FWIW I don’t think you’re a nutty authoritarian. I just think you’re wrong, and being wrong on the issue of, “should we cede the floor to the fellow from the nazi party” has, historically, been a pretty fuckin’ big mistake.
Hey, so far, so good. It’s only been, what, 70 years with no sign of mission creep here in Germany? Turns out that the principle of free speech works just fine, even if you say, “You have freedom of speech, unless you’re trying to deny or cover up the most heinous crime in human history, in which case, no, fuck you.” I welcome you to find the benefit to a modern society in letting holocaust deniers spread their misinformation freely, beyond absolutist, “free speech for the sake of free speech” nonsense. If all you have is a slippery slope argument, then you have nothing.
It’s working quite well for N. Korea.
Look, the same reason we have a fourth, fifth, and 2nd amendment is why we have a 1st. It’s to diversify power. History has demonstrated that power corrupts and that allowing the political class to censor or tolerate proxies censoring leads to bad things. I’d much rather deal with some verbal nonsense than a too powerful state.
I’m against civil forfeiture laws for the same reason. Allowing police to seize property without a conviction or a warrant is too much power in the hands of the corrupt state. Does that mean I’m pro this or pro that criminal? No. It means I’m against giving up liberty because delicate ears are offended.
That’s not entirely accurate. And who cares if some random person disputes the holocaust? I dont care. They are cranks like the flat earthers. That’s just humanity. Always going to be 1-10% of cranks and contrarians. Allowing the state the power to declare that illegal and imprison someone or seize their property over that is stupidity.
I never said anything about you in particular. I’m just pointing out that your point of view, for the specific reasons you brought up, has perhaps unfortunately been poisoned in many minds by prominent people, because I wasn’t sure if you realized that.
Those are simple minds then.
Yeah, well, when you’ve already spent a lifetime dealing with prejudice, listening to someone advocating your murder (and gaining fans for it) can be a little tiring.
How about the “sunlight is the best disinfectant” argument? The one that says “Let them say Nazi shit so we can debunk their ideas and demonstrate they are not supported by the wider community”?
…Donald Trump is now President of the United States. Giving these people a platform demonstrates that they are supported by the wider community. Milo got invited to speak at CPAC for fucks sakes. You can’t get a wider platform than that.
I agree that it’s terrible for people to speak in such a manner and to work to advance such odious ideas. And there are things that make me doubt how far freedom of press should go. However, I’m more worried about government oppression and corruption than I am about a few nuts that are able to speak legally.
So… and I’m playing devil’s advocate to an extent here… doesn’t that mean the “wider community” should get to shut down all the pro-LGBTQI/Lefty views, since it’s clearly counter to the “community approved” view?
About as valid and as useful an argument as “the free marketplace of ideas will sort it out”.
Sunlight did not disinfect Milo Yiannopolous’s insane, retarded ideas. The people who followed him didn’t do so because his ideas were rational, well-thought-out, or reasonable. He wasn’t removed from positions of national prominence because of anything present within his philosophy or his speeches or his ideas, but because he went a bit too far towards “pedophiles aren’t monsters” territory. He’s still got a massive, rabid, dangerous fanbase, mind you, it’s just that he’s not writing articles for a news source with similar outreach to a national newspaper or publishing a book with a well-known outlet. What sunlight do you expect to disinfect this guy, short of something akin to the solarbeam from “Die Another Day”? Do you think they care that his article on bogus hate crimes is utterly dishonest? Do you think they care about how full of shit his article about birth control is? I don’t think they do.
Additionally, these ideas are not tenable in reasoned debate, sure, but they look tenable enough to an outside observer. I mean, let’s say I throw a long list of statistics at you, some real, some distorted, and some flat-out made up, all supporting the idea that black people are genetically inferior. Do you think your nuanced debunking is going to have the same impact as my “just giving the facts”? And if you dedicate the same amount of time to debunking each statistic I throw out as I spend throwing them out there, will the result be convincing?
Will it fuck.
We know this from YECs. If I’m willing to be a dishonest shithead and use dishonest tactics, I can win a debate, no matter how absurd my position is… as long as it’s not clear from the outset that my position is absurd and not to be taken seriously. This is why you don’t see scientists debating them any more. There’s nothing to be gained; all you do is give them more of a platform to spread their bullshit. The whole idea that if we only expose people to all viewpoints, the best, most rational, most reasonable viewpoints will win out is bullshit, and anyone who still believes that after the last presidential election is a fucking idiot.
…well you are doing your best to do that, aren’t you?
You are in the media. You are one of the gate keepers: who help decide what is and what isn’t a story. And you’ve clearly stated that a lot of the things that are important to me and important to a hell of a lot of people is not important to you.
If you had editorial control: would you have run the Australian National University Bar story? What slant would you have put on the story? How would you have reported it?
Pro-LGBT/Lefty views get shut down all the time. The ABU story you cited was an excellent example of that. How did the promoter respond to a simple question about representation? He shut it down.
So spare me this false equivalence rhetoric. Look at yourself first.
Again, just to clarify, in this analogy I represent the university and my children represent the students, right? If so, I’d allow the cult leader to speak. I’d give my daughter that speech. If, the following week, my daughter wanted to invite a speaker who argued that the cult leader is a crazy motherfucker, I’d allow that speaker as well. If my sons objected, I’d give them the same speech. I really don’t see how much more unequivocal I can be on this topic. Also, lack of nuance isn’t necessarily a bad thing when defending free speech. It really is an either/or proposition. Too much hairsplitting, and free speech may end up dying the death of a thousand cuts.
But speaking of nuance, isn’t it about time that you acknowledged that a family homestead isn’t exactly analogous to a modern university? Your comparison does rather skew the issue. These people aren’t being invited into anyone’s living room for tea and crumpets. They’re being invited into small rooms on massive campuses where absolutely nobody is under any obligation to hear anything. When I was at university, I doubt I visited 1% of the spaces on campus in 4 years, and 99% of speakers probably came and went without my even hearing their names (admittedly, this was before Twitter). These allegedly controversial speakers aren’t being shoved in anyone’s faces. If you want to avoid them, you can. If you want to protest them, you can and provided you do it peacefully and don’t use the heckler’s veto to shut the speaker down I have absolutely no problem with that. You can’t really compare the invitation of a controversial speaker to a college campus with the invitation of a controversial guest to Sunday lunch. The dynamics are totally different.
But let’s turn it around. Let’s say you’re the father/university dean/whatever. Let’s say the cult is Roman Catholicism and the speaker is an Archbishop. And let’s say that some of your children/students demand he be disinvited because his presence might be triggering to people who’ve been abused by Catholic priests. Would you disinvite him? If so, don’t you worry that might set a troubling precedent? If not, why not?
Now, you might be thinking “But Roman Catholicism isn’t a cult”, and I’d agree…to an extent. But I’d also argue that ‘religion’ is simply the word we assign to cults when they reach a certain critical mass, and anyway, abuse is abuse.
This post shows that you miss the entire point.
The reason for having a speaker in a venue like that is to increase the community support for their views and positions.
While you may be against the the idea of the community accepting minorities as equals, the community can learn to be more tolerant by exposure to the ideas.
The same as hate speakers, where the community can become more tolerant towards the hate that they spew.
Do you not see the difference?
One is advocating for tolerance and community, the other is arguing for hate and prejudice. If you really thnk that those are the same thing, something is very wrong with your worldview.
Hate speakers are not like a catholic priest, who, while representing some controversial issues, has a more or less acceptable view, and if people don’t want to hear him, no biggie.
This is more like inviting Ryan Kennedy to your house to give a talk to your sons about how best to rape women, and to explain how your daughters are sluts, and they should encourage and help their friends to rape them.
So, your sons really want to invite over this rapist to hear what he has to say, and his strategies for raping women, and your daughters are aghast about it, not concerned about their delicate ears, but about their very safety.
Do you invite this serial rapist into your home to teach and encourage your sons in this behavior?
Okay…I’m getting mightily sick of this never ending parade of increasingly ridiculous hypotheticals, each bearing less resemblance to what actually happens on university campuses than the one before it. So, before I respond to this, I’d like you to explain why you think this even qualifies as a serious question in the first place. Spell it out for me. Explain it like I’m a six year old.
When you invite people like Milo, or other people that espouse hatred and intolerance, the listeners, especially the listeners who wanted to hear him in the first place, find their own bigoted views encouraged and legitimized.
I do think that a person exposed to such hateful rhetoric is going to be much more likely to at the very least continue the denigration of the groups that were denigrated by the speaker, as well as more likely to even engage in assault or rape of those groups.
My point is that inviting people to your campus who encourage hate against certain groups will increase the amount of hate directed towards those groups, completely independant of whether those groups listened to the hate speech or not.
But you are the one who says that if your sons want to invite a speaker into your house, you would not tell them no, no matter how much your daughter objected, I was curious to know if that was a principle that you would hold to absolutely, or if there was speech that even you would think is going to far.
But, if that question comes too close to home, and invites you to give an honest answer, let’s move it out of your house then. Lets say that a fraternity invites this rapist to give a seminar on the best ways to rape women. If you were the university, would you approve this speaker? If you were a person against rape, would you protest against this speaker?
Don’t know why you’re making this more difficult than it is. Look at the chants for “shut it down” across American campuses. Can you point to even one incident of the right trying to shut down the speech of the left? Search some you tube videos and compare the number of incidents of the left using violence and intimidation to shut down speech from the right and incidents of the right using violence and intimidation to shut down speech on the left? Let me know what you find.
See my response to Kimstu.