Mao’s cultural revolution in 1966, what the leftists
at Respect in Security want for America and the world.

Persecution is now cool! A new project being developed by leftist cybersecurity experts calls for corporations to use their software to identify and fire individuals that their software identifies as having expressed what they define as “offensive” speech online.

Cancel Culture and Big Tech are a match made in hell, as cybersecurity experts call to target the livelihood of internet users who get too edgy online. “The initiative, called Respect in Security, was launched on Tuesday by two cybersecurity experts. According to the founders, several companies have already signed up,” Reclaim The Net reported. “For a lot of people, it’s a no man’s land,” founder Lisa Forte and Red Goat Cyber Security employee told the BBC. “It can feel like the platforms do nothing, the police don’t do a lot, lawyers are expensive and the publicity legal action generates can be negative.”

The BBC reported that co-founder and Trend Micro Vice President Rik Ferguson said “many companies had anti-bullying policies but they tended to focus on internal behaviour.” In what may be a reference to his Respect in Security program, he wrote a few weeks ago: “Inside my ‘Projects’ email folder resides a subfolder called ‘Kill Trolls’ and it is now only a couple of weeks away from becoming a real thing (sadly not with that name).”

Free speech advocates concerned about Ferguson and Forte’s work may have good reason to be. Forte explained her clear fix for people saying offensive statements via the internet: “The best solution we have, if the culprit is identifiable, is to approach their employer.” [emphasis mine]

It is bad enough that the big social media companies — Google, Facebook, Twitter — are routinely banning conservatives for expressing opinions or even facts they don’t like. Now the storm troopers above want to extend the blacklisting to get those same people fired for daring to speak their mind publicly. From another story:

One of the founders, Lisa Forte, who works at Red Goat Cyber Security, said she has previously received threats on Instagram and Twitter, and unsolicited content from official accounts on the professional networking platform LinkedIn.

According to Respect in Security, the best solution is to target the users’ livelihood.

This is the essence of blacklisting, where you not only censor writing you don’t like, but you also take action to directly harm the person for daring to write it.

Now obviously, if someone makes a direct threat of violence against someone else, there is cause for concern and action should be taken. However, leftists today routinely define any disagreeable opinion as a violent threat. As a perfect and very pithy description of the political philosohy of the new left and its Antifa and Black Lives Matter storm troopers, “Your speech is violence, our violence is speech.” If you dare say anything critical about them or the left, you have committed violence that must be smashed, violently if necessary. And they have the right to perpetrate that violence, because that is their free speech.

Based on the politics of Ferguson and Forte as described at both links, this is exactly what I think they mean when they say they have been threatened. They want to silence debate, and now are trying to rally the corporate world to work with them to blacklist their opponents.

Sadly, the behavior of American corporations in the past year suggests it will sign on to this project, and do it eagerly. If you work for a big company, you will have to have great courage and a willingness to get fired, to do what Americans have always considered their fundament right, to speak your mind freely without fear.

That right no longer exists. You might be able to speak freely — for now — but you can’t do it without fear.