What I will say about them publicly is that if we are afforded another shot at democracy after all this, they and their fellow travelers cannot be permitted to have a voice in the political process. Just about any system of government can work if everybody involved is commited to making it work, but if 1/3+ of voters hold pluralistic, representative democracy in active disdain there is no system that can protect itself against those people engaging with the system in bad faith. This was the fundamental failing of reconstruction, and it’s shaping up to be the undoing of freedom in the US now.
I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that just letting the “marketplace of ideas” play out is tantamount to throwing the gates open to any demagogue with a big enough megaphone. Participation in the political process must be restricted to good-faith actors in some fashion, be that at the “supply side” of media and content creation or at the voting booth. Anything else is akin to a basketball team kicking, biting, and throwing punches on the court and the referees shrugging and insisting they have to be allowed to play anyway.
Yes, and I was one of that generation who believed broad adoption of the Internet would cut out the gatekeepers and lead to a better-informed electorate that would give more radical ideas a shot. And I guess it did, but the problem is that it’s primarily allowed the worst of bad actors direct, unfiltered access to a vast swathe of the most credulous, easily-manipulated idiots in the world. Arguably it’s massively tilted the field towards authoritarianism because before the Internet, left-wing activists were better-educated, and more capable of organizing and communicating. Now, though, it takes no special knowledge or effort for a right-wing conspiracy theorist or authoritarian demagogue to jump on X or Facebook or whatever other platform you like and immediately blast their message out to vast numbers of their followers – who are largely passive consumers of this stuff, waiting to given their party line and marching orders. Before the Internet, they had mostly-mainstream ideas because that was what the filter of the mainstream media gave them. Now they’re getting sucked into the far right because social media is biased for shareable outrage-bait propaganda and against validated facts and nuanced discussion.