How political extremists deal with online free speech

This is about a personal online incident from yesterday.

I've mentioned several times here that a few months before the 2020 elections, I started to  engage with seven large pro-T**** online politics sites. All seven wound up blocking me, some starting with my first comment, but none banned outright. My comments just stopped showing up, sometimes labeled as in moderation or being spam checked. The rest with no explanation at all. Clearly, T**** supporters and fascist pro-T**** sites cannot handle, or will not accept, inconvenient facts or sound reasoning.

A couple of days ago, a commenter here cited OffGuardian or OFFG (tagline: Because facts really should be sacred) as an information source. Since that one was new to me, I checked it out. I picked an article, The Propaganda War (And How to Fight It) because I'm interested in fighting propaganda. And, facts really are critically important in defense of good things including democracy, the rule of law and social comity. 

The article turned out to be crackpot conspiracy theory and as deranged and fact-free an attack on the COVID vaccine as anything I've ever seen. It was a based on lies and argument that doesn't even qualify for motivated reasoning. It is almost as false, offensive and socially damaging as anything I encountered on the pro-T**** sites. The recommended anti-vaxx action item was this:

OK, here comes the big idea, which will only work if enough people do it. You probably won’t like it, but what the hell, here goes…

This is the red inverted triangle the Nazis used in the concentration camps to designate their political opponents and members of the anti-Nazi resistance. Make one. Make it out of fabric, paper, or whatever material you have at hand.

Put a big, black “U” in the center of it to signify “Unvaccinated.” Wear it in public, conspicuously.

The article went on to tell people to tell other people why they are wearing the U Nazi symbol in public and to encourage other people to also refuse the vaccine. The article indicates that although this tactic will not work on people who are New Normal segregationists, even those miscreants should also be told to refuse the vaccine. No, I don't know or care what a new normal segregationist is.

Being curious about this site and its loyal followers, I posted this comment: 

People who could but do not get vaccinated are responsible for the deaths and social and economic damage they cause. The evidence is clear that vaccines work and are safe enough to be used to prevent COVID infections or reduce their severity. It is disheartening to see this kind of anti-vaccine disinformation-propaganda being passed as real information. What has happened to the a significant slice of the human race? It’s gone nuts. Facts are lies and lies are facts. Maybe we will self-annihilate. The seeds of it are in our minds. Those seeds are being nurtured by mass disinformation.

Some time later that day (yesterday) I got some responses, all negative. By then, my comment had accumulated 12 downvotes and no upvotes. At the moment it's at 47 down and 0 up. My three attempts to respond yesterday got blocked, allegedly to check for spam. My one attempted one sentence response today is also being checked for spam. I doubt that any will ever be posted. 

From that wonderful encounter, I assumed that OFFG is a far left crackpot and conspiracies site. Having an inquiring mind, off to MBFC I went. Sure enough, it's crackpot in reasoning and sloppy with facts. MBFC comments in its rating of OFFG: "Founded in 2015, the OffGuardian is an independent news and opinion website that “takes its name from the fact its five founders had all been censored on and/or banned from the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ sections.”" Woof! From that, one can tell one that one is dealing with some serious firepower here.

Based on the anti-vaxx article, I would rate OFFG Tin Foil Hat & Quackery, with Very Low fact accuracy and maybe far left extremism (I'm not quite sure about it being far left - it may be too nutty to be categorized in any political scale way). But heck, that's just silly old me, where facts are sacred and so is sound reasoning.  

One can wonder, what sites actually get Tin Foil Hat & Quackery, with Very Low? Those places must be enchanting. But that's for another blog post. But I digress.

In another way, this site is a lot like some of the fascist radical right sites that booted my sorry backside off in 2020. They sanctimoniously bleat that they revere free speech and are open to all ideas, but it just ain't so, i.e., it's a big, fat lie. This is some of the meaningless drivel from the OFFG comment policy page:

OffGuardian has a completely open comment policy. People can post without signing in or confirming their identity.

We have never banned anyone from this site, and unless you are grotesquely racist, abusive or spammy, you will be able to post any shade of opinion you like here.

Please note also that we do have an automated system that holds back any comment containing three or more hyperlinks. This is intended to help filter out spam. If your comment contains three or more hyperlinks it will be held back until we clear it, but it will be published eventually.

None of my comments had three or more hyperlinks. Like with the fascist T**** sites, no one ever openly banned me. My comments just mysteriously failed to appear. Maybe my one allowed comment was grotesquely racist or abusive to OFFG, but it seemed rather mild to me. Or, maybe telling the truth is too abusive. None of my attempted but now blocked responses to people who responded to me has been posted yet. People there responded to me mostly with insults, and/or derision, e.g., liar. On the bright side, they let me post one comment before shutting me down. A couple of the free speech loving, fascist[1] pro-T****  sites would not let me post even one comment.

What a fun place. /sarc 

What an immoral place. /not sarc

Question: In view of the damage to society and democracy that sites like OFFG cause, should their taxable income be taxed at a high rate, or should they be required by law to pay a high monthly or annual license to operate fee, or should they be free to spew their divisive and damaging lies, hate and disinformation regardless of the consequences?

Footnote: 

1. I know, I know. Free speech loving fascist is an oxymoron. Of course, that's not oxymoron if one defines free speech as only what supports fascism and the dictator and its supporting autocracy and kleptocrats.