9 ms·

There seems to be a generational divide on this topic. A lot of younger people seem to be fine with restrictions on free speech, often under the guise of variou

• fugalfervor 3y ago
  The book banning and restrictions on content in classrooms in Florida are further examples of people being fine with restrictions on speech. At this point it's pretty disingenuous to lay the blame entirely on the left, or the young.
  • mellosouls 3y ago
    No, the overwhelming dominance in cancel culture over the last few years has been from the left. Sure, the right has also been up to its old tricks in tired corners (it dominated in previous times like the McCarthy era), but lets be realistic about who the modern problem is mainly with in the West or we won't solve it.
    • dmbche 3y ago
      What books were banned by "the left"?
      • mellosouls 3y ago
        I was commenting on "restrictions on speech", of which book banning is a historically symbolic example but less relevant in the modern age. In the West the left has dominated restricting speech.
        • _a_a_a_ 3y ago
          Like the famously left-wing Nazi's bookburning?
          • throw0101b 3y ago
            > Like the famously left-wing Nazi's bookburning? Like the famously left-wing CCP book burning: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_China#Mao_Zedong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_China#Mao_Z... Authoritarians exists on the left as well: * https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/psychological-dimensions-left-wing-authoritarianism/620185/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/psychologi...
          • mellosouls 3y ago
            "of which book banning is a historically symbolic example" so yes, that's why I used the word "historically" and... "(it dominated in previous times like the McCarthy era)" ...noted the dominance of the right in previous decades.
        • TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
          [flagged]
          • spondylosaurus 3y ago
            I'd even argue that the wave of anti-drag legislation hitting the US right now is an attack on free expression akin to free speech. (What gives state legislature the right to ban me from putting on too much makeup and lip syncing to Madonna?)
            • mansion7 3y ago
              It's the very peculiar, very strenuous insistence that children watch, and participate, as men cavort in women's clothes in a sexually charged manner. Followed by the vilification of people with quite reasonable concerns as "transphobes" (a fireable, deplatformable, censorable offense) and "Nazis" (who have been deemed acceptable targets of unprovoked violence). But for that, most Americans would go back to not caring. Regrettably, some don't understand the concept of boundaries or restraint, or think it doesn't apply to them. Possibly because we have many in the media/entertainment industry, government, and education system telling them that they're right.
              • spondylosaurus 3y ago
                What? You're implying a lot of things here, so I'm struggling to follow all of them, but I find it especially odd to suggest that being anti-Nazi is somehow unfair to them or otherwise unprovoked. I can think of at least one rather conspicuous example of a time when Nazis "started it," so to speak. Some of my relatives didn't make it out of that one.
                • lostlogin 3y ago
                  Your comment read better when it was just ‘What?’ I’d suggest just moving on - a look at comment history has a couple of similar comments.
        • dmbche 3y ago
          What speech is restricted? I have nothing I can't say as long as it's not hateful/diffamatory, and if I do say it I can be sued for damages. What are we referring to?
      • jl6 3y ago
        Do research papers count as books? https://unherd.com/2023/04/did-city-uni-censor-my-gender-research/ https://unherd.com/2023/04/did-city-uni-censor-my-gender-res... This one’s hilarious/tragic because the censored paper was researching censorship.
      • indy 3y ago
        "the left" is perhaps too broad a group, but definitely amongst the progressive liberal left there are now examples of editing particular books to remove problematic terms. I'd consider this an even more insidious attack on free speech than outright banning books.
        • lostlogin 3y ago
          > “the left" is perhaps too broad a group When a political system has two parties, this is exactly what one would expect. The book ban proponents and book editors are likely a tiny fraction of the population. However in a two party system, they are part of their party. This is what you get.
      • throw0101b 3y ago
        > What books were banned by "the left"? Not banning but altering would be one form of censorship, e.g., "Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive": * https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-boo... "Why I Decided to Update the Language in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Children’s Books": * https://lithub.com/why-i-decided-to-update-the-language-in-ursula-k-le-guins-childrens-books/ https://lithub.com/why-i-decided-to-update-the-language-in-u... "D&D: WotC’s New Batch Of Errata Removes Racial Alignments, Retcons Drow": * https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/12/dd-wotc-removes-racial-alignments-retcons-drow-in-new-batch-of-errata.html https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/12/dd-wotc-removes-raci... To quote George Orwell's 1984: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." The past is being rewritten (as opposed to leaving the original language and simply putting a forward in explaining things).
        • tshaddox 3y ago
          Weren’t all of those changes done willingly by the publishers/copyright holders of those works?
          • throw0101b 3y ago
            Maybe, maybe not; it's hard to tell: how many folks are willing to stake their livelihood on saying "no" to a potential mob of progressives that will 'cancel' them? Saying to them "what is written is written; make your own (new) stories with the words you want".
            • tshaddox 3y ago
              Then it sounds like you’re just describing normal persuasion, rather than using state power or violence. At that point, the heart of the disagreement isn’t over methodology (“censorship is bad”) or broad human rights (“freedom of speech is good”), but simply over whether you personally like the first version of the book or the new version.
        • djur 3y ago
      • cubefox 3y ago
        Free speech is not just about not banning books. Things like cancel culture and social media censorship are mainly left-wing phenomena.
      • revelio 3y ago
        [flagged]
    • andrewflnr 3y ago
      [flagged]
    • archagon 3y ago
      Hmm… and how do you propose to “solve” the problem of “the left”?
    • mcv 3y ago
      > No, the overwhelming dominance in cancel culture over the last few years has been from the left. That's the popular story, but I constantly see evidence that it's overwhelmingly coming from the right.
  • jl6 3y ago
    Different debate. Those authors were not restricted from publishing their books. The Florida issue is about what kind of material is suitable for children to access.
    • mindslight 3y ago
      It's actually not. You can make the same distinction by saying web commenters aren't restricted from writing whatever posts they want, and the debate is about what kind of material is suitable for centralized websites to facilitate. Really, the larger ideal of free speech is about the desired orthogonality of distribution channels versus content, and general tolerance for things we dislike. We see the results of its diminishing the strongest where the first amendment to the US constitution doesn't legally apply due to these kinds of distinctions.
      • jl6 3y ago
        The key element that makes it a different debate is the involvement of children. There is widespread precedent for children to have limited rights and responsibilities, and limiting what media they have access to is entirely commonplace and not done to curtail speech.
        • mindslight 3y ago
          First, Reddit is used by plenty of children (regardless of COPPA). Many have tacit approval of their parents, who don't look too hard at what Reddit contains past the front page. And Reddit most certainly wants to be a place for children (age 13-17). So what children have access to is part of both issues. Second, does this "Florida issue" include provisions for parents of children that want their children to be able to access those books, to opt out of the restrictions in question? If not, then one can't say the topic is entirely limited to the traditional role of parents deciding what is right for their children. Rather it's also about about controlling what other people's children might read. Ultimately, both topics are about filtering distribution channels, based on criteria the distribution channel managers deem appropriate - with free speech concerns hinging on how much those distribution channels end up affecting what gets perceived as the total market.
• didntcheck 3y ago
  It feels to me that the Overton window shifted rapidly (and arguably inverted) in the late 2010s. I remember this speech being posted and praised in forums and among people who would now consider it a harmful "dogwhistle". And I concur with the generational divide. As a mid-90s birth I've often found myself defending these principles towards younger people, and have done so by pointing out how the left used to support them (I was one of them), and it was the right suppressing them, only to be alarmed to learn that said younger people have no idea what I'm talking about. They came into politics after the "skeptical/free inquiry left" had been replaced by the "public safety" left
  • mellosouls 3y ago
    They came into politics after the "skeptical/free inquiry left" had been replaced by the "public safety" left I agree (as a person who didn't use to feel embarrassed to describe himself as a man of the left), though I think there was a similar move from class to identity politics during the same period. Much of the moral decline of the left of the recent period can probably be traced to (white) middle class dominance through academia and social media, which has been scaled by the web and led by the young who dominate the demographic in both cases.
    • cubefox 3y ago
      Here is another interesting theory why the free speech was pushed back so much: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/womens-tears-win-in-the-marketplace https://www.richardhanania.com/p/womens-tears-win-in-the-mar... In short, women gained much more influence in academia and other positions, and they are significantly less supportive of free speech than men. The theory is that this resulted in a feminization of political discourse.
  • kaba0 3y ago
    I don’t think that generations would be the important difference here — free speech in a pre-modern media world was entirely different than what we have in the modern, chaotic disinformation-y one.
• dmbche 3y ago
  Any examples come to mind? I feel most people are pretty free to voice their thoughts
  • mellosouls 3y ago
    After years of people being genuinely damaged in their careers and reputation it is disappointing that these disingenuous questions ("sealioning") are still asked in threads like these. Here's a start for you: https://www.google.com/search?q=cancel+culture+examples https://www.google.com/search?q=cancel+culture+examples
    • LeafItAlone 3y ago
      Is “cancel culture” itself just not another form of free speech?
      • mellosouls 3y ago
        Only in the sense "you're free to say only what I agree with"
        • LeafItAlone 3y ago
          Who is the “I”? Can one sole person single-handedly cancel another?
          • mellosouls 3y ago
            Sure, if they are powerful enough either individually or in influence, but cancel culture is generally a mob/groupthink activity.
      • cubefox 3y ago
        Firing someone over speech is not even a speech act. It's censorship.
        • 3y ago
• whoopdedo 3y ago
  History ebbs and flows like the tide. A hundred years ago young people saw how censorship, racism, and authoritarianism were being used to maintain the status quo. A wave of free expression and individuality grew throughout the 20th century as a way to disrupt the power balance. They encouraged diversity of thought, even things you didn't agree with, and expected that freedom of expression would allow the "good" ideas to naturally arise. Enter the young people of today and their perception of the status quo is that it's built on these principles of individual freedom. As they evaluate the history of their forebears and find it lacking the way that every generation does, they can't help but see the shortcomings of the 20th century. Which means being critical of absolute free speech since that was the dominant motivation of much of the actions by people in Western nations. To be more specific, older generations entered the 20th century with women not being allowed to vote, evolution not being taught in schools, and racism being coded in the law. They saw that those things existed because social institutions such as churches enforced conformity of thought. So it was progressive to insist on greater personal freedom. Young people today entered the 21st century with climate change, poor mental health, and systemic under-the-table racism. They see that those things exist because of short-sighted individualism. It's progressive now to insist on greater social awareness. In other words, if kids today were taught "think globally, act locally". You could say that the previous generations grew up with "think locally, act globally".
  • cubefox 3y ago
    The so-called "systemic" racism is mostly a conspiracy theory unsupported by evidence. But even if it exists, your theory makes no sense here, since nobody doubts that racism was more prevalent in the past. So free speech can't be blamed to have caused it.
    • kallistisoft 3y ago
      > The so-called "systemic" racism is mostly a conspiracy theory unsupported by evidence. I will give you far too much benefit of the doubt and assume that you are speaking from a privileged position of ignorance vs being willfully ignorant, or arguing in bad faith. I do not have the time, nor is it my responsibility to educate you on these matters, but here is a very easy place to start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
• cubefox 3y ago
  There is also a gender difference [1]. Women are significantly less supportive of free speech than men. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-antisocial-psychologist/202104/the-gender-gap-in-censorship-support https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-antisocial-psych...
• smitty1e 3y ago
  "Real fascism" has only been tried by those with whom I disagree.