My thoughts and opinions about Trump’s deplatforming are slowly consolidating, developing vague outlines. I had a vague feeling that there was something not right, but there is also so much schadenfreude, that it’s hard to think through how. But there is a feeling of an establishment mob to counter the more violent, unruly neo-Nazi mob of a few days ago, that I think makes this just another axe-blow at the institutions Trump and his fellows have done so much to destroy. A temporary suspension, till the inauguration, would have been fine. An official directive or a violation of a coherent and consistently applied terms of service would have been fine too. Impeachment proceedings are, I think, essential, and shame on the Republicans that they will not allow them. But this cold, hard hand of the private companies that have refused responsibility for, for example, the massacres of Rohingya in Myanmar, more powerful than the elected president of the United States – I find this troubling. (And wonder if he has been calling into Fox News and finding no one answering the phone). There are a lot of problems with Western democracy, and with US institutions in particular, but tech companies are part of the problem, not (at the moment) the solution. And I wonder if this clear marshalling of the establishment is going to calm down the millions who voted for Trump and or fire them up. With Brexit, – the expression of popular anger came after the murder of Jo Cox, it didn’t seem to bring anyone to sensible right-thinkingness. What will come next in America, where everything is bigger and brasher and they have more weapons?
I was both amused and appalled that among the Trump accounts they have closed is his Spotify account.