In recent times, a few prolific proponents of free speech—people I’ve had ongoing friendly relations with—have either lashed out at me, unfollowed me, or both. And in each case...
Let me give you a reason why I've been muting people lately. I might click on something, or even reply to something they said, and then Substack's algorithm just keeps feeding me their content above and beyond anything else. Now, I don't really want to mute these people - but I also don't want them non-stop in my feed! If I could, I'd tell the algorithm to ease up a bit. But since this is not possible, I just mute them. Unfortunate, but there you have it.
"Free speech" advocacy has become a good gauge of ideological hypocrisy on both the left and right. The self-styled, primarily alt-right "free speech absolutists" of a couple of years back quickly made it clear that, the moment they had power (whether over a corporation or government) the only kind of speech they valued was their own. It's the same on the ideological left. Freedom to protest -- but only if it's against Israel. Book bans are bad -- unless it's J.K. Rowling or Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's not really about speech -- it's about ideological power and control.
Someday, if the (classical) liberal democratic centre is able to hold, we may reclaim the understandings until recently shared by most westerners within a standard deviation of the political centre: that freedom of expression is a vital social right, subject to limited constraints (e.g., sedition, actionable threats of violence, libel / slander, etc.) that had mainly been worked out in common and civil law. But of course it is precisely this kind of understanding ideologues on both the far right and far left have sought to undermine as they push society to be destroyed and remade under their authority.
It's happened with me and others. Some "anti-woke" corners of Substack and TwitterX are becoming indistinguishable from 2010s Tumblr in terms of behavior. The personal attacks, the gaslighting, the mentality of "I didn't say what you think I said, but also I did and it's a good thing," the assumption that any minor disagreement with them (or even asking questions for clarification!) is, by definition, in "bad faith." At least the "woke Tumblr" crowd never pretended to speak for "open debate" or "rationality" or "masculine stoicism."
If someone undramatically deletes my comments on their spaces or mutes me for whatever reason, and they're not someone I know personally, I don't take it personally. I wouldn't even notice because I don't go back and check those things. People get to curate their own spaces and timelines.
It's the making a big show of it and "lashing out" that's disturbing. Why would someone respond with rage and character attacks over a simple counterpoint? Curating their own space doesn't explain that behavior (and the same individuals go raging into other people's spaces anyway). It's almost as if they don't want your viewpoint expressed *anywhere*.
In retaliation for a disagreement that *I* didn't think was a big deal, a stranger accused me of causing my child's medical problems! Then again, autism moms risk getting wild hate and accusations any time we identify ourselves. I don't know why...? I'm not online enough to understand that particular phenomenon!
I can sympathize -- I've been blocked on Facebook and email by one of my sisters over the transgender issue -- she and several other (extended) family members get quite "offended" 🙄 when I say that transwomen are most certainly not women, and that, for all their flaws, Republicans at least aren't sterilizing and castrating autistic and dysphoric children.
Kind of the coup de grace there has been being kicked out of the biweekly Zoom meetings -- exiled, cast into the outer darkness, "go and never darken our doorsteps again!!11!!" 🙄
I think it especially sucks that you've been blocked by a family member! We probably have some disagreements on this topic (and some agreements too), but I don't get the sense you're coming from a place of hate. Also if I blocked family members over thoughts that offend me, I'd have no more family left. We certainly argue though!
Well, I've been accused of being somewhat "obsessed" on the topic. 🙂 Though with some justification -- Helens Dale and Joyce have argued that transgenderism is a "civilization threatening/ending movement":
It can be hard to tell who is acting in good faith. One good outcome of the Trump era is that it's like an X-ray for allegedly free thinkers who opine on so many things, but never find time to comment on the man himself. The negative space is a tell.
They either like him and justify his actions, or are afraid of being further ostracized or attacked. A lot of these free thinkers, especially if on the left, were pushed out and at the time the right embraced them. The left won't welcome them back. And the maga are the only community they have left... So that plays a role too.
I think what we are talking about here are forbidden ideas. For those people, more terrifying than being outsmarted, is being convinced and thereby becoming the thing they despise.
Winston Churchill once said this and I think it is related because the power of ideas is that they can change who we are:
"You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them."
How nice, I totally agree, intuitively connected this with my own experiences, I think it's a great idea for where we are on the Earth at the moment. I've also been harmonizing with the animal kingdom around me, so let's help this helps balance things in my ecology. Hopefully yours with what it is, and your people, can find each other and we can actually see that this relationship we have is, like that, really much more than we know, and what a good opportunity for us to be apprised for these things which are innate & inherent, our ideas. Like a good garden to grow forever thru the turns. I like people, I just can't stand such abject negativity sometimes, with all I've seen. I try to balance it but who knows? It's still a conversation I'm communicating, I need it.
Sorry to hear this happened with some of your contacts! Hopefully some of them will come back around! For a split second when I saw the email with this title I thought you had muted me, but then I remembered that if you get muted Substack doesn't inform you of this 🤣
I think people talk only with those they agree with for several reasons, as other commenters have noted: a) their quibble is not with the process in place but rather with their lack of power. Once they have power, the ends justify any means, i.e. any process; b) in interpersonal relationships, there are many people who are constantly tending to a wounded inner core and want friends and contacts who do things that boost that core.
On A, this is the norm more than the exception in history. See all the political rulers throughout the world who came to power by at least one legitimate election but then scrapped legitimate elections to retain power.
On B, I think it's understandable to want your social connections to add something, often by making you feel better about yourself, and I wouldn't claim that I'm not also mostly doing this. I would maintain that I've noticed other people are much quicker to dissociate from me when they find out I have a different viewpoint on an important issue than I am to do this from them. For me this is also about imagining the world I want for the next generation and my kids. I don't want a world where you can't associate with people of differing viewpoints. I've always been annoyed at concerts when the artist makes some political statement between songs, essentially pointing to the door for anyone who thinks differently, even though the views were usually ones I was a bit closer to than not.
In my social circle it has happened that our political views have started to diverge on some very important issues, and we have responded to this by ring-fencing those topics and ceasing to discuss them at all. This actually is working pretty well and allowing a largely peaceful relationship to go on. At some point you realize you can't make new old friends and that everyone is going to change and grow and that you need to acknowledge and accept this if your friends aren't being used just as tools.
Very much agree about the point about power, and artists making certain political comments—though I guess for them they feel they have a big platform and thus a responsibility to make them.
As I thought further about this, the point about power also extends to general trends in political orientation one sees. People who do not have power or money are vastly more likely to favor a fundamental change in the system, i.e. a change in process. People who have money or power are more likely to favor incremental change, moderation, or hold conservative views.
This happened in my own political views as well: as I began to succeed in the existing system, the existing system seemed less totally broken to me than it did when I was a humanities PhD looking at having spent many years earning a degree that could not provide me with a decent living, or that would have had me eking by. Now that I have a very good job and have been promoted many times and eventually was able to get out of debt, buy a house, afford to have children, things don't seem as broken to me. This doesn't mean I favor pulling up all the ladders behind me, or that I don't think there are problems with the system: I do, and I still want to see those changes happen. But I also want to protect the aspects of the system that worked for me and that now underpin my own living. I'm sure one could accuse me of motivated reasoning, but I do genuinely think that with the long-running sense of siege on my own personal prospects for professional and personal success lifted, I am able to assess issues in a manner less motivated on balance than it was when I was closer to the view that everyone else should be sending me and people like me more of their paychecks. Just a candid thought.
Well, you've moved me to become a "Founding Member" of your substack and I, for one, am always willing to have a conversation. I have been guilty of just what you have described in the past. I think many people in our society are avoidant. We find it easy just to "disappear" - and avoid anything that seems like friction. I learn through friction and am going to work hard to stay in a space where I might feel discomfort.
I massively appreciate the support and respect the self-recognition/reflection. You're right, I think, about the avoidant part. Although in my particular cases that wasn't the main factor, I do think a lot of people do just sort of "fade out" on difficult topics that challenge their worldview, or in general any conversation that might cause friction.
The "big tent" was an ideal only moderates ever really believed in. It's a moderate concept by definition. There are some on the far right or left who might have tried to use it for their benefit, but it was never real. Their "tent" is only big enough for those who conform to their perspective, at least on all the important issues. Those who only occasionally disagree on minor matters have still shown that they're "too strongly opinionated," as a far right friend of mine put it once, and will occupy the outer fringes of their "big tent" accordingly.
The big tent can only be what it's advertised to be if a moderate runs the show, whether they're conservative, liberal, or centrist. Communists and hard nationalists might talk a big game about "big tents" when they don't have institutional power, but will never practice what they preached when they attain it.
Let me give you a reason why I've been muting people lately. I might click on something, or even reply to something they said, and then Substack's algorithm just keeps feeding me their content above and beyond anything else. Now, I don't really want to mute these people - but I also don't want them non-stop in my feed! If I could, I'd tell the algorithm to ease up a bit. But since this is not possible, I just mute them. Unfortunate, but there you have it.
That's perfectly fine. I'm more talking about people who were previously friendly with me.
"Free speech" advocacy has become a good gauge of ideological hypocrisy on both the left and right. The self-styled, primarily alt-right "free speech absolutists" of a couple of years back quickly made it clear that, the moment they had power (whether over a corporation or government) the only kind of speech they valued was their own. It's the same on the ideological left. Freedom to protest -- but only if it's against Israel. Book bans are bad -- unless it's J.K. Rowling or Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's not really about speech -- it's about ideological power and control.
Someday, if the (classical) liberal democratic centre is able to hold, we may reclaim the understandings until recently shared by most westerners within a standard deviation of the political centre: that freedom of expression is a vital social right, subject to limited constraints (e.g., sedition, actionable threats of violence, libel / slander, etc.) that had mainly been worked out in common and civil law. But of course it is precisely this kind of understanding ideologues on both the far right and far left have sought to undermine as they push society to be destroyed and remade under their authority.
You're spot on.
It's happened with me and others. Some "anti-woke" corners of Substack and TwitterX are becoming indistinguishable from 2010s Tumblr in terms of behavior. The personal attacks, the gaslighting, the mentality of "I didn't say what you think I said, but also I did and it's a good thing," the assumption that any minor disagreement with them (or even asking questions for clarification!) is, by definition, in "bad faith." At least the "woke Tumblr" crowd never pretended to speak for "open debate" or "rationality" or "masculine stoicism."
If someone undramatically deletes my comments on their spaces or mutes me for whatever reason, and they're not someone I know personally, I don't take it personally. I wouldn't even notice because I don't go back and check those things. People get to curate their own spaces and timelines.
It's the making a big show of it and "lashing out" that's disturbing. Why would someone respond with rage and character attacks over a simple counterpoint? Curating their own space doesn't explain that behavior (and the same individuals go raging into other people's spaces anyway). It's almost as if they don't want your viewpoint expressed *anywhere*.
In retaliation for a disagreement that *I* didn't think was a big deal, a stranger accused me of causing my child's medical problems! Then again, autism moms risk getting wild hate and accusations any time we identify ourselves. I don't know why...? I'm not online enough to understand that particular phenomenon!
I can sympathize -- I've been blocked on Facebook and email by one of my sisters over the transgender issue -- she and several other (extended) family members get quite "offended" 🙄 when I say that transwomen are most certainly not women, and that, for all their flaws, Republicans at least aren't sterilizing and castrating autistic and dysphoric children.
Kind of the coup de grace there has been being kicked out of the biweekly Zoom meetings -- exiled, cast into the outer darkness, "go and never darken our doorsteps again!!11!!" 🙄
I think it especially sucks that you've been blocked by a family member! We probably have some disagreements on this topic (and some agreements too), but I don't get the sense you're coming from a place of hate. Also if I blocked family members over thoughts that offend me, I'd have no more family left. We certainly argue though!
Before my parents visit, we have to coach our 7 year not to mention Trump so as not to piss off my mom. I hate it.
Well, I've been accused of being somewhat "obsessed" on the topic. 🙂 Though with some justification -- Helens Dale and Joyce have argued that transgenderism is a "civilization threatening/ending movement":
https://lawliberty.org/podcast/when-does-sex-matter/
Not sure what your position is on the topic, and on the recent Skrmetti case but something of a watershed event with far-reaching consequences:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/magazine/scotus-transgender-care-tennessee-skrmetti.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Rk8.gwR6.DXJ3ntlUwYZr&smid=url-share
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/30/politics/transgender-health-care-birth-certificates-supreme-court
It can be hard to tell who is acting in good faith. One good outcome of the Trump era is that it's like an X-ray for allegedly free thinkers who opine on so many things, but never find time to comment on the man himself. The negative space is a tell.
They either like him and justify his actions, or are afraid of being further ostracized or attacked. A lot of these free thinkers, especially if on the left, were pushed out and at the time the right embraced them. The left won't welcome them back. And the maga are the only community they have left... So that plays a role too.
I think what we are talking about here are forbidden ideas. For those people, more terrifying than being outsmarted, is being convinced and thereby becoming the thing they despise.
Winston Churchill once said this and I think it is related because the power of ideas is that they can change who we are:
"You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them."
That too!
How nice, I totally agree, intuitively connected this with my own experiences, I think it's a great idea for where we are on the Earth at the moment. I've also been harmonizing with the animal kingdom around me, so let's help this helps balance things in my ecology. Hopefully yours with what it is, and your people, can find each other and we can actually see that this relationship we have is, like that, really much more than we know, and what a good opportunity for us to be apprised for these things which are innate & inherent, our ideas. Like a good garden to grow forever thru the turns. I like people, I just can't stand such abject negativity sometimes, with all I've seen. I try to balance it but who knows? It's still a conversation I'm communicating, I need it.
Sorry to hear this happened with some of your contacts! Hopefully some of them will come back around! For a split second when I saw the email with this title I thought you had muted me, but then I remembered that if you get muted Substack doesn't inform you of this 🤣
I think people talk only with those they agree with for several reasons, as other commenters have noted: a) their quibble is not with the process in place but rather with their lack of power. Once they have power, the ends justify any means, i.e. any process; b) in interpersonal relationships, there are many people who are constantly tending to a wounded inner core and want friends and contacts who do things that boost that core.
On A, this is the norm more than the exception in history. See all the political rulers throughout the world who came to power by at least one legitimate election but then scrapped legitimate elections to retain power.
On B, I think it's understandable to want your social connections to add something, often by making you feel better about yourself, and I wouldn't claim that I'm not also mostly doing this. I would maintain that I've noticed other people are much quicker to dissociate from me when they find out I have a different viewpoint on an important issue than I am to do this from them. For me this is also about imagining the world I want for the next generation and my kids. I don't want a world where you can't associate with people of differing viewpoints. I've always been annoyed at concerts when the artist makes some political statement between songs, essentially pointing to the door for anyone who thinks differently, even though the views were usually ones I was a bit closer to than not.
In my social circle it has happened that our political views have started to diverge on some very important issues, and we have responded to this by ring-fencing those topics and ceasing to discuss them at all. This actually is working pretty well and allowing a largely peaceful relationship to go on. At some point you realize you can't make new old friends and that everyone is going to change and grow and that you need to acknowledge and accept this if your friends aren't being used just as tools.
You weren’t the only one SBT 😹
Happy Canada Day all!
💪💪🇨🇦🗽
haha! No, I didn't mute you.
As for them coming around, frankly, not likely.
Very much agree about the point about power, and artists making certain political comments—though I guess for them they feel they have a big platform and thus a responsibility to make them.
As I thought further about this, the point about power also extends to general trends in political orientation one sees. People who do not have power or money are vastly more likely to favor a fundamental change in the system, i.e. a change in process. People who have money or power are more likely to favor incremental change, moderation, or hold conservative views.
This happened in my own political views as well: as I began to succeed in the existing system, the existing system seemed less totally broken to me than it did when I was a humanities PhD looking at having spent many years earning a degree that could not provide me with a decent living, or that would have had me eking by. Now that I have a very good job and have been promoted many times and eventually was able to get out of debt, buy a house, afford to have children, things don't seem as broken to me. This doesn't mean I favor pulling up all the ladders behind me, or that I don't think there are problems with the system: I do, and I still want to see those changes happen. But I also want to protect the aspects of the system that worked for me and that now underpin my own living. I'm sure one could accuse me of motivated reasoning, but I do genuinely think that with the long-running sense of siege on my own personal prospects for professional and personal success lifted, I am able to assess issues in a manner less motivated on balance than it was when I was closer to the view that everyone else should be sending me and people like me more of their paychecks. Just a candid thought.
Well, you've moved me to become a "Founding Member" of your substack and I, for one, am always willing to have a conversation. I have been guilty of just what you have described in the past. I think many people in our society are avoidant. We find it easy just to "disappear" - and avoid anything that seems like friction. I learn through friction and am going to work hard to stay in a space where I might feel discomfort.
I massively appreciate the support and respect the self-recognition/reflection. You're right, I think, about the avoidant part. Although in my particular cases that wasn't the main factor, I do think a lot of people do just sort of "fade out" on difficult topics that challenge their worldview, or in general any conversation that might cause friction.
The "big tent" was an ideal only moderates ever really believed in. It's a moderate concept by definition. There are some on the far right or left who might have tried to use it for their benefit, but it was never real. Their "tent" is only big enough for those who conform to their perspective, at least on all the important issues. Those who only occasionally disagree on minor matters have still shown that they're "too strongly opinionated," as a far right friend of mine put it once, and will occupy the outer fringes of their "big tent" accordingly.
The big tent can only be what it's advertised to be if a moderate runs the show, whether they're conservative, liberal, or centrist. Communists and hard nationalists might talk a big game about "big tents" when they don't have institutional power, but will never practice what they preached when they attain it.