Category: Michelle Malkin

“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”
— Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” 1965

Sunday night, I was a guest on “BlogMock Radio,” the weekly online podcast hosted by Blogmocracy and Diary of Daedalus, and a caller asked, “Did you hear what happened to Chris Loesch?”

Chris Loesch is a musician who joined forces with Steven Crowder to perform as Powdered Zombies for the viral rap hit “Mr. America.”

Chris is also, not coincidentally, the husband of blogger/talk-radio host/CNN contributor Dana Loesch. Chris was arguing with some left-wingers on Twitter who had attacked his wife when the enlightened tolerant progressives decided — to borrow a phrase from Spencer Ackerman — to smash him through a plate-glass window. Chris explained to Twitchy what happened:

I was suspended 20 minutes after I was done debating a few liberals. Twitter’s suspension message to me stated that I had used “Abusive Language” I never cursed, threatened or belittled anyone. . . .
I stumbled upon a few tweets between the liberals I was debating, discussing getting groups together to block conservative twitter accounts in mass. I am certain that @OccupiedMuslim got her entire OWS rally in NYC to report me for spam. I wish I would have taken a screen shot because those tweets were deleted as soon as I started making noise about it. . . .
This is clearly a tactic being used by the left and Twitter is either ignorant or allowing it to occur.

Got it? Any conservative active on Twitter is familiar with how left-wing trolls — many of them associated with the Occupy movement — like to get up “in your face,” hurling abusive language and dishonest smears. The best response usually is to ignore them.

Most people don’t have time to waste on such vermin, but ignoring the troll attacks will sometimes give them the idea that they are “winning” (Charlie Sheen-style), so that the trolls start congratulating each other on their success, and claiming that the objects of their attacks are too stupid or too cowardly to engage them in arguments. You’ll never guess who wrote this:

Right wingers harass, abuse, insult & attack people constantly on Twitter, then act outraged and whine when their accounts are suspended.

OK, maybe you did guess, huh? This is what happens when the target responds to the trolls: The enlightened tolerant progressives deliberately mischaracterize the response as an “attack,” or “whining,” as if the targets of their vicious dishonest online aggression had no right to answer them back. And now, as the case of Chris Loesch dramatizes, the Left has begun organizing stalker mobs to falsely report conservatives for “spam”/”abuse,” in order to silence the Right on Twitter. Why?

Silencing opposition is the Left’s only hope for success.

If conservatives are permitted a fair chance to critique the Left’s agenda, to expose the Left’s tactics and demonstrate the failure of the Left’s policies, the Left loses. Not content to dominate academia, public schools, the entertainment industry, book publishing and the mainstream news media — all of which cultural institutions are characterized by an overwhelming liberal hegemony — the Left is now determined to silence conservative opposition in the few bastions of freedom that remain: Talk radio, cable TV and the Internet.

Nearly half a century has passed since Marxist theoretician Herbert Marcuse proposed a “liberating tolerance” — in fact, progressive intolerance — that would silence the Left’s opposition. Many old-fashioned liberals at that time recognized the totalitarian nature of Marcuse’s formula. Leszek Kolakowski observed that the ultimate object of Marcuse’s ideology was “Marxism as a Totalitarian Utopia. . . . the freedom he advocates is non-freedom.”

Here we are now in 2012, and we see mobs of left-wingers still pursuing the Marcusean totalitarian formula: Smash the opponent “through a plate glass window,” as Spencer Ackerman infamously said, and do not scruple about the means to the end. If one imagines that the Right is Evil by definition, then defeat the Right “by any means necessary,” to employ a favorite slogan of the Left.

Ten days ago, Daniel Vergara committed libel against me — and Twitter has still done nothing about Vergara’s defamation.

Yesterday, a left-wing online mob attacked Chris Loesch, and Twitter suspended Loesch’s account. When conservatives rallied under  Ben Howe’s #FreeChrisLoesch banner, Loesch was briefly reinstated, but continued agitation from the left-wing Twitter trolls resulted in a second suspension. If this could happen to such a prominent person, whose wife is a paid contributor to CNN, what do you suppose happens to smaller, less influential figures online?

As Twitchy documents, these attacks have happened to many conservatives, and Twitter has done nothing to stop it.

Anneke Green reports the story at The Washington Times. Now a Memeorandum thread, with commentary from Hot Air and Nice Deb.

Conservatives must defend free speech now, before the Left uses Marcusean “liberating tolerance” to silence all opposition.

UPDATE: Darleen Click on the Twitter troll tactics:

They even believe they “own” certain hashtags and target conservatives who engage, mockingly or seriously, in “their” space.
Sister Toldjah was able to uncover one of the “hit lists” and, scroll down and you’ll find me and Serr8d on the list.

She’s exactly right: The Left wanted to “own” the #OWS and #Occupy Twitter hashtags, and when conservatives began using those tags to promote stories documenting the criminal violence of the Occupy movement, the Left became enraged. Well, they were enraged already, I guess, but they went into an especially demented sort of frenzy at being unable to control the “narrative” of the Occupy movement.

UPDATE II: Da Tech Guy sees Soviet tactics by the Left, while Dan Collins discusses the possibility that the White House is orchestrating such attacks. One need not believe that to understand that Our President has done nothing to discourage the Left’s venomous hatefulness and has, indeed, in many ways fomented it.