7 ms·

> Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences. Wasn't that an old Soviet or similar joke? "In {country_name}, we have freedom of speech. What we

> Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences. Wasn't that an old Soviet or similar joke? "In {country_name}, we have freedom of speech. What we don't have is freedom after speech".

mlindner 4y ago
They still have freedom after speech. They can continue to say what they were saying about Musk anywhere they like (including on Twitter).
- PathOfEclipse 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    I don't disagree with some of the principle. I think what you are saying can be perceived (and maybe it inherently is) partisan, in the sense that it focuses on one aspect entirely to prove a larger point - I think we are missing out on many of the things that the right restricted - good ol' Fifties' McArthyism of course comes quickly to mind, but I think through much of the history (but not all!), and certainly throughout the global geography, it was the conservative / establishment voices that had the power to restrict progressive speech. If instead, in your post you made a point that going against the cultural zeitgest of the times is always inherently risky and with consequences, you'd have been far more engaging and accepted rather than focusing on one side and attaching a ranty YouTube about "wokeness". It especially doesn't sound non-conspiratorial and non-partisan once you talk about "evil influences" and "this war will be won" - that means we're not having a discussion, you're preaching a specific point of view. (FWIW, I don't like either side overzealously restricting what's permissible to discuss - I'm in my own world of no mental or verbal taboos and a marketplace of ideas, which is the rarest side of all it turns out -- neutral simply means all sides can gang up on you :D )
    - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
      I actually appreciate your reply being relatively measured. You're right in that my post would be more accurate if I said "what I said above is neither partisan nor conspiratorial", because later on I do take a very partisan stance. I also didn't mention things like McCarthyism because: A) I'm not very familiar with it. B) From what little I've heard, McCarthyism seems to me like an failure in that it didn't go far enough where it should and went too far where it shouldn't. C) I don't see it as relevant to today's culture war, which is a consequence of the left having successfully gained cultural ascendancy and become an incredible threat to our country. Edit 2: I remembered faintly reading about McCarthyism once, and it turns out I'm right: I read chapter six of "Debunking Zinn", titled, "Writing the Red Menace out of history." To quote from the chapter: "Senator Joesph McCarthy -- always an easy mark for the left -- is presented as representative of all anti-Communists. But it's a fact that Soviet expansion was enabled by Americans' lack of due diligence when it came to weeding out Communist spies." And, to McCarthy's inffectiveness, the book says: "Christopher Anddrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, among other anti-communists, claim that 'McCarthy ultimately did more for the Soviet cause than any agent of influence the KBG ever had'." And later: "[McCarthy] was also not careful in making his charges, and he became more reckless as his drinking, some say, got worse." Edit: "Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds" makes brief mention to this 1954 book defending Joe McCarthy: https://www.amazon.com/McCarthy-His-Enemies-William-Buckley/dp/0895264722 https://www.amazon.com/McCarthy-His-Enemies-William-Buckley/.... I have not read it, but if I were to learn more about McCarthyism I would probably personally start there. From one book review: "However, what I love most about this book is the authors challenge the reader to do his or her own thinking about communism in the 50's and what needed to be done during that time. They ask questions and then provide hypothetical answers which returns over and over again the same verdict. That rooting out communism and subversives in government was an extremely tough job, and it required a tough man to do the job, and he would have to play "hardball" to get the facts. To make the job even more difficult is that McCarthy was up against powerful establishments in all aspects of society."
      - NikolaNovak 4y ago
        Here's the deciding coin toss: can we both imagine there equally exist books defending current left restrictions on discussions, as there exist books defending mcarthyism? :)
  - robocat 4y ago
    > What I am saying is neither partisan Your comment is partisan. The implication you are making is the right does not participate in the activities you are pointing out. Regardless of how correct you are, you are making a political comment against the left on a site that tries to avoid political arguments. You are also using partisan trigger words.
    - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
      - monkey_monkey 4y ago
        > Because the left of today is against all those things, and they themselves have made that very explicit. Actually it's the rightists that are against those things. And this is also not a partisan comment, it's just an objective viewpoint.
        PathOfEclipse 4y ago
        Neat, but juvenile. Now Show me the seminal research paper, or influential book, speech, or editorial from the right denouncing tolerance, objectivity or truth. Because I've already done that for the left, and I've provided references, one of which is from someone who is not overtly conservative (Ryan Chapman). Edit: here's a fun college course: https://www.hws.edu/catalogue/pdf/catalogue_16-18.pdf https://www.hws.edu/catalogue/pdf/catalogue_16-18.pdf White Mythologies: Objectivity, Meritocracy, and Other Social Constructions ... Students will explore how systematic logics that position “the West” and “whiteness” as the ideal manifest through such social constructions as objectivity, meritocracy, and race.
        monkey_monkey 4y ago
        It's not a trick. Fascists hate tolerance. The Klu Klux Klan - a very conservative group did not, in any way, want to tolerate black people. Rightists marched a few years ago chanting "Jews will not replace us". In the 1940s there was an effort by right-wing fascists to exterminate an entire race. Don't need a seminal research paper to know that.
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    >The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated and people are free to express a non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized from society This leftist vs non-leftist idea doesn't seem to align with the article. You seem to be saying that if the letter had been more leftist, they wouldn't have been fired from SpaceX. I don't think that's the case.
    - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
      That's because the left have so far failed to exert their influence on SpaceX like they have other companies. I can cite plenty of other cases where a tiny minority of leftists pulled a similar stunt on or at a different company and succeeded in their objectives. Here's a fun one: https://winteryknight.com/2020/11/16/target-bans-book-critical-of-transgenderism-after-lgbt-activists-complain/ https://winteryknight.com/2020/11/16/target-bans-book-critic... "An official Target company Twitter account announced Thursday they had removed author Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” from the retailer’s “assortment” after an unverified Twitter user complained the book questions transgender ideology, especially the concept of irreversible hormonal and surgical experimentation on minors."
      - Thorrez 4y ago
        This article is proof that non-leftists are firing people. If the goal is to stop people being fired for speech, then we shouldn't be focusing purely on leftists, but on all sides.
  - greiskul 4y ago
    1930s consertatives in many places in the world were literally the original fascists. The ones in the US might not have been, but they were probably too busy forming the second Ku Klux Klan and trying to whitewash the Confederacy.
    - serf 4y ago
      nit, the Italian Fasci movement started around 1915ish.
    - MandieD 4y ago
      1930's German fascists took a lot of ideas from the US South's Jim Crow laws. I didn't realize this until I saw a display about it at the Dokumentationszentrum in Nuremberg. The Nuremberg racial laws were particularly influenced by the laws implementing American anti-Black racism once the descendants of Africans abducted into enslavement were nominally free. If you never want to sleep easy again, tour the section exploring how Germany went from fragile democracy into the state that was, within less than a decade, willing and able to systematically murder millions. Germans aren't special.
    - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
      the KKK was entirely aligned with democrat party, by the way, as were Jim crow laws created entirely by democrat party politicians: https://www.socialjusticesurvivalguide.com/2018/01/08/the-democratic-partys-history-slavery-jim-crow-kkk/ https://www.socialjusticesurvivalguide.com/2018/01/08/the-de...
      - andrekandre 4y ago
        right... in 1872...
      - greiskul 4y ago
        I never mentioned any political parties, but ideology. The social order was slavery and racism, and people that wanted to conserve it were conservatives.
      - cmurf 4y ago
  - widjit 4y ago
    Other than your first paragraph, which is reasonable, your name dropping is doing a poor job of hiding your very weak understanding of history, philosophy, and political theory. Get off the internet and talk to an actual human who knows what they're talking about.
  - cmurf 4y ago
    >actively seeks to suppress and silence opposing views What's your best example of either of these? >while openly lying and distorting truth Same, best example of either lying or distorting truth. >The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated How is a culture war fought? What is the metric for winning? And how are the opponent's influences eradicated, exactly? >non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized What is an example of a non-leftist political opinion that is suppressed due to fear of being fired or ostracized?
    - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
      An example of suppression and silencing is: twitter! https://lidblog.com/twitter-censors-conservatives/ https://lidblog.com/twitter-censors-conservatives/. There are, of course, many other examples. Twitter silenced the hunter biden scandal at election time. The story turned out to be true and could have swung the election. Youtube has been restricting, shadowbanning and explicit banning conservatives for a long time as well: https://www.prageru.com/petition/youtube https://www.prageru.com/petition/youtube https://summit.news/2022/01/27/youtube-bans-another-prominent-conservative-over-video-questioning-effectiveness-of-masks/ https://summit.news/2022/01/27/youtube-bans-another-prominen... Open lying is harder to prove. Who admits they openly lied? But we can at least show many, many, examples of leftist media being factually incorrect. Here's one: https://www.city-journal.org/exposing-the-washington-post-on-critical-race-theory https://www.city-journal.org/exposing-the-washington-post-on.... Here's another fun one: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/01/media/washington-post-new-york-times-retraction-giuliani/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/01/media/washington-post-new-yor.... It's always great when all the falsehoods are attributed to "anonymous sources". A culture war is fought by winning hearts and minds, one by one, and also taking back influence, institutions, and power. A non-leftist political opinion would be that the 2020 riots were worse for our country than January 6. an NFL coach recently got fined $100,000 and faced severe backlash for expressing this opinion: https://www.dailywire.com/news/nfl-coach-jack-del-rio-apologizes-to-team-after-getting-fined-deleting-twitter-account-over-jan-6-remarks https://www.dailywire.com/news/nfl-coach-jack-del-rio-apolog.... At least he didn't lose his job, yet? Others aren't as lucky when they "slip up": https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/22/media/rick-santorum-cnn-departure-native-american-criticism/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/22/media/rick-santorum-cnn-depar...
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    > The culture war is really around the fruits of the labor of leftists who have fought extremely hard to shift our tolerance window as far left as possible. If you say something they don't like, they will work to impose every consequence they can to both silence you and scare others into compliance. are you talking about people being fired from their jobs for saying/doing things the company didn't like? > The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated and people are free to express a non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized from society, and when the left starts prioritizing truth and objectivity over winning. is that why fox news is the #1 most-watched new channel? how about on youtube? how many views do ben shapiro and tucker carlson get vs insert-any-leftist-here? im not seeing this vast left-wing conspiracy, but maybe you can enlighten me....
bdowling 4y ago
Found online: Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, just like in the USA?. Yes. In the USA you can stand in front of the White House and shout "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished. Equally, you can stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell "Down with Reagan!", and you will still not be punished.
- incompatible 4y ago
  Perhaps in Space-X you can email things like "Down with Vijaya Gadde!" without consequences.
  - AwaAwa 4y ago
    Judging by the downvotes, apparently she has a strong influence here too. Weird the incestuous circles of tech.
bb88 4y ago
I enjoyed this. I think what's really funny is that North Korea has freedom of speech in their constitution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_North_Korea#:~:text=Citizens%20have%20the%20right%20to,Article%2071)%2C%20right%20to%20free https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_North_Korea#:~... You have a right to speak. You just need to expect a bullet through your head shortly afterward.
AzzieElbab 4y ago
That joke is bs though. The whole point of soviet censorship was always to prevent any unfettered info to come out

> Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences. Wasn't that an old Soviet or similar joke? "In {country_name}, we have freedom of speech. What we don't have is freedom after speech".

mlindner 4y ago

They still have freedom after speech. They can continue to say what they were saying about Musk anywhere they like (including on Twitter).

PathOfEclipse 4y ago
[flagged]
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  I don't disagree with some of the principle. I think what you are saying can be perceived (and maybe it inherently is) partisan, in the sense that it focuses on one aspect entirely to prove a larger point - I think we are missing out on many of the things that the right restricted - good ol' Fifties' McArthyism of course comes quickly to mind, but I think through much of the history (but not all!), and certainly throughout the global geography, it was the conservative / establishment voices that had the power to restrict progressive speech. If instead, in your post you made a point that going against the cultural zeitgest of the times is always inherently risky and with consequences, you'd have been far more engaging and accepted rather than focusing on one side and attaching a ranty YouTube about "wokeness". It especially doesn't sound non-conspiratorial and non-partisan once you talk about "evil influences" and "this war will be won" - that means we're not having a discussion, you're preaching a specific point of view. (FWIW, I don't like either side overzealously restricting what's permissible to discuss - I'm in my own world of no mental or verbal taboos and a marketplace of ideas, which is the rarest side of all it turns out -- neutral simply means all sides can gang up on you :D )
  - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
    I actually appreciate your reply being relatively measured. You're right in that my post would be more accurate if I said "what I said above is neither partisan nor conspiratorial", because later on I do take a very partisan stance. I also didn't mention things like McCarthyism because: A) I'm not very familiar with it. B) From what little I've heard, McCarthyism seems to me like an failure in that it didn't go far enough where it should and went too far where it shouldn't. C) I don't see it as relevant to today's culture war, which is a consequence of the left having successfully gained cultural ascendancy and become an incredible threat to our country. Edit 2: I remembered faintly reading about McCarthyism once, and it turns out I'm right: I read chapter six of "Debunking Zinn", titled, "Writing the Red Menace out of history." To quote from the chapter: "Senator Joesph McCarthy -- always an easy mark for the left -- is presented as representative of all anti-Communists. But it's a fact that Soviet expansion was enabled by Americans' lack of due diligence when it came to weeding out Communist spies." And, to McCarthy's inffectiveness, the book says: "Christopher Anddrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, among other anti-communists, claim that 'McCarthy ultimately did more for the Soviet cause than any agent of influence the KBG ever had'." And later: "[McCarthy] was also not careful in making his charges, and he became more reckless as his drinking, some say, got worse." Edit: "Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds" makes brief mention to this 1954 book defending Joe McCarthy: https://www.amazon.com/McCarthy-His-Enemies-William-Buckley/dp/0895264722 https://www.amazon.com/McCarthy-His-Enemies-William-Buckley/.... I have not read it, but if I were to learn more about McCarthyism I would probably personally start there. From one book review: "However, what I love most about this book is the authors challenge the reader to do his or her own thinking about communism in the 50's and what needed to be done during that time. They ask questions and then provide hypothetical answers which returns over and over again the same verdict. That rooting out communism and subversives in government was an extremely tough job, and it required a tough man to do the job, and he would have to play "hardball" to get the facts. To make the job even more difficult is that McCarthy was up against powerful establishments in all aspects of society."
    - NikolaNovak 4y ago
      Here's the deciding coin toss: can we both imagine there equally exist books defending current left restrictions on discussions, as there exist books defending mcarthyism? :)
- robocat 4y ago
  > What I am saying is neither partisan Your comment is partisan. The implication you are making is the right does not participate in the activities you are pointing out. Regardless of how correct you are, you are making a political comment against the left on a site that tries to avoid political arguments. You are also using partisan trigger words.
  - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
    - monkey_monkey 4y ago
      > Because the left of today is against all those things, and they themselves have made that very explicit. Actually it's the rightists that are against those things. And this is also not a partisan comment, it's just an objective viewpoint.
      - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
        Neat, but juvenile. Now Show me the seminal research paper, or influential book, speech, or editorial from the right denouncing tolerance, objectivity or truth. Because I've already done that for the left, and I've provided references, one of which is from someone who is not overtly conservative (Ryan Chapman). Edit: here's a fun college course: https://www.hws.edu/catalogue/pdf/catalogue_16-18.pdf https://www.hws.edu/catalogue/pdf/catalogue_16-18.pdf White Mythologies: Objectivity, Meritocracy, and Other Social Constructions ... Students will explore how systematic logics that position “the West” and “whiteness” as the ideal manifest through such social constructions as objectivity, meritocracy, and race.
        monkey_monkey 4y ago
        It's not a trick. Fascists hate tolerance. The Klu Klux Klan - a very conservative group did not, in any way, want to tolerate black people. Rightists marched a few years ago chanting "Jews will not replace us". In the 1940s there was an effort by right-wing fascists to exterminate an entire race. Don't need a seminal research paper to know that.
- Thorrez 4y ago
  >The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated and people are free to express a non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized from society This leftist vs non-leftist idea doesn't seem to align with the article. You seem to be saying that if the letter had been more leftist, they wouldn't have been fired from SpaceX. I don't think that's the case.
  - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
    That's because the left have so far failed to exert their influence on SpaceX like they have other companies. I can cite plenty of other cases where a tiny minority of leftists pulled a similar stunt on or at a different company and succeeded in their objectives. Here's a fun one: https://winteryknight.com/2020/11/16/target-bans-book-critical-of-transgenderism-after-lgbt-activists-complain/ https://winteryknight.com/2020/11/16/target-bans-book-critic... "An official Target company Twitter account announced Thursday they had removed author Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” from the retailer’s “assortment” after an unverified Twitter user complained the book questions transgender ideology, especially the concept of irreversible hormonal and surgical experimentation on minors."
    - Thorrez 4y ago
      This article is proof that non-leftists are firing people. If the goal is to stop people being fired for speech, then we shouldn't be focusing purely on leftists, but on all sides.
- greiskul 4y ago
  1930s consertatives in many places in the world were literally the original fascists. The ones in the US might not have been, but they were probably too busy forming the second Ku Klux Klan and trying to whitewash the Confederacy.
  - serf 4y ago
    nit, the Italian Fasci movement started around 1915ish.
  - MandieD 4y ago
    1930's German fascists took a lot of ideas from the US South's Jim Crow laws. I didn't realize this until I saw a display about it at the Dokumentationszentrum in Nuremberg. The Nuremberg racial laws were particularly influenced by the laws implementing American anti-Black racism once the descendants of Africans abducted into enslavement were nominally free. If you never want to sleep easy again, tour the section exploring how Germany went from fragile democracy into the state that was, within less than a decade, willing and able to systematically murder millions. Germans aren't special.
  - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
    the KKK was entirely aligned with democrat party, by the way, as were Jim crow laws created entirely by democrat party politicians: https://www.socialjusticesurvivalguide.com/2018/01/08/the-democratic-partys-history-slavery-jim-crow-kkk/ https://www.socialjusticesurvivalguide.com/2018/01/08/the-de...
    - andrekandre 4y ago
      right... in 1872...
    - greiskul 4y ago
      I never mentioned any political parties, but ideology. The social order was slavery and racism, and people that wanted to conserve it were conservatives.
    - cmurf 4y ago
- widjit 4y ago
  Other than your first paragraph, which is reasonable, your name dropping is doing a poor job of hiding your very weak understanding of history, philosophy, and political theory. Get off the internet and talk to an actual human who knows what they're talking about.
- cmurf 4y ago
  >actively seeks to suppress and silence opposing views What's your best example of either of these? >while openly lying and distorting truth Same, best example of either lying or distorting truth. >The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated How is a culture war fought? What is the metric for winning? And how are the opponent's influences eradicated, exactly? >non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized What is an example of a non-leftist political opinion that is suppressed due to fear of being fired or ostracized?
  - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
    An example of suppression and silencing is: twitter! https://lidblog.com/twitter-censors-conservatives/ https://lidblog.com/twitter-censors-conservatives/. There are, of course, many other examples. Twitter silenced the hunter biden scandal at election time. The story turned out to be true and could have swung the election. Youtube has been restricting, shadowbanning and explicit banning conservatives for a long time as well: https://www.prageru.com/petition/youtube https://www.prageru.com/petition/youtube https://summit.news/2022/01/27/youtube-bans-another-prominent-conservative-over-video-questioning-effectiveness-of-masks/ https://summit.news/2022/01/27/youtube-bans-another-prominen... Open lying is harder to prove. Who admits they openly lied? But we can at least show many, many, examples of leftist media being factually incorrect. Here's one: https://www.city-journal.org/exposing-the-washington-post-on-critical-race-theory https://www.city-journal.org/exposing-the-washington-post-on.... Here's another fun one: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/01/media/washington-post-new-york-times-retraction-giuliani/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/01/media/washington-post-new-yor.... It's always great when all the falsehoods are attributed to "anonymous sources". A culture war is fought by winning hearts and minds, one by one, and also taking back influence, institutions, and power. A non-leftist political opinion would be that the 2020 riots were worse for our country than January 6. an NFL coach recently got fined $100,000 and faced severe backlash for expressing this opinion: https://www.dailywire.com/news/nfl-coach-jack-del-rio-apologizes-to-team-after-getting-fined-deleting-twitter-account-over-jan-6-remarks https://www.dailywire.com/news/nfl-coach-jack-del-rio-apolog.... At least he didn't lose his job, yet? Others aren't as lucky when they "slip up": https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/22/media/rick-santorum-cnn-departure-native-american-criticism/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/22/media/rick-santorum-cnn-depar...
- andrekandre 4y ago
  > The culture war is really around the fruits of the labor of leftists who have fought extremely hard to shift our tolerance window as far left as possible. If you say something they don't like, they will work to impose every consequence they can to both silence you and scare others into compliance. are you talking about people being fired from their jobs for saying/doing things the company didn't like? > The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated and people are free to express a non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized from society, and when the left starts prioritizing truth and objectivity over winning. is that why fox news is the #1 most-watched new channel? how about on youtube? how many views do ben shapiro and tucker carlson get vs insert-any-leftist-here? im not seeing this vast left-wing conspiracy, but maybe you can enlighten me....

bdowling 4y ago

Found online: Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, just like in the USA?. Yes. In the USA you can stand in front of the White House and shout "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished. Equally, you can stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell "Down with Reagan!", and you will still not be punished.

incompatible 4y ago
Perhaps in Space-X you can email things like "Down with Vijaya Gadde!" without consequences.
- AwaAwa 4y ago
  Judging by the downvotes, apparently she has a strong influence here too. Weird the incestuous circles of tech.

bb88 4y ago

I enjoyed this. I think what's really funny is that North Korea has freedom of speech in their constitution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_North_Korea#:~:text=Citizens%20have%20the%20right%20to,Article%2071)%2C%20right%20to%20free https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_North_Korea#:~... You have a right to speak. You just need to expect a bullet through your head shortly afterward.

AzzieElbab 4y ago

That joke is bs though. The whole point of soviet censorship was always to prevent any unfettered info to come out