It appears that a large chunk (all?) of the people who call themselves "progressives" are all for gov't censorship when the gov't censors "the right things".
That didn’t happen, though.
> Reducing censorship became “toxic politics”
Musk hasn’t reduced censorship. In fact, he very quickly stepped back from even claiming that, claiming instead that he was maintaining Twitter’s content policies (which, in fact, he never retracted) and even embracing artificial reach limitation (the same “shadowbanning” practice he had early complained of) as a means of enforcing it. It’s true that outside observers that have been tracking content on Twitter since long before Musk took over found that particular forms of hate and abuse (most banned by the written policy) took off under Musk, while other viewpoints (while not engaging in nominally banned conduct) were suppressed, but this shift in bias in content moderation is very much not the same as making it a “more open” platform.
> Musk is now flagged as “not a real leftist”
Musk was never considered even loosely a leftist. It’s very hard to see how a hypercapitalst (in class terms) could remain such while also being a leftist in ideological terms, but if such a contradictory character has ever existed, Musk was never it, and no one ever thought he was. Before he played footsie with Trump, Musk might have been pegged for a center-right neoliberal pro-weed capitalist with a horrible record on race relations that might manage to fit in with the right wing of the Demcocratic Party, but…that’s about as far left as anyone ever thought he was.
> but a right winger,
I mean, race and class issues aside, he’s been endorsing right-wing culture war positions on all the hot issues, so, yeah, that’s kind of how he’s asked to be seen, I don’t think he’s actually ideologically a right-wing culture war extremists, I think he’s just virtue-signalling to that camp because that faction has made naked its willingness to punish enemies and reward allies in industry, whereas the opposing political camp has generally been loathe to do so, at least openly and overtly. But, whatever the motive is, Musk has clearly made a conscious decision about how he wants to be seen, and how he is seen reflects that.
> he’s probably done more for liberal causes than any of these authoritarian phonies.
Leftists don’t support “liberal” causes.
"Conservatives think ... obviously dumb and bad thing" and "Liberals think .... obviously dumb and bad thing" being shouted back and forth is extremely unenlightening.
Please don't straw man the other camp's political views and if you aren't 100% sure you can represent them accurately, just say the thing you believe in and give some basis for why you think that's correct rather than misrepresenting the other side and saying why you think that's wrong.
(I've also heard people call him transphobic, but the evidence they link to is a dog whistle that I'm — continuing the metaphor — unable to hear).
Is it just the freedom of speech thing? What’s wrong with being pro first amendment? That right, and absolutists who support it, are the biggest reason why the left has been able to gain so much power and make so much progress.