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The answer depends, in its entirety, on the speech being shouted down. To Godwin, if famous “author” A. Hitler gets invited to your place of learning and start

The answer depends, in its entirety, on the speech being shouted down. To Godwin, if famous “author” A. Hitler gets invited to your place of learning and starts promoting the usage of industrial ovens as a solution to his Jewish Question, then you bloody well shout him down, and if you don’t there is something fatally flawed in your humanity. The point of the university is to educate the students; in this case their education should be in what kinds of speech are quite simply not acceptable, and what kind of ideas simply aren’t worthy of being entertained, much less propogandized. The fact that someone is entitled to their idiot opinion doesn’t imply that they’re entitled to have their idiot opinion heard respectfully and without opposition.

SamPatt 3y ago
Of the scores of deplatforming events noted in the article, how many of them are you proposing are similar in kind to Hilter proposing genocide? If it's a tiny minority, then why use this sensationalist example?
- yawpitch 3y ago
  First, there aren’t “scores” of “deplatforming events” noted to any degree of verifiable specificity, there’s, at first blush, maybe a single score. Secondly, I’m also not sure we should embrace a phrase very loosely defined by those whose entire goal is to confirm the thing they’ve defined is growing in prevalence, as their definition seems to include any time a speaker was interrupted more than once for a self-reported “significant” amount of time. That alone would easily allow them to enumerate every standing ovation given to Adolf, or any time Goebbels interjected to praise his Fuhrer, as a “deplatforming event”… these people who are essentially writing an opinion piece about finding data that confirms their confirmation bias isn’t obviously a good source of truth. All that said, my reason for jumping to that example is precisely to address your question… the answer to “what is their mindset” depends entirely on the speech being shouted down. People don’t shout down speech they don’t believe is offensive enough to be worth shouting down, and this “sensationalist” example proves them entirely correct when the speech is, objectively, offensive. So you’re not honestly asking what their mindset is, you’re asking what right they have to be so offended by speech you, personally, would not find offensive. Personally I really do believe in freedom of speech… which implies freedom to shout down those you disagree with. If you have the right to say something that invites reproach then they have the right to reproach you, and if that means you losing your platform because you a) didn’t earn it or b) don’t own it and those whom you have offended do a better job of employing their speech, then so be it, either examine and evolve your beliefs or find a more receptive venue.

SamPatt 3y ago

Of the scores of deplatforming events noted in the article, how many of them are you proposing are similar in kind to Hilter proposing genocide? If it's a tiny minority, then why use this sensationalist example?

yawpitch 3y ago
First, there aren’t “scores” of “deplatforming events” noted to any degree of verifiable specificity, there’s, at first blush, maybe a single score. Secondly, I’m also not sure we should embrace a phrase very loosely defined by those whose entire goal is to confirm the thing they’ve defined is growing in prevalence, as their definition seems to include any time a speaker was interrupted more than once for a self-reported “significant” amount of time. That alone would easily allow them to enumerate every standing ovation given to Adolf, or any time Goebbels interjected to praise his Fuhrer, as a “deplatforming event”… these people who are essentially writing an opinion piece about finding data that confirms their confirmation bias isn’t obviously a good source of truth. All that said, my reason for jumping to that example is precisely to address your question… the answer to “what is their mindset” depends entirely on the speech being shouted down. People don’t shout down speech they don’t believe is offensive enough to be worth shouting down, and this “sensationalist” example proves them entirely correct when the speech is, objectively, offensive. So you’re not honestly asking what their mindset is, you’re asking what right they have to be so offended by speech you, personally, would not find offensive. Personally I really do believe in freedom of speech… which implies freedom to shout down those you disagree with. If you have the right to say something that invites reproach then they have the right to reproach you, and if that means you losing your platform because you a) didn’t earn it or b) don’t own it and those whom you have offended do a better job of employing their speech, then so be it, either examine and evolve your beliefs or find a more receptive venue.