By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
JWeinCom on 29 September 2020
Edit Thread
Slimebeast said:
JWeinCom said:

Clearly you have not studied First Amendment jurisprudence. Freedom of speech means the government can't make laws restricting speech regarding matters of public concern. It means that when a company or an individual says something that another company or person feels is fucked up, they can say "that's fucked up and you shouldn't say it". And that company is free to either agree with them and stop saying it or say fuck you we're going to keep saying it. If the company feels pressured by public opinion to change their ways because they feel it will hurt their business that's what is called the free market. 

Freedom of speech doesn't mean you get to say whatever you want and nobody can say you're an asshole for it. The right to call someone an asshole for saying something is just as important as the right to say the thing in the first place. Criticism is not antithetical to free speech it's the whole damn point.

So for instance when Trump tells everyone to cancel their subscription to New York Magazine because he doesn't like what they're saying (I'm assuming that's part of what you mean by cancel culture) his right to call for cancelling things he doesn't like is part of Freedom of Speech. I don't know about you, but while I disagree with Trump calling for cancellation of things he doesn't like (in his capacity as a private citizen at least), I fully support his freedom to do so. 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/politics/fact-check-trump-cancel-culture-boycotts-firings/index.html

It's scary that you seem to brush the whole thing off as just private companies having the freedom to act like they seem fit. It's already a classic response.

Cancel culture and censorship. There's two dimensions, a cultural element but also a political, judicial element. Public discourse can change the culture and attitudes in society, but there's also a legal battleground with the human right called freedom of speech that is regulated through The First Amendment and corresponding legislature in all Western liberal democracies.

Cancel culture refers to a cultural phenomenon, about a totalitarian mindset among a vocal minority. Mainly among the leftist intelligentia. We're now seeing the radical left pushing wokeness like a religion. An important tool of this is policing the language of other people in order to shame and control people. Often throughout history the left has had totalitarian tendencies to silence its opponents and impose restrictions on speech and on expression of free thought, but this has gone totally overboard in the last decade. Due to the explosive nature of internet, cancel mobs have a disproportionate amount of power against the individual.

I have no problem being criticised and I think I can speak for everyone on the right. That's not the problem. And I think you know this very well. The problem is that we have a culture of fear where dissenting opinions are disproportioanately punished by deplatforming, by losing your job, by people not wanting to associate with you because they in turn fear the consequences. By the opposition using it as an extremely powerful punishment. It's similar to how the religious power structures of the Middle ages, how people were ostraziced and silenced if they dared to speak up. It totally goes against our values of freedom and tolerance and it's unworthy of a modern democratic society.

If J.K. Rowling tweats about women who menstruate, it's wrong to demand her publisher to drop her. It's wrong to create such a hysterical atmosphere of hate that emotion-driven mobsters are able to pressure colleges to cancel invited speakers. It's wrong that people are being fired for making  insensitive jokes, or getting fired for criticising BLM. Such behaviour is legal, we know that, but it's also totally immoral and evil. It's a culture that censors and supresses freedom of speech.

This is deeply inhuman. We cannot allow a culture of fear. We will soon be living in a democracy by name only.

It's scary that the country who once embraced freedom of speech and was famous all over the world for it, has suddenly become the strongest force in the West to suppress diversity of opinion. Just a few decades ago we as Swedes saw America, that you venerate freedom of speech. You even allowed nazis to march openly because freedom of speech was so holy. Now it's the other way around, cancel culture is rapidly spreading from the US universities, Big Tech and HR departments to Sweden and Europe. US college after college is being taken over by the woke mob with critical race theory and intersectionality being enforced in all areas, from school bureaucracy, to the curriculum, to recruitment and hiring practices.

But there is also a possibility to change laws. The big tech internet companies now control freedom of speech to such an extent that they effectively make up a monopoly and their bias against voices on the right is infringing on our democracy, it's infringing on freedom of speech. We can regulate big tech if we want to, by forbidding Google, Facebook and Twitter to arbitrarily suppress certain opinions, mainly conservative voices. We can accomplish this legally by many ways if we want to, perhaps by changing their legal status as platforms and instead make them accountable as publishers, or force them to disclose the bias of their algorithms and require that they're unbiased, demand more hearings with their CEOs, or simply break up the companies. There is a lot we can do politically.

There is an opposition on the left, a part of the left that embraces liberalism and classic Western values, who are also deeply concerned by this. Who realizes that they have to cooperate with conservatives on the right to oppose wokeness, to oppose cancel culture and defend Western democracy. Look up Bret Weinstein and Evergreen college. These people are increasingly realizing that right now, Trump is the only sensible choice to combat this dangerous movement on the legal front. Biden is a good man but far too weak and too blind and gullible to be able to stand up against this woke crazyness.

Should I just repeat the same thing I said before? Because you keep bringing up the First Amendment and its guarantee of freedom of speech, and again neither has anything to do with what you just said. You just spewed out buzzwords that have nothing to do with the First Amendment. Just your opinions on what is moral to say or not to say, and I don't really care at all.

You then suggested that the government should regulate private enterprises and define what view points they can choose to platform or not platform. THAT is in violation of the First Amendment. If people don't like the restrictions these platforms place, they are free to go somewhere else. If it is not viable for any competing platform to emerge, then that's an anti-trust issue, wholly separate from the First Amendment.

And, no you can't speak for everyone on the right. Ffs.

"If NFL fans refuse to go to games until players stop disrespecting our Flag & Country, you will see change take place fast. Fire or suspend!"

Let us assume for a second that Donald Trump is not the President, since that actually DOES create pretty severe First Amendment concerns. But lets say he's a private citizen who objects to players kneeling for the pledge of allegiance. Why is it wrong for him call for those players to be fired or suspended?

Last edited by JWeinCom - on 29 September 2020