[deleted]
Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive
91–100 of 606 posts
Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive
#92Just in case someone finds the examples in the article all acceptable censorship, here's a few more off the top of my head: Evergreen professor forced to resign for opposing day of white absence: https://blog.usejournal.com/the-controversy-of-bret-weinstei... UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail": https://freebeacon.com/issues/university-to-investigate-lect... Dat…
In mainstream news (ap, CBC, bbc, others), increasingly people and groups are being labelled as racist without any discretion. Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories[1]. Surely, there is at least one racist in the group, but increasingly every single person who doesn’t tow the line is being called out - entire police departments, mayors, city councils, schools…
Cause the statue was defended by far-right group. It is not act of defending statue that makes him Paul Golding racist, but the fact that far-right groups are defending the statue while left leaning are against it is definitely notable.
Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive
#93I understand that there are a lot of people who are hurting right now, and I empathize with their pain, but how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other or convey important information to the public if we believe there might be serious reprisals against us if we "say the wrong thing". For example, I personally helped work against slavery on the Black Market in the Middle East, and I wanted…
>> There is no "right" way to convey the issue above without offending someone. You are not responsible for those people being offended. If people actually respond that way to your efforts they look stupid. Just carry on doing what is right. Most of them are not actually offended but are claiming you may be offensive to someone else.
> You are not responsible for those people being offended.
This is objectively false, you can get fired for offending people both at your job or outside it.
Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
The world, in general, is abandoning the past two centuries in which freedom has risen, to become illiberal, and enforce intellectual orthodoxies. It is more obvious and markedly so in in places like Turkey, but even here in the US we see those who would blacklist all political enemies and dissenters. These efforts will ultimately fail here, but not before grave harm is inflicted; history will judge us as harshly as…
I think part of it is the decay of discourse. People don't know how to discuss ideas in good faith. They just know how to troll, yell, make unfounded wild accusations, and meme. Basically we have a junior high level of public discourse. People aren't open to hearing reasoned arguments either. A reasoned argument doesn't deliver the dopamine hit of a rant or a catchy meme. In that environment the only thing possible i…
It's not "social media". It's Twitter, specifically, because of the design decisions of that platform (obvious things like the message length limit, and slightly more subtle things like the way that replies from other people are hidden, encouraging you to pile in).
Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive
#95To quote Noam Chomsky, "If we do not believe in freedom of speech for people we despise, we do not believe in it at all." That's not to say you're entitled to not be fired for any reason that makes you a liability to a company, but I'm seeing far too many people applauding political violence. "Punch Nazis" is now the standard internet response to any right-wing demonstration and those who repeat that slogan always fail to see the incredible irony of it.
Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive
#96Unpopular speech is the only speech worth defending.
Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive
#97I understand that there are a lot of people who are hurting right now, and I empathize with their pain, but how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other or convey important information to the public if we believe there might be serious reprisals against us if we "say the wrong thing". For example, I personally helped work against slavery on the Black Market in the Middle East, and I wanted…
You could always say "underground market". Just make sure there aren't any hobbits around.
Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Silencing dissenting views has never worked in history There may be a grain of truth to that, but I don't think a historian, even one who agreed with its thrust, would feel comfortable with it as a blanket statement. I don't really want to have this sort of heated debate this evening. Sorry.
It's simple. Name one historical example where this strategy of systemic censorship of an ideology worked and didn't blow back. You can't. There aren't any. It always blows back. America is just failing to learn from a lesson that's been taught to various empires for millennia.
> It's simple. Name one historical example where this strategy of systemic censorship of an ideology worked and didn't blow back.
It worked majority of the time. It typically stopped to work only when power to be ceased to have power.
Both nazism and communism were extremely successful in this. The monarchies did this successfully for very very long time. It ceased to work only when their lost power for unrelated reasons. Saudi Arabia is going strong.
The suppression of nazi ideology post WWII did not lead to blow back either.
Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive
#99For the past five years or so, I prefer discussing current events with conservatives - not because I think they are closer to truth, but because they are willing to be a good sport in a conversation. This has nothing to do with political parties, which are both dumpster fires. Maybe Republicans started earlier with Tea Party and got worse, but Democrats are heading in the same direction after Occupy Wall Street. And…
I think you've simply found the "able-to-have-these-convos conservatives" to have these discussions with and haven't found the "able-to-have-these-convos liberals". Note that I hate using these categories. Anyway, in my personal experience almost all the people I can think of that I have deep political discussions with who may fall into the latter camp almost never discuss politics online, for various reasons.
Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're in a large group, and many members of that group are by any definition racist, you're going to be called part of a racist group.
Then the early black lives matter protests were nothing but a bunch of anarchistic rioters and looters. And every cop in those police departments is racist. And all those city councillors too. It isn’t true though and the point is you can’t just go around labelling people like that willy nilly. You can’t just group everyone together based on what the worst of them do. Imagine a world where every honest cop quit in or…
I don't agree with the point you're making at all here. OPs point is that if you attend a gathering with people you don't know, and that gathering turns out to be heavily represented by white supremacist groups, you are going to be labelled with it.
You're furiously defending an argument that you've made, which is exactly the point that is being made repeatedly in this thread, that's it's very difficult to have a discussion on many of these topics because the debate turns to this very quickly.