Lindy West wants to save free speech — not from destructive censorship, but from conservatives, or as she calls them, “trolls.”
In a ridiculous op-ed, published earlier this month for The New York Times, Lindy West claimed that silencing conservative voices on Twitter isn’t a form of censorship. West writes at length that people on the right aren’t being censored; West believes that instead of being censored, conservatives are simply being “criticized” and they should basically suck it up.
While West claims that the right isn’t actually being censored, she goes on a tangent about how it was okay for Twitter to ban Milo Yiannopoulos simply because it’s legal. Believe it or not, she thinks conservatives should spend their time defending Kathy Griffin instead of Milo Yiannopoulos.
“If the goal was really to destroy political correctness, as Mr. Trump promised was his top priority, they would have rallied behind Kathy Griffin and Stephen Colbert and Johnny Depp instead of — by their own definition — ‘censoring’ them with at least as much fury as they generated on behalf of Milo Yiannopoulos and his suspended Twitter account (which was perfectly legal, as per the Twitter corporation’s speech rights).”
West seems to think that the Constitution of the United States of America is on her side, too. West points out that the 1st amendment only protects you from actions from the government. From there, she extrapolates that she and private companies can silence you all they want. It’s just criticism after all.
West claims that she and her friends in progressive leftist circles have a joke about conservatives who fight to protect free speech. According to West, the joke is actually a new phrase circulating in the leftist echo chamber.
“You can find disingenuous rhetoric about protecting free speech in the engine room of pretty much every digital-age culture war. The refrain has become so ubiquitous that it’s earned its own sarcastic homophone in progressive circles: ‘freeze peach!’ Nothing is more important than the First Amendment, the internet men say, provided you interpret the First Amendment exactly the same way they do: as a magic spell that means no one you don’t like is allowed to criticize you.”
Freeze peach is just about as clever as Lindy’s last genius idea, “Shout your abortion,” which failed in a massive way. The hashtag was hijacked by conservative Twitter warriors; #PPSellsBabyParts and #ShoutYourAdoption started trending in response.
