In Defense of Elon Musk’s Twitter Decisions

Elon Musk has been facing a lot of criticism lately over how he’s been running Twitter. Just today, I got an email from Gab:

Elon Musk is in over his head when it comes to free speech.

Musk is quickly learning that in order to run a free speech platform you need two things: thick skin and a fanatical commitment to free speech, even when being pro free speech is bad for business, and even when being pro free speech means tolerating the most excoriating criticism of yourself.

Elon’s “free speech” saga at Twitter is really nothing of the sort. He’s treating the product, and his users, as his playthings. Flailing, hyper-feminine emotional outbursts are a substitute for a “leadership style.” All told, he has revealed that he has no interest whatsoever in bringing actual free speech to Twitter.

Twitter was, ironically, more measured and free when there were thousands of mentally ill blue-haired Communists with their fingers on the ban hammer. At least the Communists tried to come up with an objective and consistent rationale for their actions. Contrast with Elon, who waved the flag of free speech as soon as he took over but immediately began compromising on that promise for the sake of business expediency.

When it came to Alex Jones being reinstated, Elon had an emotional reaction and invoked the loss of his child. When it came to Kathy Griffin impersonating him, Elon had an emotional reaction and swung the ban hammer on anyone in his way. When it came to Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, posting a symbol of a French UFO cult which combined a swastika and a Star of David, Elon had an emotional reaction and banned him so as to be hip with all of the other California types who were throwing Ye to the wolves.

Now with the ElonJet and journalist ban situation, where constitutionally protected information which is publicly available is being removed from the site (despite being massively available practically everywhere else on the Internet) Elon is once again “leading” with his emotions and treating Twitter not as a product, not as an essential and vital publication utility for the entire world, but as a toy, and one controlled by a petulant child at that.

Men who lead do not make decisions and dictate on the whims of their emotions. Weak, hyper-effete men “leading” with emotions instead of reason and logic is a big reason Western society is crumbling. Given Elon’s Reddit-tier political takes and patchy soy beard, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that he is low on the testosterone side. But I digress…

Conservatives and White-advocates have been criticizing Musk for failing to re-instate Jared Taylor or even Alex Jones. He’s been criticized for banning Kanye West (Ye). Leftists are, all of a sudden, concerned about “freedom of speech,” and they don’t like it when their precious “journalists” are held accountable for enabling the stalking of Musk or his son. CNN is threatening to pull out of Twitter.

It’s easy to bash Musk for his decisions when we’re not the ones who have to live with those decisions. Musk paid a lot of money for Twitter, and it’s clear to me that if he were to reinstate too many controversial figures in a short period of time, Twitter would shrivel and die. Though I don’t agree with the (apparent) decision to keep Jared Taylor banned, I fully understand it. Similarly, I understand why he banned Kanye West. It’s easy to be a free-speech absolutist in theory. In practice, the real world tends to get in the way. One must make practical decisions, and consider the long-term consequences.

I’ll use this to segway to another topic I’ve been wanting to write about:

Cambridge Dictionary updates definition of ‘woman’

The Cambridge Dictionary has updated its definition of “woman” to include anyone who “identifies as female” regardless of their sex at birth. 

Though I disagree with this new definition, I do understand why they did it; a large enough portion of the English-speaking population now uses the word in this way. Ideally, dictionaries would be politically neutral – but this is impossible. I doubt that dictionaries ever WERE politically neutral. The editors must take practical trends into consideration. The real world doesn’t stop at the editor’s office.

My answer to the Cambridge Dictionary is a measured return to Free English, where spellings and definitions are valid as long as they’re in common usage. In other words, there is no such thing as “correct” or “incorrect,” at least on the basis of dictionaries. The people decide, through their usage, what is correct and incorrect.

This is how it was for most of English history. There was no standardized spelling, and people simply wrote things phonetically as they spoke them in that particular time and place. This is how we know the pronunciation of earlier forms of English; we assume that the “misspellings” were based upon actual pronunciation.

When I say “a MEASURED return to Free English,” what I mean is that we can still use what is perceived as correct spelling and grammar in order to project professionalism or education. Indeed, we should always do so when writing pro-white/pro-liberty articles. Aside from that, I don’t think we should give dictionaries as much weight as we used to. If they’re telling us that a man can be a woman, then we shouldn’t take them too seriously.