{"id":67642,"date":"2024-04-27T13:23:52","date_gmt":"2024-04-27T18:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67642"},"modified":"2024-04-27T13:23:52","modified_gmt":"2024-04-27T18:23:52","slug":"leading-german-politician-calls-for-the-state-to-issue-revocable-social-media-licenses-for-the-privilege-of-commenting-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67642","title":{"rendered":"Leading German politician calls for the state to issue “revocable social media licenses” for the privilege of commenting online"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Leading German politician calls for the state to issue “revocable social media licenses” for the privilege of commenting online<\/a><\/h3>\n

If only speech were not a right but a privilege granted selectively by the state, our democratic freedoms would be that much more secure.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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You may remember this man. His name is\u00a0Mario Voigt<\/a>, and he is the head of the centre-right CDU in Th\u00fcringen. He made national headlines a few weeks ago for grievously threatening German democracy by\u00a0agreeing to debate his AfD counterpart Bj\u00f6rn H\u00f6cke on national television<\/a>. Because the AfD in general and H\u00f6cke in particular are antidemocratic fascists, allowing them anywhere near a microphone is very likely to destroy our entire system of government, that is what a weak and failed state we have here in Germany.<\/p>\n

The duel between our leading Thuringian politicians was all but unwatchable, as indeed almost all political debates turn out to be. While H\u00f6cke could\u2019ve acquitted himself better, Voigt\u2019s performance was flat, uninspired and profoundly banal. Among other things, the man suffers from a peculiar rodentine aspect; he bites his way stiffly through bland preformulated arguments like a squirrel chewing a stale nut or a beaver gnawing through saplings. After the event, the CDU took to the press to declare victory, but polls showed that viewers found H\u00f6cke on balance more persuasive, which is of course the real reason that everybody told Voigt to avoid the confrontation. Voigt is intensely democratic and therefore extremely right about everything, but somehow \u2013 and this is very awkward to discuss \u2013 his being eminently righteous and correct in all things does not manifest in an ability to defeat the very wrong and evil arguments of his opponents. It\u2019s very weird how that works, perhaps somebody should look into it.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leading German politician calls for the state to issue “revocable social media licenses” for the privilege of commenting online If only speech were not a right but a privilege granted selectively by the state, our democratic freedoms would be that much more secure. You may remember this man. His name is\u00a0Mario Voigt, and he is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[43,120,33189,359,26071,1169],"class_list":["post-67642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-authoritarianism","tag-censorship","tag-eugyppius","tag-germany","tag-narrative-management","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67643,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67642\/revisions\/67643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}