Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

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

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

― hey, trust the fungus! (pomenitul), Thursday, September 17, 2020 1:39 PM (two days ago)

y'know, if Hitler had just been a bit less anti-semitic, he could have won the war

This might be my least favorite thread on ilx. Total non-issue at best, akin to collaboration at worst.

collaboration in what sense?

Calling out so-called liberals for their blatant hypocrisy and power-hoarding tendencies is now collaboration? Lol okay.

Like sorry for wanting people to not act like disingenuous assholes!

ohhh as in "collaboration" like in the phrase "collaborate with Nazis to commit genocide"? ... and not "collaborate on an interdisciplinary performance piece involving poetry, dance, and ambient electronica" ???

sorry i am dense and old at times

Sarahell you just made me lol very hard.

i am glad i am useful in some small way

When the revolution comes this will be the thread we end up hanging from

Collaboration in the sense that taking seriously concerns about the left/cancel culture silencing centrist/conservative views is in fact ignoring much more drastic concerns of the continued rise of the right-wing if not actually abetting it.

I am still confused who is collaborating with whom on this thread.

i read this thread mostly as a variant of "ok boomer" ... like it strikes me mostly as a generational shift of values and ethics and politics, which as a card-carrying middle-aged person, I am aware that I have to step back a bit and really think and listen because I have some of those older generation instincts.

Being old is bad not good and being young is good not bad iirc.

Re-forming social norms around acceptable speech is really an attempt to reject and marginalize the ideas conveyed in such speech. I'm fine with making harmful ideas socially unacceptable by exposing them to ridicule, scorn, and shows of mass solidarity against them.

For me the major bright line that ought not be crossed, except in the most dire cases, is attempting to define speech into a criminal activity subject to incarceration. The hard right wing is far more likely to enter any openings in that direction and occupy that space.

The hard right are already actively testing strategies to use current civil rights laws to force every institution of learning that receives federal money in any form to allow fascists free access to propagate their ideas. They're gleeful at the thought that liberals will be gored by their own legislation. They may well succeed.

The old saw about fighting bad speech with better speech and bad ideas with better ones yields extremely uneven results and is a weak bulwark against fascism, racism, and oppression. But using the force of law to regulate political speech has dangers untold. There are no easy answers here.

I think most of the cancel culture events mentioned in this thread make leftists look like a bunch of morons, but sure let’s not talk about it on ilx because some impressionable kid might stumble upon this thread and turn into a fash

And I think most cancel culture events mentioned on this thread are a bare ripple in the fascist ocean lapping at the shores of this country.

PBKR otm, at this stage if you’re still whining about the left, just say that the fascists don’t bother you that much.

I don’t let my enemies dictate what i’m allowed to find annoying

Arguing politics right now is probably a bad move for me. Apologies. Be well everyone.

wait i am still confused whether PBKR is pro-cancel or anti-cancel ?

PBKR, do you not understand that the right has hi-jacked ideas of free speech to push fascist ideas into the realm of public debate and popularity, and that many so-called liberals have gone along with the hi-jacking of these ideas...and moved into realms of fascist speech policing in the process, namely the silencing of more radical voices on the left? That's what I see pretty much everywhere I go, on ILX in particular. It's like being an actual leftist is seen as 'not reasonable.'

Like a lot of conversation in this thread has recently revolved around liberals in power being complicit in these waves of fascism lapping at our shores.

And so if that isn't cool to you, then maybe think about the thread yr posting in and who you're calling a collaborator.

It would probably be advisable to have a forum called I Hate Fascism where we could check in everyday and tell other posters that we still don’t like Nazis in case anyone was wondering

PBKR, do you not understand that the right has hi-jacked ideas of free speech to push fascist ideas into the realm of public debate and popularity, and that many so-called liberals have gone along with the hi-jacking of these ideas...and moved into realms of fascist speech policing in the process, namely the silencing of more radical voices on the left? That's what I see pretty much everywhere I go, on ILX in particular. It's like being an actual leftist is seen as 'not reasonable.'

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Saturday, September 19, 2020 9:02 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

table, I think you are making the exact point I am trying (poorly, apparently) to make. I think we are in total agreement that the backlash against cancel culture is an insidious right wing ploy.

If this isn't the case, I apologize and will bow out.

so i'm late to this but uhh

Class reductionism is the supposed view that inequalities apparently attributable to race, gender, or other categories of group identification are either secondary in importance or reducible to generic economic inequality. It thus follows, according to those who hurl the charge, that specifically anti-racist, feminist, or LGBTQ concerns, for example, should be dissolved within demands for economic redistribution.

I know of no one who embraces that position. Like other broad-brush charges that self-styled liberal pragmatists levy against “wish-list economics” and the assault on private health insurance, the class reductionist canard is a bid to shut down debate. Once you summon it, you may safely dismiss your opponents as wild-eyed fomenters of discord without addressing the substance of their disagreements with you on policy proposals.

I'm going to say the big problem w/ this Reed excerpt is that he's basically accusing a position i see replicated all the time of not existing at all -- there are dozens of ways in which ppl who do not *intend* to replicate that logic do so in ways they don't even realize, before you get to the people who outright believe in class reductionism

not *accusing ... *Characterizing