customers not to bother coming back.

Finally you talk about dissenting view points, as I mentioned above, there are a lot of different ideologies represented on RevLeft, form anarchists to authoritarian Marxists. As such, there is plenty of debate.

Enjoy.

Posted by: Freida Jones at Sat Jul 21 06:05:54 2007 (Jq0Vd)

2 Hey, I'm merely pointing out my criticisms of the place, not saying they can't do it or shouldn't be allowed to do run their place the way they want to.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Sat Jul 21 10:20:02 2007 (UlWia)

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