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Regrettably, that is what's lost in all of this. Protesters against other opinions and belief systems strongly defend free speech so long as you are saying wha

Regrettably, that is what's lost in all of this. Protesters against other opinions and belief systems strongly defend free speech so long as you are saying what they approve of.

edoo 6y ago
Typical Marxism.
fennecfoxen 6y ago
The world, in general, is abandoning the past two centuries in which freedom has risen, to become illiberal, and enforce intellectual orthodoxies. It is more obvious and markedly so in in places like Turkey, but even here in the US we see those who would blacklist all political enemies and dissenters. These efforts will ultimately fail here, but not before grave harm is inflicted; history will judge us as harshly as we judge the McCarthy era. There were Communists in the government in the McCarthy era. There were quite a few Communists, much as there is still racism at large in the USA today. And yet you will note that successfully rooting out spies is not why McCarthy is remembered, but rather, for his self-aggrandizing campaign of paranoid repression.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  I don't think equating racist power structures in police and government to red scare communists is a good analogy. The fear of communists was mostly made up in rhetoric. The protestors on race relations are pretty clear on why they're upset.
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    The US and the West faced for 45 years a totalitarian system that had conquered a dozen neighboring countries and had a powerful military. How far was "too far" in combating that? As mentioned, there were Communist spies in the US government, far more than was generally understood at the time; we know that now thanks to the Venona files. That doesn't change the fact that Joe McCarthy was almost always correct only by accident. (You shoot in a random direction often enough, you'll hit someone eventually.) Worse, his excessive rhetoric likely for years discouraged legitimate rooting out of said spies.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    Communism, like fascism is an undemocratic form of governance. The latter is much worse for most people, but that doesn't mean communism isn't misanthropic as well. It is based on childish axioms that creates fault lines where none should be under an illusion of empowerment. Formerly economic, now we see this disaster around race and sex which certainly doesn't result in more understanding for anyone. There was certainly a red scare which was borderline idiotic, but communism/late marxism should be abolished just like fascism or restricted to idealistic teenagers in favor of democracy.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > The fear of communists was mostly made up in rhetoric. Maybe ask the West-Berliners that the SU tried to starve to make them surrender and become part of the SU.
    - cgrealy 6y ago
      “Communism” != “Soviet style totalitarianism”. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a communist. You don’t have to agree with it as a political philosophy (I don’t), but it’s no worse than being a capitalist.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        Let's not go down the "those aren't real communists" route. The communists in the West were by and large always very cozy with the SU. Hell, they loved Stalin so much and wanted to hear so little that Orwell sat down to write a fable to explain the issues to them.
        klmadfejno 6y ago
        One of the most famous moments was the waving of an imaginary list with known communists embedded in the government. Regardless of your view on the 'realness' of those who actually were communists, the point is that it was largely speculative who was part of them. The concerns of the BLM protestors are not that there are hidden racists, but overt bad actors with tangible track records of oppressive behaviors.
        fennecfoxen 6y ago
        Another of the famous moments was when McCarthy called out Frederick G. Fisher, a young lawyer, as a proxy attack on his political opponent, Joseph Welch. "Before this moment, I never appreciated your cruelty," remarked Mr. Welch, noting, "you have sat within six feet of me and could have asked me about Fred Fisher." He asked the Senator: "Have you no decency, sir?" He was offended, and thought it indecent, that this young man, a nobody and a nonentity, should have his name paraded front of the entire nation, accused of betrayal, his reputation jeopardized not by any proceeding undertaken for the sake of justice, but rather, in the mainfestly unfair court of public opinion, for the sake of his outrage machine. Eighteen months ago this nation witnessed Nicholas Sandmann, a random eleventh grader from Covington, Kentucky, excoriated on national television. There are those who still believe it was justice, that the boy had it coming, and declare that he has a "punchable" face. If someone has stood up and called this indecent, it was little noted. CNN settled a lawsuit over the matter, but has not issued an apology; our outrage machine has rolled on to other matters, and will continue to do so with little heed to justice.
- api 6y ago
  I think part of it is the decay of discourse. People don't know how to discuss ideas in good faith. They just know how to troll, yell, make unfounded wild accusations, and meme. Basically we have a junior high level of public discourse. People aren't open to hearing reasoned arguments either. A reasoned argument doesn't deliver the dopamine hit of a rant or a catchy meme. In that environment the only thing possible is to deplatform. I mean what else is there to do? Nothing is being accomplished anyway. Maybe we should just turn off social media. Deplatform it all.
  - lmm 6y ago
    It's not "social media". It's Twitter, specifically, because of the design decisions of that platform (obvious things like the message length limit, and slightly more subtle things like the way that replies from other people are hidden, encouraging you to pile in).
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      While it is certainly worse on Twitter I would argue that the other social media sites are not that much better. See reddit or facebook for example.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    .. at the highest level of government. People want a president who trolls the opposition.
- drtillberg 6y ago
  A chaplin recently had to resign in apology at a distinguished academic institution for ... making factual and insightful comments about the George Floyd incident.[1] McCarthy eventually was shamed and disgraced by his casual destructiveness. "Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" [1] https://nypost.com/2020/06/17/mit-chaplain-resigns-over-email-criticizing-george-floyd/ https://nypost.com/2020/06/17/mit-chaplain-resigns-over-emai...
  - smt88 6y ago
    Saying someone "didn't live a virtuous life" is not factual. In this case, it's an irrelevant and tasteless opinion about a victim. It implies Floyd somehow deserved to be shot in the back and killed.
    - legostormtroopr 6y ago
      > It implies Floyd somehow deserved to be shot in the back and killed. No it doesn't. This is wild hyperbole. No one deserves to be shot in the back. However, people are painting him out to be an angel - quite literally there are multiple artworks of George Floyd with a halo and wings [1]. The reality is he was human, and one with a complicated criminal past who was jailed 8 times [2] including for drug offenses. Is saying that someone with a criminal record like that "didn't live a virtuous life" really a fireable offense? [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=george+floyd+angel&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=ALeKk00nMHtG8DjlxgC9apPjPLBHYmpIkA:1593066663036&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=Zc2XqCm-cCeq_M%252C0loWz6H057CD0M%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kRPwZ_-x7-s6YTPcjlhnnGhGltT3g&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjawrbkq5zqAhXCyzgGHXlzB3sQ9QEwAHoECAkQHA&biw=1217&bih=579#imgrc=Zc2XqCm-cCeq_M https://www.google.com/search?q=george+floyd+angel&client=fi... [2] https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/06/12/george-floyd-criminal-record/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/06/12/george-floyd-criminal...
      - romwell 6y ago
        >Is saying that someone with a criminal record like that "didn't live a virtuous life" really a fireable offense? Talk about wild hyperboles! “In the wake of George Floyd’s death, most people in the country have framed this as an act of racism,” Moloney’s email continued. “I don’t think we know that. Many people have claimed that racism is a major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that.” The Chaplain has said enough things that association with him became a liability for an institution like MIT, that is all.
cheschire 6y ago
And this causes virtue signaling on the part of companies, which then causes employees' livelihoods to be directly tied to their ability to express acceptable beliefs in the correct way.
- Mangalor 6y ago
  > causes employees' livelihoods to be directly tied to their ability to express acceptable beliefs in the correct way You mean like how underrepresented groups regularly experience the workplace already?
  - cheschire 6y ago
    I like this point too!
  - humanrebar 6y ago
    Sure, but there are more underrepresented groups than the ones currently adopted by woke culture. Folks with English as a second language are having a hell of a time with the rapidly evolving speech codes. One cannot even go by the annotations in the OED anymore.

Regrettably, that is what's lost in all of this. Protesters against other opinions and belief systems strongly defend free speech so long as you are saying what they approve of.

edoo 6y ago

Typical Marxism.

fennecfoxen 6y ago

The world, in general, is abandoning the past two centuries in which freedom has risen, to become illiberal, and enforce intellectual orthodoxies. It is more obvious and markedly so in in places like Turkey, but even here in the US we see those who would blacklist all political enemies and dissenters. These efforts will ultimately fail here, but not before grave harm is inflicted; history will judge us as harshly as we judge the McCarthy era. There were Communists in the government in the McCarthy era. There were quite a few Communists, much as there is still racism at large in the USA today. And yet you will note that successfully rooting out spies is not why McCarthy is remembered, but rather, for his self-aggrandizing campaign of paranoid repression.

klmadfejno 6y ago
I don't think equating racist power structures in police and government to red scare communists is a good analogy. The fear of communists was mostly made up in rhetoric. The protestors on race relations are pretty clear on why they're upset.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  The US and the West faced for 45 years a totalitarian system that had conquered a dozen neighboring countries and had a powerful military. How far was "too far" in combating that? As mentioned, there were Communist spies in the US government, far more than was generally understood at the time; we know that now thanks to the Venona files. That doesn't change the fact that Joe McCarthy was almost always correct only by accident. (You shoot in a random direction often enough, you'll hit someone eventually.) Worse, his excessive rhetoric likely for years discouraged legitimate rooting out of said spies.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Communism, like fascism is an undemocratic form of governance. The latter is much worse for most people, but that doesn't mean communism isn't misanthropic as well. It is based on childish axioms that creates fault lines where none should be under an illusion of empowerment. Formerly economic, now we see this disaster around race and sex which certainly doesn't result in more understanding for anyone. There was certainly a red scare which was borderline idiotic, but communism/late marxism should be abolished just like fascism or restricted to idealistic teenagers in favor of democracy.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > The fear of communists was mostly made up in rhetoric. Maybe ask the West-Berliners that the SU tried to starve to make them surrender and become part of the SU.
  - cgrealy 6y ago
    “Communism” != “Soviet style totalitarianism”. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a communist. You don’t have to agree with it as a political philosophy (I don’t), but it’s no worse than being a capitalist.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Let's not go down the "those aren't real communists" route. The communists in the West were by and large always very cozy with the SU. Hell, they loved Stalin so much and wanted to hear so little that Orwell sat down to write a fable to explain the issues to them.
      - klmadfejno 6y ago
        One of the most famous moments was the waving of an imaginary list with known communists embedded in the government. Regardless of your view on the 'realness' of those who actually were communists, the point is that it was largely speculative who was part of them. The concerns of the BLM protestors are not that there are hidden racists, but overt bad actors with tangible track records of oppressive behaviors.
        fennecfoxen 6y ago
        Another of the famous moments was when McCarthy called out Frederick G. Fisher, a young lawyer, as a proxy attack on his political opponent, Joseph Welch. "Before this moment, I never appreciated your cruelty," remarked Mr. Welch, noting, "you have sat within six feet of me and could have asked me about Fred Fisher." He asked the Senator: "Have you no decency, sir?" He was offended, and thought it indecent, that this young man, a nobody and a nonentity, should have his name paraded front of the entire nation, accused of betrayal, his reputation jeopardized not by any proceeding undertaken for the sake of justice, but rather, in the mainfestly unfair court of public opinion, for the sake of his outrage machine. Eighteen months ago this nation witnessed Nicholas Sandmann, a random eleventh grader from Covington, Kentucky, excoriated on national television. There are those who still believe it was justice, that the boy had it coming, and declare that he has a "punchable" face. If someone has stood up and called this indecent, it was little noted. CNN settled a lawsuit over the matter, but has not issued an apology; our outrage machine has rolled on to other matters, and will continue to do so with little heed to justice.
api 6y ago
I think part of it is the decay of discourse. People don't know how to discuss ideas in good faith. They just know how to troll, yell, make unfounded wild accusations, and meme. Basically we have a junior high level of public discourse. People aren't open to hearing reasoned arguments either. A reasoned argument doesn't deliver the dopamine hit of a rant or a catchy meme. In that environment the only thing possible is to deplatform. I mean what else is there to do? Nothing is being accomplished anyway. Maybe we should just turn off social media. Deplatform it all.
- lmm 6y ago
  It's not "social media". It's Twitter, specifically, because of the design decisions of that platform (obvious things like the message length limit, and slightly more subtle things like the way that replies from other people are hidden, encouraging you to pile in).
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    While it is certainly worse on Twitter I would argue that the other social media sites are not that much better. See reddit or facebook for example.
- pjc50 6y ago
  .. at the highest level of government. People want a president who trolls the opposition.
drtillberg 6y ago
A chaplin recently had to resign in apology at a distinguished academic institution for ... making factual and insightful comments about the George Floyd incident.[1] McCarthy eventually was shamed and disgraced by his casual destructiveness. "Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" [1] https://nypost.com/2020/06/17/mit-chaplain-resigns-over-email-criticizing-george-floyd/ https://nypost.com/2020/06/17/mit-chaplain-resigns-over-emai...
- smt88 6y ago
  Saying someone "didn't live a virtuous life" is not factual. In this case, it's an irrelevant and tasteless opinion about a victim. It implies Floyd somehow deserved to be shot in the back and killed.
  - legostormtroopr 6y ago
    > It implies Floyd somehow deserved to be shot in the back and killed. No it doesn't. This is wild hyperbole. No one deserves to be shot in the back. However, people are painting him out to be an angel - quite literally there are multiple artworks of George Floyd with a halo and wings [1]. The reality is he was human, and one with a complicated criminal past who was jailed 8 times [2] including for drug offenses. Is saying that someone with a criminal record like that "didn't live a virtuous life" really a fireable offense? [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=george+floyd+angel&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=ALeKk00nMHtG8DjlxgC9apPjPLBHYmpIkA:1593066663036&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=Zc2XqCm-cCeq_M%252C0loWz6H057CD0M%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kRPwZ_-x7-s6YTPcjlhnnGhGltT3g&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjawrbkq5zqAhXCyzgGHXlzB3sQ9QEwAHoECAkQHA&biw=1217&bih=579#imgrc=Zc2XqCm-cCeq_M https://www.google.com/search?q=george+floyd+angel&client=fi... [2] https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/06/12/george-floyd-criminal-record/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/06/12/george-floyd-criminal...
    - romwell 6y ago
      >Is saying that someone with a criminal record like that "didn't live a virtuous life" really a fireable offense? Talk about wild hyperboles! “In the wake of George Floyd’s death, most people in the country have framed this as an act of racism,” Moloney’s email continued. “I don’t think we know that. Many people have claimed that racism is a major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that.” The Chaplain has said enough things that association with him became a liability for an institution like MIT, that is all.

cheschire 6y ago

And this causes virtue signaling on the part of companies, which then causes employees' livelihoods to be directly tied to their ability to express acceptable beliefs in the correct way.

Mangalor 6y ago
> causes employees' livelihoods to be directly tied to their ability to express acceptable beliefs in the correct way You mean like how underrepresented groups regularly experience the workplace already?
- cheschire 6y ago
  I like this point too!
- humanrebar 6y ago
  Sure, but there are more underrepresented groups than the ones currently adopted by woke culture. Folks with English as a second language are having a hell of a time with the rapidly evolving speech codes. One cannot even go by the annotations in the OED anymore.