As part of the ongoing kerfuffle that our opinion on Young v Rogan caused, someone we know wrote and they said something so shocking (to us) that we feel the need to make a further post.

As part of a long back & forth this is what they said, “Fuck it bring on a smart benevolent dictatorship and tell the uneducated and unwashed to get a jab not for themselves but any one they may pass the virus onto.”

That someone would wish for a smart benevolent dictatorship because they see no other way to get people to behave in what they deem as necessary is unfortunately where we find ourselves.

Where do we begin? The first thing is this is clearly a religious impulse, the longing for perfection (though they would deny it). The disparaging of the ‘other’ in classic class terms (though they would deny this too). We understand how strongly people feel about what they see as misinformation. We understand that asking Spotify to remove Rogan isn’t technically a free speech issue and that Neil Young was indeed principled in his actions. But as we finished out that post - fuck he’s wrong. We believe that Young not wanting to share a platform with Rogan (aside from it only being the opening skirmish in what would most likely be an ongoing battle to silence him) is not the way out but the way deeper into mess and catastrophe. The more censoriousness there is, the less listening, the less venting, the less messy discussion, the more likely to lead to events of violence, to who knows what?

To people longing for the Revolution, to people who long for a “smart benevolent dictatorship”, to people who long to put the “uneducated and unwashed” in their place this might be one way to hasten it but any sane reading of the 20th century should tell us that is NOT the way to go.

Life is a mess, full of bad, dangerous ideas, people you can’t stand, systems on the edge, shitty pop songs, awful, putrid smells but it’s our life and we jostle through it together. We live in a system that generally accommodates all of this, beware wanting to change it, beware repression, beware simple, magical thinking (It’s Rogan! It’s the ABC! It’s Murdoch!) Out and out liars are part of this mess and yes, they can be dangerous but it can be difficult to seperate a lie from an honestly held view and some lies are benign while some beliefs are dangerous BUT, in general, before you rush to shut somebody up, think about how you might be able to counter them in a more compelling way than crushing down with the boot of silence. Beware the religious, utopian impulse to perfect this place - only a few more broken eggs to make the omelette.

This is just a short post on a loooooong subject to start the day and we’ve just been hopelessly general here on a topic that needs many words and that people are going to yell at us and say stuff like, “Lives are at stake!” Etc etc so here’s a preemptive:

Have a nice day. x