Is Free Speech good?

[Liriena]

No. It's a riot.

An institution or organization censors. A disorganized phenomenon of political violence does not "censor".


Does that mean that all casual conversations should be strictly held in a turn-based fashion, lest one of the people engaged in conversation commit censorship by interrupting or talking over? Am I being censored when we're having a family dinner and my racist great aunt gets really loud about how much she hates aboriginal people?


YES

FUCKING YES


What do you think harassment is, exactly?

Coming up to my congressman when he's in public and calling him a shithead is not "harassment", dude. Is it inconvenient for him? Does it make it hard for him to ignore my grievances? Hopefully, yes. That should be the point of every form of political activism. If your political activism doesn't bother powerful people in the least, what good is it?

Dude, you are in denial. What you are calling for the PREVENTION of speech, not free speech. Coming up to a person wearing a MAGA hat minding his own business at the dinner table and spewing vitriol at him is harassment, not heckling.

It's not harassment, though? I'm just engaging him in the free marketplace of ideas. You're just tone-policing, which is very authoritarian of you. The other person can engage with me if they want to. If anything, my heckling is an invitation for more free speech!

What free speech am I "preventing" by coming up to my congressman in a restaurant and calling him a shithead? Is his cheeseburger secretly a microphone? Are the French fries his audience?

[Cordel One]

Imagine being a center-right American loberal and trying to kick the left out of the left. The left has never won US elections, we're always getting killed.

What part of Australia is in America

Australia is similar to America, but Operation Condor and COINTELPRO were all us.

[Ammostan]

Saying you are for free speech then saying it's okay to make someone else's speech literally IMPOSSIBLE to be heard is hypocrisy.

*EDIT*
Harassment isn't the prevention of speech I was talking about. It's the chanting over a speaker/using a sound system.

[Liriena]

ITT: People not understanding free speech doesn't (and shouldn't) protect you from backlash by individuals

Thats actually what its there for.

No, it's not. It quite explicitly is not. The backlash is just as much part of free speech as the cause for it is.

[Necroghastia]

Saying you are for free speech then saying it's okay to make someone else's speech literally IMPOSSIBLE to be heard is hypocrisy.

You do realize that you're the one advocating for that, right?

[Cordel One]

ITT: People not understanding free speech doesn't (and shouldn't) protect you from backlash by individuals

Thats actually what its there for.

Free speech protects you from government backlash. Backlash by an indivdual is free speech in itself.

[Des-Bal]

Someone's being pretentious.


A public forum is a public forum. They have a right to use it. Others have a right not to accept their invitation to come and hear them or to interact with them. Others have the right to criticize them, to assert that their ideas do not deserved be discussed on their own terms, and to argue against them through a different framework. Others have the right to say "thanks for your shit opinion, now pack up your things and leave my business".

In principle, yes.

Unlike you, I'm not so arrogant that I feel comfortable talking about what "the left wing", as a whole, does or does not do.

One of these is not like the others...

Deplatforming? That definitely happens and I'm not wholly opposed to it. Deplatforming is downright necessary when it's the product of organic collective action to protect the community which uses that platform from bad faith actors whose activity causes demonstrable, tangible harm to others. For example, I think Shane Dawson should be deplatformed from Youtube for using it to groom children. I also think Andy Ngo should be deplatformed for actively collaborating with violent far right organizations in the targeting of their victims and covering up their crimes.

Sure.

I talk english good. I apologize if it's a bit much for you.

They certainly do. And when groups make a concerted effort to deny as many forums as they are able to their opposition that is engaging in censorship.

In my unbridled hubris I am able to notice patterns and form understandings of what practices a group is or is not likely to engage in. Cartels do behead people, the right does dogwhistle, the left does engage in censorship, suppression, and deplatforming.

Declining to allow someone the opportunity to express their ideas is fundamentally different endeavoring to prevent someone from trying to finding a forum to express their ideas.

You just justified one of the things you asserted you would stand in opposition of. That was a choice you made.

[Des-Bal]

Free speech protects you from government backlash. Backlash by an indivdual is free speech in itself.

Freedom of religion doesn't protect you from people shooting up your mosque but if that guy says he supports freedom of religion he's a fucking liar.

Backlash is justifiable, even endeavoring to prevent someone from being heard should be permitted but it's not okay.

[Ammostan]

Saying you are for free speech then saying it's okay to make someone else's speech literally IMPOSSIBLE to be heard is hypocrisy.

You do realize that you're the one advocating for that, right?

The mental gymnastics here is absurd. A guy was invited to speak at an event, he goes up on stage and begins his speech, then some group of idiots starts chanting so that the speaker cannot proceed. One of these things is okay, the other is censorship.

[Des-Bal]

All that I am saying is that there is responsibility for having the rights you have. And a society (especially a democratic one which is more vulnerable) has to use the power that it has to defend itself from subversion to a worse-off ideology. It's why we tolerate social media moderating its content. It's why counter protests are a thing. It's why, even though highly controversial (for fair reasons), cancel culture and shouting down people are a thing. They are ways that a society defends itself. Because if the society falls to a different ideology, the government will too.

The responsibility is that you pay your taxes and you don't chop off your leader's head whenever you get pissy. It is not that you swear to renounce opposing ideologies and punish those who would not.

[Liriena]

It's not censorship to infiltrate a far right group and expose its leaders. It's the exact opposite of it, in fact.

Neither is it censorship to heckle a neo-nazi, nor to engage in an act of civil disobedience when a religious fundamentalist tries to organize in the open.

Honestly, guys, it's beginning to feel like it's you lot who're against political freedom, with how you insist on opposing perfectly legitimate forms of political action just because they inconvenience nazis. Very curious, really.

So if an activist went to speak about the unconscionable abuse of transgender rights activists in Poland and a crowd formed to shout "FUCKING TRANNY-LOVER!" over and over until nobody could hear them you as an equitable person who is not a transparent tribalist idealogue would be there giving a thumbs up saying "good for thee, good for me?"

My criticism would be of the reasons, the ideas behind the heckling, not of heckling as a tactic. Much in the same way that I think everyone should have the right to vote, even conservatives, but I also happen to think conservatives deserve to lose elections because their politics are shit.

Maaaaan, you really weren't ready to talk to a real, non-imaginary leftist in here, were you?

Please note also that there's a pretty big gulf between saying "this is a dick move" and "do everything in your power to stop these people." You're creating a comparison where noe exists.

The point of political debate in liberal democracy is that, at some point, some of the ideas put forth will have to win over the rest. Some of those ideas will be enshrined into the dominant ideology, become the hegemony, etc. At some point, somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. And I don't know about you, but I think that nazis should definitely lose at some point. Decisively, if possible.

Or do you believe that a free society can prosper and endure while also constantly inviting ideologies specifically born to destroy it to share political power with everyone else, without any materially significant opposition to them? Do you believe that a free society is better off keeping nazism alive and safe from any effective opposition?

[Slaver Pirates of Vaas]

The responsibility is that you pay your taxes and you don't chop off your leader's head whenever you get pissy. It is not that you swear to renounce opposing ideologies and punish those who would not.

I think you're mistaking duty and responsibility.

[Necroghastia]

You do realize that you're the one advocating for that, right?

The mental gymnastics here is absurd. A guy was invited to speak at an event, he goes up on stage and begins his speech, then some group of idiots starts chanting so that the speaker cannot proceed. One of these things is okay, the other is censorship.

And you would have those protestors silenced, so that none can hear the message they have to say. Censorship indeed.

[Liriena]

Someone's being pretentious.


A public forum is a public forum. They have a right to use it. Others have a right not to accept their invitation to come and hear them or to interact with them. Others have the right to criticize them, to assert that their ideas do not deserved be discussed on their own terms, and to argue against them through a different framework. Others have the right to say "thanks for your shit opinion, now pack up your things and leave my business".

In principle, yes.

Unlike you, I'm not so arrogant that I feel comfortable talking about what "the left wing", as a whole, does or does not do.

One of these is not like the others...

Deplatforming? That definitely happens and I'm not wholly opposed to it. Deplatforming is downright necessary when it's the product of organic collective action to protect the community which uses that platform from bad faith actors whose activity causes demonstrable, tangible harm to others. For example, I think Shane Dawson should be deplatformed from Youtube for using it to groom children. I also think Andy Ngo should be deplatformed for actively collaborating with violent far right organizations in the targeting of their victims and covering up their crimes.

Sure.

I talk english good. I apologize if it's a bit much for you.

They certainly do. And when groups make a concerted effort to deny as many forums as they are able to their opposition that is engaging in censorship.

In my unbridled hubris I am able to notice patterns and form understandings of what practices a group is or is not likely to engage in. Cartels do behead people, the right does dogwhistle, the left does engage in censorship, suppression, and deplatforming.

Declining to allow someone the opportunity to express their ideas is fundamentally different endeavoring to prevent someone from trying to finding a forum to express their ideas.

So your response really is 90% vague, unsubstantive filler, huh?

You just justified one of the things you asserted you would stand in opposition of. That was a choice you made.

I'm sorry, I ought to have clarified: I'd stand in opposition to all of those except deplatforming, at least in principle in a vacuum.

[Ammostan]

The mental gymnastics here is absurd. A guy was invited to speak at an event, he goes up on stage and begins his speech, then some group of idiots starts chanting so that the speaker cannot proceed. One of these things is okay, the other is censorship.

And you would have those protestors silenced, so that none can hear the message they have to say. Censorship indeed.

So, who gets to silence who?

[Liriena]

And you would have those protestors silenced, so that none can hear the message they have to say. Censorship indeed.

So, who gets to silence who?

Nobody. The speaker gets to speak, the hecklers get to heckle. If you don't like the cacophony, that's your problem.

[Ammostan]

So, who gets to silence who?

Nobody. The speaker gets to speak, the hecklers get to heckle. If you don't like the cacophony, that's your problem.

Wrong. If the audience doesn't even get to HEAR the speaker, it isn't just "heckling". I'd say the one who was speaking first gets the right to speak.

[Cordel One]

Free speech protects you from government backlash. Backlash by an indivdual is free speech in itself.

Freedom of religion doesn't protect you from people shooting up your mosque but if that guy says he supports freedom of religion he's a fucking liar.

Backlash is justifiable, even endeavoring to prevent someone from being heard should be permitted but it's not okay.

Talk about false equivalency. You should be able to speak your mind without government interference, but if you insult the comrades I'm gonna retaliate.

[Necroghastia]

Nobody. The speaker gets to speak, the hecklers get to heckle. If you don't like the cacophony, that's your problem.

Wrong. If the audience doesn't even get to HEAR the speaker, it isn't just "heckling". I'd say the one who was speaking first gets the right to speak.

Nobody is stopping the speaker from speaking but the speaker themselves.

[Liriena]

Nobody. The speaker gets to speak, the hecklers get to heckle. If you don't like the cacophony, that's your problem.

Wrong. If the audience doesn't even get to HEAR the speaker, it isn't just "heckling".

The hecklers, by definition, are part of the audience. A part which has complaints that they want the rest of the audience and the speaker to hear. Why do you want to censor their complaints?

I'd say the one who was speaking first gets the right to speak.

That's a social convention at best, not a "right".

[Des-Bal]

My criticism would be of the reasons, the ideas behind the heckling, not of heckling as a tactic. Much in the same way that I think everyone should have the right to vote, even conservatives, but I also happen to think conservatives deserve to lose elections because their politics are shit.

Maaaaan, you really weren't ready to talk to a real, non-imaginary leftist in here, were you?

The point of political debate in liberal democracy is that, at some point, some of the ideas put forth will have to win over the rest. Some of those ideas will be enshrined into the dominant ideology, become the hegemony, etc. At some point, somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. And I don't know about you, but I think that nazis should definitely lose at some point. Decisively, if possible.

Or do you believe that a free society can prosper and endure while also constantly inviting ideologies specifically born to destroy it to share political power with everyone else, without any materially significant opposition to them? Do you believe that a free society is better off keeping nazism alive and safe from any effective opposition?

Just the opposite, I love it when you can pin down the exact part in somone's logic where they make the mistake. It makes fixing them easier.

I believe that a free society cannot prosper without inviting ideologies outside the hegemony to be discussed. I further believe that suggesting the opposition to an idea must take the form of endeavoring to eradicate it and preventing it from ever being heard is dumb.

[Ammostan]

Wrong. If the audience doesn't even get to HEAR the speaker, it isn't just "heckling". I'd say the one who was speaking first gets the right to speak.

Nobody is stopping the speaker from speaking but the speaker themselves.

What is the purpose of continuing a speech that cannot be heard? Do you honestly believe that shouting over someone is the right thing to do? Or do you just take any action that is politically expedient and the ends justify the means?

[Cordel One]

Nobody. The speaker gets to speak, the hecklers get to heckle. If you don't like the cacophony, that's your problem.

Wrong. If the audience doesn't even get to HEAR the speaker, it isn't just "heckling". I'd say the one who was speaking first gets the right to speak.

"Wrong" applies to factual information, not opinions. Besides, that's not part of free speech. Free speech only applies to government retaliation.

Just the opposite, I love it when you can pin down the exact part in somone's logic where they make the mistake. It makes fixing them easier.

I believe that a free society cannot prosper without inviting ideologies outside the hegemony to be discussed. I further believe that suggesting the opposition to an idea must take the form of endeavoring to eradicate it and preventing it from ever being heard is dumb.

Congratulations on believing that, that's not pointing out a logical flaw but rather a differing opinion on your part.

[Des-Bal]

Congratulations on believing that, that's not pointing out a logical flaw but rather a differing opinion on your part.

The logical flaw in this case would be supporting something you disagree with based on the means it's achieved. To believe the death penalty is an awful thing but to assert lynching is a-okay speaks to an error happening somewhere.

[Cordel One]

Congratulations on believing that, that's not pointing out a logical flaw but rather a differing opinion on your part.

The logical flaw in this case would be supporting something you disagree with based on the means it's achieved. To believe the death penalty is an awful thing but to assert lynching is a-okay speaks to an error happening somewhere.

Can you seriously not tell the difference between your scenario and the one currently being discussed?