So your are saying sending people to prison for saying nice things about Palestine Action and banning women from wearing Niqabs and Hijabs are left wing positions? I’d argue this makes the exact opposite point.
For the record I’m British and all my family still live there, though I’ve been living in the states for 20+
I would put the odds Reform forming a government in the next decade as greater than 50%. The current labour government (who incidentally are so centrist as to make the US Democrat party look like raving lefty extremists in comparison) seem to be deadset on making that happen.
When that happens the government’s ability to arbitrarily decide which groups you are allowed to say nice things about, and what speech counts as offensive, on pain of a prison sentence will become a much more pressing problem
I’m guessing you’ve not been sent to prison for wearing religious headgear your government disagrees with? Or for saying nice things about a group of Palestinian supporters your government disagrees with? Europeans who have probably disagree with this assessment.
Well, I wouldn’t describe The Economist as “far-right grifters,” but I suppose you are entitled to your view.
I think it can be said that limitations on free speech have been growing in much of Europe, mostly in an effort to buy tranquility. But the road to hell and all that.
There is no National Socialist Worker’s Party in Germany and hasn’t been since 1945. It is banned and an unconstitutional party under the German (and a number of other European countries) constitution. So are political parties that ape the Nazi party, such as Socialist Reich Party, Volkssozialistische Bewegung Deutschlands/Partei der Arbeit, Action Front of National Socialists/National Activists, German Alternative, Nationalist Front, and Wiking-Jugend, all of which have been banned for opposing the constitution under Strafgesetzbuch section 86a.
Yeah, they’ve tried that. Doesn’t work:
Because of the law, German Neo-Nazis took to displaying modified symbols similar but not identical with those outlawed. In 1994, such symbols were declared equivalent to the ones they imitate (Verbrechensbekämpfungsgesetz § 2).
Does it prevent people from holding Neo-Nazi beliefs? No, of course not. Does it severely curtail the political organization and public visibility of Neo-Nazi beliefs in Germany et. al. to a degree that would be unacceptable in the US because of the US constitution’s first amendment? Absolutely.
What’s happening right now at the University of Kentucky illustrates a sort of free speech debate.
Ramsi Woodcock is a UK law professor who got suspended from teaching after calling online for all nations of the world to immediately make war on Israel until it allows itself to be subjugated to the Palestinians.
Woodcock runs a website called antizionist.net which calls for “Ending Israel” and declares “opposition to any right of self-determination for Jewish people as such in Palestine”.
The powers that be at UK call this anti-Semitism (ya think?) and are “investigating”.
So is Woodcock a ranting loon who should be permitted to blather online if he can keep it out of his business law lectures, or a hateful bigot who shouldn’t be tolerated in a teaching position?
Seems pretty obvious that UK jumped on this to keep Trump from hearing about Woodcock and interfering, including threatening a withdrawal of federal financial support.
I’m saying that when a group of people start echoing JD Vance’s talking points, they are all fascists. Are you saying fascists are left wing?
Remind me how many people have been sent to jail for saying nice things about Palestinian Action or for wearing a hijab? Ballpark figures are fine. Is it a slippery slope argument?
What exactly is it about Palestinian Action’s activities do you feel compelled to defend, which can only be defended by supporting Palestinian Action? Can you defend them using ‘free speech’ without also facilitating fascist billionaires’ hijacking of the democratic process? If you think you can, why didn’t you stop it in America? That’s the slippery slope I most fear.
I don’t disagree. Marx never claimed that the collapse of capitalism would be pleasant for those who live through it. On the other hand, Lenin did say that you can never trust a menshivik, since they will always, always side with the liberals to betray the working class. I think of that whenever I think of Starmer.
JD Vance has been bemoaning Burqa bans and the fate of pro-Palestinian activists? Thats news to me.
Nothing. Fascists care about power, not law; they’ll stomp on people regardless of what laws are or are not in place. There’s little point in worrying about possible misuse of a law by people who care nothing about law in the first place.
This is the same mistake people here in the US keep making when they say “The Democrats shouldn’t do X or the Republicans will do X as well”, only to get blindsided when the Republicans do X anyway.
This is a thread about Europe’s so-called free speech problem. Has JD Vance not been hectoring Europeans about our so-called free speech problem? Has the American government not been agressively demanding freedom from European regulation for American based media companies? If not, then I stand corrected, and I apologise for my misunderstanding.
Is the idea here that anything a bad person says is automatically bad, and anyone who agrees with anything a bad person says is also a bad person?
So, my main point here is that very few people in Europe think we have any problems with free speech, and those that do are either grifting right wingers or impressionable young people in the first flush of youthful revolutionary ardour. I thought that American liberals should at least be exposed to that point of view.
An interesting side point, and I apologise if this is a hijack, is how the champions of free speech seem to think that they are somehow authentically left wing. I suspect they are making similar mistakes to the charmingly enthusiastic young people protesting the genocide in Gaza. But on this board in particular, without the excuse of youth.
It seems to me that most of the advocates for ‘free speech’, here and elsewhere, are advocating for classic liberal values while explicitly identifying as liberals? Am I wrong? Is there anyone else in this thread who identifies as a socialist?
Bourgeois liberalism is only left wing when compared to bourgeois conservatism and aristocratic conservatism. I’m not sure it’s even left wing compared to populism. To the extent that middle class liberals do support the working class, it is inevitably paternalistic, and, if we are honest, entirely contingent on not materially impacting the interests of the liberal middle class. That’s not meaningfully left wing in any shape or form.
Free Speech is not a socialist value. If you are not a socialist then, with respect, you should not be claiming to be left wing.
For sure, socialists think that individual workers and citizens should be entirely free from oppression, and so should be free to talk freely. Indeed, the most motivated and talented individuals should be encouraged to contribute to the work of their local citizens’ councils. But advocating against the dictatatorship of the proletariat? No. Hell no, with extreme prejudice.
A free press? Nope. The common ownership of the means of production and distribution includes the common ownership of all the media. Sure, you want a free and frank debate amongst the comrades to better progress the journey to perfect the socialist society, but the current situation where effectively all media is dominated by the global hyper-rich who are explicitly manipulating public opinion to deliver global fascism is, and how can I put this bluntly, not a good thing. At least we have the CPC as a partial bulwark against this.
Individual rights. Sure, we absolutely want to improve the lot of the individual citizen, but the common collective good always takes precedence over individual rights. Always. Which brings us around to the activists vandalising public property, and their supporters. Their supporters need to be careful not to act against the public good. The vandals themselves - that’s sabotage, and the authentically left wing response is to drag them in front of a commisar to organise their summary execution. Now, you may disagree with that approach, indeed as a liberal be vehemently opposed, but please don’t try to claim left wing virtue for your position. That’s just silly.
So, you’ve probably worked out that I am abandoning any pretence to accomodation with the liberals. Working across the aisles has not worked. The menshiviks will always cave to the liberals, and the liberals will always cave to the conservatives, who will always gleefully support the fascists. I don’t care about liberal concerns and strongly worded disagreements anymore.
So, where does that leave us globally. The genocide in Gaza seems to be an important touchstone for the free speech debate. I suggest that there is very little left wing relevance to this. Israel is the only country in the region with anything like a liberal democracy, and it has it’s own unique circumstances which lead to an odd mix of far-right aggression and egalitarian communalism. It does have organised socialist organisations, but there is no scope for a socialist revolution anytime soon. Not least because it is surrounded by implacable enemies organised on feudal or barely post-feudal lines. Everyone involved seems committed to total war and letting (their own) god sort it out. Sad really, particularly since there are no gods. How ironic is that?
The hyper-capitalist United States seems to have entered into its final phase, where it will destroy itself as predicted by Marx. It won’t be pretty, and may not lead to a socialist revolution. I’m glad that there is an ocean between me and it.
Following the end of US hegemony, China will become the pre-emminent global power. Since it already has a broadly socialist system, that’s quite encouraging. We observe with interest.
The EU is making a fair fist of negotiating a peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism. This transition is necessary for civilisation to continue - climate change and the high technology society demand the end of all inegalitarian political systems. It’s socialism or a descent into a new dark age.
Which leaves us with dear old Blighty, the main subject of this thread. I think it’s about 50/50 if we implode in imitation of the USA, or somehow come to our senses and at least try to maintain civilisation in alignment with the EU. Interesting times.
Congratulations if you got this far. Thank you for reading.
Power to the People!
I generally can’t stand JD Vance. But he’s right that free speech protections are worse most anywhere else compared to America. Similarly, despite all the well-known problems with the justice system in America, if my freedom was on the line I’d still rather take my chances in an American court with a jury and at least theoretically a very strong presumption of innocence. The Fifth Amendment is one of the greatest things about American justice.
…I don’t agree.
Free speech is under attack worldwide. And that includes the United States of America. It just happens differently in America.
For example, I just this moment discovered the existence of “the Palestinian Exception.” From Wikipedia:
I thought that I was going to have to spend a few hours digging up relevant citations, but it turns out that this is so common that there is a mountain of cites all in one place, so this is a good place to start.
But to summarise: people that spoke up in defence of Palestinians risk losing their jobs, risk getting kicked out of their homes, risk losing their diplomas and their education, get put on Hollywood blacklists, get told by law firms they won’t get hired, they get their names and addresses plastered on mobile billboards, get harassed by members of faculty, get arrested by ICE and detained for weeks or months.
And just today:
It doesn’t matter what the constitution says. It hasn’t protected them.
And we just have to look at what happened this week. Stephen Colbert lost his job. In isolation, if we take what CBS have said at face value, it’s just a thing about money.
But we have this lawsuit.
And 60 minutes.
And Bari Weiss.
And we are seeing what appears to be one of the networks kowtowing to the administration.
We have all the major social media networks either controlled by billionaire oligarchs, or their existence (ie TikTok) threatened by the government. Newspapers ownership consolidated to a statistical handful of owners.
The reality is that the constitution has loopholes. And the government and institutions take full advantage of them. America ALSO has a free speech problem. But its much easier to pretend that doesn’t exist because it presents itself very differently to what we see in the UK.
Because the UK has a VERY big problem right now. Most of it going under-reported because just like in the US, the so-called “mainstream media” falls into line with government narratives.
Under-reported story number one: the targeting of UK journalists under anti-terrorism laws.
That raid was later found to be unlawful.
Disturbingly, the UK police asked her for her contacts locations in Gaza:
Journalist Richard Medhurst:
The UK government, just like in the US, are using anti-terrorism laws not just to silence activist groups like Palestine Action, but journalists as well.
It’s important to note that the courts are likely to see things differently to the government, as we can see with what happened to Winstanley, and what we are likely to see with Wilkinson and Medhurst. The “free speech problem” isn’t with the lack of explicit constitutional protections, but because of police, anti-terror and government overreach.
It’s just like the detention of Mahmoud Khalil by ICE, where the government argued he was deportable because “of his “beliefs, statements or associations” that would compromise US foreign policy interests.” That was almost certainly unconstitutional: however, that didn’t stop his detention from happening.
It’s a chilling effect. In the US, the UK, much of Europe and all over the world governments and institutions are using every lever of power to silence dissent. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got “concise, (relatively) unabigous set of absolute statements” or “verbose, more ambiguous, and more wishy washy, alternatives”, if they want to shut you up…they can and they will. A few arrests, blacklists, firings, it’s enough for many people to decide to say nothing.
Well, with respect, you can see exactly what I said by clicking back through the reply icons, and your paraphrase isn’t great. I’ll try again: when a fascist is fascing, to promote fascism, and you find yourself thinking, ‘hey, you know, he’s got a point there’, you may not be the most left wing person on the internet.
But this is a sidetrack, the main point is that it doesn’t matter if these are bad people, because the target audience doesn’t care about these fascist talking points, however enthusiastic some ‘I’m not a fascist but he makes a good point’ people are.
Yeah, that still sounds a whole lot like my paraphrase.
Well, I did my best.
I can believe that.