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My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

popehat.substack.com

131–140 of 189 posts

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#131
post #67
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. As a reader, I find that "Jewish Communities" very much sounds like "All Jews" and "Muslim Communities" very much sounds like "All Muslims". If that's not what the authors mean, I'm sure that there are much, much better phrasings.

That may very well be your own bias. If I say "Christian Communities hate gays", you'll probably think of one or two specific communities. When I saw "Jewish Communities" in gp's headline, I immediately thought "oh, the ADL", because they're bigots and don't really hide it.

If you write "Christian Communities hate gays", I will very much read "all Christian communities". And deduce that you're probably spewing nonsense, just as with "Jewish communities" and "Muslim communities".

Also, please do not make assumptions on my biases.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And my point is that "Muslim communities bombed Israel" is not an obviously reasonable statement. If Reuters or AP posted an article with that phrasing, I'd wonder if some party other than Hamas was fighting Israel now. At that point, why not just say "Muslims bombed Israel"? It's technically true but also wildly disingenuous. You'd have to qualify it with a bunch of details in order to make it an honest, good-faith…

But it's the literal truth, and using a descriptor on a group of people acting does not attribute the action to all people who fit the descriptor. Not all mammals are dogs, and that shouldn't need to be said.

You're confusing semantics and subtext.

The clear subtext in your examples is "Jews" (not "some Jews"), "Muslims" (not "some Muslims"), "Christians" (not "some Christians"). A racist (or variant thereof) will not say "all Jews"/"all Muslims"/"all Gays"/... , they'll just casually namedrop "Jews" (or even a single Jewish personality), "Muslims" (or even a single Muslim personality), "Gays" (or even a single Gay personality), and use this as a dogwhistle.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doxing, at least that’s universally viewed as going over the line. Not really. When the user database of Parler was dumped, the media covered that event quite widely and favorably.

They would and have cover that event if any major user database was leaked. But unless you have some evidence I've not seen any news organisations deliberately reveal PII data.

I think you've not been paying attention then. Journalists love doxxing their ideological enemies:

- Scott Alexander

- Richard Hanania

- LibsOfTikTok (can't remember her real name)

And that's just in, like, the last 18 months or so.

They also love to widely report on cases where allied organizations do it, thus pointing everyone to the dumps. For example the home addresses of the entire German AfD political party was dumped online by Hessen Antifa and this was widely reported in German media (who they got the info from wasn't).

There is absolutely no code of honor in news organizations or NGOs. Their goal is to silence anyone who opposes them and they use their positions to do that.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me divert from Musk specifically for a moment. The "anti woke cancel culture critics" are in fact concerned with the inorganic, overwhelming influence that a specific family of ideologies has today over the means of modern communication. Observe the similarity with the left themselves, who are concerned with the inorganic, overwhelming influence that a specific class of wealthy people have today over the means of…

You mean when the advertising companies pulled their money from Twitter after its owner said Jews "pushing [...] hatred against whites" was "the actual truth"? Darn those woke hippies at... let's see... IBM! Or maybe, just maybe, the simpler explanation is that they don't want their ads running alongside that trash.

These same companies are noticeably silent over the outpouring of support for Hamas on TikTok and other platforms, or when #KillAllMen was trending on old Twitter.

> that trash

... is defined ideologically, it's the point being made here.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#135
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bad_understanding_of_racism

Many racists proclaim people “misunderstand racism” when their different standards for different races are denounced for being racist. After 160 years of the same political party fighting to rebuild racism, generation after generation, people are done hearing the moralizing excuses for why this time Democrats have the magic formula for virtuous bigotry.

>After 160 years of the same political party fighting to rebuild racism

Is this serious comment? There was nothing that happened in the parties in the 1960s? Maybe 1964? All of a sudden the people in the south just suddenly decided to no longer be racist, and joined the Republican party fighting _against_ racism?

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#136
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "that's obvious" but your terminology is ambiguous. I wouldn't say "Muslim communities bombed Israel". To me, that sounds something along the lines of "the predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East teamed up and bombed Israel".

And that's your bias speaking, since my statement is factual. It's perfectly normal, and you can accept that my meaning and your interpretation can be wildly different, therefore accusing me of the worst possible interpretation is unfair.

It's totally fair. If you're going to be intentionally ambiguous just because it's technically correct, we can just assume you're an asshole and extrapolate from there

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our "public spheres" are in fact not public, but rather are private property. You have misunderstood the meaning of the word "public", because it is often used for government provided things. Many private establishments are public spheres, the most common example are Pubs - short for Public Houses. So you have completely misunderstood the word and arguing from your mistaken assumption.

I haven't misunderstood anything. In a "public house" you can be kicked out of the owner doesn't like what you're saying, because it's private property. In places which are actually public, like a town square, this isn't the case. I understand that it is conventional to speak of some places that are private property as being public, but they are not public in the sense that actually counts for the protection of free…

Some private properties really are part of the public sphere, counting for the protection of free speech. The main example being printed newspapers, that will print opinion pieces sent to them, even when they go against the private owner's interest, even when the opinion piece comes from a political enemy. They are privately owned public forums.

Other examples of public spheres in private hands are the internet provider you're using to read my comment and write your own reply. The ISP doesn't interfere with your free speech. E-Mail is another great example of a public sphere. You can freely send your opinion to any and all the people you want.

In some countries, all unexploited nature is considered public space. Trump's Twitter was deemed a public forum.

It has nothing to do with government ownership, even though most physical public forums are government owned, such as parks, streets and squares.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#139

Question I would have for Popehat would be whether a DoS attack is speech or not. If it is, why isn't it protected, because it's inline messaging on the medium it uses and is therefore like any other mediated expression. If it isn't, what is it about attacking the medium and participants that isn't speech? The problem with the cancel culture people is their "working the ref," strategy launches a DoS attack on the par…

A DoS is a theft of computer resources. Since that's specifically a crime in most jurisdictions, it's not protected speech.

A DoS attack can legally be many things, theft of resources, interference, harassment, manslaughter. The question is whether the response to speech that is similar to a DoS attack against the speaker is also those things.
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