6 ms·

There's a really disturbing movement against freedom of speech in the US that I never thought I would see.

Miner49er 4y ago
It's not the first time, though, look at McCarthyism. We mostly bounced back from that, we'll probably do the same this time.
- LewisVerstappen 4y ago
  Sure, but people have to fight for their rights. The world doesn't swing towards freedom automatically. The rise of authoritarianism around the world (China, Russia, etc.) makes that clear.
mandmandam 4y ago
It's a small but crucial part of a wider class war, which is beyond belief in its scale and sheer evil. "Vote blue no matter who" isn't gonna get us out of this one, and neither is donating to the ACLU and NPR.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  Out of? It’s how we got it. I can’t be the only one left that is wondering how the window shifted so far left so quickly. Well, I guess me and Elon.
  - colpabar 4y ago
    It shifted because the powers that be saw an actual unified, targeted movement aimed against the ultra rich (occupy), and got scared. So now, instead of fighting against the people who own the government, we are fighting each other based on skin color. So progressive!
    - sli 4y ago
      Nothing really shifted to the left, certainly not the DNC. We just gave Bezos a $10B bailout. The rich are getting richer and richer. Roe is being overturned. There is not "far-left" presence in the US with any actual power. The right-wing (and Elon) freakout about the "far-left" is about people expressing their gripes with the state of things online, much of it being actual, salient criticism that gets handwaved away as "communism." There isn't a single far-left politician in the federal government. There are a few that are maybe left of center, but "far-left?" Absolutely not. Show me a rep or senator calling for public ownership of the means of production and then we have a conversation, but there simply isn't one. Nobody with a say is advocating for abolishing money, the state, class, etc. Even the list of politicians that support worker unions is really short. The furthest left US politicians go is social democracy, which is just democracy with strong safety nets to help keep as many people as possible from rock bottom.
- dorfsmay 4y ago
  I'm outside the US, but I see similar issues everywhere. I think it's time modern democracies stoped having "representative of the people" voting on laws. Laws should be considered each on their own value, and everybody should be able to vote for/against them.
  - Buttons840 4y ago
    Perhaps going back to one representative per 10,000 would help? We'd have to use technology to hold a quorem though.
    - BitwiseFool 4y ago
      Unfortunately, United States has a population of ~330 million and that would mean a House of Representatives with 33,000 members. There's no way it would be able to effectively deliberate topics with that many people. Just imagine how little time each representative could be allocated to speak, given there are only 8,760 hours in a year. Additionally the individual power of each representative would be so watered down as to be practically meaningless. It's an unacceptable solution but it seems to me that the US is just too big and splitting it up would make more sense.
      - dolni 4y ago
        > It's an unacceptable solution but it seems to me that the US is just too big and splitting it up would make more sense. We already have this. The divisions are called states. And it's solid argument for a weaker federal government.
        BitwiseFool 4y ago
        I wholeheartedly agree, but sadly the Federalists "won" this power struggle long ago.
      - Buttons840 4y ago
        Why do people need to debate on the house floor? Do such debates actually change anyone's mind or how they vote? Let them debate in an electronic forum with written arguments, let them debate in public and on social media (a good portion of political debate already happens on social media). Debate on the floor isn't so sacred we can't do without it. And yes, the power of individual representatives would be watered down, that's ok. It would be much closer to the direct democracy the parent comment suggested (and the reason I brought it up). It allows representatives to deal with boring bills the public doesn't care about, but there are enough representatives that I can reasonably expect to be on a first name basis with my representative if I care enough to get involved.
- ranger207 4y ago
  It's really a shame that my options right now are either the anti-freedom "no abortions, no weed, and absolutely no criticizing us" party, or the anti-freedom "no critical thinking, no guns, and absolutely no criticising us" party. Unfortunately under first past the post tribalism is rewarded, and moving to the center only gives room for a more radical same-party challenger to appear making you both lose. In my opinion, the greatest boost to freedom in current American politics would be the introduction of a better voting system[0] to allow third parties to exist and encourage them to work together to legislate. [0] I prefer score voting, but I'll vote for anyone who will get any alternate form of voting out there. For an easy explanation of the different voting systems, look at https://ncase.me/ballot/ https://ncase.me/ballot/
  - tiahura 4y ago
    Trump was pro medical and thought rec should be decided at the state level. Seems pretty balanced and mainstream to me.
  - dicknuckle 4y ago
    Score Voting, Runoff Voting, something, anything to fix the red/blue mess here.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    Come to slovenia... we just had an election which was (a bit simplified), "a bad guy we have now, and most people hate, but right leaning grandmas like" vs "a guy we didn't know existed two months ago, but media propped him up, and he's the only chance to take on the current guy". Because of the voting systems, parties need 4% of the votes to make it into the parliament, and all the votes for <4% parties are basically "lost". The end effect was people not voting for the "new guy" because they liked the new guy, but because they didn't want the new guy to stay, causing a huge discrepancy between the the parties they actually wanted to win vs the voting results.
jgeada 4y ago
Because freedom of speech has never been quite what it says. It is basically only immunity from consequences for the rich and powerful. Only they're allowed to have substantive influential speech without consequences, and only they are allowed to reclassify bribery as "speech". Anybody not in that set saying something the rich and powerful don't agree with gets sued into oblivion and/or gets their soap box taken away. All that is happening is that people want everyone to live by the same rules. Either nobody has consequences or everybody can have the soapbox taken away if the general public doesn't agree with them. Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are. BTW I'd also note that "free speech" American style is almost like a religion, you can't argue against it. I'd just note that no other country Europe (or the world) subscribes to this absolutist version of free speech. So it is reasonable that questions ensue questioning how great this "free speech" really is. Is lying by corporations really speech?
- mlindner 4y ago
  This is a great post illustrative of the currently widespread misunderstanding of freedom of speech in the US. It's not about the powerless wanting to control the speech of the rich and powerful. It's about the powerful of one side wanting to control the speech of the powerful of the other side by weaponizing ignorant masses of the populace to do their fight for them in defeating the ability of their opponents to have speech. It's a scary precedent and even more scary that so many don't see what's happening. > Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are. The powerful have controlled the media in the past WAY more than they do now or even in recent decades. Even the people gaining control of the media recently are outside of the normal historical rich as they're all of the nouveau riche class. This is all one more example of the recent trend of not wanting to bring UP the less privileged but to tear DOWN the privileged to the level of the less privileged. The former is beneficial for society the latter is self-destructive. The result of lack of speech is violence. If people (parts of the rich) can't voice their opinion with words they do so with actions by galvanizing people into violent actions.
- JackFr 4y ago
  > It is basically only immunity from consequences for the rich and powerful. Only they're allowed to have substantive influential speech without consequences, and only they are allowed to reclassify bribery as "speech". This is simply not true and I'm curious if you have any examples to support this. > Anybody not in that set saying something the rich and powerful don't agree with gets sued into oblivion and/or gets their soap box taken away. Again that is simply not true. In fact compared with the UK for instance it is _far_ harder to sue for libel or defamation in the US. > Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are. Rich people have access to resources the poor don't. That's not new. > BTW I'd also note that "free speech" American style is almost like a religion, you can't argue against it. I'd just note that no other country Europe (or the world) subscribes to this absolutist version of free speech. In general we are free speech absolutists. Honestly along with fast food, very entertaining movies and our love affair with guns it's quintessentially American.
brudgers 4y ago
First they came for the communists…
rrradical 4y ago
What are some examples of this? (Aside from the posted article, which is debated in other comments.)
- native_samples 4y ago
  One might think the recently announced Disinformation Board would count.
- jandrese 4y ago
  Notable examples include kicking people who post white supremacist articles off of Twitter and Facebook. Or DirectTV dropping OAN from their lineup because their ratings have tanked after Trump left office. Or when Marjorie Taylor Green lost her committee assignments for merely stating her belief that white genocide is a major problem that Congress must take action against the Jewish space lasers immediately before they cause more wildfires that kill white people.
- jollybean 4y ago
  Banning people from Twitter, App Store, AWS, VISA being cancelled, kicked out of distribution etc... Private institutions are narrowing their versions of what was considered normative 'crude' behaviour into 'hate speech' which has implications. Netflix, Hulu etc. spend a lot of time defining what's appropriate and not in their programming, and someone uttering something 'counter narrative' is problematic for them (unless it makes them a lot of money). That said, with Trump lying about the election, and others lying about vaccines, and foreign actors 100% trying to influence electoral outcomes (these are real things), it's an actual problem. I mean, I don't care if RT.com is punted from anywhere, it's not relevant, but it's a slippery slope.
  - rrradical 4y ago
    Those are examples of private companies not platforming certain speech. But how is that a modern change? Are you saying that decades ago, the big media companies at the time (say, NBC, CBS, ABC) platformed a greater variety of speech than now? I don't think you can earnestly claim that.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

It's not the first time, though, look at McCarthyism. We mostly bounced back from that, we'll probably do the same this time.

LewisVerstappen 4y ago
Sure, but people have to fight for their rights. The world doesn't swing towards freedom automatically. The rise of authoritarianism around the world (China, Russia, etc.) makes that clear.

mandmandam 4y ago

It's a small but crucial part of a wider class war, which is beyond belief in its scale and sheer evil. "Vote blue no matter who" isn't gonna get us out of this one, and neither is donating to the ACLU and NPR.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
Out of? It’s how we got it. I can’t be the only one left that is wondering how the window shifted so far left so quickly. Well, I guess me and Elon.
- colpabar 4y ago
  It shifted because the powers that be saw an actual unified, targeted movement aimed against the ultra rich (occupy), and got scared. So now, instead of fighting against the people who own the government, we are fighting each other based on skin color. So progressive!
  - sli 4y ago
    Nothing really shifted to the left, certainly not the DNC. We just gave Bezos a $10B bailout. The rich are getting richer and richer. Roe is being overturned. There is not "far-left" presence in the US with any actual power. The right-wing (and Elon) freakout about the "far-left" is about people expressing their gripes with the state of things online, much of it being actual, salient criticism that gets handwaved away as "communism." There isn't a single far-left politician in the federal government. There are a few that are maybe left of center, but "far-left?" Absolutely not. Show me a rep or senator calling for public ownership of the means of production and then we have a conversation, but there simply isn't one. Nobody with a say is advocating for abolishing money, the state, class, etc. Even the list of politicians that support worker unions is really short. The furthest left US politicians go is social democracy, which is just democracy with strong safety nets to help keep as many people as possible from rock bottom.
dorfsmay 4y ago
I'm outside the US, but I see similar issues everywhere. I think it's time modern democracies stoped having "representative of the people" voting on laws. Laws should be considered each on their own value, and everybody should be able to vote for/against them.
- Buttons840 4y ago
  Perhaps going back to one representative per 10,000 would help? We'd have to use technology to hold a quorem though.
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    Unfortunately, United States has a population of ~330 million and that would mean a House of Representatives with 33,000 members. There's no way it would be able to effectively deliberate topics with that many people. Just imagine how little time each representative could be allocated to speak, given there are only 8,760 hours in a year. Additionally the individual power of each representative would be so watered down as to be practically meaningless. It's an unacceptable solution but it seems to me that the US is just too big and splitting it up would make more sense.
    - dolni 4y ago
      > It's an unacceptable solution but it seems to me that the US is just too big and splitting it up would make more sense. We already have this. The divisions are called states. And it's solid argument for a weaker federal government.
      - BitwiseFool 4y ago
        I wholeheartedly agree, but sadly the Federalists "won" this power struggle long ago.
    - Buttons840 4y ago
      Why do people need to debate on the house floor? Do such debates actually change anyone's mind or how they vote? Let them debate in an electronic forum with written arguments, let them debate in public and on social media (a good portion of political debate already happens on social media). Debate on the floor isn't so sacred we can't do without it. And yes, the power of individual representatives would be watered down, that's ok. It would be much closer to the direct democracy the parent comment suggested (and the reason I brought it up). It allows representatives to deal with boring bills the public doesn't care about, but there are enough representatives that I can reasonably expect to be on a first name basis with my representative if I care enough to get involved.
ranger207 4y ago
It's really a shame that my options right now are either the anti-freedom "no abortions, no weed, and absolutely no criticizing us" party, or the anti-freedom "no critical thinking, no guns, and absolutely no criticising us" party. Unfortunately under first past the post tribalism is rewarded, and moving to the center only gives room for a more radical same-party challenger to appear making you both lose. In my opinion, the greatest boost to freedom in current American politics would be the introduction of a better voting system[0] to allow third parties to exist and encourage them to work together to legislate. [0] I prefer score voting, but I'll vote for anyone who will get any alternate form of voting out there. For an easy explanation of the different voting systems, look at https://ncase.me/ballot/ https://ncase.me/ballot/
- tiahura 4y ago
  Trump was pro medical and thought rec should be decided at the state level. Seems pretty balanced and mainstream to me.
- dicknuckle 4y ago
  Score Voting, Runoff Voting, something, anything to fix the red/blue mess here.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  Come to slovenia... we just had an election which was (a bit simplified), "a bad guy we have now, and most people hate, but right leaning grandmas like" vs "a guy we didn't know existed two months ago, but media propped him up, and he's the only chance to take on the current guy". Because of the voting systems, parties need 4% of the votes to make it into the parliament, and all the votes for <4% parties are basically "lost". The end effect was people not voting for the "new guy" because they liked the new guy, but because they didn't want the new guy to stay, causing a huge discrepancy between the the parties they actually wanted to win vs the voting results.

jgeada 4y ago

Because freedom of speech has never been quite what it says. It is basically only immunity from consequences for the rich and powerful. Only they're allowed to have substantive influential speech without consequences, and only they are allowed to reclassify bribery as "speech". Anybody not in that set saying something the rich and powerful don't agree with gets sued into oblivion and/or gets their soap box taken away. All that is happening is that people want everyone to live by the same rules. Either nobody has consequences or everybody can have the soapbox taken away if the general public doesn't agree with them. Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are. BTW I'd also note that "free speech" American style is almost like a religion, you can't argue against it. I'd just note that no other country Europe (or the world) subscribes to this absolutist version of free speech. So it is reasonable that questions ensue questioning how great this "free speech" really is. Is lying by corporations really speech?

mlindner 4y ago
This is a great post illustrative of the currently widespread misunderstanding of freedom of speech in the US. It's not about the powerless wanting to control the speech of the rich and powerful. It's about the powerful of one side wanting to control the speech of the powerful of the other side by weaponizing ignorant masses of the populace to do their fight for them in defeating the ability of their opponents to have speech. It's a scary precedent and even more scary that so many don't see what's happening. > Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are. The powerful have controlled the media in the past WAY more than they do now or even in recent decades. Even the people gaining control of the media recently are outside of the normal historical rich as they're all of the nouveau riche class. This is all one more example of the recent trend of not wanting to bring UP the less privileged but to tear DOWN the privileged to the level of the less privileged. The former is beneficial for society the latter is self-destructive. The result of lack of speech is violence. If people (parts of the rich) can't voice their opinion with words they do so with actions by galvanizing people into violent actions.
JackFr 4y ago
> It is basically only immunity from consequences for the rich and powerful. Only they're allowed to have substantive influential speech without consequences, and only they are allowed to reclassify bribery as "speech". This is simply not true and I'm curious if you have any examples to support this. > Anybody not in that set saying something the rich and powerful don't agree with gets sued into oblivion and/or gets their soap box taken away. Again that is simply not true. In fact compared with the UK for instance it is _far_ harder to sue for libel or defamation in the US. > Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are. Rich people have access to resources the poor don't. That's not new. > BTW I'd also note that "free speech" American style is almost like a religion, you can't argue against it. I'd just note that no other country Europe (or the world) subscribes to this absolutist version of free speech. In general we are free speech absolutists. Honestly along with fast food, very entertaining movies and our love affair with guns it's quintessentially American.

brudgers 4y ago

First they came for the communists…

rrradical 4y ago

What are some examples of this? (Aside from the posted article, which is debated in other comments.)

native_samples 4y ago
One might think the recently announced Disinformation Board would count.
jandrese 4y ago
Notable examples include kicking people who post white supremacist articles off of Twitter and Facebook. Or DirectTV dropping OAN from their lineup because their ratings have tanked after Trump left office. Or when Marjorie Taylor Green lost her committee assignments for merely stating her belief that white genocide is a major problem that Congress must take action against the Jewish space lasers immediately before they cause more wildfires that kill white people.
jollybean 4y ago
Banning people from Twitter, App Store, AWS, VISA being cancelled, kicked out of distribution etc... Private institutions are narrowing their versions of what was considered normative 'crude' behaviour into 'hate speech' which has implications. Netflix, Hulu etc. spend a lot of time defining what's appropriate and not in their programming, and someone uttering something 'counter narrative' is problematic for them (unless it makes them a lot of money). That said, with Trump lying about the election, and others lying about vaccines, and foreign actors 100% trying to influence electoral outcomes (these are real things), it's an actual problem. I mean, I don't care if RT.com is punted from anywhere, it's not relevant, but it's a slippery slope.
- rrradical 4y ago
  Those are examples of private companies not platforming certain speech. But how is that a modern change? Are you saying that decades ago, the big media companies at the time (say, NBC, CBS, ABC) platformed a greater variety of speech than now? I don't think you can earnestly claim that.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]