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Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

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Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#21

Post by MarcoZavala »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #10
CamperBob2 wrote: post #3

People who equate speech with violence have generally never known physical violence. I've always held that position firmly. The trouble is, people are turning out to be a lot more programmable than I thought they (we) were. You could almost say that we're becoming more like machines at the same time that machines are becoming more like us. To the extent that's true, the part of the old saying that goes "... but words…

I don't know if this is true all the time. I think knowingly sending rape threats to rape victims is pretty violent behavior. I think knowingly trying to trigger someone into an eating disorder relapse or coercing someone into suicide are heinous things that fall into violence. I think there is a line where speech can be violent or said with the intent to harm someone the same as a punch is.

[dead]

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#22

Post by csdvrx »

jrm4 wrote: post #9

Lawyer here, and this definitely strikes me as one of a surprising number topics in which, the law has for some time, already a very effective and useful way to get at this concept. Sure, speech can be harmful and hurtful, to the point that someone should get punished for it. But the law has generally done very good job of reminding us that this tends to be a VERY NARROW possibility, i.e. the harm has to be very spec…

> the law has generally done very good job of reminding us that this tends to be a VERY NARROW possibility, i.e. the harm has to be very specific and directed and measurable.

Here in the US, yes. In the rest of the world (like, EU) they aren't very specific.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#23

Post by garbagecoder »

jrm4 wrote: post #9

Lawyer here, and this definitely strikes me as one of a surprising number topics in which, the law has for some time, already a very effective and useful way to get at this concept. Sure, speech can be harmful and hurtful, to the point that someone should get punished for it. But the law has generally done very good job of reminding us that this tends to be a VERY NARROW possibility, i.e. the harm has to be very spec…

Most people don't realize this and they also don't realize that equal opportunity laws also apply to white, male, christians, etc.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#24

Post by autokad »

vannevar wrote: post #7

I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought. They are calling for boycotts and de-platforming, both of which fall well within the bounds of the "marketplace of ideas." While there is indeed no right to not be offended, there is also no right to be listened to, and no right to artificially amplify your speech on someone else's dime. We…

> I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought

First off, they are. but if you are saying: loose your job and ability to make a living, losing your ability to speak in public, fuck me give me those charges then!

you are backing tyrannical ideas while trying to pretend you are just being reasonable.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#25

Post by fallingfrog »

When a message board or user is kicked off a platform, it's never for "saying the wrong thing" or "political correctness". It's generally because they organized targeted campaigns of harassment, doxxing, swatting, and other kinds of behavior that violated the terms of service.

Take this example:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/cloudflare-kiwi-farms-...

"At least three people have died by suicide after becoming targets of Kiwi Farms harassment campaigns, according to Vice. In 2016, the family of a trans person who died by suicide, Lizzy Waite, was harassed by Kiwi Farms trolls for weeks after her death. She had posted a suicide note on Facebook."

"Sorrenti, known to fans of her streaming channel as “Keffals,” says that when her front door opened on Aug. 5 the first thing she saw was a police officer’s gun pointed at her face. It was just the beginning of a weekslong campaign of stalking, threats and violence against Sorrenti that ended up making her flee the country."

When we talk about violent forms of speech, this is what we mean. Actual crimes.

Note that this website was, in the end, taken down. But the users have moved on to other spaces where they organize harassment campaigns, such as Libs of Tiktok.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#26

Post by PuppyTailWags »

giantg2 wrote: post #19
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is true all the time. I think knowingly sending rape threats to rape victims is pretty violent behavior. I think knowingly trying to trigger someone into an eating disorder relapse or coercing someone into suicide are heinous things that fall into violence. I think there is a line where speech can be violent or said with the intent to harm someone the same as a punch is.

Those would be intentional (a differentiation the article makes) threats. These fall under terroristic threats. They are not violent themself, but they are threats of violence which are not legal.

The poster I'm responding to disagrees with the differentiation of the article. I'm trying to affirm the differentiation with examples.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#27

Post by vannevar »

autokad wrote: post #24
vannevar wrote: post #7

I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought. They are calling for boycotts and de-platforming, both of which fall well within the bounds of the "marketplace of ideas." While there is indeed no right to not be offended, there is also no right to be listened to, and no right to artificially amplify your speech on someone else's dime. We…

> I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought First off, they are. but if you are saying: loose your job and ability to make a living, losing your ability to speak in public, fuck me give me those charges then! you are backing tyrannical ideas while trying to pretend you are just being reasonable.

The tyranny isn't coming from me, it's coming from the people that own the company that's firing you. And the "tyrannical idea" you're referring to is called capitalism, and it has its upsides and its downsides. Don't shoot the messenger.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#28

Post by henrikschroder »

giantg2 wrote: post #2

"To be sure, that doesn’t mean that deliberately offending people for its own sake is morally acceptable, or that people should be entitled to use speech to incite violence, harass, or threaten." The difficulty is knowing what the intent was. Usually there are ways of "non-violent" communication. But it seems a lot of it is subjective. By far it seems the most restrictive places are primary and secondary schools.

> The difficulty is knowing what the intent was.

It's not a coincidence that the postmodern thoughts that underpin a lot of this bullshit simply does away with intent, declaring it to be completely useless, and saying that the only thing that can be used to judge a message is how it affected the recipient.

Combine that with "words are violence", and you can manufacture physical abuse out of thin air.

It's really not the way forward for progressivism.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#29

Post by fsckboy »

poszlem wrote: post #4

Although violent speech may seem hard to swallow, the alternative of censorship has been shown throughout history to be far more detrimental. It seems that the younger generation has not fully understood this fact, but hopefully they will come to understand it through the lessons of others, rather than through their own experiences.

> Although violent speech is unacceptable

speech inciting violence is unacceptable. Speech isn't by it's nature violent--although it might be called forceful--and I would refrain from ever calling speech violent.

(and even speech inciting violence turns out to be acceptable to a majority of people in conditions where you say you want to kill (for example) a pedophile or a racist, or when you're writing a Declaration of Independence or a French National Anthem (La Marseillaise) because everybody agrees, the Tree of Liberty must periodically be watered by the blood of tyrants!)

my comment is a little bit all over the place, but what I'm trying to say is, you should never agree to call speech violence but always put in the word "incite/ment"; and at the same time it's difficult to make any broad or universal statements about speech without discovering it's a complex subject. Humans are good at imagination or conceptualizing hypotheticals, and we have the capacity for violence, so it's very difficult to say what someone can and can't say, usually the listener understands implicitly but sometimes the person listening does not have your interstests at heart, has their own motives, or is plain nutso.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#30

Post by johnny22 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #3

People who equate speech with violence have generally never known physical violence. I've always held that position firmly. The trouble is, people are turning out to be a lot more programmable than I thought they (we) were. You could almost say that we're becoming more like machines at the same time that machines are becoming more like us. To the extent that's true, the part of the old saying that goes "... but words…

how much physical violence is enough? Getting jumped by a crowd of dudes for no reason? Getting held up at gunpoint? There was definitely some other stuff as well, but those are the most memorable. I do admit that i haven't been in an actual warzone though.
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