Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

Always bear in mind Denmark is fanatically pro-free speech whenever it comes to hating on muslims and Islam. That is almost a duty in Denmark.

afaik holocaust denial is legal in denmark which does speak well of its fanatical pro-free speech bonafides

we had a free speech bus ad debate in the US recently re Pamela Geller's anti-Islamic ads. the judge ruled that the ads couldn't be banned bc of free speech so the MTA decided to ban all political advertisements - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/nyregion/mta-board-votes-to-ban-political-ads-on-subways-and-buses.html

We had an exhibition of posters made by a Swedish nazi portraying the lynching of named Swedish-Africans that he has harrassed for years. In the parliamental building. Very important to show our support for that kind of thing. Boycutting settlements? Get out of here!

I was pretty alarmed by those Gellar ads when I saw them on buses in SF. I'm ok with the NY MTA's decision, dunno if SF's made a similar decision (and if so I didn't hear about it)

i don't get the impression they bus company didn't take the ad bc they were personally offended by its content but bc it was creating controversy that they wanted to avoid. MTA said similar things - that the controversy around the Geller ads were distracting them from their main mission of transport, and that political ads made up so little of their budget that it wasn't worth the trouble. also, i think it should be pointed out that ppl protesting the ads were primarily concerned not w/ the settlement boycott but w/ the map on the bus that suggested that all of israel was occupied territory and the organizations other comments (on their website and elsewhere) that implied that they favored a total boycott. nb i think they should have been allowed to run the ad and i think geller should have been able to run her ad.

that the controversy around the Geller ads were distracting them from their main mission of transport, and that political ads made up so little of their budget that it wasn't worth the trouble

I agree it was Geller's right to run those ads, but I also agree w the MTA and find their reasoning sound. It's kind of an evenly applied all-or-nothing approach.

i'm conflicted a little bc the nature of what makes an ad "political" is open to interpretation. for example the ad fred mentioned for the plastic surgeon - many feminists protested it bc they felt it was degrading to women (i hope i'm representing their argument accurately here). surely they're right to claim that there is a political dimension to the ad. so should any ad that anyone thinks is political be disallowed? who makes these decisions?

surely they're right to claim that there is a political dimension to the ad.

it's not about publicly held office or public policy so idk how you could make that argument in court

tbf I don't think this constitutes a political ad, that does seem like a dicey definition:

The rejected ad showed a man with a scarf across his face and said, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah. That’s his Jihad. What’s yours?”

is a personal boycott on settlements a public policy issue? or geller's ads about islam's opinions on jew murder? i guess you could do a potter stewart thing but it seems open to abuse

lol look at this url
http://www.ibtimes.com/mta-ban-all-political-advertising-nyc-subways-buses-after-court-allows-killing-jews-1900977

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

iirc, the Supreme Court has ruled that first amendment privilege is extended to cover political speech more completely than any other type of speech. This is the primary reason the first amendment was written - to protect a citizen's right to redress grievances against government abuses of power without being thrown in jail to silence them. It wasn't put there so your neighbor could verbally harass you with impunity.

So, yes, free speech is not intended to be totally free. For example, you can't claim a first amendment privilege to send people you hate daily anonymous death threats against their children, giving details of how you'll mkidnap them and make them suffer.

This is basic stuff, but people constantly get confused about it anyway.

you can't claim 1st amendment for sending death threats bc they're not protected speech

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions#Threats

Threats of violence that are directed at a person or group of persons that has the intent of placing the target at risk of bodily harm or death are generally unprotected.[35] However, there are several exceptions. For example, the Supreme Court has held that "threats may not be punished if a reasonable person would understand them as obvious hyperbole", he writes.[36][37] Additionally, threats of "social ostracism" and of "politically motivated boycotts" are constitutionally protected.[38] However, sometimes even political speech can be a threat, and thus becomes unprotected.[39]

Oh, you already knew about the subject, Mordy? I think it should also be pointed out that the complaints were 'primarily' in English rather than Danish. Also, saying that they suggest all of Israel is occupied territory is flat out wrong, the pictures very clearly don't do that. Could you perhaps link to where you've heard about it, I'm pretty interested in figuring out how it's presented outside of the Danish context?

And we pretty clearly allow political ads on busses. All parties are campaigning on busses or busstops or trainstations at the moment. We don't allow political tv-spots, so the public space is the main combat area for political ads. The busstops had the 'Stop Naziislamism' ad as well.

unless there's an exception tho, all speech is protected. not just speech against governmental abuses of power. it so happens that generally the government has a monopoly on violence and so they're who you have to be particularly worried about re speech repercussions. you might ask why this matters - ie, why does drawing mohammed need to be protected? after all, the shooters in TX were breaking the law by killing ppl. but this shows up in issues like the state trying to prevent a speaker from talking bc it creates unsafe conditions (like it might rile protestors up to violence). it is illegal to stop someone from speaking bc of concerns about preserving the peace. xp

i vaguely heard about it. nothing happens re israel in the world w/out it popping up in one of my rss feeds. i'll have to hunt around for the article that i saw particularly about it. iirc jpost for sure covered it and i'm sure times of israel ran something on it as well. not sure what kind of coverage it got in mainstream US media (NYT, WaPost, etc).

I'm pretty sure it wasn't in NYT or WaPost, at least not on their twitter feeds.

Also, just to be clear, I'm pretty sure DANPAL (Danish-Palestinian Friendship Org) are a very problematic org, and there's more than a whiff of anti-semitism to a lot of what members have said before. But that doesn't mean politicians can just censor everything they do.

definitely, i agree with you. we don't need to protect the speech of people whose opinions are accepted and supported in society - their speech isn't in danger. we need to protect the speech of people we disagree w/, and even find repulsive and disgusting.

at the same time obv it's the right of anyone to complain about anything - that's speech too. even if they're complaining primarily in english ;)

generally the government has a monopoly on violence

Yeah if you ignore private military contractors.

if you don't ignore private military contractors than the government does not generally have a monopoly on violence? putting side the 'generally,' the contractors are only authorized to use violence by the government. part of having a monopoly on violence is having the power to authorize other actors to use it.

guyz can we go back to

Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is a fixture of Lit Hum, but like so many texts in the Western canon, it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom. These texts, wrought with histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression, can be difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.

i mean um

like first of all fuck the canon but nonetheless...

all western literature is potentially triggering in that the West is the paradigmatic oppressor of the Third World. but if you're gonna take a class in the US, a Western country, you probably should reconcile yourself to having to read Western literature

^^^

x-posts: Right, nobody is saying people can't complain. (Except everyone in Denmark is saying that all the time, whenever people complain about racism, sexism, and islamophobia.) But if you're complaining while not in Denmark, then the bus-company cannot say that they pulled the ad due to not wanting to offend their costumers. Which they did.

I'm not sure you get how big a deal free speech is in Denmark. It's constantly in the news, you will be attacked for being anti-free speech all the time, if you say people shouldn't say something, or think before they speak. There are free-speech stories in the news all. the. time. The company used 'free speech' to defend why they put naked boobs on all the busses. And all of a sudden this ad is censored. It's amazingly hypocritical, almost shockingly so. Like, people are quite honestly shocked, it's created this major backlash.

except for the hypocrisy i think it's wonderful that denmark is so gung-ho about free speech - and you're right that i don't really know much about it in the public sphere. but it sounds like a positive to me that it's so prevalent and that a case like this is generating so much controversy.

here's a decentering idea 4 everyone -- "the west" as in europe / christianity has a tenuous hold on any claim to the greeks and romans because that lineage of culture really descended down throughout the muslim world during the middle ages so maybe we're teaching them wrong anyway?

that lineage of culture really descended down throughout the muslim world during the middle ages

wouldn't go that far, i.e. not entirely, but big part yes, one can say islamic culture gifts the west with itself (qua "the west") through work of arabic translation & interpretation of greek texts (many of which were lost to latin west in middle ages, e.g. much of aristotle)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Classics#Arab_translations_and_commentary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_of_Aristotle

xp

Huh? The Byzantines were not muslim and the great majority of greek and roman texts that were preserved into post-medieval times were preserved through them. Of course, quite a few ancient texts we have were palimpsests, parchments scraped off in Byzantine monasteries and written over with religious texts, but still...

And yes, I do know that the muslim world valued many greek texts, especially the medical or scientific ones, and helped to preserve those. But it would be incorrect to say that lineage of culture "really descended down throughout the muslim world."

well not only in terms of preservation but in terms of development and innovation.

what exactly is the theory of the case for the tens of thousands of rape survivors who were forced to read Ovid before trigger warnings entered the national consciousness? are we supposed to believe that they were all damaged by the reading but were too timid to speak up? were they oppressed w/ false consciousness? or is this PTSD triggered from Roman literature a transient mental disorder that only just appeared?

what is the recommended ovid pedagogy vis-a-vis students from low-income backgrounds

j -- yeah this is what i'm sort of stymied by. like there's nothing "rich, white ppl" about ovid per se. that's just the baggage that's been attached to ovid. i'm all for fucking up the canon but it should be done for the right reasons i guess?

Ovid being sent into exile by Augustus ought to give him some cred

maybe it's a 'not about their experience' thing

who has ever turned into a tree really

Y'know, Tiresias does get blinded because he is transgender!

what exactly is the theory of the case for the tens of thousands of rape survivors who were forced to read Ovid before trigger warnings entered the national consciousness? are we supposed to believe that they were all damaged by the reading but were too timid to speak up? were they oppressed w/ false consciousness? or is this PTSD triggered from Roman literature a transient mental disorder that only just appeared?

What I want to know is how many rapists, racists and other oppressors use Ovid as an inspiration or guiding text, and more generally how many use the classical canon as such

'Rich people use knowledge of the classics as an identifying mark or code to spot each other and exclude people who are not rich' sounds ... plausible I guess? But does even that fit with the contemporary forms of power?

& even if that is the case isn't it democratizing to teach everyone else the same ish?

My suspicion is that when people say things like

Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is a fixture of Lit Hum, but like so many texts in the Western canon, it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom. These texts, wrought with histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression, can be difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.

they're using confident, professional-sounding words to dress up what is really a desperate feeling of animosity toward 'the classics as a badge worn by rich cunts to look wise and permanent'

I want to say eff canon, there are many historical works that we ignore in favor of stuff that is less and less relevant imo. Then again if the class is specifically covering Western Literature then shielding students from potentially offensive material will result in a less comprehensive study. Nobody should be forced to sit through something they don't want to hear, but in the context of reviewing Western literary history, there would have to be a LOT of stuff to miss out on. Then again you could say by focusing on Western Lit one misses out on the rest of the world as well.

It is true that the classics are biased towards the ruling classes, in many ways towards oppression, but no more so than any work written before the invention of the printing press imo. Most people did not know how to read until only very recently, so perhaps teachers can point out the audience for these works is generally the people doing the raping/pillaging.

xp on second thoughts,

Don't get me wrong, I can see perfectly well why people don't like Ovid's Metamorphoses: that slow, elegant cycle from rape to rape, from murder to murder, going on and on unpunished and unstoppable, the general Fatalistic posing with no outside or ending ... I myself think the (most obvious) 'message' of the poem is unacceptable, unless you are actually someone who lives in the ancient world, in which case Fatalistic posing is forgivable as a trauma-response, a way of dealing with what must have been a bloody horrible life. I would not want that message taught as if it were a neutral 'life lesson'.

It's just ... the classics have not been taught in that way since before the year 2000, have they? And am I far wrong if I say that probably the last time the obvious, explicit message of a classical poem was handed to down to modern people uncritically, in a western university, was before the 1960s?

It seems like overkill for left-leaning academia to go condemning Ovid now, when we are long past the time when the really powerful people pretended to a classical, literate, unworldly culture. And as well there is another 'message' in Ovid if you scratch beneath the official surface of the poem, i.e. that all status and all states are subject to change and falling apart, no-one's power lasts forever, etc; and that other reading of the poem is something we'll never get to if we cordon it off as unacceptable enemy propaganda.

This is before we even get on to the grunting, clucking stupidity of people who are only interested in the 'message' of a poem, and attacking or defending that 'message'; perhaps that type of reader/reading is actually where the real problem lies

These texts, wrought with histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression, can be difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.

feel like this is at least as true about any worthwhile text that attempts to address "exclusion and oppression" as the dominant mode of western lit.

It is true that the classics are biased towards the ruling classes, in many ways towards oppression I know that when I think of the wealthy + powerful ruling classes I think of people who read a lot of ancient literature.

a lot of ppl ITT seem not to have been able to read since very recently tbh

fred, what are ppl saying about the latest developments?