Conservative intolerance toward inconvenient free speech

I've mentioned here several times that before the 2016 election I tried to engaged with seven big conservative politics websites. All seven wound up blocking me, two of which did not allow me to make even one unblocked comment. I did that to try to open communications with conservatives, Trump supporters and Republicans generally. From what I can tell, the effort appeared to be about 98% failure.

Given how dire and fragile our political and social situation is, making another attempt to reach conservatives makes sense, even if the effort is doomed to fail. What I am finding is that at least some big conservative politics sites are now more explicitly intolerant of non-conservative commentary, even if it is respectful and fact-based. 

Here's an example. The is a big conservative politics site (subreddit) at reddit called r/Conservative. The site shows it has 898,000 members and about 3,500 online at the moment. I checked its commenting rules. Here are the relevant ones, copied verbatim:

We have seven rules here - and they're easy to follow so let's review:

1 - Be civil, follow any flair guidelines.

This one is pretty easy... try and be nice to people. If you're getting some of that famous Liberal snark just message the moderators and let them know what's going on so we can help. And if a post says, "Conservatives Only" and you're not a Conservative don't comment there (your comment won't be visible anyway unless you have flair). if you want flair click here to learn about it.

It's not civil to say someone has a "punchable face" or we need to have another civil war. So don't be that person because we will find you and take action for it.

From the flair rules page:

To display your User Flair, you must also have the “☑️ Show my flair on this subreddit” box checked on the sidebar.

The only thing having User Flair does is grant you the ability to comment in posts marked with the submission flair "Flaired Users Only". All the other posts not flaired as such are open for you to comment in.

This is designed so that a couple posts per day are almost guaranteed to have conversation which is not hijacked by leftists and other non-conservatives.

Who Gets Flair?

Only mods can assign User Flair, and User Flair is only for conservatives. Once you have a solid history of comments in /r/Conservative, and have been commenting in the subreddit for at least two weeks, that is the right time to request flair via the link at the bottom of this page.

Please understand that this is for conservatives. We do our best to vet you based on your post history on reddit. You will need some post history to qualify - ideally within the subreddit itself. If you do not have a conservative leaning post history you will likely be asked to re-apply when you do.

You may choose your own flair but mods reserve the ability to reject the text. The flair must be conservative or at least generally right wing in nature. As our mission statement is to provide a place for conservatives to speak to other conservatives - we do not grant flair to those who are not at least reasonably close to that world view.

We do give variants on some of the above: "Libertarian Conservative" and "Moderate Conservative" are acceptable, for example.

We're looking for people who have been commenting for at least two weeks with verified history here in our subreddit. Ideally, we want you to average a couple comments per week, as well. If this is your first comment in /r/conservative, you have not met the minimum requirements to get flair.

7 - Do not violate the Mission Statement

We have a mission statement and we take it very seriously. This is what guides our subreddit and determines who and what belongs here:

We provide a place on Reddit for conservatives, both fiscal and social, to read and discuss political and cultural issues from a distinctly conservative point of view.

For our purpose behind the mission statement, please read Why We Have a Mission Statement.

Our Mission Statement

We provide a place on Reddit for conservatives, both fiscal and social, to read and discuss political and cultural issues from a distinctly conservative point of view.

Why Does /r/Conservative Have Its Mission Statement

The mission statement of this sub exists solely due to the hordes of leftists trying to silence this sub. If they could engage in civil discussion without resorting to personal attacks, dogpile downvotes, and endless parroting of hackneyed talking points, then we wouldn't need to ban them.

In fact, conservative ideas thrive when contrasted with the vapid superficiality, pseudo intellectualism, and creepy totalitarianism of leftism.

-/u/philosoguido - Moderator January 21, 2018

 

So, there you have it. A conservative politics site with almost 900K members that explicitly says liberals (i) want to shut r/Conservative conversation down, by making personal attacks, dogpiling downvotes[1] and whatever other bad things all liberals always do (ii) don't engage in civil discussion, (iii) are vapid and superficial, and (iv) make only hackneyed talking points. Liberals and presumably moderates need to be banned for these horrors.

I will keep civilly commenting at r/Conservative based on facts and logic until they ban me. I imagine it won't take long. My first comment there is here. It is the beginning of my latest little experiment in how mainstream conservatism deals with inconvenient free speech.

Questions: 

1. Are sites like r/Conservative unable to deal with civil, but inconvenient facts and logic, or am I just another one of those uncivilized, superficial, vapid, brainwashed liberal blowhards who makes only hackneyed talking points and is rude to conservatives? (I suspect most conservative really do see me as rude, uncivil, ignorant and stupid-brainwashed)

2. Are sites like r/Conservative echo chambers or places for unfettered, honest discussion?

Footnote: 

1. The dogpiling of downvotes might have been what flagged me to the two conservative sites that would not let me post even one comment under my Germaine II Disqus account. People on the other Disqus sites constantly downvoted most of my comments, So by the time I got to the last two sites on my list, I was already persona non grata by virtue of a having buttload of downvotes. 

FWIW, I dislike downvoting and rarely do it. I dislike it here.