Thirty years ago, at the dawn of what we think of as the internet, no one imagined that this amazing new frontier in human interaction would become a tool of oppression wielded by massive corporations. In fact, it was assumed that the internet would break the grip of corporations, special interests, and even governments. People would be free of the gatekeepers who controlled public discourse.

Those we call the left were sure that the internet would help democratize American society by opening the floor to marginalized voices. The people we call the right were sure this new medium would follow the pattern of talk radio. Free of progressive control, normal people could challenge the opinions of the liberal media. The internet was going to be an open debating society that worked on democratic principles.

Thirty years on and people old enough to remember the before times think that maybe the internet was a mistake. Giving a platform to millions of talking meat sticks, banging away at their phones, has just made life noisy. Worse yet, the range of allowable opinion has become much narrower. We now live in an age of censorship that was unimaginable before the internet.

“Even in small societies, universal agreement is impossible.”

What we are experiencing is due to a contradiction within the idea of democracy that can only be resolved through coercion. In order to have a noncoercive government that reflects the will of the people, you need consensus. There has to be a sense that everyone largely agrees. Since unanimity is impossible, how does a system based on consensus deal with people opposed to the consensus?

Here is a simple thought experiment. Imagine a world with no government. Take 10,000 people and plop them into some isolated area. The only thing they bring to the experiment is the absolute conviction that coercion is wrong. The people can only be legitimately ruled by people selected from and by the people, who then fashion compromises around universal consent.

Since they do not permit coercion, they first start out working independently to find food and build shelters. This is terribly inefficient, so they quickly begin to form cooperative groups to do these things. That will naturally lead to group rivalry. These tribes will disagree on how to go about things. Human nature being what it is, they will be tempted to make war on each other and force compliance.

Therein lies the trouble. They have sworn off coercion. The one thing they all believe is that government should be cooperative, so they form up structures to hash these things through and come to a consensus. This is a social contract. The members agree to give up some independence in order to get the benefits of society. That means they all compromise to come to some agreement.

In reality there is never a way to get unanimous consent. Eventually, they get close, but there are still dissenters out there who refuse to submit to the consensus. Some people are just jerks who enjoy being outliers. Some people will have ideas that are clearly wrong, but for emotional reasons they cannot relinquish them. Even in small societies, universal agreement is impossible.

This creates a dilemma. On the one hand, they eschew coercion, so they have to accommodate these dissenters. On the other hand, there is no way to do that and maintain the consensus. In other words, these dissenters are a threat to the consensus because they refuse to submit to it. They are enemies of the system, so an exception must be made to compel them to submit.

Because of their beliefs, they are initially unwilling to threaten the dissenters, so they fashion a fair bargain. In exchange for submitting to the consensus, the dissenters get compensated for submitting. It is not real compensation, because that creates a moral hazard, but it is perceived to be compensation. Perhaps in the form of some autonomy in areas where the consensus does not apply.

Even if the dissenters are offered a great prize for going along with the consensus, some will simply refuse. Maybe it is pride, or maybe they value what is on offer lower than the people making the offer. At this point, those making the offer are left with no choice but to assume that the dissenters are enemies of the consensus. It is the only logical remaining choice. Self-defense, therefore, requires coercion.

Therein lies the contradiction within the idea of democracy. You either submit to the tyranny of the majority or you must enforce consensus. The former violates the principle of democracy, which states it is consensual government. The latter requires an enforced consensus, thus eliminating free and open debate. The only way a democratic system works is if everyone agrees on everything all the time.

There is another problem. Since the people within the consensus are perceived to be the good guys by the people within the consensus, the people outside the consensus become the bad guys. This is human nature. Even in petty things we see that people naturally don the white hats and black hats. Since no one wants to believe he is the villain, the other guy is always going to be given the black hat.

This is what happens in a democratic society with open debate. That consensus forms and quickly the people inside it give themselves white hats. The people outside of it are not only a threat to the consensus, but they are also the black hats, the bad guys. As a matter of logic, it quickly becomes necessary to defend the consensus—our democracy, if you will—against the outsiders, but it also becomes a moral imperative.

Since no one wants to be viewed as opposed to the moral consensus, there is a race to the center. The safest place in a democratic society is to be seen as more enthusiastic for the consensus than the next guy. Everyone is then searching for someone they can position as slightly further away from the center. The result is a narrowing of what is acceptable as everyone races to the center of the moral consensus.

This is what we have seen in the past thirty years. That great interregnum that existed at the dawn of the internet, a time when Peter Brimelow could openly write about immigration and Jared Taylor could go on television to discuss white people, quickly closed as the dynamic of democracy kicked in. First came the forced consensus and then the systematic attacks on the dissidents.

You will note that what drives the censorship is not the content. YouTube bans people for medical misinformation that is well within established medicine. The reason is the content falls outside the perceived consensus. Put another way, the crime is not the content but the fact that it falls outside what the censors perceive to be the morally acceptable range of opinion.

Thirty years ago, the early adopters were sure the internet would change America by making it more democratic. They were proven correct. Just as the Founders predicted, the embrace of democracy has quickly led to mob rule. Orderly and open debate has given way to the wild passions of the mob. Even the sober judgments of the courts are now threatened by the furious passions of those “defending our democracy.” The result is an increasingly bizarre secular theocracy.