What we probably don't want is hysteria on a crowded boat. — pomophobe

And this what we should really notice and stop here. There's no need for hysteria.

Students being hysterical asses in Ivy League universities is rather unimportant in the end. They are enjoying their time being woke and being so hip 'university students' and simply having fun before they start their top notch careers. And isn't it awesome for them if they get some professor fired? So they don't care about the wars the US, but do care if some provocative right-wing commentator is invited to their university campus to give a speech or are concerned of 'microagressions'. That's their thing to be so woke about. Let them have their egotrips I say.

Yet it really isn't that important. Just look at how radical university students, or the loudest leftist part of them, were in the 1960's and just how traditional that generation came out to be. The media has picked up these incidents mainly because of the absurdity factor, like the Yale Hollywood suit incident or the Evergreen incident and so on.

Right wing commentators like Scruton will be attacked. That's just the nature of the game.

We do need to challenge his rhetoric (or at the very least question it), or he will likely continue to win followers. — VagabondSpectre

No need to challenge his views directly if he's not invited or discussed on a public, wide-reaching platform further amplifying his voice. No one owes Ben a conversation, any more than they owe me a conversation. He has his own website (funded by billionaire brothers, of course) so he's free to publish his views there (insofar as he is profitable).

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

lol the whole sokal squared thing was a dud.

Wow the radical center is such a fount for vital ideas, like how university students are so loud and bad these days and uh....

That's a good point. Personally I'm not that worried about it. I was already dying before I started paying attention to politics, in the usual sense of just being mortal. 'War is god.' I relate to John Gray's dark view. Maybe history is a merry-go-round. I don't see why something like WWII won't happen again, including another genocide. We're the same old monkey after all. And it'll happen because part of us wants it too. It's fun watching Drogon annihilate King's Landing.

No need to challenge his views directly if he's not invited or discussed on a public, wide-reaching platform further amplifying his voice. No one owes Ben a conversation, any more than they owe me a conversation. He has his own website (funded by billionaire brothers, of course) so he's free to publish his views there (insofar as he is profitable). — Maw

There are two errors in this formulation:

The first is that Shapiro's views are already out in the wild, and regardless of our whack-a-wing-nut high-score, Shapiro or whoever else will manage to find or build a platform of their own. We need not invite him to platforms of our own, but his views must still be challenged.

The second error is that nobody is suggesting we're obligated to invite Shapiro to any of our platforms: the specific issue is that one group of students is claiming the right to dis-invite Shapiro from the platform of another group of students who do want him invited. While it is true that platforming pundits for the purpose of rebuke is sometimes worthwhile (albeit risky), specifically what I'm condemning is forced de-platforming by third party groups. If Berkeley wants to succumb to social pressure and disallow Shapiro, I can respect that, but protestors should not use extortionate physical force and disruption to make it happen, nor should they use force to disrupt the event should they not get their way.

Maybe this is just a necessity of keeping ‘regret’ alive and functional? If we live without understanding the concatenation of action and thought then ONLY a violent shift will allow ‘regret’ to hold us to its breast again.

It is for this reason I hold to radical inner change and destruction over such destruction manifested in society. As an individual I try to be an anarchist - questioning my own authority - and as a member of a community I try to be conservative; with my inner rebel shining forth rather than causing outward destruction. Non-destructive radical change only seems possible to me if the radical change is taken on in numerous individuals and spread as a paradigm change. To put such change into outward action directly seems foolhardy to me where a passive outward attitude holds dear what is existent whilst the active inner rebellion drip-feeds society and ushers in long lasting progressive change - be it at dire personal cost rather than some naive policy thrown out experimentally into the political sphere where the cost becomes the burden of the innocent bystander.

Some of it is a contempt for the college kids for being such pussies. But I think Shapiro is a joke too. Zizek I like, since he knows he's never quite telling the truth about himself, and he knows I know.

Paglia is whiny these days, but Sexual Personae was good stuff. When the PC kids interrupted her talk, it was like a team of cliches interrupting someone who might be saying something interesting with predictable noise. Sexist. Racist. Fascist. Something-phobe. These words have been milked dry. They were used like wide-spectrum antibiotics. Yet just about everyone roots for the blue people when they watch Avatar. Few people embrace racism consciously, though maybe everyone (like it or not) is racist on some level --even the white people who like to shame other white people on this issue. After all, bringing it up and crying 'racist' constantly keeps us all well aware of what team we're on.

It is for this reason I hold to radical inner change and destruction over such destruction manifested in society. — I like sushi

I like this.

Non-destructive radical change only seems possible to me if the radical change is taken on in numerous individuals and spread as a paradigm change. To put such change into outward action directly seems foolhardy to me where a passive outward attitude holds dear what is existent whilst the active inner rebellion drip-feeds society and ushers in long lasting progressive change - be it at dire personal cost rather than some naive policy thrown out experimentally into the political sphere where the cost becomes the burden of the innocent bystander. — I like sushi

Indeed. Holding dear what is existent especially stands out for me. One of the things that keeps people from violence is the sense that all the nice things in life (like the daily routine of a mostly happy marriage) can be washed away beyond recall. And let's see: I buy lots of healthy food from the grocery store. I ride my bike not expecting to be murdered. Above someone stressed the shittiness of the world, but I don't think it's all that shitty. Now I know a homeless addict who's not enjoying the ride, but it's anything but clear what to do with/for him. So it goes.

lol the whole sokal squared thing was a dud. — Maw

It may have been silly, but they scored a hit with the dog park rape culture paper. The journal didn't just publish it. They celebrated it. They lapped it up. And this is how your debunking link responds to that:

How absurd was it for such work to get an airing? It may sound silly to investigate the rates at which dog owners intervene in public humping incidents, but that doesn’t mean it’s a total waste of time (as psychologist Daniel Lakens pointed out on Twitter). If the findings had been real, they would have some value irrespective of the pablum that surrounds them in the paper’s introduction and discussion sections. — link

That's pretty weak. And the issue is bigger than that paper in any case. It doesn't keep me up night, but it moves the needle a little bit at the voting booth --not that that matters much either, but talking about politics is a nice way for us all to twist up our intellectual panties. At the moment I'm remembering to laugh at all of this again, all the drama that serious people are supposed to take seriously. So 'lol' indeed.

So do you distance yourself at all from any PC stuff? I ask sincerely.

PC or not things have gone too far if all a person can do is cause or take offense openly yet never turn the vitriol inward.

I'm replying sideways to csalisbury, streetlightX and Noble Dust I guess.

We can commentate without participating and still know what we're talking about. Just look at football. So I'm not sure about the necessity of things having wordly consequences outside of this thread.

I find the comment that there is an inherent asymmetry between an platformed speaker and regular Joes persuasive. I doubt this is fixed through deplatforming or disrupting speakers. First, half of the time the whole invite is troll baiting. I sincerely doubt serious Conservative students care about Milo's brainfarts. It's just to set up the situation so they can then claim neo-Marxists and SJWs are against free speech. And that is all about appearances which basically is what politics has devolved into.

That's the second point there, that it is indeed all about appearances. The insistence that it shouldn't is just a wish. Without a plan to enrich the debate it will not change.

The devolvement means clickbait, memes and one liners have become more effective as political tools to get the necessary votes to give a thin veneer of democratic legitimacy. But nuance is lost because it cannot be captured in three words, it needs to be teased out through debate. What if left is two sides who just repeat their positions ad infinitum without actually engaging the other side that we still need for meaningful political action.

Just look at Brexit and how this was initially attempted as something to be imposed on the "losers". How a certain segment of Brexiteers insisted on going at it alone and a parliament voting down every option without the ability to develop real alternatives.

We're creating schisms in societies by setting up every difference as irreconcilable, with us vs them, winner-takes-all, while we still need to live together. It's all pretty toxic.

And it gets worse because freedom of speech isn't meaningful without freedom to information and we don't get the information we need to make informed decisions because we're inundated with clickbait, memes and one liners.

his views must still be challenged. — VagabondSpectre

Why?

protestors should not use extortionate physical force and disruption to make it happen, nor should they use force to disrupt the event should they not get their way. — VagabondSpectre

I don't know about physical confrontation, but they have every right to protest the event, in particular against someone who thinks women shouldn't have reproductive rights, that Muslims are mostly religious extremists, etc. If Ben Shapiro, who claimed that Left Jews are bad and undermine Judaism, came to my university, then why should I, a Left/Secular Jew, standby as a person who dehumanizes and delegitimizes me is offered a platform? You cannot expect that when a person's views are essentially a protest against others, they are not challenged and confronted in turn by it. That's a consequence of free speech.

That's pretty weak. — pomophobe

Can you actually explain why it's weak? The paper is interesting and "celebratory" because of the number of hours purportedly observed. 1,000 hours of observation, as the article and linked tweets within explain, is a huge outlier in research, and would be an enormously valuable data set for other scientists, even if the actual study itself was silly.

It doesn't keep me up night, but it moves the needle a little bit at the voting booth — pomophobe

Good to know that a poorly executed sociological hoax makes you slightly more likely to vote for what's becoming a white nationalist party.

So do you distance yourself at all from any PC stuff? I ask sincerely. — pomophobe

I don't know what Political Correctness means, a priori. Most people agree that white people shouldn't be slinging the N-word around. But is that political correctness? Most people agree that women should't be sexually harassed in the workplace? Is that political correctness? Some people think that we should acknowledged a person's preferred gender and refer to them as such. Is that political correctness or just common decency?

I don't think you can see it, but you are misreading me. It's not just the quasi-religious pseudo-scientific nonsense going on in gender studies. It's stuff like this too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO1agIlLlhg

Chants of 'black power' and the demonization of whiteness are racist, at least in the view of many people whose votes the DNC should seek. Is Bret Weinstein the devil? If even he is the enemy, then the PC left is doomed. If that guy is your boogeyman, you're an extremest, a New Age religious fanatic --or so it seems to me.

That's what I mean by the PC-left, a cult of race, gender, and sexual orientation that pretty much inverts a more familiar cult of race, gender, and sexual orientation --as if repeating a mistake in the opposite direction is progress rather than excess.

We're creating schisms in societies by setting up every difference as irreconcilable, with us vs them, winner-takes-all, while we still need to live together. It's all pretty toxic. — Benkei

Well said.

A non-contextualized video of a protest and sit-in, along with vague accusations of new ageism and cultism around gender studies doesn't paint a clearer picture of what you mean by "political correctness".

How much context do you need for a gang of students chanting 'black power'? Or a mob of students gathered threateningly around a small female professor? Or 'whiteness is the most violent fucking system to ever breathe' being yelled out for a mob's applause? Would you need the same context for chants of 'white power' ? It just seems reasonable to me for us all to encourage a society where race and gender aren't such a big deal. If blacks are justified in chanting 'black power' because they are viewed as currently less powerful, then at some point 'white power' politics will be justified. Some obviously already think so. But if whites become a smaller part of the population and lose political power, they'll have a precedent for thinking racially. Perhaps they already do, but it doesn't seem like something we'd want to encourage by tolerating divisive rhetoric.

That said, I also see something like the futility of this reasonable talk. It's more exciting to be unreasonable. The reasonable people end up depending on the extremists to cancel one another out. In the meantime the rich can get richer and the oceans can get warmer. The world was always on fire and always will be. I'd hate to live without any distance from all this political hysteria. It's serious and yet it's not, not while most people just go the grocery store without shooting one another.

Why? — Maw

Because either:

Shapiro's rhetoric is meaningless, persuades nobody, and need not be protested whatsoever, let alone censored.

OR

Shapiro's rhetoric does persuade people, in which case we must try to counter his persuasive power with persuasion of our own, a large part of which entails addressing the underlying substance of his claims and beliefs. (Given he is persuading people, censorship or no, clearly de-platforming alone isn't the answer for the left)

but they have every right to protest the event — Maw

Yes they do have the right to protest.

in particular against someone who thinks women shouldn't have reproductive rights, that Muslims are mostly religious extremists, etc. — Maw

We should not encode what we can and cannot protest beforehand (for good reasons). People are free to protest against water, air, earth, and fire if that's what tickles their political fancy.

If Ben Shapiro, who claimed that Left Jews are bad and undermine Judaism, came to my university, then why should I, a Left/Secular Jew, standby as a person who dehumanizes and delegitimizes me is offered a platform? — Maw

If it's not your platform that he is being invited to, how much authority should you have to veto his invitation?

You cannot expect that when a person's views are essentially a protest against others, they are not challenged and confronted in turn by it. That's a consequence of free speech. — Maw

This is all well and good, but I draw the line at responding to speech with physical force, intimidation, or violence. Violence is not speech, and using force to silence the speech of other groups likewise is not speech.

Why not protests - if one so wishes - and engagement - if one so wishes? Why not disinvitation and invitation? — StreetlightX

As long as the bullhorns and barricades of the former don't crowd-out the benefits of the latter, then absolutely. And this is how we've always done it, so what's changed in recent years?

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. — StreetlightX

Rather than flatten the conversation out, it's only practical to examine the issue on a case by case basis, which is what I've tried to do. In the case of Shapiro (which I realize is not that relevant to your position), it's not a plain matter of to invite or not to invite, it's whether or not to disrupt the private political event of another group with force. As nebulous as the free speech discussion has become, you can at least agree to a distinction between speech and violence, and that when it comes to achieving political goals, the means should not undermine the ends.

The context behind the video is that that there was a series of incidents in which several black students were mistreated while white students who had been involved as well were not charged or taken into police custody, and so black students protested these unjust events.

But if whites become a smaller part of the population and lose political power, they'll have a precedent for thinking racially. — pomophobe

This is really the thrust of your argument, isn't it, and the genesis of white nationalism. White people fear losing power and will take extreme efforts to hold on to that power. The key difference between black power movements and white power movements is that latter tends towards overt violence and systemic oppression of non-whites. 'Black Power' is the call for Black Americans to defend on another against oppressive forces, and confronting those forces in non-violence ways. 'White Power' is to call for lynches and remove non-whites from their communities. Black Americans simply don't want to be unjustly targeted by police in their own communities and desire safety like their white peers. American demographics are changing, and non-whites are simply demanding the same opportunities, freedoms, and equality before the law that's currently afforded towards whites. Thinking that a white racial backlash is a justifiably precedent to these demographic shifts and demands is to justify white nationalism.

Ironically, you seem triggered by the use of 'Black Power', but my main concern is that this issue, which occurred two years ago at a college campus and really only affected a few people is a more compelling influence on how you will vote, than say, the draconian legislation to destroy women's reproductive rights, or the zero-tolerance border policy separating children from families, villianizing news media, cozying up to right nationalists around the world, as well as domestic white nationalists, shifting wealth to the ultra-wealthy through tax cuts, etc. somehow these play second fiddle to black students protesting unsafe and unfair conditions in their colleges.

Shapiro's rhetoric does persuade people, in which case we must try to counter his persuasive power with persuasion of our own, a large part of which entails addressing the underlying substance of his claims and beliefs. (Given he is persuading people, censorship or no, clearly de-platforming alone isn't the answer for the left) — VagabondSpectre

This is nonsense. Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon, and Milo were deplatformed and have all but been removed from public conversation, save for Bannon when he's occasionally invited to speaking engagements. Deplatforming works, and just because Shapiro may be persuadable, doesn't mean he deserves to be heard. And it's not as if someone who says Muslims are bad, or doesn't understand transgenderism deserve to be heard.

Violence is not speech — VagabondSpectre

No but speech can undoubtedly lead to violence. Shapiro is emblematic of that.

I think we may be running aground on our final vocabularies, and I'm not sure you have the story straight, especially since you didn't mention Weinstein.

That you ultimately don't object to the chant of 'black power' seems to confirm you as a defender of 'virtuous' racism. I'm not so sure about your psychoanalysis of my motives. To be sure, I'm no saint. Drogon wants out. Are you a saint?

Anyway, what I'm hearing is that it's cool if biologists are chased out of their institutions as long as they are white men who question an arguably racist policy. I though we on the left were down with science? Oh well. Here's his testimony before congress. I'd say decide whether even this guy is one of the baddies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRIKJCKWla4

This is nonsense. Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon, and Milo were deplatformed and have all but been removed from public conversation, save for Bannon when he's occasionally invited to speaking engagements. Deplatforming works, and just because Shapiro may be persuadable, doesn't mean he deserves to be heard. And it's not as if someone who says Muslims are bad, or doesn't understand transgenderism deserve to be heard. — Maw

You're missing the point: it's not about who deserves to be heard, it's about who is influential, what they are saying, and responding to it directly. Milo, Bannon, and Spencer don't get much play on CableTV, but they still have large online followings, and their influence is still able to spread through the unregulated new media. Whether or not Bannon is verboten, if he is still gaining followers in whatever platform, then the answer is to address his rhetoric directly rather than just pushing him onto the next platform.

We could ban them from every existing platform, but as long as they have an extant following, they could simply create platforms of their own (we would also have to ban all of their followers from very platform). I'm saying it's not practical to disallow their speech on whatever platforms they manage to get invited to, instead it is far more practical to counter their rhetoric directly when and where arises.

Shapiro is a bit more tame than the three other provocateurs you've named, so I'm not sure lumping him in with the rest is entirely warranted. Shapiro does represent a very large ideological demographic in America, so unless you want to get rid of political-pluralism altogether, it might not be the best move.

No but speech can undoubtedly lead to violence. Shapiro is emblematic of that. — Maw

Speech that leads to violence is the kind of speech that we want to censor, but where do we draw the line? In my opinion, if someone calls for, condones, or advocates for violence against a specific individual or group, then we should be able to prosecute them for hate speech, but legislating that in practice is a tricky affair.

@StreetlightX I think the point is one which @VagabondSpectre is gesturing toward above. There comes a point where deplatforming is like sticking your finger in the dam only for three new leaks to open above you.

I want to differentiate myself from what I take to be vagabond's stance in that I don't think the right tack is to argue with Shapiro or whoever on their own ground (which is so deeply disingenuous that I think even Shapiro doesn't realize how disingenuous he is.)

But the point is that shaming w/ fiery rhetoric, even if you're right, has no positive effect. It worsens things. It's a show of weakness. That's why the most 'clap' worthy medium piece is going to get parsed as 'liberal tears' by the right. 'clap' worthy pieces are only going to land for those who agree with you already , so it amounts to circling the wagons, a defensive maneuver.

That doesn't work, but arguing seriously with e.g. anti-blm is no good either because [anti-blm] stuff is always, always motte and bailey, even tho half the time people are tricked by their own rationalizations and don't even realize the difference between their motte and bailey.

But what is there that isn't performative? I don't know, but I think it's not taking a heroic trash-talking stand against the enemy. As if the mccoys would listen to the hatfields if only the hatfields really gave it to them.

There's a new-left thing of flirting with the vibe of violence and revolution while certainly not advocating it because real violence isnt real violence, its symbolic violence etc. Here's a poem by Brecht only of course I don't mean it like that. But for anyone not already sympathetic, this looks deeply silly and structurally symmetrical (not equivalent- value-symmetrical) to what the rights doing. This is at least one major part of the engine that keeps the whole thing churning. This is ultra-performative.

Whatever's outside is probably something like: a real alternative. Which the left has become expert at not-offering. The first thing is probably to let go of 'theory' which is fine as an exciting private pursuit, one which I also enjoy, but from the perspective of political efficacy is nothing but series of very clever footnotes to Marx which alternate between cerebral self-satisfaction and a community founded on mutual recognition of well-struck poses. It doesn't work. Empire & Zucotti should have been the last hurrah.

I think we may be running aground on our final vocabularies, and I'm not sure you have the story straight, especially since you didn't mention Weinstein — pomophobe

I don't mention Bret Weinstein because he was not, in actuality, a major component to the story. He inserted himself as a major figure during on-going protests for personal exposure. The actual story is that for decades, Evergreen engaged in a 'Day of Absence' event in which students of color would leave the school to highlight their importance within the college and overall community. This practice, which was optional, was praised by Weinstein. However, in Trump's first year in office after threatening mass deportation for people of color, the school had decided to invert the original project so that white people were asked to leave the campus while people of color stayed, in order to highlight their belonging to the community. This was encouraged, but not mandated, and Evergreen's white students made up over 66% of the overall population, so it was never expected that a majority of white students would participate. Bret complained about this change on false premises, arguing via email that this was a "show of force", which it wasn't, since it was always optional. This email was sent and leaked in April. No protests took place because of this because who cares about Bret Weinstein. It wasn't until May that the incidents I mentioned regarding black students occurred and protests appeared throughout the campus. Weinstein confronted the protesters who shouted him down, in part because of his emails. Whether or not they were right to do so is frankly neither here nor there, as Weinstein later appeared on white nationalist Tucker Carlson's show on Fox and knowingly gave a false version of the events, which lead to alt-right targeting and harassment towards the school.

Milo, Bannon, and Spencer don't get much play on CableTV, but they still have large online followings, and their influence is still able to spread through the unregulated new media — VagabondSpectre

Well no they don't, because they were banned from most forms of popular media. Can't have a large online following if you are banned from most popular platforms.

We could ban them from every existing platform, but as long as they have an extant following, they could simply create platforms of their own (we would also have to ban all of their followers from very platform). I'm saying it's not practical to disallow their speech on whatever platforms they manage to get invited to, instead it is far more practical to counter their rhetoric directly when and where arises — VagabondSpectre

Is it? I thought Fascism, Nazism, White Supremacy, or whatever Spencer, Milo, Bannon, et. al. are selling were thoroughly defeated by the end of WW2, and yet somehow you feel that we still need to confront these ideas via debate and counterargument? That these ideas can still take hold over segmented populations (despite the last 70+ years) shows that far-right ideology actually thrives when placed in the light and publicly confronted. That's precisely why Bannon, Milo etc. want confrontation. That's why they want to be platformed and publicly exposed. That's why the alt-right celebrated when Hilary Clinton gave speech in 2016 condemning them. They can't lose. Far-right ideology is inherently irrational. It cannot be defeated by debate and countering rhetoric. In that regard, it's actually very practical to disallow their speech on platforms, whether on popular publications, or social media, or college campuses.

Shapiro does represent a very large ideological demographic in America, so unless you want to get rid of political-pluralism altogether — VagabondSpectre

Does he? Seems like a majority of Americans, regardless of political affiliations, prefer left-leaning policies.

Speech that leads to violence is the kind of speech that we want to censor, but where do we draw the line? In my opinion, if someone calls for, condones, or advocates for violence against a specific individual or group, then we should be able to prosecute them for hate speech, but legislating that in practice is a tricky affair. — VagabondSpectre

Sure, but my point is that it's not unreasonable to protest Shapiro for lecturing on college campuses.

Culture war and identitarian Leftists have not merely forgotten about economics and class. Their position is predicated on an outright rejection of the working class as a progressive political force, and on a concomitant fear and suspicion, namely that the average white Joe is always one Shapiro video away from signing up as a white supremacist. So this Left antipathy to free speech is not merely suicidal or naive, but is an expression of a class hostility. — jamalrob

I don't think I addressed this properly so let me try this on: free speech is a class issue, and until it is understood in those terms, liberals will continue to find themselves arrayed with the fascists whose rights their tender little hearts break for. 'Cause liberals don't - in fact are constitutionally incapable, given the poverty of terms in which they approach politics - have any way to address the material and historical differentials that have made reactionary views so attractive to the uptake now, in this time, in this particular political situation.

I mean, reactionary fucks like Shapiro have been around since the dawn of time, all with more or less varying degrees of success; so the question is: why now? Why this prevalence, this attractiveness, now? The only piddling, bootlicking answer the liberal can give is something like 'because the Left have gone too far with PC culture and I'm not allowed to make tasteless jokes anymore' (note again the foregrounding of speech). Aside from the fact that anyone who doesn't do politics-by-meme can at a glance note the disproportion between supposed cause and contemptible effect, this simply cannot account for why-now. Can you imagine a Bannon, a Trump, a Shapiro running around in the 90s? They would have been fringe, and would have remained fringe, and not beacuse they weren't engaged with by the left. Platforming - or not - wasn't even at issue.

I'm not saying society was much, if at all, better 'back then' (that time had its own, insane, problems), but - I can't believe I have to spell this out - if you want to know where Sapiro et. al. emerged, perhaps, just fucking perhaps, one ought to look at the material conditions of the poor white working class, rather than 'Muh Free Speech Under AtTaCK fROM ThE LeFt'. Long story short, to put the etiology of the emergence of Shapiros down to 'the left' is such, such, such a stupid and historically myopic idea that it simply cannot be taken seriously. But the liberal simply has no fucking language or vocabulary other than 'free speech' by which to track these issues, so of course for him it's all about 'speech'.

Given all this, the point is not to give up or cede the argument for free speech to the right, but to insist upon creating the conditions under which speech is genuinely constitutive of freedom, and not just a sop to some abstract freedom felt by no one, no where, and has liberals walking in goosestep with the wankers whose speech they cry over. That's the sense in which I think the argument that 'we have to engage them' misses the mark to a fatal degree. Leaving aside the sheer fact the deplatforming works, despite the unemprical meme that it doesn't, the point is to get us to a point at which the 'platforming' - or not - of Shapiros shouldn't even be an issue. I want to live in a society where Shapiros don't matter - not because he's 'deplatformed', but because even if he had all the platforming in the world, no one would care.

Leaving aside the sheer fact the deplatforming works, despite the unemprirical meme that it doesn't, the point is to get us to a point at which the 'platforming' - or not - of Shapiros shouldn't even be an issue. I want to live in a society where Shapiros don't matter - not because he's 'deplatformed', but because even if he had all the platforming in the world, no one would care. — StreetlightX

Well, clearly deplatforming works against individuals, but not against the ideas they're vessels for... otherwise this conversation wouldn't be happening, and otherwise it wouldn't be barreling inexorably toward what you've said, which reads, quite literally as, " It was because of NAFTA, not the left, I want things to be different." Yes, so....

What things? Speech things, like the liberal thinks? No.

The thing of Shapiros not mattering. 'Because if he had all the platforming in the world, no one would care." Me too! I also don't want [any bad thing.]