(Alternatively titled: "Leave Orwell Out Of It")
Welcome to the public sphere. In the old days if you wanted to air controversial and/or disrespectful opinions you could always get yourself a soapbox, climb up on it and speak your piece. Of course back then you ran the risk of getting pelted with rotten fruit (or worse).
But if you believed enough in what you were saying (& not just revelling in being controversial) I guess you'd run that risk because you believed it was important. I imagine it took a lot of guts. Now you just have to hit SEND
What I think a lot of people are looking for (& I see it nearly daily) is to air grievances, voice complaints & make controversial statements without being held accountable for them by their fellow society members. But it doesn't work that way. It never has.
When held accountable for their controversial opinions, in some cases by those that are actually offended or indeed impacted by them, folks will claim their free speech is being assaulted, impossible given folks would've had to've first seen said speech to've been offended by it.
In this day & age your speech has never been more able to be readily discovered, consumed, shared, agreed with or disposed of by your fellow citizens. It's the Golden Age of saying whatever you want to whomever you want. That's not saying there can't or shouldn't be repercussions.
Because just like in literally every other public sphere IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY (amongst equals) one could *always* expect pushback from your fellow society members when they think you might be incorrect, ignorant, boring, evil, stupid or full of shit.
Most folks I see quoting Orwell these days need to actually read Orwell or re-read him. 1984 is not, at all, about your peers in the public sphere disagreeing with your opinions, which you remain fully free to post & leave up in the public sphere for as long as you want, never once holding anything even remotely resembling a fear of jackbooted government thugs bursting through your door. The privilege is enormous and perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the majority of the progenitors of this misguided argument are white and male.
George Orwell's '1984' is about government control & Fascism and though literally NONE of these folks have had the government come in and tell them what they can or can not say on Facebook or Twitter, Fascism is most certainly on the rise and worth our vigilance.
A great many contemporary Orwell quoters have more in common with the Fascism Orwell writes against than they do Orwell himself and are manipulating his name in a manner that George Orwell, who wrote extensively about the manipulation of words, would detest.
You have every right to misquote, mischaracterize or otherwise abuse the works of George Orwell all day and every day and across an astonishing array of platforms (in fact you can probably find five new ones by lunchtime) just as I am equally free to tell you that you don't know what you're talking about. To think that's the Fascism Orwell was describing is to have lived a relatively sheltered existence, which, of course, if you're white and male it's likely you have.
Peak irony was reached when those very same Proto-Fascists that had incited a deadly Insurrection to overturn legitimate election results claimed a grand silencing of "Conservative" voices after President 'The Other Guy' got deplatformed from Twitter & Fbook.
Trump wasn't deplatformed for holding controversial or outright racist & hateful beliefs but rather for his words resulting in violence & death, which no smart business wants to find themselves openly associated with or legally/financially culpable for.
Perhaps you think folks should be able to incite others to violence. That's your opinion. You have every right to espouse it. But no corporate-owned platform is required by any law, right or freedom to broadcast that message for you. It doesn't work like that. It never has.
I'm not always friendly to an opinion contrary to mine but I guarantee if there's a nugget of merit to it I will end up reflecting upon it, feel compelled to explain my position more clearly with less fire & more evidence, addressing not just my own thoughts but my opponent's
In time I'll have a response based on my best understanding of what's knowable on the subject. Some of my best stuff starts exactly this way.
I'm an entirely imperfect human in a time of Humankind's greatest danger AND opportunity. There's no doubt I owe more than a few apologies for allowing my fears for the future, anxieties about my fellow humans or fury towards sustained apathy/ignorance get the better of me.
I'm also perfectly aware some folks bait or 'troll' others & may not actually believe the 'opinions' they are perfectly free to casually espouse, unaware or uncaring that some of us have intense feelings about the subject & aren't debating just for the sheer debate of it
At best maybe these sites are testing grounds for our own thoughts as we cruise through Life trying to make sense of it all, as we always have. I'm sure many of us've had to back down from a thing we've said that could've used more thought, better wording and cooler heads.
You're allowed to state your case today just as I am free to accept it or refute it, as equals in the public sphere have always done. What's new is the scale of freedom has grown, and though some will inevitably use it for evil, it is, I believe, a good thing overall.
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