Many people, including mainstream media outlets, friends of mine, and co-workers have labeled these positions as white supremacist. Not just identifying them as positions that white supremacists support. The set of views considered "white supremacist" is indeed expanding to include mainstream conservative views like the ones I mentioned.

It most certainly is.

I recently attended a diversity workshop at a large organization that you’d recognize where we were taught some key elements of white supremacy are things like: perfectionism, urgency, defensiveness, individualism, etc.

https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/white-supremacy-cu...

Stephen Fry might disagree with you there.

It most certainly is. What's worse is when anonymous strangers on the internet accuse someone of being white supremacist just because they oppose reparations and affirmative action without even knowing anything else about the person. I am a brown immigrant myself (recently moved to Canada) who opposes affirmative action and reparations and just for that, I got called white supremacist, a nazi etc on reddit. Like how exactly can a dark brown person be white supremacist? Makes no sense. But the hidden identity on the internet lets people throw abhorrent insults like no tomorrow.

> Perhaps, but there is also a cultural trend of alt-right/far right groups clamoring about free speech in response to de-platforming and being disinvited to speak at college campuses.

For public universities, this is a breach of the first amendment no matter how heinous the speakers' viewpoints are. And for private universities it's a big blow to the institution's reputations for all but the most objectionable speakers.

> Most contemporary American free speech protests aren't apolitical affairs where nonsectarian activists are just "standing up for their rights because they legitimately care about freedom" for the sake of free speech as an ideal- they view freedom as a means to promote their ideology.

I don't disagree with you. But you're drawing the wrong conclusions from this observation. If the concerns over free speech is more prevalent on one end of the political spectrum, it could easily be due to the fact that said end of the political spectrum is being censored more frequently and more aggressively. And I can't argue with that, I've seen very stark disparities in enforcement over the past several years.

If people try to crush speech they don’t like, and fringe groups are the only ones saying they support freedom, otherwise neutral people who are concerned about their rights are going to side with one of those groups.

The number of people siding with those groups will be more than zero. Support will grow and they’ll push their message farther and farther into extremism.

It’s not the first time this has happened. But each generation thinks they’re enlightened and extremism won’t take over again. Political extremists work with a grain of truth (“Look! They really ARE oppressing us”). If they were absolutely false nobody would support them.

I'm not getting into the hate speech debate - most of this page of comments so far is depressingly tone-deaf and insensitive - but I have to say that your argument about having no rights on websites is pretty hollow. Nobody with even a modicum of sense ever claims that their actual legal rights are being violated when they complain about being censored on a private website. Any reference to "free speech" is an appeal to shared values, an argument that they think the moderators are acting improperly in light of those shared values. The public debate is over whether platforms like Facebook, Google, Reddit, etc should be neutral marketplaces of ideas, like Greek agora, and to what extent they should be able to privately police such a large part of our public discourse. This is a legitimate topic for debate and potential public policy, even if initially such policy would only serve to provide a voice for some pretty despicable people. You pointing out that Facebook is a private company which can do whatever it wants with its own data is wholly missing the point. Nobody is even having that conversation.

Are they platforms or publishers? Your ISP doesn't police content in a meaningful way and are immune to legal claims that their service is responsible for same, similarly a newspaper is legally responsible for what it prints due to the fact they have a editor who controls what is published.

Twitter et al. seem to want to have it both ways.