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In Support of Free Speech

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Re: In Support of Free Speech

#81

Post by tomp »

diyorgasms wrote: post #79
tomp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it's OK to shun Nazis, but not OK to shun Muslims? Both are opinions/belief systems, hence a choice, and both are, in their extreme versions, quite brutal.

Is this a serious question? It should be evident why it's okay to ostracize an ideology founded on the belief in genocide of "lesser" people. While some interpretations of Islam lead to violence, the same can be said about probably any religion, and Islam is not foundationally rooted in violence. If you legitimately can't tell the difference between a genocidal ideology and a religion then I cannot continue this conv…

Islam (like any religion) is based on the idea that this religion is better than any other religion (or belief system, like atheism). Nazism is based on the idea that being white/Aryan is better than others.

You could argue that Islam was foundationally rooted in violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests

Re: In Support of Free Speech

#82

Post by mwpmaybe »

Grue3 wrote: post #67
paulgb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refusing to do business with someone is not censorship.

Funny how similar argument is used by white nationalists to assert that they have a right not to do business with minorities. The mindsets of far left and far right are oddly similar.

You are walking around one day when you overhear someone accosting someone else. You run over to witness the accoster shouting vicious racial, religious, and/or sexual epitaphs at the accosted. You interrupt them and ask what's going on. It's clear the two don't know each other, and the accosted, who seems in shock, says he/she was just going about his/her day when this person noticed something about his/her appearance and started screaming. The accoster does not dispute this, and indeed, as soon as you've stopped asking questions, resumes accosting.

If you respond to this situation by any action (other than smiling and walking away or joining in the accosting), you are demonstrating intolerance for the accoster. Even simply trying to reason with him/her about his/her beliefs demonstrates some level of intolerance. But you feel sympathy for the accosted, you don't share the views of the accoster, and you want to help in some way. This is known as the paradox of intolerance and it's a challenging philosophical issue.

The argument against Shopify that is being made here is that the behavior and actions of Breitbart and similar groups and publications bring about an atmosphere that leads to intolerance towards minorities. Or, if you prefer something more concrete, a store in Indiana refusing to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple demonstrates intolerance towards homosexuals. What can we do to help or make them stop being intolerant? How can we respond to this intolerance without demonstrating intolerance ourselves? Or is intolerance of intolerance a moral obligation?

Re: In Support of Free Speech

#83

Post by tomp »

mikeash wrote: post #77
tomp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By comparing Breitbart with Nazi you're being incredibly disrespectful to the actual Nazi victims.

Their Shopify store includes a t-shirt with a fricken' parteiadler on it. I think the label is entirely justified.

Link? I found this [1], but the label suggests it's the US eagle instead...

[1] https://store.breitbart.com/collections/mens/products/e-plur...

Re: In Support of Free Speech

#85

Post by paulgb »

Grue3 wrote: post #67
paulgb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refusing to do business with someone is not censorship.

Funny how similar argument is used by white nationalists to assert that they have a right not to do business with minorities. The mindsets of far left and far right are oddly similar.

Well, it's a fact whichever side uses it: refusing to do business with someone is not, by definition, censorship. In which cases it's right or wrong is a matter for debate, but it doesn't serve that debate to incorrectly call it censorship in order to benefit from the stong negative connotations of that word.

Re: In Support of Free Speech

#86

Post by tomp »

diyorgasms wrote: post #73
tomp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this argument is that everybody can be called a Nazi. The only people who're using the word "Nazi" to describe "Breitbart" seriously are those who completely disrespect the millions of actual victims of the Nazi regime.

OK, so I would and have made the argument that brietbart is Nazism rebranded, since identifying as a Nazi is unacceptable these days (but decreasingly so it would seem). However, there are far more clear examples of Nazis, like Richard Spencer, who writes pieces on the best way to genocide the black race and things like that. You do a disservice to the people they are harming by refusing to acknowledge that actual Na…

So what do you propose that we do? Kill him?

Crazy people can be as crazy as they want, as long as they don't harm others. But restricting the freedom of speech is a slipery slope that I want to avoid for all costs, lest people that are not Nazis start being called Nazis and are silenced.

This [1] is an article about what real Nazis are like Ipossibly simlar to Spencer, but definitely not similar to Trump).

[1] https://regiehammblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/this-hitler-n...

Re: In Support of Free Speech

#88

Post by mikeash »

tomp wrote: post #83
mikeash wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their Shopify store includes a t-shirt with a fricken' parteiadler on it. I think the label is entirely justified.

Link? I found this [1], but the label suggests it's the US eagle instead... [1] https://store.breitbart.com/collections/mens/products/e-plur...

I found this one, but basically the same:

https://store.breitbart.com/collections/all-products/product...

The US eagle has its wings going up, not straight sideways. And the head is pointed to the eagle's right, not the left. (This is also the difference between the reichsadler, which is a more generic symbol of Germany, and the parteiadler, which is a Nazi symbol: the riechsadler's head points to the eagle's right, while the parteiadler's head points left.)

Just compare:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Seal_of_the_United_State...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Pa...

The one on the shirt is quite close to the second (minus the swastika) and quite distant from the first.

Re: In Support of Free Speech

#89

Post by notacoward »

tomp wrote: post #76
notacoward wrote: post #25

The headline is offensively misleading. A boycott, or severance of commercial relationship, is not censorship. It's people using commerce to express their values, which is also a form of free speech. Unlike true censorship, which comes from the government, both parties are free to seek other partners in promoting their products or messages. Lütke's attempt to paint this as a defense of free speech is disingenuous, an…

Did you also support Visa's and MasterCard's decisions to stop transactions to WikiLeaks?

I don't see the two as being equivalent. For one thing, the contractual issues involved in the two cases are quite different. For another, one case could be considered to have involved criminal activity while the other clearly does not. On the other side of the ledger, Visa/MC enjoy a level of monopoly power that nobody in this case does. Those are just too many differences for a comparison to be very informative. I'm slightly inclined to say Visa/MC's actions were wrong, but not on that basis. The principle still stands. It also stands regardless of whether I or anyone else applies it consistently in disparate cases. Legal severance of a commercial relationship is still not censorship, and it does not harm anyone's right to free speech. Denying people that manner of expressing themselves, on the other hand, does abridge free speech.

Re: In Support of Free Speech

#90

Post by stillsut »

Milton Firedman's most famous work is Capitalism and Freedom and yet within that work, he completely rejects Hollywood blacklists (or "boycotts" if you prefer). If you consider his main point is that under communism, people are un-free, it seems odd that he would sympathize with avowed members of American communist party, who would ultimately like to bring communism to the US, and in Friedman's eyes, result in societal catastrophe. Doubly so given the power of persuasion that Hollywood writers wield. So why does he reject the ability of studio execs to simply exercise their freedom of association, and not contract with blacklisted writers?

The problem in Friedman's eyes is that this boycott reduces to collusion. And under collusion, the benfits of free market dry up: for example, in the free market you can shop your script, no matter who you are, and if your product is good, you could make a living out of it. When firms collude to establish acceptable political beleifs as a pre-condition to an economic exchange, you have reduced the economic freedom of everyone who is not wealthy enough to establish a movie studio for themselves. In effect, you have by-passed democracy ("one person, one vote") and moved to [benevolent] oligarchy ("one chairman, one vote"). As the old saying goes - you're freedom to swing your elbows ends where my nose begins, and so too with economic association. If you would starve a man until he renounced his political preferences - even if you deem them antithetical to the good of society - you're no better than Stalin.

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