Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

Paraphrasing but around the idea of how to make being and working in groups work better

he repudiates “anti-racism” as a barrier to egalitarianism

ok, but as you acknowledge by putting it under quotes, "anti-racism" here means something specific, a certain model of fighting racism that involves elevating what robin diangelo calls "racial consciousness" among whites. whether this project will actually help minority communities is an open question. i don't think adolph reed, a black man born in the 1940s, should be shut down for having opinions on this topic.

and that's the whole issue. people don't like reed's perspective on this, so they try to make him taboo. you even said he was "moving right" with no evidence, or maybe just a personal definition for what it means to "move right."

if there is in fact a conflict between minority concerns and broad base social programs, this has to be confronted and navigated by organs like the DSA. if they're just going to scream that anyone who disagrees with them is a reactionary who isn't worth listening to, they'll never accomplish anything.

I hate all that white ally self help shit. I regret saying moving, which implies a trajectory I haven’t followed closely enough. His concerns generally seem to be in line with the right wing of the left, which I’m familiar enough with. The DSA is an example. I don’t for second trust that type of org not to sacrifice “minority concerns” for some alleged greater good whenever they can. This is why I don’t like political parties.

the right wing of the left...The DSA is an example

You're seriously the funniest poster on ILX. Never change.

Both candidates were black women. The incumbent lost her primary, but let me tell you, having DSA dudes tell me that homophobic attacks don't matter because the candidate was on the side of the working people was enough to make me write off the DSA forever.

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table)

same except instead of "write off the DSA forever" substitute "write off dudes forever"

not really sure how to do content warnings on message boards like this but content warning: gonna talk about suicide here

When I had that two-day bout of acute suicidality last week I read through a lot of books on the topic. One of the books I read was a survivor's story, a woman talking about her dad and his suicide. She spent more than a decade working on the book, coming at it from every angle, trying to understand why her dad did what he did. Her critical gaze was thoughtful, deep, and unsparing.

At one point she asked her mom how he shot himself with a rifle. Her mom said oh, no, it wasn't a rifle, it was a handgun. The writer didn't know her dad owned a handgun. Oh yes, her mom said, he bought it in 1964, during the Watts riots.

The writer is white. Her dad is white. Neither of these facts are acknowledged. What was her dad's mindset when he bought the gun? She doesn't ask. She asks what he might have been thinking, might have been feeling, at pretty much every other time in his life _except_ the time he bought the gun he killed himself with. I'm white. I understand why. I understand what she didn't want to have to ever say to herself.

Her father shot himself with a gun that he bought to kill Black people.

not a bad allegory for racism. james baldwin writes about how in unjust societies, the oppressed groups are hurt and killed, but the oppressors are spiritually mutilated basically, they are constantly living with a truth they can't really face and so can't attain the dignity that comes from real honesty

best wishes to you, kate

I am reminded of the doc Did You Know Who Fired the Gun? which is worthy of everyone's time

There's a chapter in Metzl's book about how in Missouri, white people fight against stricter gun laws in the name of maintaining white supremacy....yet there is an epidemic of firearm suicides by young white men in Missouri.

Really recommend it: Dying of Whiteness.

Speaking of Metzl, he was confronted by some fascists in a DC bookstore last year..that's the kind of free speech shit that is actually an issue, IMHO.

Also, Left is right about the DSA-- they're the center-right of the left.

this is like a Johnny Cash song

unfortunately there are no non-embarrassing political organizations

except for Chumbawumba

(I say this as someone who was recently a member of two of em simultaneously)

you were in chumbawumba?!

I confess I did stints as both chumba *and* wumba, never at the same time tho

Had no idea they were one of those bands that split into rival touring lineups, like Yes or the Coasters. But factionalism abounds on the left, as we can clearly see.

it goes back all the way to the days of marx. the socialists and anarchists all over europe were constantly splitting into different parties and writing treatises against one another. that's the fun of it.

lenin was the best at this game, probably. he had a knack for re-stating other people's arguments in ways that made them seem like absolute blockheaded morons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Left-Wing%22_Communism:_An_Infantile_Disorder#/media/File:20-lenin-infantilesickness.jpg

scare quotes and everything. and this a whole book--with ten chapters! just digging into people.

aw, link didn't work. the bookcover was for lenin's "left-wing" communism: an infantile disorder

well, when you're trying reach utopia, you don't want some dummy to get there before you

this is like a Johnny Cash song

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes)

shot a man in reno just to watch him die

twist ending the man i shot was ME

I did try to read that Facebook post denouncing Reed but stopped at "bad faith argument"

there is an asad haider response to this kerfuffle https://asadhaider.substack.com/p/class-cancelled (i have to read it later because i'm supposed to be working so don't blame me if it's crap)

lol I fucking hate that lenin book

the haider piece is mostly good I think

Worth thinking about the Facebook banning of a number of anarchist and antifa-related groups today, in the same cull that rid the platform of a lot of QAnon fashie crap.

Obviously, organizing over social media sites isn't intelligent, but some of the groups banned are essentially radical left news sources.

I guess I just worry about the extension of such logic, but maybe I'm paranoid.

it's not paranoid at all imo

not because of this thread (i wanted to read it before and just got it a few weeks ago), i am reading adolph reed's class notes and almost done with it and i cannot believe the people who wrote the dsa afrosocialist thing have actually read him? this dude hates racism. i'm not that invested in either side i just don't get it. i will read the black marxism book they said to read.

Obviously, organizing over social media sites isn't intelligent

It's fast, cheap and easy. And vulnerable af.

yes it's concerning, any form of discourse that's beholden to capital is vulnerable to attack

there's a genuine need to find methods of discourse outside the corporate internet. they could sever us from each other at any second. i got no answers to this, to anything, but it is a high probability that technology will explicitly be used to silence us if/when we are perceived as a threat.

some really good analysis of the ban here

https://freedomnews.org.uk/a-note-on-facebooks-crackdown-against-us-anarchist-groups/

Thanks Kate. The IGD statement was good, underlining the struggle anarchists and like-minded people are up against...

Free speech warrior Yascha Mounk runs to the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health to complain that an employee there tweeted about an interview with a Harvard Ph.D. student Mounk didn't agree with

Dear Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health,

Do you think that this kind of content is likely to increase public trust in experts and scientists in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic?

No?

Well, then you should cut out the crap.

Yours,

Yascha Mounk https://t.co/FLEE8W23oM

— Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) August 30, 2020

I think these people would be totally fine if they would stop trying to pretend they were staking out some kind on universalist "let all views be heard" stance and just said "of course some views should be censured or even suppressed, but not my particular views, because mine are good"

Yeah I was just talking about this in the context of another shittier social media site's high value placed on 'freezing the peaches' and how it really just reflects their Overton window.

from the new republic article - table posted:

On an afternoon in July, nearly 200 people packed into the ballroom of a local community center in northern Oakland for a general meeting of the East Bay chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

lol, I am 99.99% sure I know exactly where this was.

I think these people would be totally fine if they would stop trying to pretend they were staking out some kind on universalist "let all views be heard" stance and just said "of course some views should be censured or even suppressed, but not my particular views, because mine are good"

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, August 31, 2020 10:30 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes!

The maddening thing about these debates is that virtually no one literally believes in absolute free speech. Virtually everyone agrees that certain views are beyond the pale, and virtually everyone would, under the right circumstances, denounce and distance themselves from someone who expressed certain views, consider someone unfit for certain jobs if they held certain views, etc.

So the real disagreement isn't about the very idea of treating certain ideas as verboten, or about maligning someone's character for voicing certain opinions, or even about professional repurcussions for extracuriccular speech. It's about the substantive merits of certain specific, controversial ideas.

But instead of just coming about and defending those ideas, people pretend to be standing up for abstract speech norms. It's very annoying.

Trying to “think out loud” and break this down by the occupation of the speakers:

So on the one hand: writers and journalists who openly espouse stances that are hateful and hurtful on social media; these people are not entitled to a job where they get paid for their expressed opinions, when those attitudes are unwelcome to the audience.

On another, maybe: entertainers whose work is completely separated from their politics, who embrace hateful and hurtful stances; these people are generally disdained, but not “fired” or cancelled, because they’re paid for acting and dancing and singing, not what they think.

On a third hand, academics getting flak for views that are repellent to either their administration or their students. Some of whom have tenure, some of whom do not. I don’t think that’s especially useful since “tenure” seems increasingly arbitrary as a quality in higher education. These people are absolutely paid for what they think, and the model as I’ve learned it works by allowing them to think whatever they want, and say so. Their opinions are judged in the marketplace of ideas and not related to the click rate of their articles, the reputation of their employer, or political favor.

Who else? Is this a stupid way to look at it?

the free speech defender has logged on

This is absolutely delicious. https://t.co/16XvONd4oW

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) September 17, 2020

ffs

this is governing for the lulz

And this is why all this shit is so plain— people like Weiss and her ilk clearly don't give a fuck about free speech or the rights of others, only their ability to control narratives and keep power in the hands of a few, mostly white, people.

And sorry, being Jewish doesn't make Weiss "not white." She's white.

I mean it's right there in the name

True!

If only Hitler had gotten the memo. He spoke German ffs.

nazis not smart imho

Devos must’ve been getting jealous of Barr get

this is governing for the lulz

Sorry, weird abandoned post artifact there