Leninthink
newcriterion.com
Leninthink
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Re: Leninthink
#2[deleted]
Re: Leninthink
#3> the Soviet Constitution of 1936 guaranteed more rights than any other state in the world. I recall a Soviet citizen telling me that people in the USSR had absolute freedom of speech—so long as they did not lie
Actually I heard it as “The people of the USSR had complete and absolute freedom of speech... but only once”. Lie or not, if the state didn’t like it, you ended up in a concentration camp.
Re: Leninthink
#4I'd hate to be either of the two students the author throws under the bus with nary a sentence of context (the bus here being thousands of words describing Lenin's atrocities). Just think, one moment you're unable to sufficiently articulate your feelings on hate speech in front of a class to satisfy your professor, the next moment you've been lumped in with a mass murderer!
Re: Leninthink
#5I'd hate to be either of the two students the author throws under the bus with nary a sentence of context (the bus here being thousands of words describing Lenin's atrocities). Just think, one moment you're unable to sufficiently articulate your feelings on hate speech in front of a class to satisfy your professor, the next moment you've been lumped in with a mass murderer!
To be fair modern activist groups like anyone who disagrees with them to Hitler.. so the student is likely in good company.
Re: Leninthink
#6I'd hate to be either of the two students the author throws under the bus with nary a sentence of context (the bus here being thousands of words describing Lenin's atrocities). Just think, one moment you're unable to sufficiently articulate your feelings on hate speech in front of a class to satisfy your professor, the next moment you've been lumped in with a mass murderer!
To be fair modern activist groups like anyone who disagrees with them to Hitler.. so the student is likely in good company.
Seems to be a common game with ignorant right and ignorant left (I can think of a million instances of ignorant right-wing people rambling on incessantly about the "socialist" part of national socialist german workers' party). The difference I suppose is that fascism is a far-right ideal and not a far-left one. Also the fact that the far-right in the United States are in some cases literal neonazis.
Re: Leninthink
#7I'd hate to be either of the two students the author throws under the bus with nary a sentence of context (the bus here being thousands of words describing Lenin's atrocities). Just think, one moment you're unable to sufficiently articulate your feelings on hate speech in front of a class to satisfy your professor, the next moment you've been lumped in with a mass murderer!
TFA says this:
> I recalled this curious concept of freedom when a student defended complete freedom of speech except for hate speech—and hate speech included anything he disagreed with. Whatever did not seem hateful was actually a “dog-whistle.”
That seems pretty clear, and just the opposite of Evelyn Beatrice Hall's paraphrase of Voltaire's position:[0]
“I wholly disapprove of what you say—and will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Re: Leninthink
#8Leninthink erodes power differentials and power relations, which it portrays as good to destroy, but also erodes the dual relations of responsibility. When nobody has any responsibilities towards any other, then society is gone with the wind like so much poor soil.
Re: Leninthink
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair modern activist groups like anyone who disagrees with them to Hitler.. so the student is likely in good company.
Seems to be a common game with ignorant right and ignorant left (I can think of a million instances of ignorant right-wing people rambling on incessantly about the "socialist" part of national socialist german workers' party). The difference I suppose is that fascism is a far-right ideal and not a far-left one. Also the fact that the far-right in the United States are in some cases literal neonazis.
> fascism is a far-right ideal and not a far-left one.
That myth underlies much of the misunderstanding in contemporary political discourse.
Re: Leninthink
#10I'd hate to be either of the two students the author throws under the bus with nary a sentence of context (the bus here being thousands of words describing Lenin's atrocities). Just think, one moment you're unable to sufficiently articulate your feelings on hate speech in front of a class to satisfy your professor, the next moment you've been lumped in with a mass murderer!
That and, assuming those students are even real. Regardless of the truth or falsehood of the contents, it's quite the strawman regardless.