Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

like let's say i finally get on board w/ 'privilege,' 'intersectionality,' 'call out culture,' 'social justice,' whatever other trendy word. besides moving forward myself to abuse ppl into agreeing w/ the jargon, what are the practical actions i can now take? by contrast i could disagree w/ all those things but still participate in passing legislation X (idk, equal pay law, or union laws, or expanding safety net).

well, some of those trendy words are connected w/ practices you could try to engage in or establish, say if you were part of an institution that needed better procedures for decisionmaking, for dealing with conflict, etc.

i don't think these are exactly the same struggles over and over, even if "progress" is fractional and stuttery. absolutely coalition-building requires finding commonalities but coalitions that seek to do this at the expense of recognising and accommodating difference are gonna be inherently unstable imo

maybe that's true, h00s can speak better to that than i can. i'm obv not a professional activist - just a politically active employee of a small business. in my experience every organization needs help w/ decision making, conflict resolution, etc, and it hasn't been my experience that those trendy words have a lot of practical use, but obv different spaces have different needs. xp

if anything in my experience those terms are counterproductive for decision making + conflict resolution

(yes, ryan otm. piece on "critique drift" & article posted by hoos insightful as well)

well i mean i'd be cautious to separate the decision-making, training & conflict res practices born out of the anti-nuke & global justice movements from the people who've adopted their jargon in the present, as the former have pretty broad utility while the latter are sorta defined by their narrowness. but yeah, there are a lot of real practical things you can change about how you conduct yourself, or your group, or your organization if you decide to get on board with this stuff. since the 90s a whole cottage industry of "activist training" has sprung up based on the values of social justice. training for change is a great example.

oh yes i didn't mean to say they were the same, just that the historical connection (and some present-day connection, to i dunno graeber-style direct-action practices? at least laterally??) suggests that there be practices there (yaar) for those interested in them

100%! a lot of my initial exposure to this stuff was through graeber's book "direct action" where he's primarily writing about the latter days of the global justice movement of the 90s.

lol fair cop on article

btw i heard a radio ad for online reputation management in the barber shop the other day lol

― lag∞n, Tuesday, April 14, 2015 11:05 AM (7 hours ago)

interesting NYer article recently mentioned these reputation companies

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/solace-oblivion

whoops wrong thread

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2015/04/16/judy-putnam-prof-live-tweets-elhs-sex-ed/25879891/

: D

BREAKING wtf

http://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/former-reed-college-student-arrested-sex-abuse-charges#.tdjDKj7ELA

that is m/l the logical conclusion to that story unfortunately

Okay thank you. Probably first time "arrested for disrupting a high school girls' rugby practice" has ever been called "the logical conclusion" to anything, but then the internet is full of people claiming they are never surprised by anything, ever.

well i just mean more "creepy guy who got a lot of attention for saying a bunch of creepy men's rights stuff & weird stuff about rape stats has been arrested for sexual abuse charges" is not a shocking thing.

unhinged for sure but odd is in the details

he was trying to interrogate our assumptions about rugby the cops were preventing a conversation do u see

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/04/24/mama-dont-let-your-baby-grow-up-to-be-a-winner/

fdb sonned by maura in epic twitter beef

rip free speech.

u were pretty sweet

not really

guy spends 2/3rds of an essay writing that poptimists claim to like Beyonce and Kendrick so that they can't be charged with racism, only to then turn around and write, What I am tired of is being told “you don’t really like this; you only claim to like it to seem cool/arty/different/intellectual.” That is something else. That is something different. That is not disagreement. That’s refusing me the right to be myself.

that dude lives in a different reality

One of my many critics defined poptimism as merely the belief that chart pop should be taken seriously by critics. Well then I have good news! You have already won. It has already been accomplished. Where, I’d like to know, is chart pop not taken seriously by reviewers? What sad website didn’t run a rapturous review of the latest Kendrick Lamar?

Chart popper Kendrick Lamar

should have included the next line - Jesus, Rolling Stone can’t fall over itself fast enough to seem down with the hippity hop.

if Kendrick Lamar is chart pop then Metallica was chart pop in the 90s

should have included the next line - Jesus, Rolling Stone can’t fall over itself fast enough to seem down with the hippity hop.

― da croupier, Friday, April 24, 2015 2:59 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if i hadn't just picked a new dn...

you know, ever since Pitchfork stopped reviewing Sunn O)))))) records to focus exclusively on Radio Disney releases I've started to wonder if things have gone too far

http://gawker.com/big-sean-is-turning-princeton-students-into-idiots-1700805783

what up j0rdan

Most people who listen to rap music learn how to navigate around, and within, the misogyny and homophobia that seep into so many tracks.

around & within!

i kinda love that 'and within' gets its own clause there bc it suggests some readers might've gotten to 'navigate around,' and thought, 'only around? how about other propositional relationships to rap music? are you saying rap fans don't navigate within?' otoh, how about navigating under, over, throughout, or across?

Metallica was chart pop in the 90s

but... they were

xxp

overall good take imo

Chait’s anti-PC jack sesh

http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-golfclap.gif

i kinda love that 'and within' gets its own clause there bc it suggests some readers might've gotten to 'navigate around,' and thought, 'only around? how about other propositional relationships to rap music? are you saying rap fans don't navigate within?' otoh, how about navigating under, over, throughout, or across?

― Mordy, Wednesday, April 29, 2015 2:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk makes sense to me, he's talking about outsider/insider dynamic

i'm glad the intended audience understood

you are so much more the intended audience than i am, lol

one of NYT's comment picks argues about the TX shooting:

Another perversion of the right to free speech by ignoramuses.

Even in the 60's they taught us to be responsible in what we said and advocated to prevent what it seems was intended by this event. Free speech is meant to guarantee your right to speak up against the government when you have good reason to believe it is out of line not to protect or create a freedom to abuse groups or people whom you do not approve of.

Apparently free speech is not intended to be totally free, only free to criticize the government. Well, I guess he learnt it in the sixties.

not to protect or create a freedom to abuse groups or people whom you do not approve of

"abuse"

Apparently free speech is not intended to be totally free, only free to criticize the government

but only "when you have good reason to believe it is out of line"

Next big free speech test will be approaching drunks in bars and seeing if they respond to creative free speech with violence. Should provide more talking points once the jaws are unwired.

wonder how many NYT readers hear about a drunk killing a guy for insulting him and respond w/, "the victim was misusing their freedom."

How many think the victim was heroically reaffirming our free speech rights either?

whatever happened to defending to death your right to say things w/ which i disagree? or is that only when it isn't politically inconvenient?

Also, uhm, can we not compare being a muslim with being drunk?

speak for yourself Frederik, "we" aren't doing anything of the sort.

Aren't most rights compromised/ignored when politically inconvenient? Maybe ask the folks at gitmo about their free speech.

Violence provoked by speech is already regarded as criminal so, you know, "free speech" remains as legally safe as ever despite CH and the Texas incident.

What should I ask them? I am not making an argument about the US's government's treatment of free speech. xp

"Because your free speech has been abrogated do you think we should eliminate the principle in general from our society and only defend the speech of people with whom we agree?" And if they say yes, do you think Gitmo prisoners should generally handle all our civic/ethic questions, or only our free speech questions?