Can someone tell me what exactly #freethinker has evolved to mean in the modern political world?
People were sneering at it as if it meant a specific political ideology, and I find that sadly plausible.
As an autistic man, I'm an involuntary "free thinker" and get in enough trouble without attaching myself to a mistaken label.
Whatever the ideology, I will disagree with it somewhere. Friends who can tolerate dissent are an absolute necessity for me.
It happened in the USA. April 2, 2025
In the halls of Congress.
Republican Congressman Keith Self, during a House hearing
on censorship and public discourse, looked into the camera
and quoted Joseph Goebbels — Hitler's Minister of
Propaganda — as if he were citing a respected authority on
governance. “It is the absolute right of the state to supervise
the formation of public opinion.”
Let those words sink in.
This wasn’t an academic comparison. This wasn’t a history
lesson. It was a quote from the architect of the Nazi
propaganda machine, spoken aloud by a sitting U.S.
Congressman in defense of state control over speech.