The Post-Cold War Origins Of The Surveillance State

The Hamas terror attacks and Western response are a sharp return to those dynamics, though we had been living with their offspring for some time - the new systems of censorship have their origins in the War on Terror, which then shifted to countering violent extremism, and expanded to countering anti-elite dissent more broadly.

Corporate liberals enthusiastically jumped on board, expanding the surveillance state and then remodeling the War on Terror to "Counter violent extremism," justifying the micro-policing of the internet to combat hate and "Disinformation."

For woke liberals and progressives that meant an alliance with the intelligence community and the administrative state to counter populist movements and to rein in dissent more broadly.

Already positions are shifting radically on censorship - some free speech champions on the right now advocate censorship, and previously enthusiastic censors on the left now rail against getting canceled.

In France, Germany, Britain, and Australia there are crackdowns on legitimate protest and free expression in support of Palestine and against the war.

Only a few months ago I wrote that it is "Important to return to strong principles of free expression, including for ideas we dislike. The shoe will one day again be on the other foot. When that day comes free speech will not be the enemy of liberals and progressives, it will be the best possible protection against the abuse of power."

Is the speed and force of this shift enough to convince those who had abandoned free speech to renormalise it as a principle? The shoe is now on the other foot. 

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-post-cold-war-origins-of-the-surveillance-state/