Freedom of speech // Is the West falling behind?

[Cultural Posadism]

The American "pro-life" movement is a Christian fundamentalist front whose dogma is firmly rooted in a very reactionary view of gender, sexuality and personal freedom.

Which is untrue because of the amount of secular pro lifers

The secular pro-lifers aren't in charge.

As for #Walkaway, the guy who claims to have started it all apparently did it because of a totally true story of how a homeless Hispanic guy screamed at him about his white privilege and punched him for not giving him money. And he now calls himself "redpilled". If you've spent any amount of time online since the mid-2010s, you know that the whole "redpill" ideology comes with a whole lot of weirdly bigoted garbage.

So your train of thought is, because the original founder of the movement was "redpilled," despite having no hateful practices or views, that the movement as a whole is hateful and deserves to be banned from twitter for being so hateful? First of all, "redpill" is a meme-ish term on the right, and it represents people going along with holier-than-thou liberal media narratives until coming to a realization that they’re bullshit.

Big stretch to say that’s bigoted

I never said #Walkaway specifically deserved to be banned from Twitter... but it sure is funny to watch an alleged "grassroots" movement that's totally not astroturfed dissolve into nothing after losing its mainstream media presence and having its leader get caught participating in an attempted coup.

[Kexholm Karelia]

Which is untrue because of the amount of secular pro lifers

The secular pro-lifers aren't in charge.

That’s debatable, but considering this is an overall anti abortion movement, you’re tying in other issues into this movement despite it not calling for it. It’s a turnabout double standard, since many of the leftists here say I’m against civil rights for being against BLM, despite BLM being more than just a simple civil rights movement. Double standard

So your train of thought is, because the original founder of the movement was "redpilled," despite having no hateful practices or views, that the movement as a whole is hateful and deserves to be banned from twitter for being so hateful? First of all, "redpill" is a meme-ish term on the right, and it represents people going along with holier-than-thou liberal media narratives until coming to a realization that they’re bullshit.

Big stretch to say that’s bigoted

I never said #Walkaway specifically deserved to be banned from Twitter... but it sure is funny to watch an alleged "grassroots" movement that's totally not astroturfed dissolve into nothing after losing its mainstream media presence and having its leader get caught participating in an attempted coup.

Ignoring the red herring, you admit that many of the movements being banned by twitter aren’t hateful?

[Vedastia]

Most Western countries classified as having "free speech" do not have free speech to the standard that America does. Almost nowhere else has the standard of freedom of speech that America has. The rest of what would be called Western civilization has "fallen behind" America in that regard practically since the US was founded, if it was ever ahead. Freedom of speech in the Anglosphere has always been ahead of the rest of the West and the rest of the world. The US doesn't have laws criminalizing certain political statements... yet.

I say "yet" because the noises that the government establishment connected to the Democratic Party have been making have been absolutely horrifying on that front. A proposed domestic terrorism law that is almost certainly only going to be applied to the current establishment's political opponents is being supported by the same people who opposed the Patriot Act for doing the same thing. Law professors are shifting their positions on their interpretation of the First Amendment from one where freedom of speech is sacrosanct to one where the federal government can regulate broad and sweeping categories of what people can & cannot say without being punished by the government. The Sedition Act, long held to be a blatant and direct attack on the Federalist Party's political opponents in the standard American historical narrative, is now being cast in a positive light. People in the establishment (often people who do not believe in "objective truth" as a concept) are calling for a government agency that decides what is true and what isn't. This is very dangerous, especially when the speech that is being called into question has to do with questioning the outcome of an election and is damning hypocrisy in light of what many of the people proposing these restrictions have been saying about the outcome of the 2016 election.

We can't ignore what's going on in the universities anymore. What could be dismissed as typical campus craziness in the '90s and early 2000s has become the dominant establishment narrative in such a short amount of time. It has become clear to me that the people who were fighting for free speech back in the '60s weren't serious and only wanted freedom of speech for themselves but not for their political opponents. These are people who play to win. Their calls for unity seem more like calls for domination of their political opponents than anything else in light of what they want to do. As the years go by, I find myself thinking about something I've said a few years ago here a lot:

Most people simply do not like individual freedom. Those in societies where various forms of liberalism are the dominant ideology will say they do because society reinforces that attitude, but their politics and ideologies often betray that hegemonic belief in one way or another.

This is true on the right as much on the left. The average American conservative is starting to question liberal society, too, not just illiberal right-wingers, especially because their own opponents, who have basked in it for so long that the right itself in America has become a lot more liberal over the past several decades, now want to clamp down on their opposition hard. People are now seriously thinking along the lines of Carl Schmitt's axiom, "The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy."

The US's situation regarding freedom of speech is rapidly deteriorating. Currently, there is no other country on Earth that has the robust freedom of speech protections that the US does, but given what the establishment is proposing, I can see the US getting worse than quite a few places on that front rather quickly. It won't be anywhere near the worst, but nothing like it is now. My family has seriously considered emigrating over the past month, something that they have never said seriously before. They see the writing on the wall and feel like they should prepare to get out while they still can.

[Nilokeras]

We can't ignore what's going on in the universities anymore. What could be dismissed as typical campus craziness in the '90s and early 2000s has become the dominant establishment narrative in such a short amount of time.

Ah yes another person whose primary source of information about universities is the daily Sean Hannity broadcast

My family has seriously considered emigrating over the past month, something that they have never said seriously before. They see the writing on the wall and feel like they should prepare to get out while they still can.

lol at the free speech being the thing thats causing your family to flee the dying empire

[Arthenius]

Just like the speech of the rabble in Hong Kong is upsetting the public order and people are being put in harms way because of it. Shut them down, agreed.

If you took that from what I said, that's not my problem.

I've already drawn distinct differences between the censorship of governments (especially authoritarian regimes) and the non-censorship of being booted off of one site for breaking the rules.

An attitude of "all is permissible" on the net would result in dick-pics, hate speech, "I have the meaning of life" spam, and rampant trolling. I do not see keeping that crap off the internet as a freedom-of-speech thing. I see the fact that political and religious opponents are arrested and having their organs removed by the CCP as a freedom-of-speech thing.

One of the questions is who is deciding what is permissible vs. What isn't permissible? I do think it should belong to different people in different areas.

[Cordel One]

My family has seriously considered emigrating over the past month, something that they have never said seriously before. They see the writing on the wall and feel like they should prepare to get out while they still can.

We need a "pointing and laughing" emoji, because, well...

[DEATH4U]

Look at our nation lol

[Bombadil]

I'm already bored of the emerging mantra from the right about 'freedom of speech' just because their totem had his Twitter rights removed, we're very sorry your far right racist speech is being oppressed.

Your right, free speech isn't important at all. Look at all those troublemakers in Hong Kong, stirring up the public, destroying order, slurring the government leaders. We need to support shutting that kind of talk down, and isolating those rabble rousers from the population. And no need to tell where the government will shipp those miscreant criminals too, it just causes unrest in the people.


Now to be fair I do agree with your point about my fellow American rightist's complete lack of understanding of the importance of free speech. That the answer isn't more restrictions on speech. (Ie repealing section 230 instead of strengthening it)

That said your living in a location that is well on its wqy to becoming a tolatarian nightmare and you still aren't supportive of free speech, is surprising.

The crackdown on free speech here is specifically over the right to vote, which is the fundamental free speech of a democracy. Trump, wittingly or not, incited an attempt to overthrow democracy. So I find it ironic that the Right is suddenly up in arms over free speech when their side is generally committed to stripping people of their right to vote, if not supportive of that attempt.

Everyone's free to criticise government in a democracy, generally, and the core free critique is to vote against the incumbents.

We don't have that privilege, we cannot vote and now we cannot even vocally criticise.. those who have such privileges should count themselves lucky and not whine because someone inciting a coup against democracy had his Twitter feed shut down.

Or, you know, whine if you want to.. you're able to, but personally I see it as a cheap trick to avoid reflecting on the fact that Republicans by and large strongly supported Trump, even after the events of the 6th. All these lines such as 'we should move on', 'but free speech', 'what about unity', are simply attempts to move past what happened, an attempt to halt the democratic process spurred on and fed by the lies of a single man desperate to hold onto power.

Because we certainly know the effects of a single man who owns a total grip on power and sustains it through lies and control.

[Ethel mermania]

Your right, free speech isn't important at all. Look at all those troublemakers in Hong Kong, stirring up the public, destroying order, slurring the government leaders. We need to support shutting that kind of talk down, and isolating those rabble rousers from the population. And no need to tell where the government will shipp those miscreant criminals too, it just causes unrest in the people.


Now to be fair I do agree with your point about my fellow American rightist's complete lack of understanding of the importance of free speech. That the answer isn't more restrictions on speech. (Ie repealing section 230 instead of strengthening it)

That said your living in a location that is well on its wqy to becoming a tolatarian nightmare and you still aren't supportive of free speech, is surprising.

The crackdown on free speech here is specifically over the right to vote, which is the fundamental free speech of a democracy. Trump, wittingly or not, incited an attempt to overthrow democracy. So I find it ironic that the Right is suddenly up in arms over free speech when their side is generally committed to stripping people of their right to vote, if not supportive of that attempt.

Everyone's free to criticise government in a democracy, generally, and the core free critique is to vote against the incumbents.

We don't have that privilege, we cannot vote and now we cannot even vocally criticise.. those who have such privileges should count themselves lucky and not whine because someone inciting a coup against democracy had his Twitter feed shut down.

Or, you know, whine if you want to.. you're able to, but personally I see it as a cheap trick to avoid reflecting on the fact that Republicans by and large strongly supported Trump, even after the events of the 6th. All these lines such as 'we should move on', 'but free speech', 'what about unity', are simply attempts to move past what happened, an attempt to halt the democratic process spurred on and fed by the lies of a single man desperate to hold onto power.

Because we certainly know the effects of a single man who owns a total grip on power and sustains it through lies and control.

Again, I am not arguing the Republicans are right on the free speech issue, they are wrong. What surprises me is your ok walking down that path.

[Bombadil]

The crackdown on free speech here is specifically over the right to vote, which is the fundamental free speech of a democracy. Trump, wittingly or not, incited an attempt to overthrow democracy. So I find it ironic that the Right is suddenly up in arms over free speech when their side is generally committed to stripping people of their right to vote, if not supportive of that attempt.

Everyone's free to criticise government in a democracy, generally, and the core free critique is to vote against the incumbents.

We don't have that privilege, we cannot vote and now we cannot even vocally criticise.. those who have such privileges should count themselves lucky and not whine because someone inciting a coup against democracy had his Twitter feed shut down.

Or, you know, whine if you want to.. you're able to, but personally I see it as a cheap trick to avoid reflecting on the fact that Republicans by and large strongly supported Trump, even after the events of the 6th. All these lines such as 'we should move on', 'but free speech', 'what about unity', are simply attempts to move past what happened, an attempt to halt the democratic process spurred on and fed by the lies of a single man desperate to hold onto power.

Because we certainly know the effects of a single man who owns a total grip on power and sustains it through lies and control.

Again, I am not arguing the Republicans are right on the free speech issue, they are wrong. What surprises me is your ok walking down that path.

I'm ok with shutting down a person who's tried to overthrow democracy, because the right to vote for your government is the fundamental free speech we have.

He's not even shut down, he's been removed from a social media platform.

[Kexholm Karelia]

Again, I am not arguing the Republicans are right on the free speech issue, they are wrong. What surprises me is your ok walking down that path.

I'm ok with shutting down a person who's tried to overthrow democracy, because the right to vote for your government is the fundamental free speech we have.

He's not even shut down, he's been removed from a social media platform.

The issue is bigger than Trump. Like I mentioned earlier, many twitter accounts associated with #Walkaway and the Pro Life March were also deleted, despite not breaking any twitter ToS rules nor inciting any sort of hate or violence. This seems like a cover for twitter to silently strike down other conservative movements on their platform as well

[Intaglio]

I'm ok with shutting down a person who's tried to overthrow democracy, because the right to vote for your government is the fundamental free speech we have.

He's not even shut down, he's been removed from a social media platform.

The issue is bigger than Trump. Like I mentioned earlier, many twitter accounts associated with #Walkaway and the Pro Life March were also deleted, despite not breaking any twitter ToS rules nor inciting any sort of hate or violence. This seems like a cover for twitter to silently strike down other conservative movements on their platform as well

Just asking, do you know for a fact that those accounts were banned specifically because they were pro-life/walkaway? Like, do you have specific evidence?

[Nilokeras]

I'm ok with shutting down a person who's tried to overthrow democracy, because the right to vote for your government is the fundamental free speech we have.

He's not even shut down, he's been removed from a social media platform.

The issue is bigger than Trump. Like I mentioned earlier, many twitter accounts associated with #Walkaway and the Pro Life March were also deleted, despite not breaking any twitter ToS rules nor inciting any sort of hate or violence. This seems like a cover for twitter to silently strike down other conservative movements on their platform as well

what's more likely: a giant media conspiracy to suppress conservative thought

or

a tech company attempting to deal with a sprawling ecosystem of posts using an algorithm to prune users with a lot of crossfire because they're incompetent

[Kexholm Karelia]

The issue is bigger than Trump. Like I mentioned earlier, many twitter accounts associated with #Walkaway and the Pro Life March were also deleted, despite not breaking any twitter ToS rules nor inciting any sort of hate or violence. This seems like a cover for twitter to silently strike down other conservative movements on their platform as well

what's more likely: a giant media conspiracy to suppress conservative thought

or

a tech company attempting to deal with a sprawling ecosystem of posts using an algorithm to prune users with a lot of crossfire because they're incompetent

IIRC account deletions are done by humans, algorithms only do suspensions

[Dangine]

Every country is falling behind. No country has true free speech. Every country has some sort of regulations on speech.

[Nilokeras]

what's more likely: a giant media conspiracy to suppress conservative thought

or

a tech company attempting to deal with a sprawling ecosystem of posts using an algorithm to prune users with a lot of crossfire because they're incompetent

IIRC account deletions are done by humans, algorithms only do suspensions

So a bunch of outsourced workers in India are reviewing and deleting accounts handed to them by an algorithm en masse after a directive from Twitter HQ. Yes that seems much more coordinated and less likely to be riddled with mistakes and collateral damage.

[Vedastia]

Ah yes another person whose primary source of information about universities is the daily Sean Hannity broadcast

It's less so the student body going nuts and more so what the professors are telling them. I went to what I was told was a relatively left-leaning university compared to other institutions and never really felt like I was out of place or that the student body was out of control, but then that wasn't too different because before I lived around affluent establishment social "liberals" in a deep blue city & its surrounding metro area all of my life (and holding some antipathy toward them) before going off to university in another deep blue city full of affluent establishment social "liberals." The Ben Shapiro trigger le libs Trigglypuff shit has been old hat forever, and it's a shame that that phenomenon has made shining a light on stupid (and in some cases disturbing) things going on in academia into something groanworthy. Many things in academia that would get laughed at ten years ago are dogma today. Was white privilege a term that was bandied around constantly by establishment media outlets a decade ago?

I take it that you didn't see what those law professors said in that NYT piece I linked and didn't see that that Washington Post op-ed praising the Sedition Act was written by a Notre Dame professor. These are the sort of people in the establishment who hold power over the discourse of other people in the policy establishment, and if they're saying these sorts of things, other people in the establishment already think these things and were merely looking for an excuse to implement these policies in full force.

lol at the free speech being the thing thats causing your family to flee the dying empire

The freedom to criticize the government getting eroded typically isn't a good sign that things are going to get better. As much as I make "brb reporting you to the FBI for sedition" jokes among my friends, it may become a serious problem.

We need a "pointing and laughing" emoji, because, well...

Can't say that I didn't expect that one. Kind of feel like a guy at the end of a Natty comic saying "I DESERVE THIS!" C'est la vie.

[Chia Dal]

The attack was planned a few days before January 6th. The statement you made is a sheep's statement, a statement reflecting the mind of someone who believes everything the media tells them and has critical-level Trump Derangement.
Use your mind.

Sure it was, Trump invited everyone over for the 6th long in advance having fuelled hysteria over a stolen election for two months.. it didn't just occur out of context.

Where is your evidence that Trump was behind the storming of the U.S. Capitol? Hasn't the Democratic Party been falsely claiming for 4 years about Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election?

[Kexholm Karelia]

IIRC account deletions are done by humans, algorithms only do suspensions

So a bunch of outsourced workers in India are reviewing and deleting accounts handed to them by an algorithm en masse after a directive from Twitter HQ. Yes that seems much more coordinated and less likely to be riddled with mistakes and collateral damage.

Are you implying it isn’t better than a bot?

Anyone can reasonably assumed those tasked with reviewing accounts for deletion are trained in order to not delete every slip of the algorithm, it would be bad PR otherwise for the company

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

Nazis. In Skokie, Illinois

See also: National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie

Illinois nazis do indeed suck

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

Most Western countries classified as having "free speech" do not have free speech to the standard that America does. Almost nowhere else has the standard of freedom of speech that America has. The rest of what would be called Western civilization has "fallen behind" America in that regard practically since the US was founded, if it was ever ahead. Freedom of speech in the Anglosphere has always been ahead of the rest of the West and the rest of the world. The US doesn't have laws criminalizing certain political statements... yet.

I say "yet" because the noises that the government establishment connected to the Democratic Party have been making have been absolutely horrifying on that front. A proposed domestic terrorism law that is almost certainly only going to be applied to the current establishment's political opponents is being supported by the same people who opposed the Patriot Act for doing the same thing. Law professors are shifting their positions on their interpretation of the First Amendment from one where freedom of speech is sacrosanct to one where the federal government can regulate broad and sweeping categories of what people can & cannot say without being punished by the government. The Sedition Act, long held to be a blatant and direct attack on the Federalist Party's political opponents in the standard American historical narrative, is now being cast in a positive light. People in the establishment (often people who do not believe in "objective truth" as a concept) are calling for a government agency that decides what is true and what isn't. This is very dangerous, especially when the speech that is being called into question has to do with questioning the outcome of an election and is damning hypocrisy in light of what many of the people proposing these restrictions have been saying about the outcome of the 2016 election.

We can't ignore what's going on in the universities anymore. What could be dismissed as typical campus craziness in the '90s and early 2000s has become the dominant establishment narrative in such a short amount of time. It has become clear to me that the people who were fighting for free speech back in the '60s weren't serious and only wanted freedom of speech for themselves but not for their political opponents. These are people who play to win. Their calls for unity seem more like calls for domination of their political opponents than anything else in light of what they want to do. As the years go by, I find myself thinking about something I've said a few years ago here a lot:

Most people simply do not like individual freedom. Those in societies where various forms of liberalism are the dominant ideology will say they do because society reinforces that attitude, but their politics and ideologies often betray that hegemonic belief in one way or another.

This is true on the right as much on the left. The average American conservative is starting to question liberal society, too, not just illiberal right-wingers, especially because their own opponents, who have basked in it for so long that the right itself in America has become a lot more liberal over the past several decades, now want to clamp down on their opposition hard. People are now seriously thinking along the lines of Carl Schmitt's axiom, "The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy."

The US's situation regarding freedom of speech is rapidly deteriorating. Currently, there is no other country on Earth that has the robust freedom of speech protections that the US does, but given what the establishment is proposing, I can see the US getting worse than quite a few places on that front rather quickly. It won't be anywhere near the worst, but nothing like it is now. My family has seriously considered emigrating over the past month, something that they have never said seriously before. They see the writing on the wall and feel like they should prepare to get out while they still can.

Bruh it was the right wing who attacked the US on Jan 6th. Not the dems.

[Chia Dal]

Most Western countries classified as having "free speech" do not have free speech to the standard that America does. Almost nowhere else has the standard of freedom of speech that America has. The rest of what would be called Western civilization has "fallen behind" America in that regard practically since the US was founded, if it was ever ahead. Freedom of speech in the Anglosphere has always been ahead of the rest of the West and the rest of the world. The US doesn't have laws criminalizing certain political statements... yet.

I say "yet" because the noises that the government establishment connected to the Democratic Party have been making have been absolutely horrifying on that front. A proposed domestic terrorism law that is almost certainly only going to be applied to the current establishment's political opponents is being supported by the same people who opposed the Patriot Act for doing the same thing. Law professors are shifting their positions on their interpretation of the First Amendment from one where freedom of speech is sacrosanct to one where the federal government can regulate broad and sweeping categories of what people can & cannot say without being punished by the government. The Sedition Act, long held to be a blatant and direct attack on the Federalist Party's political opponents in the standard American historical narrative, is now being cast in a positive light. People in the establishment (often people who do not believe in "objective truth" as a concept) are calling for a government agency that decides what is true and what isn't. This is very dangerous, especially when the speech that is being called into question has to do with questioning the outcome of an election and is damning hypocrisy in light of what many of the people proposing these restrictions have been saying about the outcome of the 2016 election.

We can't ignore what's going on in the universities anymore. What could be dismissed as typical campus craziness in the '90s and early 2000s has become the dominant establishment narrative in such a short amount of time. It has become clear to me that the people who were fighting for free speech back in the '60s weren't serious and only wanted freedom of speech for themselves but not for their political opponents. These are people who play to win. Their calls for unity seem more like calls for domination of their political opponents than anything else in light of what they want to do. As the years go by, I find myself thinking about something I've said a few years ago here a lot:


This is true on the right as much on the left. The average American conservative is starting to question liberal society, too, not just illiberal right-wingers, especially because their own opponents, who have basked in it for so long that the right itself in America has become a lot more liberal over the past several decades, now want to clamp down on their opposition hard. People are now seriously thinking along the lines of Carl Schmitt's axiom, "The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy."

The US's situation regarding freedom of speech is rapidly deteriorating. Currently, there is no other country on Earth that has the robust freedom of speech protections that the US does, but given what the establishment is proposing, I can see the US getting worse than quite a few places on that front rather quickly. It won't be anywhere near the worst, but nothing like it is now. My family has seriously considered emigrating over the past month, something that they have never said seriously before. They see the writing on the wall and feel like they should prepare to get out while they still can.

Bruh it was the right wing who attacked the US on Jan 6th. Not the dems.

Are you sure about that?

[Bombadil]

Sure it was, Trump invited everyone over for the 6th long in advance having fuelled hysteria over a stolen election for two months.. it didn't just occur out of context.

Where is your evidence that Trump was behind the storming of the U.S. Capitol? Hasn't the Democratic Party been falsely claiming for 4 years about Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election?

Edumacate yourself

[Ifreann]

Which is untrue because of the amount of secular pro lifers, and the primary motivation of the movement being an anti abortion movement. Big stretch to call it a hateful movement

So your train of thought is, because the original founder of the movement was "redpilled," despite having no hateful practices or views, that the movement as a whole is hateful and deserves to be banned from twitter for being so hateful? First of all, "redpill" is a meme-ish term on the right, and it represents people going along with holier-than-thou liberal media narratives until coming to a realization that they’re bullshit.

Big stretch to say that’s bigoted

So what does Redpilling actually refer to?

HRT *nods*

[Kexholm Karelia]

Bruh it was the right wing who attacked the US on Jan 6th. Not the dems.

Are you sure about that?

Yes