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.