Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

Khachiyan has been suspended before - trying to roll this into some kind of "now they're coming for the left" thing still seems like a stretch

Can’t say it’s a great loss but weird to go after an inactive account and leave someone like Andy Ngo active and verified.

oooof was not aware Ngo was still on there

Ngo claims to be a journalist, which gives him more protection in general

ugh, seeing a lot of "First they came for the fascists" chat from people online today over this Parler thing

Those are people you should ignore for the rest of your life.

xp - you could respond with, "Actually, first they came for the paedophiles, the fascists were second, maybe they should have been first though, idk."

The argument is "Who are Amazon/AWS to say what does and doesn't appear online? Isn't that a scary amount of power? What happened to an open Web? I don't agree with the views on Parker, but it sets a worrying precedent for what could be taken down next".

Then they start skirting ever closer to poppycock notions about how silencing far right views only drive them underground and make them stronger.

I find these views really troubling and puzzling, especially since they seem to be coming from educated liberal/left people I know. So I turn to ILX to make sure I'm not going completely mad here.

Disclaimer: reddit, but I found this to be an interesting discussion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/kv1m0k/cmv_the_power_held_by_amazon_twitter_etc_is_a/

It’s such specious bullshit. God forbid nazi ideology gets driven underground, better put it in the mainstream where we can keep an eye on it

The educated “liberal/left” people saying this shit are the people who will *actually* say nothing when they come for the socialists the Jews the trade unionists &c. Frankly, stupid cunts.

Ban the fascists and break up the monopolies are completely congruent beliefs if you’re on the left lol

xp the main argument (away from whether all views deserve to get aired or not) is the power Amazon etc have over free speech. but it still sounds like nonsense to me somehow

Ban the fascists _and_ break up the monopolies are completely congruent beliefs if you’re on the left lol

There's also the fact that leftists and radical people on the left have actually faced much of the brunt of censorship, banning, and job loss over the years. It's Going Down was banned from Facebook this summer, as were a number of other radical organizing groups. Discussion of BDS positions is outright banned at many universities. Steven Salaita is still driving a school bus.

They already came for the radical anarchists and Marxist and socialists, and anyone who doesn't know this hasn't been paying any attention.

And more than that - all the “mysterious” deaths of high profile Ferguson protestors and organisers.

ugh, seeing a lot of "First they came for the fascists" chat from people online today over this Parler thing

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin),

The 'actually, didn't they already come for the paedophiles first and you said fuck all mate?' line from Sarahell seems a good response?

Otherwise, I'd go down the path of incitement, planning violence, yelling fire in cinema, but also protection of the individuals because if they're not banned then they'll do these things in full view and get picked up by law enforcement anyway so actually its preventing them coming for the fascists its for their own protection

Absolutists are always, ALWAYS, smoothbrained. Because they're not absolutists at all just ask them one questions and it falls apart

Ugh been having the “driving them underground will only make them stronger” stupid ass argument with someone I otherwise like and care about and it’s so aggravating.

Cutting off someone’s leg will only make them run faster. It’s just this appealing sounding quasi-paradoxical thing that means nothing. It’s Star Wars as politics. We have actual historical evidence that the opposite is true.

yes, it's a silly argument. the more that alt-right, Q, etc. stuff can be limited to 8chan and off of things like facebook and twitter the better, as it limits the exposure of at-risk boomers

You could even say it ought to be treated like… a virus.

There's also the fact that leftists and radical people on the left have actually faced much of the brunt of censorship, banning, and job loss over the years. It's Going Down was banned from Facebook this summer, as were a number of other radical organizing groups.

otm!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-jodi-stand-up-to-smith-college

Nice grift here. Gofundme was at 100k when I checked it this morning. Currently at 145k.

158k and apparently it is "under review" because reverse racism idk

Actual photo of the Library Orientation Rap lady: https://t.co/FuP2ryQIbb pic.twitter.com/nRBFwYfR09

— John M. Cunningham (@jmcunning) February 20, 2021

Lady definitely should’ve just taken the L and trying to turn herself into some kind of free speech martyr is very gross, but idk why the school just didn’t let her do her dumb rap in the first place. Unless it was full of the kind of noxious bullshit she’s peddling now which is certainly possible.

Ironic rapping is pretty offensive, IMO, I can understand telling her to fuck off with it to avoid potential offense. (I have to imagine she was closer to Dynamite Hack than Ice Cube/Eazy-E.)

Wow, she sounds terrible.

"Stop demanding I admit to ‘white privilege’ and work on my so-called implicit bias as a condition of my continued employment. Stop telling me that as a white person I am, quote, ‘especially responsible’ for doing the work of dismantling racism,” she said in the first video. “We have the right to work in an environment free from the ever-present terror that any unverified student allegation of racism or any other -ism has the power to crush our reputation, ruin our livelihood, and even endanger the physical safety of ourselves or our family members.”

Wait, produced by Malcolm Burn?!

I don't think her rapping would have been appropriation, but it's hard as fuck for me to feel bad after that statement and her subsequent grifting

I’m starting to think the anti-cancel culture Patreon/Substack/Gofundme grifterverse is some kind of elaborate money laundering scheme

Buy my Free Speech Thong!

This is not a free speech issue, but a 'condition of employment' issue.

Yea it's a disingenuous grift ploy and gross

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC_n2_5EC5Q

The Lilith Fair to IDW pipeline

Can’t imagine why her boss might have 86ed the rapping portion of the festivities.

Any time you start talking about "unverified student allegation of racism," there's a 100% chance you've done some serious racism.

xp - yeah, Smith, in general, is an awkward place with a history of educating privileged white people (like pretty much all the other old NE private colleges) that is trying to foster diversity, cultural equity, anti-racism -- all the things that progressive schools are trying to do. I was actually offered a math scholarship to go there if I had chosen to major in math (I went elsewhere) and I could have been Jodi's classmate! ...

and the thing with the "student allegation of racism" re the other staff member ... it's noteworthy that it's spoken of in a "political correctness gone crazy" way, as opposed to an issue about workers' rights and did that staff member belong to a union with representation and maybe that person was treated unfairly as compared to a higher status employee whose behavior would have been swept under the rug or handled more delicately ... like if she were that focused on the college as a toxic hostile workplace, it would lend more credence to her "sincere concern" if she were speaking about it in a context closer to class politics/labor politics.

There's so much transparent projection in these kinds of statements.

And the more I think about it -- she was an alumna of Smith -- class of 1993 -- how the fuck can she sincerely believe being sensitive to racism, cultural appropriation, and white privilege are newfangled impositions when she was an undergrad at an elite New England college in the 1990s? Was she somehow able to ignore this at the time? Because I remember this era on those campuses and there was a lot of ~discourse~ about these topics. Some of the language and methods have changed/evolved, but not that much! I would be fucking astonished if as a Smith College student in 1992-1993 that the Rodney King incident and the LA riots (which put a lot of steam into student organizing about the racism of campus cops who should sure as fuck be prevented from having guns) and the "conservative lol at ebonics" stuff somehow escaped her notice.

The difference is that there weren't big gofundme bucks to make back then out of performative outrage.

a kind of forgetting seems to be required for the whole PC/snowflakes/cancellation narrative(s) to work, like if you want to go over the same bullshit for decades it’s easier to retain attention if you pretend it’s something new every time- and if normal anti-PC discourse is too obviously associated with right wing bullies these days new terminology helps if you want to do the same old shit without sounding too much like one, while positioning yourself as a victim of some insidious new agenda

at the same time the history isn’t totally forgotten, because (real or imagined or distorted) incidents from the past will be referred to as early examples of this terrible new thing in action. but it’s always still new or at least uniquely bad now

https://reason.com/2021/04/07/microaggressions-uva-student-kieran-bhattacharya-threat/

This seems bad.

And fwiw, I listened to the recording and he seems like he is being more of a dick than the article lets on, but not doing anything that warrants any disciplinary action let alone banning from campus.

It doesn't surprise me at all that a writer for Reason would be unable to recognize when someone is coming off like a dick. That said, this does seem like bullshit and the lawsuit seems merited.

Yeah, I think it would actually have made the article more credible if they had just acknowledged that, but then again he was p much just acting like every libertarian I went to college with so maybe they're deaf to it

I mean I can also def remember being that kind of sexually frustrated, overeager know-it-all mansplaining dork a few times in college, not from a right/libertarian perspective but probably with similar effect.

Baffert: My horse is a victim of cancel culture pic.twitter.com/PgWWtiidAI

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) May 10, 2021

Cancel Culture Killed My Dog

Cancel Culture is the NAME OF MY DOG