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It is strange how free speech advocates seem to worry a lot more about “cancel culture” than the literal banning of books as part of the fight against “critical
by slg 5y ago
It is strange how free speech advocates seem to worry a lot more about “cancel culture” than the literal banning of books as part of the fight against “critical race theory” or some other fabricated boogeyman.
- School-Cotton 5y agoI’m worried about both. Not everything is a one-dimensional football game.
- BoysenberryPi 5y agoThe problem is most people (or at least the loudest people) treat it as a black and white situation. You are either for this or against that.
- School-Cotton 5y agoYep, including the person I was responding to. I’m trying to combat that mindset.
- ch4s3 5y agoChristopher Rufo is not in any way a free speech advocate, and is the person behind all of the anti-CRT laws. He had an interesting exchange with Kemele Foster who predicted this exact outcome.
- slg 5y agoThis isn't specifically about Rufo. It is about the people who have embraced him and how those are often the same people who yell "cancel culture" when a comedian's Netflix special is criticized.
- ch4s3 5y agoThey definitely aren’t the same people. The folks rallying around Rufo largely seem to be traditionalist conservatives, who are often open against free speech. They’re often the same people who support flag burning bans. I can think of a few opportunists who have latched onto him and dabbled in the cane l culture backlash stuff in the past, but they’re opportunists so of course they’re also hypocrites. Who do you mean specifically? [edit] it seems some people disagree. I’d be happy to hear what people think I’m missing, maybe I have the wrong read on this.
- slg 5y ago>They definitely aren’t the same people. The fight against CRT is now a mainstream conservative mission. These are the same people who have spent years advocating for free speech when it comes to tech companies but are fine censoring the schools. It is completely hypocritical.
- ch4s3 5y agoThe conservatives like Josh Hawley who are writing these bills haven’t been in office long, he was elected in 2019 and is a central anti crt figure. He has never been a free speech advocate. I guess I’m just not sure which specific people you mean. Certainly there exist conservatives who hate being censored but love playing censor, that’s nothing new. I’m not sure it’s even hypocritical, they just have values I find to be pretty awful.
- slg 5y agoTed Cruz? Marco Rubio? Rand Paul? Greg Abbott? Ron DeSantis? Basically any Republican that has hopes of running for president has supported both these views.
- ch4s3 5y ago> Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio? Rand Paul? Greg Abbott? Ron DeSantis Of the people you’ve named below only Paul has any history of arguing for the freedom to say things he doesn’t personally like. The rest just complain when speech they like is curtailed, and they may use the phrase. I can call a pizza salad, and sing its praises all day, but that doesn’t mean I like salad, or advocate for it. You’re right that Paul is being hypocritical though.
- jonhohle 5y agoWhat does this book or it's banning have to do with critical race theory or any fight against it? As the link provided by srmarm lists, it was banned due to language and explicit illustration.
- omegaworks 5y agoThe anti-CRT moral panic has created a mass-movement and normalized book banning.
- jonhohle 5y agoThis has absolutely nothing to do with CRT. I assure you books have been banned far longer than CRT has been a trending topic. Did you read the minutes of the meeting? The content that is against school board policy is enumerated and there is a request to replace the material with something that can teach equivalent lessons. > I've got enough faith from the Director of Schools down to the newest hire in this building, that you can take that module and rewrite it and make it do the same thing. Our children need to know about the Holocaust, they need to understand that there are several pieces of history, Mr. Bennett, that shows depression or suppression of certain ethnicities. It's not acceptable today. We've got to accept people for who and what they are… But Rob, the wording in this book is in direct conflict of some of our policies… I move that we remove this book from the reading series and challenge our instructional staff to come with an alternative method of teaching the Holocaust.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- omegaworks 5y agoBanning Maus is endorsed by the people behind the CRT moral panic[1]. It was made all the easier by their effort. Believing that it’s more important to protect middle schoolers from mice that say "god damn" than it is to convey the horrors of the camps is white fragility politics in action. Infantilization to serve fascist ends. 1. https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1486732376369631234?s=20&t=Rsuke8vLw7L0TeuPuE3tcQ https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1486732376369631234?s=2...
- daenz 5y agoDeciding the things that are taught in public schools, by the government, with tax dollars is "representation with taxation", not "cancel culture."
- slg 5y agoSo we should just team our kids lies as long as enough people agree with them?
- majormajor 5y agoWell, that depends. In this case it was a school board, so it's "representative government." In other cases, "cancelers" are going around or over the heads of their school board, which is much more like "direct democracy" which is simultaneously much-decried when it comes to defending the absurdity of the Senate or Electoral College's vote distribution. Fancy-sounding principles about government don't matter in this debate. Look at the lack of right-wing outcry over the canceling of Colin Kaepernick. It's just about power, and doing whatever it takes to make sure the "right people" have it.
- chowchowchow 5y agoThose two things are not opposed. It’s not cancel culture because the cancellers paid taxes? It’s a non sequitur
- danShumway 5y agoAnd people deciding which businesses they want to shop at is the free market. And businesses deciding which products they want to carry is freedom of association. And people ganging up on other people on Twitter is technically free speech and public debate. If you don't think there's a problem with the government banning books from school curriculum for political reasons -- if you don't think that has anything to do with freedom of speech, then I don't see how you have a free speech problem with anything at all. None of the cancel culture that people complain about is illegal or unconstitutional. That doesn't mean it can't be harmful to free expression, but in contrast, "representation with taxation" can actually be unconstitutional if the "representation" people ask for is suppression of political speech. It is not my job to tell people whether or not they should be concerned with cancel culture. But anyone who is concerned about cancel culture and not concerned with educational book bans, or laws that restrict what topics teachers can talk to students about, or restrictions on conversations about sexual orientations/identities at school or with medical professionals, or any of the other speech laws being floated by Republican governments right now -- that person clearly is not interested in free speech itself, they just have an agenda and are using free speech as a convenient narrative tool in pursuit of that agenda. People can be legitimately concerned about cancel culture as a free speech issue, but I'm not going to take anyone seriously who says that cancel culture is real and actual government censorship isn't.
- sornaensis 5y agoWhat 'free speech advocates' are you talking to??? Both are and should be alarming.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- chowells 5y agoThe problem is that most people claiming they're free speech advocates are nothing of the sort. Their goal is compelled publication of their opinions, not free speech. They've just made the observation that they can work up a good mob when they claim it's about free speech. It's much harder to get that sort of self-righteous mob when they admit their real complaint is that some community won't let them come in and yell through a megaphone until everyone else goes deaf.
- whatshisface 5y agoWho has proposed compelled publication, and what form would that policy take? Perhaps they wish for the FCC to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine (lasted from 1949-1987)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
- ncallaway 5y agoI'm not sure if you're joking or not, but there have been _widespread_ proposals that would require social media sites to carry speech that they object to. These proposals were so widespread in some GOP circles that they actually became state law in 2 states (Florida and Texas) before being struck down as being a blatantly unconstitutional violation of the first amendment for being compelled speech. Note that in both contexts "struck down" does not refer to a final ruling, but rather an injunction that will remain in place until the final disposition of the case. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/01/texas-social-media-law-blocked/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/01/texas-social-media-l... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/30/florida-social-media-law-trump/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/30/florida... And the interpretation of the law as "compelling speech" is not just mine alone. The federal judge that issued the preliminary injunction in Florida described it this way: > The legislation compels providers to host speech that violates their standards—speech they otherwise would not host—and forbids providers from speaking as they otherwise would. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flnd.371253/gov.uscourts.flnd.371253.113.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flnd.37...
- chowells 5y ago
- _jal 5y agoIt is only strange if you assume their love of free speech is sincere. If you look at it as a cynical strategy, it makes perfect sense. A very good test of peoples' sincerity in this territory is to first see how well what they claim of others applies to the speaker themselves. You will frequently find that their accusations serve equally well as admissions of guilt.
- api 5y agoIt’s only censorship when it’s against things you sympathize with.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoIronically they do more cancelling than anybody- every Conservative that hasn't kissed the previous president's ring has been cancelled.
- josephcsible 5y agoThis argument goes both ways. Most people who are frothing at the mouth about this are either indifferent or happy about Big Tech's rampant censorship.
- interpol_p 5y agoIt doesn't seem equivalent to me. "Big tech," consisting of private companies, banning people and content creators from publishing misleading, harmful, calls-to-violence, racist or otherwise untrue information on their platforms A county School board choosing to reduce the accessibility of a piece of literature that may have been used to educate children about the history of the Holocaust If the latter is a government run or funded school, I'd say this is wrong. If it is a private school, then I would say it is just stupid, and poor kids for having such ignorant adults in charge of their education.
- ixtli 5y agoDo not accept the premise that they’re concerned about democratic norms. They are abusing language to undermine them.
- strken 5y agoWhich free speech advocates? I like free speech and I'd be horrified if this happened in Australia, although in this case it's in the US far away from me and about as relevant as the list of books the Taliban ban.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads into generic ideological battle. It's too repetitive to be interesting (at least in HN's sense of the word), and usually turns nasty. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20ideolog%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html