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As some one who lives under a blasphemy culture, I think American greatly take for granted their freedoms of speech, and it boggles me that this is not a corner

As some one who lives under a blasphemy culture, I think American greatly take for granted their freedoms of speech, and it boggles me that this is not a corner stone of the American Left. While I could link to hundreds of example, this one example (out of hundreds) that occurred at a university is example of offense culture taken to extreme and weaponized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Mashal_Khan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Mashal_Khan Just the implication of possible offense caused this incident. Sure, the main culprits had other ideas, but the mob was there purely due to supposed offense. If you dare, you are welcome to look [1] the videos of the incident, it's horrifying. And as a proxy, you can also guess just how guarded and buffered speech here is, and yet such events happen. This is a slippery slope, and just because this happened for a few decades in the West doesn't mean it can't happen at all. And it's not the just the left, January 6 has shown that the American right are threat vector also.. ---- [1]:https://twitter.com/search?q=Mashal+Khan+until%3A2017-04-14+since%3A2017-04-13&f=video https://twitter.com/search?q=Mashal+Khan+until%3A2017-04-14+... Needless to remind you, it contains some NSFL material, I only linked because I think some education of reality is in order. This is the extreme end for the tolerance to offense.

notSupplied 4y ago
Thank you for sharing this. I remember a while back there was a major social justice controversy at Basecamp which started with a senior exec using some insensitive language. An employee then shared the “pyramid of hate” with “biased attitudes” at the bottom and…you guessed it, “genocide” at the top. This annoyed me at the time. I thought what you described is the perfect antidote to that argument, with “speech policing” at one end and “mob lynching” at the other, or even worse.
notSupplied 4y ago
One thing Americans do not have much experience with, is how the exercise policing speech eventually becomes the exercise of policing coded speech. People will always get around speech rules by speaking in code. China has probably some of the richest history of speech suppression followed by very clever subversive speech. The most recent example being the use of empty white sheets of paper to get around censorship algorithms. So the censors now must police coded speech as well, and this is where things get extremely dangerous. Because one can take great liberties in defining what contains encoded wrong speak. You already see this in the left's frequent accusation of something being a "dog whistle" for something else. During the cultural revolution, people were persecuted by the metaphors supposedly hidden within their speech. A setting sun? That's code for the downfall of Mao, who was frequently compared to the sun.
- lostmsu 4y ago
  These days you can be attacked based on etymology of your chosen words. Not prosecuted, but people definitely can make your life harder.
wolverine876 4y ago
It seems odd to oppression by religious conservatives in Pakistan to the American left. > it boggles me that this is not a corner stone of the American Left It is. Freedom of speech is not simple: When the powerful continually intimidate and harass the vulnerable into silence, the vulnerable do not have freedom of speech. People like Musk advocate not freedom, but anarchy. Anarchy gives more power to the powerful, as protections of the vulnerable and their speech are removed. Look at Musk threatening people with online mobs, which are actively riled up and encouraged with these so-called votes, including calling people pedophiles. Freedom of speech must be more than ten wolves and a sheep debating what's for dinner.
Matl 4y ago
> As some one who lives under a blasphemy culture, I think American greatly take for granted their freedoms of speech, and it boggles me that this is not a corner stone of the American Left. I am not an American, but my own observation as a leftist of the situation there is that there's what I'd call the 'performative left' and the 'real/old school left' if you will with the second camp being mainly about economic issues, class solidarity, foreign policy, freedom of expression etc. (say Chomsky, Richard Wolf), but much smaller than the performative left, (student activists trying to deplatform etc.), which is the one the right loves because they give them so much material to work with. That part of the right on the other hand claims to be pro free speech but ends up not behaving anything like it, aka Elon Musk.
- portaPoopy 4y ago
  Boycott was long seen as a necessary behavior to preserve democracy and free markets; flush old ideas. It’s free agency; can’t force people to do business with someone or believe in their figurative identity. “Cancel culture” is boycott rebranded as a pejorative, to make the public mean and nasty for not wanting to heap figurative privilege on particular people anymore. Those shrieking loudest about the loss of speech in the US are usually those who are privileged at the expense of speech that would improve conditions for others (do not speak of sick days for railroad staff, or making Walmart pay worker benefits to get their employees off social programs!) Simple propaganda techniques are being leveraged to relabel free speech that suggests rethinking evolving society. Universities that are heavily dependent on government protections to exist fear change. Unless research requires exotic hardware (nuclear reactor or something) there’s little reason to provide special accommodations for data mining academics that make up the majority of university work these days. They can go freely speak in a park, or video chat about their findings. What’s funny is if you bring up how bloated with middle management unis have become you’re anti-intellectual too. When a corporation, celebrity, or institution are complaining about being oppressed as they rely on “essential workers” who are effectively not allowed to speak out of line, I laugh.
  - notSupplied 4y ago
    No, I don’t think the analogy works. People have a freedom of who they associate with and do business with: Boycott is when you decide not to spend your money someplace because you don’t agree with them. You’re exercising your freedom of association. Cancellation is when a 3rd party demands that a employee/employer sever their relationship because the 3rd party disapproves of the employee. Here, a 3rd party is imposing on two other parties’ freedom of association. Also, the substance of the speech is quite different: - “You are wrong, and here are the reasons why” is debate. - “You are wrong, and you should become unemployable” is cancellation. Cancellation is technically speech, but it is speech that is focused on imposing a high cost on other speech. Talk about the “paradox of intolerance” argument that the modern left loves to use.
GeekyBear 4y ago
> As some one who lives under a blasphemy culture, I think American greatly take for granted their freedoms of speech, and it boggles me that this is not a corner stone of the American Left. It absolutely was a cornerstone value for American liberals in the past. A documentary about the director of the ACLU, back before the ACLU abandoned it's principles, looks at how far the organization went to protect the speech of literal Nazis. The ACLU winning a Supreme Court case for their right to hold a public protest march was widely celebrated by those on the left. >[The First] Amendment assures that even the most odious among us (with “odious” being the term that we apply to those we loathe, but who might view us as odious) the right to express themselves either orally, in writing, or by demonstrating or marching. It was the freedom to march that caused a major flare-up back in the late 1970s, when members of the American Nazi Party, in uniform and bedecked with their decorative swastikas and stormtrooper boots, applied for a permit to march through the town of Skokie, Illinois... To Glasser and the ACLU leadership, including David Goldberger, who headed the local Illinois chapter, freedom of speech is meaningless if it is not accorded across-the-board to all those along the ideological spectrum. https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2020/10/22/mighty-ira-a-documentary-about-the-man-who-defined-american-civil-liberties https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2020/10/22/mighty-ira-a...
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - joxel 4y ago
    Exactly. It’s really this simple. The American rights inability to reconcile their love of “free speech at all time for everyone” with “businesses have the right to refuse to associate with anyone they don’t like regardless of anti discrimination laws” is probably the front cover for American Hypocrisy.
    - GeekyBear 4y ago
      You think the ACLU in the 70's was staffed by people on the right? Has everyone forgotten that America used to do things like imprison anti-war protestors? You fight for free speech for everyone because you may find that you are the person being targeted by the state for unpopular speech.
zosima 4y ago
Many people have had the idea that fascism will only be able to make entrance into America under a different name and guise. And most likely then disguised as anti-fascism. And currently it seems fairly clear. I don't think most of the historical left should be equated with the modern left. To me it seems a different beast altogether. The modern left is mostly created or lead on by the upper classes, spreading divisiveness and authoritarianism in the ranks of the less fortunate, with the rather obvious goal to keep and expand power and control.
- pksebben 4y ago
  liberal != left. Trust that there are those of us who take just as much umbridge with Clinton/Obama/Biden as trump/bush et al. The blue/red differential isn't a right/left matter. Each party is responsible for bringing one of the two large cultural groups in line with the banks and capitalism.
  - still_grokking 4y ago
    I've heard rumors that the US has only one party (with two right wings). They call that than "democracy".
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  The minority of the historical left that were marxists replaced class struggle with identity struggle and found a much wider base to take over the current left. In that sense it is indeed the same left but in the sense that the cancer has metastasized and overrun the host.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  Left-wing authoritarianism is by definition not fascism. It lacks the ethnonationalist and patriotic elements for it. Fascism is exclusively pushed by the far-right.
- roflyear 4y ago
  And the conservatives aren't lead by the upper class to the same degree? Remember, the only politicians calling for campaign finance reform in the US (I'd argue this is the problem you have?) are key liberals. No conservatives advocate for this.
roflyear 4y ago
The left very much cares about freedom of speech, they are just culturally focused on certain speech and expression right now, such as gay and trans rights. I feel like these freedoms are very related.
- andrew_ 4y ago
  they're too focused on compelling speech rather than protecting speech
  - roflyear 4y ago
    What speech do they want to compel?
    - andrew_ 4y ago
      I'm not sure if this was asked in earnest, but you could look into the recent Canadian laws around preferred pronoun use, applications and enforcement in universities there, as an example. Googling "compelled speech 2022" will yield many articles worth reading for further examples.
      - roflyear 4y ago
        Yes. Anyway, the Canada bills don't mention pronouns at all. That Google search did not give me much. I can't find any law enforcement getting involved in Canada at universities regarding pronouns. General articles about what compelled speech is but no laws. Reading those articles tho is interesting bc I'm not sure what I think you are describing is compelled speech anyway. It bans a certain type of speech potentially but doesn't force you to interact with someone. I'm also talking about the US not Canada. Where do you get your news?
        andrew_ 4y ago
        I've taken some time to look at your other comments and don't have faith that any amount of information will sway you in the slightest. Your bias is very strong, and while there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, I don't have interest in continuing.
stefantalpalaru 4y ago
[dead]
christophilus 4y ago
> it boggles me that this is not a corner stone of the American Left In my memory as a kid who grew up in the US south in the 80s, this was a cornerstone of the left. Maybe my perception was wrong back then, or maybe my memory of it is wrong, but that’s what I recall. I suspect this is a pendulum. Maybe those who are in power devalue freedom of thought / expression and those who are out of power champion it. The incentives for such an effect are pretty clear. Anyway, I tend to be libertarian (classical liberal) for this among other reasons. It’s not because it’s “the best” political philosophy, but rather because I dislike the holes in other philosophies more than the holes in this one.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  > I suspect this is a pendulum. Maybe those who are in power devalue freedom of thought / expression and those who are out of power champion it. The incentives for such an effect are pretty clear. Those who are in power value freedom of thought/expression for themselves, and devalue it for those out of power. Those who are out of power value it for themselves, and to get it, they sometimes advocate it for all, rather than just for those out of power. The classical liberals stand out by advocating freedom of thought and expression for all, even when they themselves were in power. The current American left... not so much.
- antod 4y ago
  Yup, I remember the 80s. The moral majority types were the biggest supporters of censorship and threat to free speech. It was the young and the artists etc protesting for free speech.

notSupplied 4y ago

Thank you for sharing this. I remember a while back there was a major social justice controversy at Basecamp which started with a senior exec using some insensitive language. An employee then shared the “pyramid of hate” with “biased attitudes” at the bottom and…you guessed it, “genocide” at the top. This annoyed me at the time. I thought what you described is the perfect antidote to that argument, with “speech policing” at one end and “mob lynching” at the other, or even worse.

notSupplied 4y ago

One thing Americans do not have much experience with, is how the exercise policing speech eventually becomes the exercise of policing coded speech. People will always get around speech rules by speaking in code. China has probably some of the richest history of speech suppression followed by very clever subversive speech. The most recent example being the use of empty white sheets of paper to get around censorship algorithms. So the censors now must police coded speech as well, and this is where things get extremely dangerous. Because one can take great liberties in defining what contains encoded wrong speak. You already see this in the left's frequent accusation of something being a "dog whistle" for something else. During the cultural revolution, people were persecuted by the metaphors supposedly hidden within their speech. A setting sun? That's code for the downfall of Mao, who was frequently compared to the sun.

lostmsu 4y ago
These days you can be attacked based on etymology of your chosen words. Not prosecuted, but people definitely can make your life harder.

wolverine876 4y ago

It seems odd to oppression by religious conservatives in Pakistan to the American left. > it boggles me that this is not a corner stone of the American Left It is. Freedom of speech is not simple: When the powerful continually intimidate and harass the vulnerable into silence, the vulnerable do not have freedom of speech. People like Musk advocate not freedom, but anarchy. Anarchy gives more power to the powerful, as protections of the vulnerable and their speech are removed. Look at Musk threatening people with online mobs, which are actively riled up and encouraged with these so-called votes, including calling people pedophiles. Freedom of speech must be more than ten wolves and a sheep debating what's for dinner.

Matl 4y ago

> As some one who lives under a blasphemy culture, I think American greatly take for granted their freedoms of speech, and it boggles me that this is not a corner stone of the American Left. I am not an American, but my own observation as a leftist of the situation there is that there's what I'd call the 'performative left' and the 'real/old school left' if you will with the second camp being mainly about economic issues, class solidarity, foreign policy, freedom of expression etc. (say Chomsky, Richard Wolf), but much smaller than the performative left, (student activists trying to deplatform etc.), which is the one the right loves because they give them so much material to work with. That part of the right on the other hand claims to be pro free speech but ends up not behaving anything like it, aka Elon Musk.

portaPoopy 4y ago
Boycott was long seen as a necessary behavior to preserve democracy and free markets; flush old ideas. It’s free agency; can’t force people to do business with someone or believe in their figurative identity. “Cancel culture” is boycott rebranded as a pejorative, to make the public mean and nasty for not wanting to heap figurative privilege on particular people anymore. Those shrieking loudest about the loss of speech in the US are usually those who are privileged at the expense of speech that would improve conditions for others (do not speak of sick days for railroad staff, or making Walmart pay worker benefits to get their employees off social programs!) Simple propaganda techniques are being leveraged to relabel free speech that suggests rethinking evolving society. Universities that are heavily dependent on government protections to exist fear change. Unless research requires exotic hardware (nuclear reactor or something) there’s little reason to provide special accommodations for data mining academics that make up the majority of university work these days. They can go freely speak in a park, or video chat about their findings. What’s funny is if you bring up how bloated with middle management unis have become you’re anti-intellectual too. When a corporation, celebrity, or institution are complaining about being oppressed as they rely on “essential workers” who are effectively not allowed to speak out of line, I laugh.
- notSupplied 4y ago
  No, I don’t think the analogy works. People have a freedom of who they associate with and do business with: Boycott is when you decide not to spend your money someplace because you don’t agree with them. You’re exercising your freedom of association. Cancellation is when a 3rd party demands that a employee/employer sever their relationship because the 3rd party disapproves of the employee. Here, a 3rd party is imposing on two other parties’ freedom of association. Also, the substance of the speech is quite different: - “You are wrong, and here are the reasons why” is debate. - “You are wrong, and you should become unemployable” is cancellation. Cancellation is technically speech, but it is speech that is focused on imposing a high cost on other speech. Talk about the “paradox of intolerance” argument that the modern left loves to use.

GeekyBear 4y ago

> As some one who lives under a blasphemy culture, I think American greatly take for granted their freedoms of speech, and it boggles me that this is not a corner stone of the American Left. It absolutely was a cornerstone value for American liberals in the past. A documentary about the director of the ACLU, back before the ACLU abandoned it's principles, looks at how far the organization went to protect the speech of literal Nazis. The ACLU winning a Supreme Court case for their right to hold a public protest march was widely celebrated by those on the left. >[The First] Amendment assures that even the most odious among us (with “odious” being the term that we apply to those we loathe, but who might view us as odious) the right to express themselves either orally, in writing, or by demonstrating or marching. It was the freedom to march that caused a major flare-up back in the late 1970s, when members of the American Nazi Party, in uniform and bedecked with their decorative swastikas and stormtrooper boots, applied for a permit to march through the town of Skokie, Illinois... To Glasser and the ACLU leadership, including David Goldberger, who headed the local Illinois chapter, freedom of speech is meaningless if it is not accorded across-the-board to all those along the ideological spectrum. https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2020/10/22/mighty-ira-a-documentary-about-the-man-who-defined-american-civil-liberties https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2020/10/22/mighty-ira-a...

hotpotamus 4y ago
[flagged]
- joxel 4y ago
  Exactly. It’s really this simple. The American rights inability to reconcile their love of “free speech at all time for everyone” with “businesses have the right to refuse to associate with anyone they don’t like regardless of anti discrimination laws” is probably the front cover for American Hypocrisy.
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    You think the ACLU in the 70's was staffed by people on the right? Has everyone forgotten that America used to do things like imprison anti-war protestors? You fight for free speech for everyone because you may find that you are the person being targeted by the state for unpopular speech.

zosima 4y ago

Many people have had the idea that fascism will only be able to make entrance into America under a different name and guise. And most likely then disguised as anti-fascism. And currently it seems fairly clear. I don't think most of the historical left should be equated with the modern left. To me it seems a different beast altogether. The modern left is mostly created or lead on by the upper classes, spreading divisiveness and authoritarianism in the ranks of the less fortunate, with the rather obvious goal to keep and expand power and control.

pksebben 4y ago
liberal != left. Trust that there are those of us who take just as much umbridge with Clinton/Obama/Biden as trump/bush et al. The blue/red differential isn't a right/left matter. Each party is responsible for bringing one of the two large cultural groups in line with the banks and capitalism.
- still_grokking 4y ago
  I've heard rumors that the US has only one party (with two right wings). They call that than "democracy".
snapplebobapple 4y ago
The minority of the historical left that were marxists replaced class struggle with identity struggle and found a much wider base to take over the current left. In that sense it is indeed the same left but in the sense that the cancer has metastasized and overrun the host.
hackerlight 4y ago
Left-wing authoritarianism is by definition not fascism. It lacks the ethnonationalist and patriotic elements for it. Fascism is exclusively pushed by the far-right.
roflyear 4y ago
And the conservatives aren't lead by the upper class to the same degree? Remember, the only politicians calling for campaign finance reform in the US (I'd argue this is the problem you have?) are key liberals. No conservatives advocate for this.

roflyear 4y ago

The left very much cares about freedom of speech, they are just culturally focused on certain speech and expression right now, such as gay and trans rights. I feel like these freedoms are very related.

andrew_ 4y ago
they're too focused on compelling speech rather than protecting speech
- roflyear 4y ago
  What speech do they want to compel?
  - andrew_ 4y ago
    I'm not sure if this was asked in earnest, but you could look into the recent Canadian laws around preferred pronoun use, applications and enforcement in universities there, as an example. Googling "compelled speech 2022" will yield many articles worth reading for further examples.
    - roflyear 4y ago
      Yes. Anyway, the Canada bills don't mention pronouns at all. That Google search did not give me much. I can't find any law enforcement getting involved in Canada at universities regarding pronouns. General articles about what compelled speech is but no laws. Reading those articles tho is interesting bc I'm not sure what I think you are describing is compelled speech anyway. It bans a certain type of speech potentially but doesn't force you to interact with someone. I'm also talking about the US not Canada. Where do you get your news?
      - andrew_ 4y ago
        I've taken some time to look at your other comments and don't have faith that any amount of information will sway you in the slightest. Your bias is very strong, and while there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, I don't have interest in continuing.

stefantalpalaru 4y ago

[dead]

christophilus 4y ago

> it boggles me that this is not a corner stone of the American Left In my memory as a kid who grew up in the US south in the 80s, this was a cornerstone of the left. Maybe my perception was wrong back then, or maybe my memory of it is wrong, but that’s what I recall. I suspect this is a pendulum. Maybe those who are in power devalue freedom of thought / expression and those who are out of power champion it. The incentives for such an effect are pretty clear. Anyway, I tend to be libertarian (classical liberal) for this among other reasons. It’s not because it’s “the best” political philosophy, but rather because I dislike the holes in other philosophies more than the holes in this one.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
> I suspect this is a pendulum. Maybe those who are in power devalue freedom of thought / expression and those who are out of power champion it. The incentives for such an effect are pretty clear. Those who are in power value freedom of thought/expression for themselves, and devalue it for those out of power. Those who are out of power value it for themselves, and to get it, they sometimes advocate it for all, rather than just for those out of power. The classical liberals stand out by advocating freedom of thought and expression for all, even when they themselves were in power. The current American left... not so much.
antod 4y ago
Yup, I remember the 80s. The moral majority types were the biggest supporters of censorship and threat to free speech. It was the young and the artists etc protesting for free speech.