[barfingclouds]

The left has been authoritarian. Rewind the clock to 2018, and speak your mind freely on a college campus and at some point you’ll say something that makes you lose your job. That’s one of many examples of the left being actually authoritarian.

I’m not saying two wrongs make a right and I’m not justifying the current administration. But if we look to how we got here, that’s a lot of why, if not mostly why.

[smallmancontrov]

Calling overzealous campus progressives of 2018 authoritarian is quite silly next to the actual demonstrations of actual authoritarian behavior from the actual authorities actually happening right now.

[mmooss]

The right, as they have for decades, would find something to demonize - it has nothing to do with campus politics.

Also, you can't compare their power to a US president, congressional majority, and Supreme Court justices. How many people live on campuses and how many are in the country? And finally, they didn't seek to take power from others, but to empower them - whether or not you like to see that happen or their strategies.

[refulgentis]

I'm amenable to hearing out this argument, but it would be rude to let you slip by with "in 2018, if you spoke your mind, you'd get fired." You and I both know that wouldn't fly in middle school debate class, even, and I don't want to cheapen our relationship by nodding along to it.

[mdale]

I think it's fair to call out a action reaction flow that got us here; but if we can't see we have swag into something far more destructive to free speech as the article outlines; I don't count this as intellectual honest discussion.

We are past the point of "everyone has their perspective on this" right and left have their own version of this etc. The system that protected people's right to have different opinions is being dismantled.

[tayo42]

Having social repercussions for things you say isn't the government. How is that authoritarian?

[hummusandsushi]

It is astoundingly intellectually dishonest for anybody who identifies with the American right, which espouses values of personal responsibility and the rights of organizations such as companies and universities to self-govern, to imply that a direct application of these values is "authoritarian".

Free speech is understood as the ability to express yourself and your beliefs without consequences from the government, it has never meant to practically anyone that it means that as a culture no individual or organization will take action against you. This is personal responsibility in action, you must be prepared to shoulder the consequences of what you say and do.

People losing their jobs in universities and otherwise for expressing certain beliefs is not somehow unique to the American political left of the preceding decade, and it is strange that people have been misled into thinking that it is. Of course it is regrettable that some people may have lost their jobs engaging in good-faith reasoned expression of their beliefs, but you cannot argue that this is somehow the result of "the left".

I intentionally make no judgment here on whether I believe the climate that existed on American college campuses during that time is something desirable, but people doing things that you do not like is not "being actually authoritarian".

[girvo]

Ah yes, because college campuses and the literal federal administration have the same level of power. Absolute tosh.