Censorship reformer Elon Musk caught in the classic trap between too much and not enough. By the Z-Man.

In this illiberal age, Elon Musk has appointed himself to be the minister of speech on-line and is attempting to roll back the reactionary controls that were put in place by the ruling class over the last decade.

While Twitter is not the internet of old, Musk has rolled back much of the censorship. He still bans certain accounts, mostly as a way to tell the reactionaries that his reforms will not go too far. Otherwise, he has had a light hand on the censorship of his platform.

This is where that old revolutionary vice shows its jaws.

The side that fears the reforms will go too far has successfully organized an advertising boycott. State sanctioned pressure groups like Media Matters have organized other pressure groups to harass companies that were advertising on Twitter. Those companies dropped their ads, resulting in a fifty percent decline in ad revenue. Musk has been forced to hire a girl boss approved by the reactionaries to be his new CEO.

Meanwhile, the other jaw of the vice sees what is happening and assumes Musk will eventually be brought to heel. …

Musk is facing the same dilemma all reformers face when taking the middle position. …

This is where liberal reformers like Musk find themselves. On the one hand, they are correct in fearing a rising tide of radicalism. He rightly sees that it is driven in part by the abuses of the ruling class, of which he is a part.

The trouble is the system cannot withstand open debate. It cannot risk questioning the shibboleths that sustain the moral framework at the heart of the managerial system.

In the end, reformers will be crushed by that old vice that has destroyed prior reformers.

Like Fox News? Fox lasted as the channel for anti-narrative voices from its founding in 1996 to the sacking of Tucker Carlson in 2023, for a total of 27 years. I’ll bet Musk/Twitter doesn’t last to 2050.