Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

Every time we or an expert shows the folly and wrongness of bad science, another asshole comes along promulgating it, which forces uni administrators and faculty to use gross capitalist terms like The Marketplace of Ideas. They want debate, but what's the point? To debate these spineless bimbos is to set yourself up for exhaustion. No one learns a thing.

Could have a poll on most depressing signature to find on here, for me it's a close call between Chomsky and John McWhorter. Lolz at Wynton Marsalis being there.

did someone say something nice about free jazz?

Free jazz is a vehicle for 'a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity' iirc.

Matthew Yglesias & Jeet Heer but no Matt Taibbi

doesn't McWhorter complain about lefty stuff all the time, or on his podcast with Glenn Loury at least

a little surprised to see Dahlia Lithwick

I don't follow McWhorter's political stuff at all, I dare not, but his excellent writing and lectures on linguistics was my way in to the subject and so I still feel a need to defend him for some stupid reason.

xp yes he does, he's been working a lucrative side career as a sensible-voice-of-reason for years now

I can spot the posters who are v pro-free speech for anyone who agrees with them

i deleted such a scorcher from the post box lol. you guys would have been so owned. it was gonna be sweeeeeet

debate is wank but free speechers don’t even want that they just want the plebs to shut up and do as they say. bourgeois liberalism is basically the alt right now

Would be nice just to have an official proclamation of exactly what "free speech" means from every world government which would then be prominently displayed in public places.

Anyone who publicly disagreed with it should then be given a show trial and be sent to work in the salt mines, that would stop Count dankula making those stupid fucking videos for a start.

it's interesting that the cultural/meme-ic uptake was for the idea of 'cancellation', presumably a direct transfer from the cancellation of shows because of (moral) scandals befalling/perpetrated by the creative staff for them (or sometimes entirely within their content), because the people who complain most about it now seem to enjoy many of the perks of the opposite, viz. being culturally scheduled. the idea of a 'platform' is like that, but it doesn't get at the same way in which these people have a presumption to always have attention come back around to them, and to be broadcast to people who choose from a small range of options (channels). and obviously it's helped to exceed the bounds of that framework by political polarization and narrow horizons of possibilities, to become the idea that anyone and everyone within a certain scope / past a certain level is entitled to the perks of espousing some point of view which is systemically bound to be repeated at certain intervals in a rightful order.

how do you pin a tweet on a thread

a bunch of rich people are tired of getting feedback

— octave (@curtofranklin) July 7, 2020

The circle of concern of intellectuals has become so narrow and insular that it's basically a defense of its own class issues in the guise of statements about freedom. There is no interest whatsoever in the crises facing the nation at large.

— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) July 7, 2020

Not sure either tweet applies to, say, Kamel Daoud.

Lame to see jeet in there, I find he’s on point most of the time, probably should’ve checked in to see who else was signing and adhered to the failsafe rule “Don’t put your name to anything that’s been co-signed by Bari Weiss”

…or Khaled Khalifa. I think it's safe to assume that not everyone signed this open letter for the same reasons.

xp

lol xp was about to say recommend viewing anything Katie Herzog signs onto with extreme prejudice

disappointed to see david blight, garry wills, and a couple other cool ppl on this list

extremely not-surprised to see greil marcus here, honestly

You know who actually lost his job and didn't sign this spineless piece of shit' statement? Salaita. But that's because him and anyone with any sense knows this is upper-class liberal hand-wringing because these idiots are afraid.

Forgive bad grammar, I just hate this so much I'm losing my cool. I also just shotgunned a Steel Reserve.

probably should’ve checked in to see who else was signing and adhered to the failsafe rule “Don’t put your name to anything that’s been co-signed by Bari Weiss”

xp nice

letter is vague enough that you could agree w it w/o knowing what it really means, esp if you’re not imbedded this in mind numbing discourse where every other word is some ingroup code & nothing actually means what it looks like it means on the surface. idk how many of these ppl that applies to, I’m not too generous

you sometimes get people folding actual censorship/harassment/violence by the powerful against vulnerable people into “cancel culture” which could make it look less of a non issue even tho 9/10 times it’s decried are when there’s mild pushback against this behaviour. there are good words for those other things which aren’t tied to a moral panic about celebrities and pop intellectuals not getting their arses kissed enough

I would quite possibly OTM it anyway but the way it's written, it's tbh too vague and chickenshit to say much.

How is this a free speech issue? Who is being silenced? Do these people think that other people exercising their own speech to tell them to fuck off means their freedom of speech is being taken away? Also, hasn't Harper's fired like multiple editors over the last couple of decades because their perspectives were too liberal? how is that not "being cancelled"?

Lithwick is the only person on that list that I'm surprised at and disappointed in.

I don’t really care what this letter says, I’m just putting it in the pile with the rest of the anti-trans bullshit that Harper’s has peddled.

wtf happened to Harper's, I had a subscription ~15 years ago and always enjoyed it

Matthew Yglesias & Jeet Heer but no Matt Taibbi

I think the people who organize stuff like this have never heard of Matt Taibbi

xp or Salaita

Lewis Lapham wrote like a small town Gore Vidal imitator.

Someone on Twitter wrote 'give Chomsky TERF bangs' and I can't stop crying laughing

oh no

I don't expect the average person to know who Salaita is, but that one of the most obvious recent examples of an academic losing their job over protected speech didn't sign on is evidence that these people are hand-wringing liberal fakes who deserve nothing but scorn

Not sure either tweet applies to, say, Kamel Daoud.

― pomenitul, mardi 7 juillet 2020 17:04 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

…or Khaled Khalifa. I think it's safe to assume that not everyone signed this open letter for the same reasons.

xp

― pomenitul, mardi 7 juillet 2020 17:08 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

More privileged concern trolling from Salman Rushdie. Learn to take some feedback!

haha ikr everything's gotta be a fatwa with this guy

Lewis Lapham wrote like a small town Gore Vidal imitator.

every fuckin month another 'fall of the roman empire' column

he wasn't wrong, just exhausting and premature

Matthew Yglesias & Jeet Heer but no Matt Taibbi

that *is* a surprise, maybe he got a peek at the guestlist in advance

oh so here’s where we’re talking about this bullshit

just be glad it can still be localized

Imagine if people took the same swift effect wrt mass-blocking this gaggle of morons that they did with the list of people that followed Nick Mullen on Twitter

one of the most obvious recent examples of an academic losing their job over protected speech

I totally agree that it's bizarre and inexplicable that this entire incident, relevant by any standardd, has somehow been memory-holed.

Well, at least I know about it now.

here's what salaita wrote a couple weeks ago: https://stevesalaita.com/should-we-cancel-cancel-culture/

The coalition begins to crumble

I did not know who else had signed that letter. I thought I was endorsing a well meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming. I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company.

The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry.

— Jennifer Finney Boylan 🐕 (@JennyBoylan) July 7, 2020

presumably all the replies to that are "sounds like SOMEBODY doesn't believe in free speech after all!"

and tbf they'd have a point, this is cowardly vacillation is it not

anyway this third-way culture war uprising doesn't seem especially good-faith across the board, but as a general rule we should all try to cancel each other a bit less imo

it's almost like putting your signature on vaguely worded letters with a bunch of other people you don't know might be... a bad idea?