I was only joking. It amused me that you'd managed to summarise everyone else's position, as if you'd read mine and just shook your head slowly. There's nothing needs doing about it, I didn't mean for you to take that impression. — Isaac

Reviews should summarise everything relevant that goes on. I don't care if it was a joke.

It seems like 'free-speech' is being presented as some kind of unique pre-requisite to social reform — Isaac

I'd say it's an inherent part of a functioning democracy and basically acts as a safety valve. People are very adaptable and do quite easily adapt to censorship and self-censorship. And it shows, really. Without freedom of speach, people are different and behave really differently.

You might avoid talking about politics with a total stranger (if he or she happens to be totally opposed to your ideas), yet there is no true fear about talking publicly your mind.

I remember how dramatically Russians changed once when Soviet Union collapsed. Politics and traumatic experiences of the past (and present) were something they didn't simply talk about. It didn't exist. The way to speak was called the lithurgy. Endless official jargon without any meaning, very hilarious when you actually think about it. Now they (the Russians) may be vary of publicly criticizing Putin, but are quite open to talk privately or with Russians about politics. Before not so.

Stop burning effigies like you're not made of fire.

Reviews should summarise everything relevant that goes on. I don't care if it was a joke. — fdrake

Yes well, "framing issues about politics", should cover everything I've said... and everything I'm likely to say in this and any similar debate, so I'd say you've done a very prudential job.

:up:

Without freedom of speach, people are and behave really differently. — ssu

This presumes there is a binomial {with freedom of speech/without freedom of speech}. It's that framing which I dispute. The 'freedom' to speak one's mind in a meaningful way must itself be meaningful, as in apposite to the cause about which one is speaking, otherwise how is it any different to the 'freedom' a political prisoner has. Afterall, they can always try to escape, no one's stopping them doing that.

The speech has to have function, to play a part in the process, and that function is interfered with by the means of presentation. Some groups have more control over the means of presentation than others, this control is physical (financial usually) and must be combated physically at times.

It worse that that: every single victory was won by attacking what seems to be counted as "free speech."

Each time we make a change of policy or culture, the very idea of the former is discarded. Not in the "Let's respect each other's differing opinion" either, but in the substantial "Our society ought not do this. This idea is not respectable or worth considering", such that the latter then holds dominance in culture.

The centerist assumption of the neutral postion which is settled by an exchange of respectful veiws is a myth. It gets nothing of the politcal picture correct.

This presumes there is a binomial {with freedom of speech/without freedom of speech}. It's that framing which I dispute. — Isaac

In a society without free speach, which typically is a totalitarian society, this is a fact. People do behave differently. There is a genuine collective fear which stifles even ordinary debate.

In the US (or the West) this whole debate isn't about existence of free speech, but it is about the Overton window in public discourse. And that is totally different.

Hence the debate starting from Roger Scruton, but easily going to all the usual right-wing suspects, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson etc. An many go with the leftist line that anything beyond this or that and the people have to be white supremacist nazi bigots.

An many go with the leftist line that anything beyond this or that and the people have to be white supremacist nazi bigots. — ssu

I don't know where you got that conclusion from in thread. The topic's slid from left propagandising liberals *cough* I mean reasoned debate with them to countering the influence of the far right on discourse.

I don't think it's fair to attribute blurring the lines between the two to the posters here. Especially when many of the comments have been about the weaknesses of the liberal interpretation of freedom of speech to cooption by the far right. Garden variety conservatives (though maybe not the US conservative party, they play real rough internal politics) and liberals both have this marketplace of ideas = the court of reason perspective on the issue.

In a society without free speach, which typically is a totalitarian society, this is a fact. People do behave differently. There is a genuine collective fear which stifles even ordinary debate. — ssu

I don't doubt it. I also don't doubt in a society authoritarian enough to totally suppress free-speech, the inability to tour a lecture series is probably the very least of their worries.

In the US (or the West) this whole debate isn't about existence of free speech, but it is about the Overton window in public discourse. And that is totally different. — ssu

Yes, I'd agree with this, that's why I think claims of being "anti-free-speech" are weaponised. Everyone is anti free speech. Everyone has their line, and sometimes that line is enforced by law (which ultimately is backed by serious force).

So the discussion, with regards to Shapiro, is not about whether it is reasonable to restrict free speech with force, virtually everyone agrees with that already. It is about whether small sub-communities should be autonomous enough to make those decisions for themselves, and on what grounds (or whether they should always defer to the law of whatever country they're in).

All I'm arguing is that continually deferring to the democratic decisions that have already been established, with regards to where these lines are, is pointlessly circular. Either Shapiro and the like do not influence the voting public (in which case shutting them down is of no consequence), or they do. If they do, then one cannot expect the democratic system to deal with the effect they have by restricting speech appropriately.

I don't know where you got that conclusion from in thread. — fdrake

From the comments after the OP, I guess.

Especially when many of the comments have been about the weaknesses of the liberal interpretation of freedom of speech to cooption by the far right. — fdrake

What is the far right here? Is Scruton really a spokesperson for the far right? It is about the Overton window in public discourse.

Sorry if I'm confusing people here, but I do make the difference between conservatism and the far right just as I do with social democracy and communism.

Yes, I'd agree with this, that's why I think claims of being "anti-free-speech" are weaponised. Everyone is anti free speech. — Isaac

I don't think everyone is. And besides, anyone saying that people should have the right of free speech obviously do then logically give the opening for different viewpoints.

All I'm arguing is that continually deferring to the democratic decisions that have already been established, with regards to where these lines are, is pointlessly circular. Either Shapiro and the like do not influence the voting public (in which case shutting them down is of no consequence), or they do. If they do, then one cannot expect the democratic system to deal with the effect they have by restricting speech appropriately. — Isaac

I don't actually get your point here or perhaps I haven't read this part of the conversation. What's the fuss with this quick-speaking Jewish right-wing political commentator that resigned from Breitbart?

'Pure' democracy is mob rule. Individual rights like free speech exists to protect the individual from mob rule. These rights become important exactly when the individual does not conform to the mob. One might expect intellectuals to be especially attached to this protection. But in this context maybe there are two stripes of intellectuals, ringleaders and outsiders.

Ringleaders feel themselves as leaders of a mob of the similarly virtuous. They see individual rights as giving comfort to enemy. Since they see themselves as intellectual leaders of the good guys, they don't worry about their speech being curtailed. If/when their side wins, they expect to do just fine. They don't want to say anything that they don't want anybody to say.

Outsiders, though, see fanatics on both sides of them. The alt-right and the PC-left are perhaps equally eager to reduce their freedom. At the moment, the alt right and the center makes use of the rhetoric of free speech. The center is sincere (as I intend the 'center'), but surely their are crazies in the red states who would vote for laws against blasphemy, etc.

It's in the outsiders interest to keep the fight between the maniacs close. (Of course it's also in the interest of the very rich to keep the culture war close, so that the working people don't get together and tax the rich.) As an outsider, I voted against Trump as the greater threat but consoled myself with his victory by interpreting it as a check on the PC-left and its digital mobs. I'm down with democracy, but more important than democracy are the rule of law and individual rights, with free speech as perhaps the essential right (as Spinoza saw.)

It's that supposed difference which is the problem. By the measure of the content of their postion, that conservativism is a problem. They, in many respects, reject the valuing of particular groups. One doesn't need to be a nazi, alt right or an intentionally bigoted monster to devalue and hold oneself superior monster.

To be an ordinary conservative, for example, who thinks having a penis means your a man and a vagina means your a women, constitutes a devaluing and oppression of trans people.

In a critical way, these positions are not different to the nazis, alt right or the intentional monsters people like to imagine. Like them, this value and politics form a culture we have an ethical obligation to avoid. By moral terms (that is, whether our society ought to hold them), these are equal to the monsterous forms of oppression people like to imagine.

One doesn't need to demanding slavery for or attempting to genocide a group to have a culture which devalues or oppresses them. Plenty of that happens in the values and expectations a lot of people consider "ordinary." These don't make one or their values better than the alley stalking, nazi monsters people like to imagine.

By the measure of the content of their postion, that conservativism is a problem. They, in many respects, reject the valuing of particular groups. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Ah, like the class enemy is to the communist? Sounds like authoritarianism.

To be an ordinary conservative, for example, who thinks having a penis means your a man and a vagina means your a women, constitutes a devaluing and oppression of trans people. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Oppression, really?

Without going into the sex and gender issue, I'll take another example. So if I think that humans are omnivores because humans can eat meat, do I then oppress vegans? Am I really oppressing, devaluing or ridiculing them? You see you are making a similar kind of interpretation here.

This is the problem in thinking that having different thoughts means naturally that you then automatically oppress, hate, vilify, are against and surely will attack others that have different thoughts, ideas and feelings. Is it so hard to really respect others that have different thoughts and likes? Or different philosophy?

In the critical way, these positions are not different to the nazis, alt right or intentional monsters. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yep, there's the smoking gun. In the critical way. But what are the nazi like positions, really?

One doesn't need to demanding slavery for or attempting to genocide a group to have a culture which devalues or oppresses them. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes, one can be a leftist SJW to do that too, to have that emotional hatred towards others.

Plenty of that happens in the values and expectations a lot of people consider "ordinary." — TheWillowOfDarkness

Or those with the values of being "progressive", "open to new ideas", "tolerant" and "woke".

Outsiders, though, see fanatics on both sides of them. The alt-right and the PC-left are perhaps equally eager to reduce their freedom. — pomophobe

Well, both like authoritarianism and actually aren't so excited about liberal tolerance. Radicals always hate the present that we have and want real change, something totally else.

but surely their are crazies in the red states who would vote for laws against blasphemy, etc. — pomophobe

Naturally. But for those it's quite easy to notice that the belief on liberties aren't actually so important.

the only thing I've been doing is pointing out that the liberal grounds for 'non-censorship' are rubbish. My argument is against an argument; not a position on Shapiro being 'censored' or not. Living outside the shithole that is the States, I'm lucky enough to hardly be graced by anything he says or does. — StreetlightX

The standard marketplace of ideas line is an oldie, and it's still in many ways a goodie, but my practical argument has yet to be addressed: censorship per se isn't the only issue, it's also the method of censorship that causes problems. I condemn the forceful censorship of Shapiro not only because I want to preserve my own right to be free from forceful censorship, but also because when applied to someone like Shapiro, it only elevates their celebrity.

I could better understand your position if I was defending someone like Spencer, whose views arguably amount to hate speech (the Canadian version), but I don't see how Shapiro warrants the same sort of response. If the orthodox conservatism Shapiro spews really does exacerbate the sources of harm you listed earlier, isn't it imperative that we successfully counter him and their effects? Banning books and speakers alike just makes them more popular.

And if Shapiro's views are really a major threat, isn't the current white house the final boss? If there ever was a looks based popularity contest, the U.S presidential election cycle is it. Screaming in anger just won't achieve anything.

Thus the Left is suicidal in abandoning the defence of free speech to the Right. — jamalrob

It's exasperating to have this bromide blindly repeated unceasingly. Outside of anecdotal examples (primarily at elite schools which make up a fraction of the total student population) in which left-wing students protest, or are able to shut down highly controversial speakers, which the right-wing students also do, there is no quantitative proof showing Leftists are "abandoning free speech", across campus or beyond. If free speech is having a speaking opportunity at a University then it goes without saying that all of us are without such freedom.

Curiously, accusations around abandoning free speech are never thrown at the right, despite anti-BDS legislation that's been adopted by over a dozen states, Trump and his administrations's condemnation of news media, or when right-wing figures such as Ben Shapiro, Milo Yiannopoulos, or Jordan Peterson hypocritically threaten to sue people.

Unfortunately liberals and self-described centrists often internalize the bad faith arguments put forward by right wingers, because the latter have, to @StreetlightX's point, amplified and propounded this narrative in the 'marketplace of ideas' despite how groundless and false it is.

Ben Shapiro does not have a right to lecture at college campuses. Alex Jones does not have a right to a Twitter account. Steve Bannon does not have a right to speak at events put on by the New Yorker or The Economist. Deplatforming these people is not censorship nor a violation of free speech, and if you think otherwise I have a bridge to sell you. More to the point, as I've repeated numerous times, this shouldn't even be considered an important issue.

And I don't see how anyone can be faulted in protesting Shapiro who has said that a majority of Muslims are extremists, or that Jews who vote democrat are "bad Jews who undermine Judaism", and more, among a number of things that any level-headed person would find deplorable and outright pseudo-intellectual.

EDIT: and regarding Ben Shapiro and violence, it's important to note that the Quebec mosque shooter, who murdered six Muslims, viewed Ben Shapiro's twitter 93 times in the month leading up to the killing. Even more than he viewed Alex Jones, David Duke, Richard Spencer, and Tucker Carlson.

Short of declaring Spencer an enemy of the state, how to we defeat fascism, and does protesting Shapiro contribute to that fight?

I'm willing to accept (culture) war in principle, but I think you might be escalating things rather quickly, especially you think if Shapiro's followers are beyond persuasion. — VagabondSpectre

While there are undeniably ideological overlaps between Shapiro and Spencer, the latter is an outright ethno-nationalist fascist, while the former isn't. To combat Shapiro, he should not be invited to cable news to speak, he should be protested when giving lectures at college campuses, and he shouldn't be coddled in major publications because he says nothing of value and has no journalistic merit. He shouldn't be violently confronted because I'm not convinced he's anything other than two five-year-olds stacked on top of each other in a suit.

Thus the Left is suicidal in abandoning the defence of free speech to the Right. — jamalrob

But this is not a 'defence of free speech' issue: it's a defence of consequences issue. Or at least, its matter of taking speech seriously, of actually giving it the weight it can and does have, and not treating it like some intellectual parlour game to be played out in salons where people can unironically talk about 'the marketplace of ideas' - a wretched idea indulged in by wretches. Let's be clear about what this means: the response to speech cannot simply be limited to 'more speech'. Politics is not a dinner party, and words can and are, to use a useful word in one of @Maws articles, actualized. In some cases that actualization means fucking genocide, as the Bosnian case makes clear, and the liberal disconnection of speech from its actualisation is doubly a denial of reality on one hand, and an insistence that reality go unaffected by words on the other.

The liberal hypostatization of speech has the effect of draining it of whatever power it can and does have. It sucks the life out of what it claims to be so vital to it. I'm mincing words - lets be sparkling clear: the liberal doesn't give a fuck about speech, dispute her pseudo-veneration of it.

I said above that the response to speech cannot simply be limited to more speech. Which is not to say that speech should always be responded with means other than speech; only that it cannot be turned into a political principle without at the same time destroying the power of speech. Were we to be so lucky, in a good society, speech should be adequate most of the time. Except we don't live, not by any means, in such a society. Things are shit, and liberal with his head simulatiously up his ass and in the clouds misrecognises this to sometimes literally fatal effect.

Another way to put this is that even 'initial speech' (lets call it), speech 'before' response is never 'just' speech: to have a platform is already to have been implicated in whole webs of extra-vocal institutional power: education, money, social and media networks and so on. Speech is never 'just' speech - it is that and a boatload more. To insist that the only politically appropriate response to this is just more words (throw words at fascists! That'll stop 'em!) is fucking idiotic, to put it mildly.

Holy shit, the New York Times literally just published a Bret Stephens op-ed where he yet again complains about college students.

This is all irrelevant. I'm not arguing for censorship, and I'm not arguing for violence, and if you think anything other than speech simply is, or can only be, violence or censorship, then I take that to be so obvious a howler as to be beneath serious engagement.

if you think anything other than speech simply is, or can only be, violence or censorship — StreetlightX

You're grossly mischaracterizing my position, yet again. I condemned violence as a means to censorship, and apparently that makes me a howler worthy only of passive aggressive pejoratives. You're either not bothering to read my posts, or you're too incensed even for less than serious engagement.

Whatever political action it is you think will save us all, please tell us (or share a video of it, because speech is for liberal daydreamers fascist enablers).

The rest of us aren't privy to your advanced solutions.

Well, both like authoritarianism and actually aren't so excited about liberal tolerance. Radicals always hate the present that we have and want real change, something totally else. — ssu

Indeed. I'm suspicious of this 'totally else.' What I see is various groups dreaming up a future that...ignores the problem of the existence of other groups. Of course it sucks when people won't behave how I'd like them to. It sucks even more when they try to control me. The boring old compromise is of course individual freedom. But I'm no libertarian on property rights. That might work on an infinite frontier, but we are stuck together on a crowded boat, and it's not ultra cool that the boat is largely owned by a tiny minority.

What we probably don't want is hysteria on a crowded boat. Unfortunately folks tend to glob up and demonize and I'm not above that myself. There's an ecstasy in dissolving into the angry mob. And yet it's also the slime of hell itself for the individual as individual.

To combat Shapiro, he should not be invited to cable news to speak, he should be protested when giving lectures at college campuses, and he shouldn't be coddled in major publications because he says nothing of value and has no journalistic merit. He shouldn't be violently confronted because I'm not convinced he's anything other than two five-year-olds stacked on top of each other in a suit. — Maw

I mostly agree, but I think the left can actually gain from earnestly engaging with him (although not many let wing pundits are well prepared to do so). Shapiro's gaff on the BBC is a great example of how a calm approach can be effective. Too many people think his ideas do have merit (of whatever kind), which makes them disagree with your assessment that he should not be platformed, hence the protests and counter-protests, and the general escalation of conflict.

I think the left can actually gain from earnestly engaging with him — VagabondSpectre

Don't think there is much point in an earnest debate with a guy who sells "Leftist Tears" branded tumblers.

It really doesn't matter who or what he is if he is able to win followers. We do need to challenge his rhetoric (or at the very least question it), or he will likely continue to win followers.

It worse that that: every single victory was won by attacking what seems to be counted as "free speech."

Each time we make a change of policy or culture, the very idea of the former is discarded. Not in the "Let's respect each other's differing opinion" either, but in the substantial "Our society ought not do this. This idea is not respectable or worth considering", such that the latter then holds dominance in culture. — TheWillowOfDarkness

When I think of moral progress, I think of an expansion of rights. Free speech was used to criticize slavery and argue for female suffrage. It was used to argue for gay marriage. Maybe it'll be used to remove 'male' and 'female' from government documents. Fine with me. The point is to protect the individual from the mob --including the mob acting through the government.

Now we have something like equality before the law in terms of race, gender, and sexual orientation.Still some would like to push further in the direction of 'progress.' This article links to some examples of what many of us otherwise 'left wing' people find troubling.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2017/04/04/its-time-us-left-wingers-stood-up-to-pc/

And some of us are keeping an eye on this.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Sokal-Squared-Is-Huge/244714

Why not both? Why not protests - if one so wishes - and engagement - if one so wishes? Why not disinvitation and invitation? Why not pressure on sponsors, and the occasional chat? A nice broad church of political manoeuvring and democratic expression. Let the man - or men, or women - speak. And let him know that his words are also not welcome. Or ought we simply coddle the fragilities of right-snowflakes who are sad that people don't want to talk to them?

This is one of the reasons talking about 'free speech' as a general concept is so meaningless. Free speech where? In what context? With respect to which audience? In what medium? Among which institutional arrangements? Liberals would flatten these questions out, and bray out the tautology and speech is speech is speech. But it's not, not to anyone for whom politics is anything more than a mild-mannered salon conversation - which is to say, not to most people, everywhere.