3 ms·

Should they be made to be forced to platform someone or be forced to invite someone they don't actually welcome?

barry-cotter 11y ago
That depends on the context. I'm totally ok with saying fuck the students union or the university trying to censor speakers student clubs and societies have invited though. If the illiberal left feel like using violence and intimidation to physically no platform people good. The more people see that they're just bullies on a power trip the better.
- SolaceQuantum 11y ago
  If it depends on context then perhaps it shouldn't be so widely stated. My university when I was in school had pro life people invited who put huge pictures of gore up on the student union so that no one could get food on campus without seeing the images. They also brought a truck with more gore pictures that drove around campus. Is it censorship when a huge portion of the student body made it very clear that wasn't welcome via counter protests and the creation of a tunneled off space where people could enter the student union without seeing anything? I agree that shutting out certain polticial views is bad, but I also don't feel anyone should be forced to platform or shoved into politics when they really don't want to deal with that. I mean, then it just becomes a case of forcing people to listen to you and that's not free speech at all.
  - barry-cotter 11y ago
    > Is it censorship when a huge portion of the student body made it very clear that wasn't welcome via counter protests and the creation of a tunneled off space where people could enter the student union without seeing anything? I fail to see the relevance of safe spaces and trigger warnings to what you wrote. Large portions of the student body hated the anti-abortion stuff and you protested against it and worked around it. Go you. That's how things should be done. > I agree that shutting out certain polticial views is bad, but I also don't feel anyone should be forced to platform or shoved into politics when they really don't want to deal with that. I mean, then it just becomes a case of forcing people to listen to you and that's not free speech at all. You may not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you. You can't shut out politics because politics is what happens when three or more humans get together. That's what entryism is about. One would not think hobbies as marginal as atheist organisations, SF con goers and computer gaming would be worth infiltrating and taking over but they've all become vastly more political recently. No one's forcing you to attend the Marxist/Nazi/Libertarian/Socialist speaker's talk. They're objecting to the attempt to prevent them speaking at all.
    - SolaceQuantum 11y ago
      > I fail to see the relevance of safe spaces and trigger warnings to what you wrote. Large portions of the student body hated the anti-abortion stuff and you protested against it and worked around it. Go you. That's how things should be done. Well, you see, the tunnel was called a safe space. And people were waving around signs saying "trigger warning: gore pictures ahead". > No one's forcing you to attend the Marxist/Nazi/Libertarian/Socialist speaker's talk. They're objecting to the attempt to prevent them speaking at all. I don't see how this is possible, because the internet exists and also because people can make their own talks off-campus or so. Of course, no business establishment or property owner, or even university is obligated to give them a platform. No one is obligated to give any idea or viewpoint a platform. Certain subjects are approved of for platforming by the people that set the rules for how their buildings are to be used. Is that censorship?
      - icebraining 11y ago
        Of course, no (..) university is obligated to give them a platform. For public universities, why not?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - vidarh 11y ago
    Personally I think it would be reasonable to censor what gets displayed in a public space that are hard to avoid when a large proportion is against it. Preventing them from plastering large gore pictures is very different from preventing them from showing those pictures to people who voluntarily comes to a meeting, or after asking someone if they want to see. To me, the latter is what is deeply problematic. Especially considering that a lot of issues that are now accepted by the mainstream would have been in the "deeply offensive" category when the movements started out. E.g. imagine a student union today denying a platform to advocates of gay rights. It's not that long ago that such speakers would have been considered extremely offensive in the UK, and were routinely denied a platform. The moment student unions and the like sets themselves up as arbiters of what views are acceptable, they are no better than the many people who over the years have fought to deny platforms to gay rights advocates or advocates of womens suffrage, or civil rights regardless of race, or in favour of interracial marriages, or to end slavery. Yes, someones views may be vile to you, but if there's one thing history has shown us, it is that the majority has been on the wrong end of a vast number of issues for a long time before things changed. And it's easy to assume we're on the right side. The problem is that everyone believes they're on the right side, which means a substantial proportion of us are wrong no matter the issue. The moment it becomes acceptable to censor, that means a substantial proportion of us will want to censor views that will put us squarely on the wrong side in retrospect.

That depends on the context. I'm totally ok with saying fuck the students union or the university trying to censor speakers student clubs and societies have invited though. If the illiberal left feel like using violence and intimidation to physically no platform people good. The more people see that they're just bullies on a power trip the better.

SolaceQuantum 11y ago
If it depends on context then perhaps it shouldn't be so widely stated. My university when I was in school had pro life people invited who put huge pictures of gore up on the student union so that no one could get food on campus without seeing the images. They also brought a truck with more gore pictures that drove around campus. Is it censorship when a huge portion of the student body made it very clear that wasn't welcome via counter protests and the creation of a tunneled off space where people could enter the student union without seeing anything? I agree that shutting out certain polticial views is bad, but I also don't feel anyone should be forced to platform or shoved into politics when they really don't want to deal with that. I mean, then it just becomes a case of forcing people to listen to you and that's not free speech at all.
- barry-cotter 11y ago
  > Is it censorship when a huge portion of the student body made it very clear that wasn't welcome via counter protests and the creation of a tunneled off space where people could enter the student union without seeing anything? I fail to see the relevance of safe spaces and trigger warnings to what you wrote. Large portions of the student body hated the anti-abortion stuff and you protested against it and worked around it. Go you. That's how things should be done. > I agree that shutting out certain polticial views is bad, but I also don't feel anyone should be forced to platform or shoved into politics when they really don't want to deal with that. I mean, then it just becomes a case of forcing people to listen to you and that's not free speech at all. You may not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you. You can't shut out politics because politics is what happens when three or more humans get together. That's what entryism is about. One would not think hobbies as marginal as atheist organisations, SF con goers and computer gaming would be worth infiltrating and taking over but they've all become vastly more political recently. No one's forcing you to attend the Marxist/Nazi/Libertarian/Socialist speaker's talk. They're objecting to the attempt to prevent them speaking at all.
  - SolaceQuantum 11y ago
    > I fail to see the relevance of safe spaces and trigger warnings to what you wrote. Large portions of the student body hated the anti-abortion stuff and you protested against it and worked around it. Go you. That's how things should be done. Well, you see, the tunnel was called a safe space. And people were waving around signs saying "trigger warning: gore pictures ahead". > No one's forcing you to attend the Marxist/Nazi/Libertarian/Socialist speaker's talk. They're objecting to the attempt to prevent them speaking at all. I don't see how this is possible, because the internet exists and also because people can make their own talks off-campus or so. Of course, no business establishment or property owner, or even university is obligated to give them a platform. No one is obligated to give any idea or viewpoint a platform. Certain subjects are approved of for platforming by the people that set the rules for how their buildings are to be used. Is that censorship?
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Of course, no (..) university is obligated to give them a platform. For public universities, why not?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- vidarh 11y ago
  Personally I think it would be reasonable to censor what gets displayed in a public space that are hard to avoid when a large proportion is against it. Preventing them from plastering large gore pictures is very different from preventing them from showing those pictures to people who voluntarily comes to a meeting, or after asking someone if they want to see. To me, the latter is what is deeply problematic. Especially considering that a lot of issues that are now accepted by the mainstream would have been in the "deeply offensive" category when the movements started out. E.g. imagine a student union today denying a platform to advocates of gay rights. It's not that long ago that such speakers would have been considered extremely offensive in the UK, and were routinely denied a platform. The moment student unions and the like sets themselves up as arbiters of what views are acceptable, they are no better than the many people who over the years have fought to deny platforms to gay rights advocates or advocates of womens suffrage, or civil rights regardless of race, or in favour of interracial marriages, or to end slavery. Yes, someones views may be vile to you, but if there's one thing history has shown us, it is that the majority has been on the wrong end of a vast number of issues for a long time before things changed. And it's easy to assume we're on the right side. The problem is that everyone believes they're on the right side, which means a substantial proportion of us are wrong no matter the issue. The moment it becomes acceptable to censor, that means a substantial proportion of us will want to censor views that will put us squarely on the wrong side in retrospect.