Gore goes too far, much more dangerous threat from the left

Political Ref | April 26, 2025 | Permalink

Al Gore argued on Bill Maher's show that Trump is a threat comparable to the Nazis. View below.

January 6th was a reaction to Big Tech combining with government to officially censor political opposition to affect an election. The intelligence community and the FBI combined to use Big Tech bias and influence a very close election. This happened in a context where Big Tech functioned as a megaphone for legacy media viewpoints for years, while shadow banning or outright canceling conservative viewpoints.

The mistake of January 6th rioters must be viewed in that context. The right faced an asymmetric threat to its political voice. Specifically, the right's voice was throttled in the new information environment while leftist legacy media views were treated as truth and exponentially multiplied. This asymmetry flourished because leftists in Silicon Valley used threats of cancellation within Big Tech company hierarchy, and online, to achieve dominance over the new information technology.

If someone stepped out of line and opposed the woke doctrine on political issues, he or she faced online cancellation, the modern equivalent to the old Soviet method of information control, purging someone's very existence. This practice is also fairly compared to book burning because the entire opposing viewpoint was destroyed, or at least severely handicapped, in the new information environment. This may seem extreme, but in the new information environment all that matters is one's digital presence. Destroy that and you effectively destroy the person's political presence. If any political group deserves comparison to fascists, therefore, one might look in the woke mafia's direction.

When fifty-one intelligence agents declared the Hunter Biden laptop Russian misinformation, and Big Tech literally memory holed that information in critical last weeks of a close election, it's not surprising the losing side would go too far when it lost. While the riots were ridiculous, the left really needs to drop this. For those who continually want to attack the Jan 6 rioters, it is important to note that the American people rendered a verdict on this question by reelecting Donald Trump.

Trump made this an enormous issue in the election and the people sided with him. That is the jury we should listen to, not a rigged trial on trumped up charges in an overwhelmingly left wing jurisdiction like Manhattan. Yes Jan 6 was a stupid overreaction, but it was a riot, not an insurrection, and they had good reason to be angry. The proper response was to protest, make it a huge political issue, and fight it out in the next election.

Gore makes a slippery slope argument, asserting that Trump openly distorts truth and demands that people accept it. As we descend down the slope we end up in a place where only the dictator can determine truth. He gives the examples of Trump assertions that Ukraine started the war, the climate crisis is a hoax and clean coal.

On the Ukraine starting the war, one could better state Trump's position, including him by the way, as saying threatening expansion of NATO to Ukraine baited Russia into starting the war. This is a controversial subject, but ample evidence exists that Russia received assurances that were unceremoniously undone. Ukraine has made no secret of its desire to join NATO. In a world where national security is measured by who can best position missile defense systems, the Russians have an argument. Who is right on this? I think it's very gray and neither party is an innocent actor in the lead-up to this war. Trump's position has some support, so he's not creating his own truth out of wholecloth.

Gore's characterization of environmental stances, like 'clean coal,' as bordering on fascistic truth bending, also goes too far. Trump just disagrees with Gore on whether coal can be used in an environmentally friendly way. I fail to understand why the left is not happy with carbon recapture and planting more trees. Both technologies work very well and we can use the vast carbon-based energy sources we have at the same time. Calling these positions fascistic truth bending reveals a weakness in one's argument. Stop name-calling and deal with the issues. Trump should do the same.

Policies aimed at vote buying and achieving a permanent governing majority with it represent the most direct threats to democracy. Democrats tried this by permitting massive unchecked illegal migration from poor countries, luring people with the promise of a social safety net. Buying allegiance in conjunction with opposing voter ID, promoting widespread mail-in voting, expanding voting periods to weeks or months when voter security becomes impossible, combines to destroy democracy. When you further combine these vote buying schemes with Big Tech/govt censorship combined with legacy media information dominance, it becomes clear which side represents the most pernicious threat to freedom.

Neither side should compare the other to Nazis. But if we must make a determination which side more closely aligns with a fascist dictator, the answer is clear.