Campus free speech was in trouble in 2018, and the data shows worsening
greglukianoff.substack.com
greglukianoff.substack.com
Maybe I'm just a filthy anarchist but I really don't see the issue with this. Not only because communities should be allowed to tell people they don't like to fuck off, but also because the telling-to-fuck-off itself is a valid political action.
A system like a University invites someone like Tomi Lahren or Josh Hammer to come speak, and often leverages violence to ensure that those people are allowed to come and speak - sometimes the state lends violence as well. Yeah, you can not go to the assembly hall that day, but ostensibly when you live on a campus and spend every day there studying and incorporating its culture into yourself, that becomes your community, and I think it's awesome that people reject someone else telling them what their community should put up with.
I think it's sociologically healthy for the community to protest when people like that come to speak, and I think it's sociologically healthy for our species that people with ugly, hateful ideologies face as much resistance as possible, in many forms, all the time.
A victim of Maoist violence was deplatformed by socialist students. Do victims of socialist governments represent such an abhorrent ideology?
The comment claimed only the most vile ideas get deplatformed and a lot of the examples in that article cite people that are not vile but inconvenient to the left.
Anyways I think you're being unfair to the original comment, they didn't say what you're claiming.
I really don't think I'm being unfair in saying that comment implies the deplatformed people are vile.
Given the context of the article what other group could be the "people with ugly, hateful ideologies" if not the deplatformed speakers?
https://x.com/XVanFleet/status/1768375317695996395?s=20
> Chinese conservative author Yu Jie @yujie89 offers a profile of anti-Trump Chinese “influencers”, both outside and inside China:
> They are mostly left-wingers and supporters of BLM.
> They are mostly atheists.
> They are mostly favored guests/commentators of Chinese language MSM.
> Among them is the famous dissident Ai Weiwei.
Conflating leftist ideology with BLM when BLM is explicitly a movement against excessive police violence against black people is funny - kinda says the quiet part out loud about what conservatives represent.
Not to mention the religious rage baiting.
Scrolling through her feed, she seems like your typical American right wing talk show political grifter. You can't "win in the marketplace of ideals" against these people with rigorous logic and spirited debate, if you could, they wouldn't exist, because their entire belief system depends on cognitive fallacy.
As someone else put it, modern university students are less naive than that. They understand that people like this woman aren't here to say "can I tell you why I think communism is bad from my time under a communist regime," but instead are asking "can I come rage bait your campus by fear mongering about all leftist ideology, tying it into religious fear mongering and doing a bit of race baiting? I will likely also be fomenting whatever this week's culture war talking points are." And the students, rightly, are engaging this speaker in the way she deserves: protest. Preventing her from speaking isn't really the point, loudly demonstrating her viewpoints aren't welcome is.
Would you conflate BLM with the Republican Party? This is a quiet part?
>You can't "win in the marketplace of ideals" against these people with rigorous logic and spirited debate, if you could, they wouldn't exist, because their entire belief system depends on cognitive fallacy.
I think you don't understand how inherently axiomatic the logic of political positions are.
Just for fun: I counted four cognitive fallacies in your post.
Sweeping generalizations (conservatives ...),
ad hominem attacks (by labeling the author as a "typical American right-wing talk show political grifter" without addressing the substance of her arguments),
false dichotomies (by implying that engaging with her viewpoints through "rigorous logic and spirited debate" is ineffective and that protest is the only viable response)
and confirmation bias (dismissing the possibility of engaging with the her arguments in good faith and assuming that the only reason for their presence is to engage in divisive tactics).
is not equivilant to
\2 komali2 conflating BLM with the Republican Party.
> Point one cognitive fallacy
Anyone claiming the above propositions to be equivilant has made a fallacy.
Those implying that \2 because \1 are either making a fallacy or delibrately strawmaning.
is not equivilant to
\2 komali2 conflating BLM with the Republican Party."
I'm aware, I don't think komali2 thinks the Republican Party supports BLM. (?)
"Anyone claiming..." Should be relevant when someone claims that I suppose.
The point of grifters is to overwhelm with insubstantial arguments. Do your fun game to her Twitter feed. See how long you can keep it up. Better yet: see if you can put a dent in her or her follower's belief system by totally pwning her with rigorous logic.
Double standard: you picked apart my post and didn't acknowledge a thing about the tweet I quoted. Do you disagree that it shares the traits of most right wing grifters engaging in culture war rage baiting?
Someone else put it well: racism is illogical and dependent on cognitive fallacy to be maintained. Easily dismissed if you address the "substance" of a racist's arguments. So why then is there still racism? Are the racists right? No, obviously not, so must be something else.
> Would you conflate BLM with the Republican Party? This is a quiet part?
I don't understand what you mean by this. I mean it's very interesting to me that a conservative would imply BLM is a leftist movement, in a country where the right wing is conflated with a form of psuedo-anarchy in the form of American libertarians, whose most famous hero is a man who ironically stood up to a different BLM and led an armed standoff with the federal government.
Can you explain why it's illogical and what fallacy it's maintained on?
I don't think I can logically claim torturing babies is wrong without some arbitrary axioms but you must have some killer logic I don't.
>Double standard: you picked apart my post and didn't acknowledge a thing about the tweet I quoted.
I did though (?). She said something that almost nobody denies, that BLM is associated more with the left, and you went on about what that entails but I see nothing untrue about what she said about that correlation.
I think you confuse logic with morality.
Yes, racism is illogical, because it's based on unsubstantiated ideas (e.g. some race is bad at swimming) for which there's insufficient evidence, a given prejudice doesn't provide useful information because there's race wouldn't be a stronger correlator than other factors for a given prejudice (e.g. ability to swim). It requires confirmation bias and cherry picking to maintain.
But leave that to the side, I'm happy to say "racism bad" is an axiom of human ethics, just like "slavery bad." I'm happy to simply eject the people that disagree from our society without the need to spend an ounce of energy proving them wrong or arguing with them. I fear the loss of nothing valuable in this circumstance. Is that dogmatic? Does it matter? Will you defend the racists and the slavers?
* proceeds to use Milo Yiannopolous as an example *
This is a strategy that was employed for real, as explained by this person who did it: https://observer.com/2017/02/i-helped-create-the-milo-trolli... They organised the event, and then organised a protest against the event.
Can't tell if this is a joke or not. If not, can't you see the irony in your own typing?
It sounds like a real problem to me but I'm not in school either.
Your comments is anecdotal proof of what the article tries to convey.
Since someone paying tuition perhaps feels the same way of someone you like, no one would be allowed on the campus in the long run with the logic that grifters should be cancelled.
But yes I do believe in some processes, you can host an event on the campus as well to tell everyone how he is wrong.
I won't read any book recommended by people like you, sorry.
Great, so I can basically stunlock you from reading any author by just mentioning them? In that case, I highly recommend you read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Founder's Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman....
Seriously, what kind of statement is that, you think you so fundamentally disagree with my values that you will purposefully echo-chamber yourself from anything even seemingly aligned with me? Do you have any idea who Hannah Arendt even is? She's an absurdly well respected Jewish philosopher that fled Nazi Germany by the skin of her teeth. She is frequently cited.
You just did the equivalent of "well some gross lefty recommended I read Sun Tzu's Art of War, I dunno who this Sun Tzu guy is but I don't trust him if he gets recommended by people like THAT!"
I'm honestly flabbergasted at your comment. You're basically proving that speech alone isn't enough, if people like you will put your fingers in your ears and say "la la la, I can't hear you!" Between the two of us, apparently only one is afraid of rigorously challenging their viewpoints!
Seriously, the irony could kill me. She's famous for her covering of the Eichmann trial, a nazi bureaucrat tried for crimes against humanity. She noted that he wasn't a monster, just a person whose morality was clouded by a devotion to bureaucracy and systems. If it's a process, it must be right. Hence "the banality of evil," a term she coined.
> But yes I do believe in some processes, you can host an event on the campus as well to tell everyone how he is wrong.
And his "supporters" (he has few to none) can organize a counter-protest. What's wrong with that? What inherent authority does he have? His message is all he can offer, and it's up to people to challenge it or support it. It's the 2000s, it's not like we can't possibly know what he has to say unless a college gives him a podium. Hell, he can soapbox it in the park if he wants.
> If you were protesting in the hallway outside trying to convince people of your opinion, that is just fine but don't prohibit other people from speaking their minds.
Have you ever actually seen a protest against a speaker? 99% of the time, it involves standing up, shouting your piece, and then being escorted out. Sometimes people shout things back. Oh well, what's the big deal? I find the idea of sitting quietly while someone says something stupid through a microphone, then signing up to give my own talk in 3 months so I can say my own stupid replies through the same microphone, absurd. No human society can survive with that level of bureaucracy throttling the free flow of ideas.
In my experience, the only people that fear free exchange of ideas are people whose ideas depend on deeply entrenched systems to enforce their ideology. Their ideas simply don't withstand fluid scrutiny.
Who determines who is a grifter?
What about facts? Reality? The guy own's admission when he is boosting about how manipulative he is and when he admit fueling controversies for his own profit?
That "you cannot judge anything because 'who has decided that'" argument is very weak.
You are saying that Milo is not a grifter. But who determines who is not-a-grifter? You? The angry mob?
"Water is wet". "Who determines that? You? The angry mob?" "This guy is bad, he kills kitten". "Who determines that? You? The angry mob?" ...
It's basically "alternative facts" where YOU determines what is true or not based on what suits you.
If you are not on board on that, you are not on board with free speech at all.
Besides that, your counter-argument falls short because the one that is suggesting something have the burden of proof. If you say he is a grifter, the burden of proof is up to you. If I say water is wet, the burden of proof is up to me. Also even if you think he is a grifter, I may perhaps not agree and thus someones opinion either have to be valued higher OR we just let everyone speak and host events like we do with free speech. If you do not like the guy, don't attend his event.
Why is that so hard?
Combining your "searching for truth" program with a "purist political ideology" program is a bad idea. When you split facts down a political dichotomy, "conservative whining" is just a check engine light that you're blind to half the world.
I went to a state school for what was largely job training. I think that those who go to exclusive private schools (which is a minority among the minority of Americans who have college degrees) are going for different reasons. So ideological control of them is important amongst the elite, but I can't imagine it's a subject that the average American expends much energy thinking about; I certainly try not to.
Things have changed. One side salivates just thinking about censorship and thought control and that side is not the side you think it is.
After all, some deplatforming attempts are themselves an exercise of free speech, where people who feel excluded from the platform are trying to rebalance the debate by asking that we stop focusing on debunked theories.
Sure, not all attempts are like that, there are abuses everywhere, in all direction. But 1) as long as there is no way to handle that aspect properly, this metric is just meaningless, 2) it cuts both ways: you cannot complain about complainers without exposing yourself to the same criticisms (and, I know "it's not the same because I'm just expressing my opinion, but that person who said 'can you, just, not?' want to steal my freedom and kill my family")
Bizarre paradox where a group is disenfranchised enough in academia it needs to protest dissent yet it can consistently expel people from it for disagreeing.
The very very large majority of requests to deplatforming are not followed by deplatforming. There are _tons_ of university and _tons_ of people complaining. If the majority was reaching their goal, everyone would be deplatformed all the time. (there are plenty of deplatforming protests from the "left", but as much from the "right", just look at all the banning laws discussed in states like Florida, for example)
Also, why are they organizing a protest if they are the ones deciding of everything in the first place?
Academia can have an extreme concentration of leftist dogmatism while political society can have a far right one. Both can happen at the same time in different communities.
What I've said is that:
1) the majority of attempts are not successful, so "yet it can consistently expel people from it for disagreeing" is just incorrect, so there is no paradox.
2) the people organising or allowing the events in the first place are the one in charge. If indeed the "complainers" are in charge, how is that possible that the event got the initial green light, or that the event is not simply shut down by the ones in charge when they realise they don't like it?
3) attempts are from every directions. For example, Christian student groups are organising lobbying to deplatform some stuffs they don't like for ages. It feels like this idea that it's now "all leftist" is in fact slightly "now the leftists are doing what the others were doing all along, so long that we did not notice". (not saying it's not the case, just that it's slightly biased: people trying to deplatform something you think is fair to talk about are "against free speech", people trying to deplatform something you think is stupid are just "reacting normally")
I'll need to look at data on that before conceding or disagreeing. (Not your job I'll look later)
>the people organising or allowing the events in the first place are the one in charge
How come? If I go to a town square to speak and I get lynched, am I the one in power because I organized my speech?
You're extrapolating a lot of power from being able to allocate time in a anphitheater from the University.
>3
Sure but it's been some years since leftism has been the worst offender when it comes to harassment in universities. I very much am against when it is the right doing the harassment (Dylan Mulvaney comes to mind).
> How come? If I go to a town square to speak and I get lynched, am I the one in power because I organized my speech?
But people don't just "show up" to universities and, bam, they can jump on stage and do an event. The events are always vetted by the people in charge. The events and their contents are reviewed and agreed. If it was not the case, how do you explain that companies don't go there to do a "speech" that happens to promote their product, or that extremists communities cannot easily go there and do their sermon, or that politicians cannot just go there and do their campaigning?
> being able to allocate time in a anphitheater from the University
Do you ever participate to such process? (not an attack, a genuine question. Maybe I'm wrong on how I imagine it works)
For 3: How do you judge "worst offender"? As I've said, it's very tricky, especially if the harassment from the "right" has become the norm. Or worst, when the harassment from the "left" is partially organised by the "right" (https://observer.com/2017/02/i-helped-create-the-milo-trolli...)
But does it even matter to the initial argument? Even if the "right" was the worst offender, the metric used in the article is still flawed.
And even if the "left" is the worst offender, if there is 95% of "right-wing" events cancelled and 5% of "left-wing" events cancelled, then, the presence of 5% is the demonstration that the left-wing is not in power (otherwise, it would be 0%).
More realistically, left-wing is the worst offender because they are the one using the protest tool more, while the people in power are not left-wing, they are just trying to ease the protest, but would act the same way if it was a right-wing demand.
I would be surprised if you're suggesting equivalence between a usually quite well off and at least somewhat famous speaker being shouted at from a few people in a crowd (who are usually quickly escorted out by cops), to, for example, women in Texas wondering if it's safe to leave the state to get an abortion, or, a teacher in Florida having to hide a photo of his husband he usually keeps on his desk for fear of losing his job (or even facing criminal charges as a "groomer").
Corrupting an institution that's (unfairly) used as the arbiter for scientific truth is not insignificant.
It does not compensate, but that's one thing.
Another element that I find telling is that people talk about US academic sector as if the academic sector was not extremely international. If your very good and very true research is black-listed in leftism-dogmatic US universities, if it is indeed very good and very true, this article will be supported by universities in other countries.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#:~....
>Things are more complicated: some people get more fame and more founding that their work would normally require because they present themselves as cancelled. There are even "anti-leftist-dogma university" initiatives coming out, which means that right-wing academic will have an easy position available there while left-wing academics don't have any such advantage
I think the worst of the deplatformed people enjoy this fame, which is not great. I'm a lot less concerned about Milo's exclusion than I am of Xi Van Fleet's. Drawing the ~line of acceptability~ at human rights is fine but academia is drawing it at leftist interest.
That's a really good example: if another institution admits it happened, it demonstrates that institutions are not controlled by a cambodian-genocide-denial-dogma.
Same here: as some left-wing events were cancelled by another university, even they are not the majority of the cancellation, it demonstrates that universities are not controlled by a left-wing-dogma.
> I'm a lot less concerned about Milo's exclusion than I am of Xi Van Fleet's.
And your Milo is another person Xi Van Fleet: you are basically admitting that you base your impression based on people you think were unfairly cancelled because they have an opinion that you think is sensible.
I was not able to find cases where Van Fleet was cancelled in an university event (the large majority of the research results are about how she is cancelled, again, the "bad leftist" has probably done more for spreading her view than what her views would have been otherwise, as they appear to be not really original). But I'm pretty sure you can easily find a person who say that the right-wing is like the chinese communists based on their own experience, and I'm pretty sure the right-wing people will criticize this person as much as Van Fleet is, and will protest as much to their event if they have the opportunity and if this person gets as much media coverage as Van Fleet.
(also about "democratic western academia problem": I don't get how this argument is a "win". It's basically "right-wing people are so stupid they cannot even find a way to publish something true themselves". If what a right-wing person is saying is true, then you will have universities that will support them, just because supporting someone who tells something that is true is just very very beneficial for the university. On top of that, as said elsewhere, it's not like the whole power spectrum is left-wing, so they will have plenty of support. Imagine the level of effort it will need for the bad university-leftist-owners to chase down every academic that is not a left-wing dishonest conspiracists (being left-wing does not mean a scientist will accept to reject the truth) in the WHOLE WESTERN WORLD so they cannot get any level of power in any one western uni? And at the same time, there are plenty of academic people who are right-wing, have done very well career-wise)
A country club is extremely biased towards conservatism even if there isn't an all encompassing authoritarian mind control scheme for it.
Leftism is popular in Academia because of selection bias and not some huge conspiracy, I'm aware, but that is still a problem if it lets so much misbehaviour pass and keeps gaslighting critics.
>being left-wing does not mean a scientist will accept to reject the truth
I agree but it's been known to happen and it's been known to be brushed under the carpet. Although there has been recent cases of literal socialist conspiracies in Ivy League universities.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-professor-...
Even if indeed "academia is left-wing" (which I'm still not sure it's properly proven: everyone who said that appeared to just "feel it's the case" and turn out to have some sympathies with more right-wing values. Of course you think it's more left-wing if you see left-wing event and right-wing event in same quantities: the right-wing events are not "right-wing", they are just "normal", so you end up thinking "this uni is doing 50% of normal and 50% of left-wing, so it is left-wing". Not saying it's not the case, my problem is that if it is left-wing, I would expect it will be said by people who are less biased).
I was saying ... even if it is left-wing, it is interesting that you are attributing that to "selection bias". There are plenty of other hypothesis: - people in academia thinks a lot, and right-wing ideas are just not very good (I don't think it's true, but it's as charitable as 'selection bias') - approach in academia is more compatible to left-wing way of thinking - socio-economic and culture of people going to academia are more compatible to left-wing way of thinking - ...
> I agree but it's been known to happen and it's been known to be brushed under the carpet.
How is that relevant? It's like saying "academia is dominated by right-wing: we can see some collusion and then it being brushed under the carpet", such as whatever you can find by googling "pro-iran academia in us" or any other right-wing dictatorial countries.
I love how Americans are so brainwashed about "the communist threat". I'm sure there are sometimes political games from China, sometimes linked to ideology (and maybe the example you gave it's indeed one of them, big deal, there are plenty of fraud done by right-wing academics), but in the majority of the cases, China involvement in frauds is just because China is a big country with an emergent economy, with a lax regulation to fraud supported by a corrupted dictatorship. China would have been a right-wing dictatorship, the same thing would have happened. But again, you are doing a confirmation bias: you want to see reason why academia is ideologically communist.
It does not change anything to the initial argument: what you call a paradox is not a paradox. You are just pretending here that someone the students who do the protests are the one in charge of vetting the events they are protesting about in the first place, which is just stupid.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Socialist_Ba%27ath_Part...
It's the most deadly conflict of the region and it's brushed off because it's the fault of a socialist dictator.
I am not right wing. Last election I voted for a socialist union leader despite not being socialist. As someone in academia I'm frustrated with so much corruption and harassment and bullshit passing off as science by leftists. This is where I come from.
>I love how Americans are so brainwashed about "the communist threat". I'm sure there are sometimes political games from China, sometimes linked to ideology (and maybe the example you gave it's indeed one of them, big deal, there are plenty of fraud done by right-wing academics), but in the majority of the cases, China involvement in frauds is just because China is a big country with an emergent economy, with a lax regulation to fraud supported by a corrupted dictatorship.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine
Their intention is ideological, the goal is to destroy liberal democracy, this is documented. Yes the far right would do the same. I argue they are the same movement.
> It's the most deadly conflict of the region and it's brushed off because it's the fault of a socialist dictator.
Are you serious? "because it is a socialist dictator"? Iran regime is extremely criticized in academia, the idea it's a deadly horrible regime is a very agreed consensus. And Syria too, by the way.
(edit: and if you say "but it's what I see locally in USA, maybe it's not the case worldwide", you shoot yourself in the foot: you were saying that the whole western academia is left-wing and stand by the same goals of cancelling some opinions. If some opinions are cancelled by the big bad lefties in US but not in Europe, then again, they are not cancelled: their thesis will be largely published in Europe, and the big bad lefties in US will be exposed as fraud)
Also, political game is not as simplistic as "Syrian are socialist, I'm left-wing so I will pretend they are great": tons of left-wing people are very harshly critical of left-wing countries and inversely. Take Russia for example: while historically communist and with still strong roots to it, _some_ left-wing politicians will tend to minimize all their fault, but _some_ right-wing politicians will tend to minimize all their fault because their are politically allied with the nationalist Putin (cf. Trump who said he admires some aspect of Putin and minimises his crime). Because of that, _some_ left-wing politicians recognize in Putin a right-wing ally and are against Russia.
They idea that the "left-wing academia" "brushes under the carpet" crimes of Iran because a blind allegiance to the word "left" when in practice their ideologies are very incompatible is just ridiculous.
> I am not right wing.
What I mean is: if there is a bias, it should be raised by people who are also supporting what this bias support.
Once again, there is someone saying "they are left-wing" and then say "and I don't like the way they are left-wing".
As I've said, if someone is fair, promote 50% left-wing and 50% right-wing, people who don't agree with the right-wing direction will say they are right-wing and people who don't agree with the left-wing direction will say they are left-wing.
> As someone in academia I'm frustrated with so much corruption and harassment and bullshit passing off as science by leftists. This is where I come from.
Ok, so you are extremely biased. I'm sure you may have had very bad experience. But in science, we know that opinion from someone who had bad experience is extremely unreliable, especially if they have to judge the general environment after being confronted to a very small part of it.
No wonder you think all academia is left-wing if you have experienced a small part of it where there was things you've found unjust and that you attributed it to left-wing reasons.
> Their intention is ideological, the goal is to destroy liberal democracy, this is documented. Yes the far right would do the same. I argue they are the same movement.
You realise that this document is not the result of ideology, but that the ideology this document depicts is the fake justification to attack the other country, right? If they are against "western values", it's not because they really are against "western values", it is mainly because they need a justification to depict a concurrent country as "bad".
As you said, if US was more left-wing and China more right-wing, the same document would explain why left-wing politics is bad and they are against it.
Americans are really brainwashed about "the communist threat". Other powerful countries, especially dictatorships, are threats. China is a threat. The stupid idea that China is the enemy "because of the communist ideology" is ridiculous. They are the enemy because they are a concurrent country and that USA is preventing them getting more power. While Russia is becoming more complex because it's both communist and popular amongst right-wing nationalists, Russia is as much as a threat to USA (and there too, there are numerous documents proving their political interference for their profit).
And it is also deforcing your previous arguments: academia is left-wing, so they love China because they are left-wing too, while at the same time, China is planning to kill them all. It's so ridiculously simplist. You seem to think every left-wing person is very very stupid. Even if some left-wing persons are stupid (and they are), your whole reasoning falls apart when you have one non-idiot left-wing person who says "wait, I'm left-wing, I like the left-wing ideology, but what China wants is not at all what I want, because they want to rule over me instead of me being able to do my own socialist adventure. So, wait a minute, I will not protect China, I have absolutely no reason to do so".
From this whole discussion, it just looks like to me that you were in an unfair situation, and that you rationalised the situation with "it's because they are left-wing" (which may be true, or not, people always blame it on the ideology instead of thinking that maybe these people were just dicks, independently of their ideology), and because of that, now, you see proofs everywhere that the big bad academia is both dishonest and left-wing.
This isn't rhetorical, I genuinely want to know why they think, in a place ostensibly dedicated to learning, it's acceptable (and seemingly even admirable) behavior.
Or could it be that modern students don't have the ability to think carefully about or make good judgments about speech?
In the case of Milo, this is a fair pre-judgement. Are we expected to ignore a person's entire corpus of work and treat them as an untouched field of snow every time they present themselves? We're to "rehash" their position every time they speak? That seems silly.
People like Milo form their careers on rage-bait. Shouting him down is the same as simply banning a troll or banning flame-bait on forums.
For the others, for the most part it's the same - reactionary speakers, especially in the USA, are mostly uninterested in good faith debate. They leverage rhetorical fallacy and outright disinformation to muddy the waters. See: the Trump election conspiracies, the antivax movement, the rewriting of the cultural history of gender fluidity to attack trans people's existence, etc etc etc.
For decades we've tolerated anti-woman's-rights activists shoving pictures of medical procedures into people's faces, and preachers telling students they're going to go to hell for being gay. That's ok, but protesting a transphobe isn't?
I truly don't understand the double standard. Just kidding, I get it. Leftists face a double standard when it comes to free speech. Dare to speak with your colleagues and organize a union? The president himself will order you to shut up and get to work. Stand up and shout at a transphobe who is speaking through a sound system your tuition pays for? Get escorted out by a security detail you're also paying for.
Shove fetus pictures into people's faces? No problem! Strap on swastikas and March through town? Police escort!
Take a knee in front of a slaver statue? Pepper spray!
The article is crocodile tears.
If it's really no problem try doing it. You're not being realistic about the consequences of being disruptive.
I watched proud boys march with police escort. I dealt with people shaking fetus pictures in my face the third Friday of every month for four years when I'm just trying to get to the library.
I witnessed firsthand the system's indifference or hostility to leftist protesting: the violence and arrests we faced at peaceful BLM sit-ins when proud boys meanwhile are allowed to walk around armed and shouting racial slurs at people.
What personal experience are you drawing on to deny what I'm describing? What evidence?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_...
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/14/virginia-sho...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/us/steve-scalise-congress...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/capitol-breached-protesters/...
I ask for minimal perspective towards people you feel contempt. I'd say the same to someone claiming left wing protests are easy and leftists have "no problem" participating in them. It's just not true.
Don't you find it odd that the people with a hanged effigy of the vice president outside the capitol were able to ransack congressional halls with only four dead as a result?
But your point was "there's no problem [protesting for the right]" and there is, there obviously is. They range from death at the hands of far left killers, persecution at work/academia, unemployment.
It's absurd to pretend the right has no stake when protesting as you implied.
>individual incidents of violence
So it's a coincidence the killers were ideologically opposed to the victims? I don't get how "individual" these deaths are when there's a clear political motivation.
Death of ideological enemies by "civilians" is how fascism in Italy began. Civilian political violence is not irrelevant.
From what I can see, deplatforming attempts are in very large majority done towards people who already have demonstrated the quality of their ideas.
> because if the ideas were not really constructive or entirely lacked value, then the listeners could dismiss them thoughtfully.
If it was true, then racism, populism, or prejudice would not exist at all, because all of that is based on flawed logic that can be easily demonstrated. The reality is that intelligent debate LOSES in front of convenient fearmongering. Not because people are idiot, but simply mathematically: fearmongering is way easier and way more convincing than rationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
> Or could it be that modern students don't have the ability to think carefully about or make good judgments about speech?
I would say that maybe modern students are smarter than before and go further than the naive logic of "if it's incorrect, the rational side will win", which has been demonstrated incorrect again and again in history.
Isn't part of the point of controversial speakers that they're challenging that our goals and values are fully shared?
It sounds like the speech is being judged before it's given.
Maybe for speakers who have explicitly called for violence, this would be appropriate, but my guess is nearly zero of the speakers deplatformed were actually calling for violence.
Not saying you are wrong, I just think it's way more subtle than what you present.
(and I'm certainly not saying violence against pedophiles is the solution, just that it feels the consequences on the society seems way less bad than the second one)
It's not about trying to make a net utilitarian estimate of how much harm each claim might make. It's about the acceptability of the behaviors proposed.
We may not like the idea of people choosing different medical treatments than we'd choose, but that's their right. Even if it's a foolish behavior to reject modern science, they can choose foolishness.
They cannot choose to employ violence against X group. Even if we'd agree it could improve society in some way, it's absurdly dangerous - who decides when someone is a part of X, etc?
The point I was trying to make is
1) the anti-vaxx discourse is spreading falsehood, the "violence against pedophiles" is not. The anti-vaxx is not just "opinion", is "demonstrably stupid opinion", while the second is "different moral than mine".
2) anti-vaxx will kill anti-vaxxer kids AND non-anti-vaxxer kids (because it will reenforce dangerous diseases). The anti-vaxx discourse is harming your innocent children, the "violence against pedophiles" will not harm innocent people (of course, you can imagine downward slide, but for sake of argument, let's say it's not the case here).
You say that you are ok if people have different opinions, which themselves have direct impacts on people, but then, you say you are not ok if people have different opinions, because they have direct impacts on people.
You have good point against the person having the "violence against pedophiles" opinion (and I agree with you that this opinion is not good), but you can build similar and exactly as valid arguments for the anti-vaxx one.
So, it looks like that your choice of "violence is more deserving of censorship" is just you having specific moral opinion of what is worst and what is better. But other opinions are as valid as yours. So it's a bit strange to talk about "free speech" and explaining that someone is just wrong because they don't have exactly the same morals as you.
The fact that defining violence isn't trivial is a case for more speech, not less.
I don't think you can build arguments against censoring anti-vaccination opponents which are exactly valid to those advocating violence. Our ancestors lived worse lives without modern medicine, but it's conceivable to abandon some aspects of our technology and not fundamentally alter our way of life. Whereas the normalization of violence always, inevitably, leads exactly where you'd expect.
That's dogmatic. In history, there were plenty of situations where this areas was very grey. What if you are in 1943 and that you need to defend yourself? Will status quo be ever reversed at the same pace, saving lives of thousands, if there were no extremists that made "moderates" look moderate and pushed the power in place to negociate with the moderates?
I'm not at all advocating for violence, but your vision of "dont use violence is an absolute" is just simplistic.
> I don't think you can build arguments against censoring anti-vaccination opponents which are exactly valid to those advocating violence
Yes, I can, easily. The difference is that you are just going to say "no, they are not as valid, because my base hypothesis is that 'violence is never justified'". So, of course, FOR YOU, it will never be valid.
> Our ancestors lived worse lives without modern medicine, but it's conceivable to abandon some aspects of our technology and not fundamentally alter our way of life. Whereas the normalization of violence always, inevitably, leads exactly where you'd expect.
That's a good example: our ancestors went throught PLENTY of really violent time. By your own logic, violence is not that bad. You are also saying that any act of violence immediately implies a total collapse of any judgement, which is obviously not the reality.
But that's beyond the point: you just show that you have an absolute (so it's strange to criticize others for different absolutes). Which is fine. But you think that your absolute is somehow smarter or morally superior as others, while in fact it is not really advanced and rather simplistic.
That's the opposite of what I claimed.
You are keen to put words in my mouth. I point out that we can argue about defining violence properly and you imply that the existence of WWII challenges my beliefs. Not in good faith.
I'm simply saying that being violence cannot be that bad because we survived with very violent time.
The second line is indeed the opposite of what you have claimed, but I reached this conclusion based on the exact same logic you used to argue that "anti-vaxx is not that bad".
Again, I'm not saying violence is good or whatever. I'm just saying that your conclusions are based on your personal moral compass, and that this compass is not better or worst than others. When you say "we should decide of free speech based on how much call to violence it contains", you are free or doing that and concluding "I like this free speech cancellation, I don't like that one". But you cannot say "This free speech cancellation is fine, this one is not fine, because I happen to have the ultimate compass that tells what is good and what is bad in an objective and ultimate way".
And if you don't say the second thing and in fact you say the first, then there is no problem: you just say you don't like it. Not that they are wrong, just that you don't like it.
Personally, I think that some speech that do not call for violence are in fact creating situations that hurts more people that some speech that call for violence (for example a racist and anti-scientific discourse that explain that black people are inferior but that we should not harm them vs a discourse calling oppressed black people to resist, preferably not violently, but violently if non-violence does not work). I understand you don't agree and it is fine. But it means that there is no reason that we will suddenly do everything "your way" just to please you when your position is not better than mine.
No one on this planet (China, Russia, North Korea, for example) surpresses speech they say is constructive input. When people get jailed for online speech in Russia, for example, it's almost always classified as distributing hate speech.
In 2018, Western Media even posted about "How a Social Media Post in Russia Can Land You in Jail[...]"[1]. Times have changed, I guess.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/2018/10/19/how-social-media-post-ru...
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.
If it's a tiny minority, then why use this sensationalist example?
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.
Not to mention that the entire modus operandi of reactionary ideologies is a dependence on fallacious arguments, rhetorical dishonesty, bad faith arguing, etc. Engaging with them is nearly always a waste of time.
There's no point in debating reactionaries. They don't deserve it - they're not interested in "the marketplace of ideals," they're interested in muddying the waters and justifying violence.
Shouting them down is the only thing they really deserve. In another world, maybe ignoring them would be the only thing they deserve, but they don't exist in a vacuum - they have followers. It's good to remind people that the majority of us find these ideas intolerable.
You're applying these labels to speakers (racist, transphobe, reactionary) and then claiming that if the label applies, engagement is pointless and they deserve to be shouted down.
Let's say I agree this is true, on net, for some set of beliefs. There's still some huge problems here:
1) How can we all agree which sets of ideas deserve this treatment?
2) How can we be certain these labels are being applied accurately?
Calls for violence are the only clear answer to the first question, but they're extremely rare - I'm guessing literally zero of the deplatformed speakers were actually calling for violence.
Beyond that, it's very hard to come up with a set of beliefs which we can all agree to. Socialism / communism killed tens of millions in the 20th century - should they be banned from speaking?
And who decides when these labels apply? I've personally seen examples of medical professionals using traditional scientific definitions of biological sex labeled as transphobes.
Given the difficulties drawing the lines, it seems better to have prudence when inviting speakers initially (fewer Milos) but then allow individuals to determine where those lines are themselves.
We probably can't, but we can discuss it. I don't believe in universal ethics, however I believe humans are very good at trending towards good ethics when left alone to do so (instead of i.e. being forced to participate in dehumanizing systems).
Though there are some obvious things we should agree on, for a good society, such as slavery being bad, humans deserve equal rights, etc, that many of the speakers argue against. I propose we consider the issue settled and if anyone disagrees they can deal with hippie commie students yelling at them from a crowd I guess, oh well.
> I'm guessing literally zero of the deplatformed speakers were actually calling for violence.
This is the excellent line that the shill alt-right dances in the current culture war. There's this odd belief that so long as nobody says "kill all xyz," then they must have something worth hearing, or don't deserve to be deplatformed. After all, the only person that deserves being disinvited from a university speech is Hitler, I guess?
In the 21st century I think we're smarter than that.
cauch put it well elsewhere in this thread when someone said that smart listeners should be able to listen to the hateful ideas and dismiss them thoughtfully:
> If it was true, then racism, populism, or prejudice would not exist at all, because all of that is based on flawed logic that can be easily demonstrated. The reality is that intelligent debate LOSES in front of convenient fearmongering. Not because people are idiot, but simply mathematically: fearmongering is way easier and way more convincing than rationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
> And who decides when these labels apply?
Whoever's better at protesting, of course. What's wrong with that? People like Ben Shapiro will weaponize the inherent conservative nature of most systems (states, universities, capitalism) to give themselves literal megaphones and sound systems with deployed security to ensure their ability to spread their message, so somehow it's bad to weaponize the power of "finding people who agree with you" to organize a protest? Why is one method automatically more valid? IMO probably because you're participating in the banality of evil - it's a part of a system, it's something "normal," therefore it's on at least some level OK.
In reality it's nontrivial to organize a protest. In reality, leftists almost always outnumber fascists and nazis and white supremacists at protests - at least all the ones I've been to. The reality is that protests, and these "campus cancellations," represent the will of the community. So, that's who decides. The system isn't protecting "from the mob," the system is the mob, empowering those who seek to harm humans.
> but then allow individuals to determine where those lines are themselves.
What's wrong with shouting back at a shouter? I really don't understand the opposition to lively discussion. How else do we determine our values? This is an ancient human tradition, arguably the core of our survival mechanism as a social species.
> Socialism / communism killed tens of millions in the 20th century - should they be banned from speaking?
FWIW I know very few leftists that would tolerate a speech by the genocider Stalin. There's a reason Stalin and Mao put leftists, anarchists, and communists against the wall. I believe it's intellectually dishonest to ascribe their actions to the entirety of socialist / communist thought. If that's the case, we can start blaming capitalism for all sorts of diabolical things that have happened throughout history, such as the transalantic slave trade.
For example, from the cited database:
> As Clinton was speaking a heckler began shouting over her calling her a "war criminal." The school's dean had the heckler escorted out by security. A second heckler then began to shout over Clinton. Clinton paused her speech for a minute before resuming and completing her remarks.
The incident involving hecklers disrupting Hillary Clinton's speech, while undoubtedly disruptive, it's an exaggeration to say this is a threat to free speech. In no way does this indicate a systematic suppression of free speech across the campus or broader community. It's an isolated incident rather than a widespread phenomenon. The dean's decision to have the hecklers escorted out by security demonstrates an attempt to address the disruption while allowing the speaker to continue. It's a measured response aimed at maintaining order rather than outright censorship. Despite the interruption, Clinton was able to resume her speech and complete her remarks. This indicates that the disruption, while disruptive, did not prevent the speaker from expressing her views or the audience from hearing them. The fact that hecklers were present and able to voice their dissenting opinions, albeit disruptively, suggests that there is at least some degree of diversity of views on campus. This diversity is a cornerstone of free speech, even when it manifests in challenging or uncomfortable ways.
Another thing to note... Freedom of speech guarantees individuals the right to express their opinions, but it does not guarantee them a platform or audience. Institutions have the prerogative to manage their events and platforms to ensure productive discourse while also maintaining safety and order.
Without clarity, it becomes a word that the audience is invited to read their own interpretation into. When this happens, the article serves the purpose of indoctrination rather than persuasion. This is because the audience now self-limits to people who already believe deplatforming poises the threat described in the article.
See “double contextualization” and “name abuse assessment” (NAA) in a literal banana’s article: https://carcinisation.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/extended-s...
are they genuinely suggesting that everyone has a right to speak at any university? and that the university has to let them? and that the university has to provide security, and AV staff and pay for catering? really?
who does it apply to anyway? anyone any student invites? any student club? do janitors get to invite people? how about professors?
or is that you can't uninvite someone after they've received an invite? really? how thorough a background check should one do before extending an invite then? what if you find out they killed their wife on the way to the school?
or is it that students shouldn't loudly complain about things they disagree with? really? if I'm a student at some uni, and some arseholes invite Nick Fuentes to come and give a talk about how he wants to gas the jews, I should just...not do anything? not complain to the administration? not go and tell him he's a cunt? really?
and how much force - physical and administrative - should universities use to stop students exercising their free speech to complain and protest? fines? rubber bullets? actual bullets?
what if the leader of Islamic Jihad wants to give a speech? Kim Jong-Un? how much is the university required to spend on security in those cases? infinity dollars?
Socialism was extremely popular in academia during that period. The US had the Espionage Act but I cannot think anywhere the stoning of socialists would happen, let alone in academia.
Stoning black people was never a thing as far as I know. Do you have any pointers?
Lynching and posing with corpses for collectable postcards was also a thing of the times.
Technically none of this is stoning but it's easy to imagine church gowing people that are willing to lynch black people were very likely to stone them also.
Addendum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Summer
Beginning on July 27, the Chicago race riot marked the greatest massacre of Red Summer. Chicago's beaches along Lake Michigan were segregated by custom. When Eugene Williams, a black youth, swam into an area on the South Side customarily used by whites, he was stoned and drowned.
[Just to be clear, did not know about Red Summer and I concede that point.]
IIRC union busting in the US was quite violent and sometimes involved the police and | or military aiding in charging and beating strikers with clubs and occasional deaths, frequent injuries.
Again, not stoning but would count as violence towards socialists | communists | workers.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
1916 - 1925 seems to be a peak time of extreme violence toward unions.
(The relevant part of the Wiki article is highlighted) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_relations_in_China#:~:....
Regardless of your thoughts on the matter, 100 years ago in the USofA :
Unlike the American Federation of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World opposed the First World War. The American Protective League (APL) was a pro-war organization formed by wealthy Chicago businessmen. At the height of its power the APL had 250,000 members in 600 cities.
In 1918, documents from the APL showed that ten percent of its efforts (the largest of any category) were focused on disrupting the activities of the IWW. The APL burgled and vandalized IWW offices, and harassed IWW members. Such actions were illegal, yet were supported by the Wilson administration.
Industrial Workers of the World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_Worl...
The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements.
Lynchings of black people continued well into the 1900s. https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-l...
And in particular during the civil rights movement, there was extraordinary violence against black people for daring to do nothing more than speak. Check out the library of congress: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/civil-rights-e...
The State helped - the FBI tried to convince MLK to kill himself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...
> Socialism was extremely popular in academia during that period.
For about 5 minutes until McCarthy and friends started chucking people in prison. This is such common knowledge I'm honestly not sure what to link other than simply the wikipedia article on McCarthyism lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
While it's not stoning, I consider arbitrary imprisonment also an unacceptable form of State violence and suppression of ideas.
So until the State or something as powerful as it starts literally imprisoning conservatives, or angry mobs start lynching them, I don't really care about the whining about "cancelling" and "deplatforming."
Go to a protest, the cops still buddy up with the Proud Boys. They still beat us for kneeling. Conservatives and their ideology are perfectly safe.
1924 preceded McCarthyism by 3 decades.
I conceded that the stonings did happen against Black people and I didn't know.
If that's what you're saying, I don't see that the conclusion follows from the premise. It is possible for a society to protect free speech in general but to fail to protect it in specific instances. That's a deplorable inconsistency for a society to have, but it doesn't make free speech a "myth". It makes it an inconsistently protected right.
And, if that's what you're saying about 100 years ago, then what is your point about the present? If the idea of free speech is a good thing, then let's make it not "a myth" by supporting it. If the idea of free speech is a bad thing, then let's crush it and silence everyone we disagree with. But what are you saying? How is it being "a myth" relevant?
Are you saying you disbelieve in rights altogether?
I don't tolerate people who want to remove rights from and do harm to others. Such as the right to bodily autonomy for women. The right to get married and receive its protections and benefits, like visiting your spouse in hospital. Or for people to express their gender identity safely and without right wingers directing hatred at them.
And look Im not telling I dont agree with you in many of this topics. ISt just that is easy to not listen and thing you are an iluminated person because you think the way you think.
These women weren't "sluts who deserved it", they were both 15 year old children and were isolated and groomed by a 22 year old and 28 year old man respectively. Neither man paid childcare expenses.
Both women were rejected by society, one abandoned by their parents and family, the other kept at a distance because of religious shame.
Both children were very troubled and unhappy throughout their childhood. One did OK in adulthood, but suffers from CPTSD. The other spiraled down into resentment and self-hatred, finally ending their life through heroin.
One woman was fantastic at math, she found things like calculus fun, and wanted to write software, but was very poor and unable to pursue any education. The other wanted to be a dancer and model, but was plagued by illnesses and died before age 50.
What about those womens' lives?
Should I be able to force you to have organs implanted against your will, and then harvest those organs from you later, at great physical danger and harm to you?
But still try to voice as bodily autonomy... whith lets be honest here, is easy to dismiss for someone who considers a fetus is a humna that needs to be protected.
You just making the argument to yourself .
This is obvious: we don't allow the state to pass laws that require men to donate kidneys when the donation would provably save another life. We seem to believe bodily autonomy is a human right which can't be trespassed by the state. The next step in the USA is of course to enshrine bodily autonomy specifically in the constitution.
Until then however you can't argue for only women to not be allowed bodily autonomy without basically arguing that they're subhuman and deserve less human rights than men.
The only way around this is to believe the state should indeed be allowed to compel people to donate their organs. Right now we don't even tolerate corpses being compelled to donate organs. This alone could save many lives.