In addition to being a minor issue, it's also a willful obfuscation of what's happening that's so common in Internet "debates". Just look at the wording:
" shut down other people’s events when somebody they don’t like is talking ". Emphasis mine. Is it "somebody they don't like"? No, of course not. It's not the annoying neighbor, it's not Nickleback, it's not the latest reality star fad. It's people doing specific things, usually hateful things.
This tendency to generalize specific actions into "somebody/something they don't like" is cowardly and deeply dishonest, it's a way to avoid grappling with the actual issues.
Those were my words and they were not disingenuous.
It you who is being dishonest.
If we're talking about no-platforming, by this point in time the people who have been no-platformed range from feminist heroes of yesteryear, to Conservative politicians who have a role running the country, to academics who are creditable public figures.
These people were invited around by people who wished to hear them talk, only to have events crashed by third parties.
It's like if you wanted somebody to visit your house, and a mob decided for you, based on their own subjective politics, that you weren't allowed to let them in, and blocked your front door.
Not only is there an extensive list of reasonable people who have been no platformed at events, or mobbed online, but even as an exercise if we discussed only people who did have hateful views: So what?
You either believe that the way this country sorts through the messy business of politics and life is, by consensus, allowing each other to talk, and sorting the good ideas from the bad - which we call Democracy - or you believe it's acceptable to control people by state censorship or group coercion.
If it's the latter, you an Authoritarian.
Trying to dress the way you wield power up in the language of the oppressed, or a noble project, doesn't work either. There hasn't an authoritarian in history, far right-wing or far left-wing, that hasn't used that trick.
