There is nothing stopping you starting your own website, standing on a street corner, self-publishing your manifesto. You haven’t been silenced. You literally haven’t been banned.
What, in practical terms, is the difference between “banning free speech” and every online platform, every TV channel, every radio station, every venue, and every publication, not broadcasting “Freddy Got Fingered?” Do I not have the constitutional right to watch Tom Green?
Because I don’t fucking want too?
Do you know what a strawman is? Who the fuck are you arguing with?
Of course you fucking did you disingenuous snot.
Indeed. Fuck off Unreconstructed Man. We are going to deplatform you now. But we aren’t going to ban you. Only the mods can do that. Do you understand the practical difference now?
Apart from the mob going after my service providers, my publishers, or shouting me down in the street so no-one can hear what I’m saying. All of which are things which have happen to real people.
If those stations make that decision under duress from a mob then, at least from Tom Green’s point of view there’s no practical difference.
Why not? If I could demonstrate a plausible “pipeline” from the Bible to the alt-right, or from the Koran & Hadith to ISIS (both of which are trivially easy to do), would that change your mind? If not, why not?
Currently, I’m arguing with a very, very angry little man.
No I didn’t.
Probably for the best that you do. I’m starting to worry about the effect this conversation is having on your blood pressure. But do you understand that there’s a difference between deplatforming someone and ignoring them?
Ah, I think I see your problem now: you are laboring under the delusion that society somehow owes you a mass-communications conduit for the public expression of your opinions, no matter what those opinions may be. But this is not the model on which our civic life is ultimately based.
Gather round, children, and let your Aunt Kimstu tell you what things were like back in the days not just before social media and the internet, but before network proliferation and cable TV and talk radio. Almost nobody had a mass-communications conduit for the public expression of any opinions at all!
If you wanted to express your opinions publicly, you could write a letter to the editor of a newspaper or magazine; but they might not publish it. Or if you had the money you could publish your opinions in your own paper or magazine; but maybe nobody would carry it or buy it. Or you could stand on a street corner and exhort people, as long as you weren’t disturbing the peace or obstructing traffic; but maybe nobody would listen to you. Or you could put up a big sign on your house; but everybody might ignore it. Or you could offer to give an address at a local civic-group meeting; but they might decline your offer. Or you could try to purchase a billboard ad; but if the billboard company didn’t like your ad they didn’t have to sell you the billboard space. Or you could write and send chain letters to everybody you knew; but they might ignore them and break the chain even though you specifically mentioned in your letter that that would bring very bad luck. :eek:
And guess what, kids: none of our civil liberties were being infringed at all in that situation. Just because we couldn’t be jailed for expressing our opinions or forced to publicly recant them didn’t mean that any entity, governmental or private, was in the least obligated to provide us with a channel of mass communication for disseminating them. We were not being in any way silenced; we just weren’t being amplified.
That remains true to this day. You young’uns are so used to taking it for granted that you can advertise everything from your deepest thoughts to pictures of your sandwich all over the world at the speed of light day in and day out, on your Facetubes and your Instatwit channels, that you have fallen into the habit of thinking that that kind of amplification is somehow yours by right, and that if someone kicks you off their broadcasting platform then they are illegitimately “silencing” you.
But you’re wrong, pets, you’re wrong. If you want to see the very real practical differences between being merely “de-amplified” and being silenced, just try going out there and publicly saying something inflammatory that the government is not required to tolerate on constitutional free-speech grounds. You’ll soon notice a distinct change in the circumstances.
Was about to turn in for the evening but just quickly wanted to ask, would “Kill the one who does it and the one to whom it is done” count? Like, if one literally just stood on a soapbox and just read that line from the Hadith over and over (or its Biblical equivalent), would the government be compelled to act? If so, for what moral reason can one who supports deplatforming not ask them to act against the book itself? I know this is a bit of a tangent but I’m curious what you think.
All of which, btw, are highly illegal actions, no matter how unpleasant your opinions may be, and I don’t see anybody here condoning them at all.
Er, “compelled to act” how, exactly? I mean, the words “kill” and “die” obviously occur in lots of religious texts, if not all of them. Does that mean that you can get away with standing on a soapbox and shouting “Kill! Kill! Kill!” or “Die! Die! Die!” at passersby, on the grounds that you’re just quoting Scripture? I wouldn’t count on it. Similarly, I wouldn’t count on being able to get away with cherrypicking somewhat longer scriptural excerpts for your rants, if they’re delivered in a similarly inflammatory way.
No, but close enough for the purposes of your idiotic argument:
See, this is why it’s a waste of time to argue with a troll like you.
People can read what they want, believe what they want, worship how they want, and talk about what they want. In a Supreme Court test of the case above, the SCC even ruled that parts of the law under which the individual above was charged that made it illegal to engage in any act that “ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of any person or class of persons on the basis of a prohibited ground” was in fact unconstitutional. You can do that. It’s immoral and reprehensible, but it cannot be made illegal.
What CAN be made illegal is the public advocacy of hate against a protected group, because the long and painful lesson of history is that hate promotes bigotry, discrimination, and ultimately, violence. It doesn’t matter whether the hate comes from a literal interpretation of ancient Biblical scripture and the ignorant failure to understand its historical context, or whether it comes from Mein Kampf or the writings of Joseph Goebbels or his latter-day equivalents like Richard Spencer, Ernst Zündel, or David Duke. It only matters that it fosters hate and violence which is counter to the objectives of a peaceful and just society. There are discussions to be had about the historical prejudicial influences of religion to those objectives, but those discussions are not to be had with trolls like you.
Minor correction: in the SCC case you’re referring to, the individual was not charged with an offence. It was a civil complaint, brought under a provincial human rights code, and all that was in issue was money and an order that he stop distributing the documents in issue.
This may seem a minor point of vocabulary, but “charged” means a penal offence, sometimes carrying a criminal record, and also often with a possibility of incarceration. That wasn’t in issue in that case, which was civil in nature.
You don’t care? Truly? Are you so incapable of self-insight? The word “denial” was used earlier to describe your claim that you’re not trying to change people through a sustained pattern of insults and conflict. And now, after responding to “Unconstructed Man” no less than 19 times, you’re claiming you “don’t care?”
Again, none of your rants have anything to do with a mass shooting in New Zealand anymore. Indeed, it’s the height of distastefulness. In the context of this thread and this messageboard, the Christchurch massacre has become little more than a cynical vehicle in which you can satisfy your relentless need to engage in conflict.
I know you’ve demonstrated throughout this thread that you have a tenuous relationship to the truth, but now we have descended into the world of “fake news.” Only a fucking idiot would re-contextualise 4 multi-quoted posts into “19 replies.” You’ve been here since 2002 and you don’t know how a fucking messageboard works?
And you are being deceptive about “I don’t care” as well. I don’t fucking care if somebody is outraged by a strawman. Because its a fucking strawman. You clearly can’t be bothered reading what I wrote.
LOL.
How many of your posts in this thread have been about the mass shooting? I think this was your only actual post about the shooting:
“All of us, every single day, are statistically more likely to die in a car crash than a mass shooting.”
Well thanks for that. Aren’t you a peach? Glad to see where your priorities lie.
LOL.
Its hilarious to see you accuse me of the “height of distastefulness” when every single post you’ve made in this thread has either been an attack on somebody else, a defense of the racist misognistic hater of muslims, or peddling some alt-right conspiracy about how “the minorities” are really the people with all the power.
You are in no position to lecture me on what is “distasteful.” But hey, I look forward to you popping back into the thread in a couple of days to continue to lie and misrepresent my posts, to continue to attack me, and to continue to completely ignore the people of New Zealand, the innocent Muslims that died, and the clear and present danger presented by the alt-right and white supremacy. You keep showing us who you really are.
Turns out that apparently the real villain here is Chelsea Clinton. :smack:
Gathering round a liberal (and pregnant!) woman and “snapping” at her, accusing her of literally being responsible for this massacre (let’s see if Kimstu has some way to spin that away)…FFS. If we needed a perfect illustration of how unhinged the campus/Twitter left is, there it is.
It’s distressing enough that there are people in this world this horrible (not just the woman talking, but all her friends “snapping” in support), who style themselves as the good, noble, “progressive” ones. But what bothers me most of all is that “normal” liberals like Chelsea Clinton feel the need to apologize to such despicable antagonists. Same thing when Gabby Gifford’s husband, a military veteran and former astronaut, apologized for daring to praise Winston fucking *Churchill *on Twitter. :smack:
…fuck off Slacker. Look at the date of the story. The 16th of March. Over a week ago. Your outrage is long fucking overdue and the rest of the world has moved on.
Only you would bump this thread to attack attack a muslim student expressing her opinion on the other side of the fucking world. Showing your priorities as always. Find a muslim to attack. You just can’t help yourself.
…wow. You really are a troll. I’ve made my intentions clear in regards to Slacker. He is a self-declared racist, misogynist, and he hates Muslims. He has stated for the record that he is happy for immigrants to come to America unless those immigrants happen to be Muslim. If you aren’t in conflict with people like that then there is something fucking wrong with you.
Glad we took the time to go after your favorite bugbear, “people who basically by definition have exactly zero real power with an opinion you find tasteless”. In a thread about a mass shooting. You disgusting sack of human excrement.
What BS, to say these leftist groups have “zero real power”. Tell that to the Democratic politicians who bow and scrape and apologize to these Maoists, these Jacobins, and in so doing tarnish the Democratic brand with middle of the road voters. Tell it to college administrators and professors forced out of their jobs. Tell it to successful TV auteurs whose planned next project gets thrown onto the back burner (at best) because of a ridiculous Twitter backlash.
Actions speak louder than words. Here you are again, in a thread about the slaughter of Muslims, attacking a Muslim. We can see what is in your heart. This is who you are. You aren’t one of the good guys. Accept that.
Oh, I see. A “good guy” would be on the side of the gang surrounding the innocent and apologetic pregnant woman, hurling accusations that she is responsible for mass murder. Got it.
…typical Slacker. The white woman is “innocent and apologetic.” But the grieving black Muslim woman is “part of an angry mob.” No nuance. Literally black and white. You are a “free speech absolutist” except when that free speech is being delivered by a black woman.