While that's true, I think it's worth pointing out that it is a mirror of your own statement that "the average left-leaning person today doesn't see bigots even as people any more." Neither statement is true. They are the same kind of hyperbolic/uncharitable extrapolation of a group's inner thoughts.
> That's true, it is a mirror, which should be disturbing to anyone on the left who doesn't want the left to be a mirror of the right.
I mean, sure, but I was meaning to make you think about your own tendency to fall into the same trap.
Also, the left can scarcely avoid being a mirror of the right in many ways, given that both groups are made out of humans. The influence of ideology on social dynamics is overstated.
> What does saying, "I don't think you deserve to be heard" say about the person saying it?
But see, you're putting words in people's mouths here. This saying is far from the average left-leaning position.
Even if we were to look at the subsection of the left that wishes to de-platform certain individuals, they generally wouldn't say something as crude and caricatural as "I don't think you deserve to be heard." This is, perhaps, what you think that they think, but this is uncharitable and dismissive.
Generally, I wouldn't. People may want to deplatform other individuals for a variety of reasons.
A common one is to impede the spread of ideas that they consider dangerous, because they believe that these ideas will cause human suffering down the line. Whether these ideas truly are dangerous, whether their obstruction is effective, or whether it may backfire, that's another debate. The point is that they genuinely believe these ideas to be mind-viruses of sorts, and they genuinely believe that deplatforming is an effective way to impede them. If they are correct on these counts, then their actions are justified.
There are other possible rationales. One would be concern about bandwidth: platforms have limited bandwidth and can only spread a limited number of ideas, and people also have limited bandwidth and can only be aware of a limited number of ideas. The spread of bad ideas may therefore harm us by "clogging" the system (the resurgence of flat Earthism may be the most egregious example of wasted bandwidth).
I don't mean to debate the merits of these reasons. I just mean to point out that the "deplatformers" do have well thought out rationales. And if they are wrong, which is certainly possible, they are not obviously wrong.
