• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

Freedom of speech?

SuburbanTurkey said:
It probably helps that antifa types don't chant "Jews will not replace us" and commit terrorist attacks at their demonstrations. When it comes to garnering negative public attention, the reactionaries have only themselves to blame. They can't seem to resist the ole siren song of brutalizing unarmed people at protests or committing hate crimes.

Police only take a hands off approach when their right wing allies are in the mix. The moment that the fascists leave the scene, suddenly crimes are arrestable again. We've seen this over and over again.
Click to expand...

Dude, while I get the spirit you are posting in, do you really trust a bunch of random's off the street to be self-appointed Punishers? Look at this thread, especially earlier. People lie and make **** up to justify their political agendas. Antifa, well-intentioned as they are, are not exempt from this human frailty. Peeps lie like rugs to justify what they do, and are blinded by their own lying. They absolutely, 100% sure will start racking up a body count against the wrong people in short order if they don't smarten up. Being the good guys requires a little restraint. That's one of the ways we are distinguished from the bad guys.
 
The idea that a government has to always err on the side of being content neutral has pragmatic value and can be argued to be the price we pay, etc.

However, an individual that takes the same formalistic content neutral opinion towards white supremacists and their ilk is a nihilist at best. This includes equating violence by the likes of the proud boys and those who oppose them.
 
Suddenly said:
The idea that a government has to always err on the side of being content neutral has pragmatic value and can be argued to be the price we pay, etc.

However, an individual that takes the same formalistic content neutral opinion towards white supremacists and their ilk is a nihilist at best. This includes equating violence by the likes of the proud boys and those who oppose them.
Click to expand...

Look we have leading republicans declaring people as pedophile cannibals' why should we start being restrained now? That is normal discourse and both sides need to be able to express their views as to if the jews all eat babies.
 
Thermal said:
Dude, while I get the spirit you are posting in, do you really trust a bunch of random's off the street to be self-appointed Punishers? Look at this thread, especially earlier. People lie and make **** up to justify their political agendas. Antifa, well-intentioned as they are, are not exempt from this human frailty. Peeps lie like rugs to justify what they do, and are blinded by their own lying. They absolutely, 100% sure will start racking up a body count against the wrong people in short order if they don't smarten up. Being the good guys requires a little restraint. That's one of the ways we are distinguished from the bad guys.
Click to expand...

The alternative is relying on the police, who get an erection every time some Proud Boy thumps a lefty, to impartially enforce the law. I don't like those odds. The police abdication of duty is probably the largest driver of street violence right now and I don't see that changing so long as our cops continue to fight civil reform.

I agree it's not a good situation and that oversteps and mistakes will occur. This is what happens when an out of control police force allies itself with fascist street warriors. 100% failed state scenario where people are just trying to make the best of a very poor situation. A fash rally that ends with the fash running in terror, leaving a trail of their own blood and teeth is a good day in our late-Weimar era.

Maybe we can come back from the brink and the state can reassert itself as the only legitimate authority to wield violence, but until then, these communities must defend themselves.

I think a Biden administration that made these right wing terror cells the top priority of the FBI is really the only way in the immediate future to stop the skirmishes. Regardless of leadership, local cops are just too compromised to take sustained action to stop these people.
 
Last edited:
Suddenly said:
The idea that a government has to always err on the side of being content neutral has pragmatic value and can be argued to be the price we pay, etc.

However, an individual that takes the same formalistic content neutral opinion towards white supremacists and their ilk is a nihilist at best. This includes equating violence by the likes of the proud boys and those who oppose them.
Click to expand...

This is true and the people doing the equivocation are going to look pretty silly if one side starts driving over protestors, using chemical irritant projectile weapons, shooting up Wal-Marts and synagogues, sending bombs to politicians and media, bombing healthcare facilities, and willfully violating the people's Constitutionally protected rights then being pardoned. Oh wait!

Snark aside, on a practical level hoping to even marginally address political violence in the US currently by making big shows of condemning the limited violence coming from the left and playing up an 'all sides' narrative is doomed to failure. Until the much greater and abhorrent violence from the right that has been given a pass for decades is actually held to account, then the left will simply be unable to stop every single person on their side from controlling themselves. I understand the idea that one might want to 'build credibility' with the right and then leverage that to get them to hold each other to higher standards, but it just doesn't work right now. In fact, tiptoeing around it has allowed the right to build this bizarre and frankly moronic victimhood narrative.

At some point we have to stop pretending it's all the same or even close. 'I don't care who started it' works as well as the schools with 'zero tolerance' to violence who punish the attacker and the victim.

Playing 'reasonable theater' is not the same as being reasonable. You don't have to condone the punching, but acting like it makes some statement about the left beyond 'the left is starting to use the right's tactics' is laughable.
 
Ziggurat said:
It doesn't matter. Either YOU care about free speech, in which case their right to free speech must be protected whether or not they care about it, or you don't.



Do you care care about free speech?
Click to expand...
What's the freedom of speech issue in this instance?
 
One can only imagine

Darat said:
What's the freedom of speech issue in this instance?
Click to expand...
It may be that the speakers at this rally were going to address free speech issues, but one cannot be certain. Their opponents used the Heckler's veto, in the the broader sense of the term (see my previous comment), to prevent it.
 
how to **** around & find out 101

https://twitter.com/_notherethere/status/1317957849633337344

Stop falling for the fascist's crocodile tears. These fascist groups have two modes. They either peacock around proud of the violence they have inflicted on others that weren't able to defend themselves, or they cry salty tears about how violence was done upon them by those that could.

They'll flip the switch on a moment's notice depending on circumstance. The same people that were puffing their chests after spending a day pepper spraying people from moving vehicles cry foul when some dimwit tries to pepper spray an armed man and gets shot in return.

It's objectively good, and arguably hilarious, when these people find themselves on the wrong end of a violent encounter that they so desperately want to instigate.
 
Last edited:
Chris_Halkides said:
It may be that the speakers at this rally were going to address free speech issues, but one cannot be certain. Their opponents used the Heckler's veto, in the the broader sense of the term (see my previous comment), to prevent it.
Click to expand...


I'd love to hear anywhere near reasonable speculation about what essential or even meaningful public discourse was possibly denied us by this group not doing as they intended.

This isn't an abstraction. We know who these people are. We know what they want.

That the government has to tolerate this does not mean anyone else is morally bound to take the same position. There should be an assault charge levied here. That doesn't mean this guy should have to buy another beer for the rest of his life.
 
Last edited:
Gotta say I'm feeling pretty good about the SF popo assigned to police this rally. Only a dozen or so people to protect, and they couldn't stop the organizer from getting pummeled. No arrests either. Sounds a little like someone was quite pointedly looking the other way.
 
Thermal said:
Gotta say I'm feeling pretty good about the SF popo assigned to police this rally. Only a dozen or so people to protect, and they couldn't stop the organizer from getting pummeled. No arrests either. Sounds a little like someone was quite pointedly looking the other way.
Click to expand...

And that's a good thing? Seems like people were complaining that the police looked the other way on violence against antifa. I guess that was never actually a principled stance, only a partisan one.
 
Ziggurat said:
And that's a good thing? Seems like people were complaining that the police looked the other way on violence against antifa. I guess that was never actually a principled stance, only a partisan one.
Click to expand...

Fair criticism. 'Good' is not the right word. 'Equal opportunity dereliction of duty without favoritism' might be more appropriate.

I'd rather it all stopped, but if it's on the hoof, I'd rather it not be one sided
 
Cavemonster said:
Disambiguation.

That's the LEGAL idea of free speech.
There are also moral concepts of freedom of speech on which the legal concept is based. There's room for a lot of disagreement, and I disagree personally with these protestors' model of what free speech constitutes.

But I'd wager most of us with some level of imagination could conceive of SOME level of squelching of the sharing of ideas by non-government actors that we would consider not ok.

Legal free speech is the first amendment.
Moral free speech is the general idea that we want a society where ideas can be exchanged and we recognize that a small number of corporations control a lion's share of the means for disseminating information.

Whatever your political ideology, if tomorrow facebook auto-deleted any posts that espoused your view, as did twitter and every other social media company. If Google decided not to allow emails to be sent that espoused your view. If a powerful consumer group organized effective boycotts to bankrupt any company that espoused your view, if all of that happened, I sort of doubt you'd just shrug your shoulders and say "That's the free market and consequences. I could start my own gmail!"

Probably you'd think there was something wrong there.

So I don't think these protestors are wrong that a value of free speech exists outside of the first amendment. I absolutely disagree with the specifics of their greivance.
Click to expand...


*** assuming you're American ***

At last, another poster on this thread who understands their own Constitution!!! Pity there are so few!

The moral free speech of which you speak has, of course, no legal or constitutional standing (and of course, I'm sure you are not claiming this).

This moral right to free speech is determined by, balanced with, set against (call it what you will) the backdrop of what Society wants as a whole. If Society wants right wing extremist, neo-Nazi, fascist hate speech to be part of "moral free speech" it will evolve the conditions to allow it to be an acceptable part of that speech. It is abundantly clear, however, that Society, as a whole, does not want this to happen. I think is is fair to say that the numbers of people/protests against that kind of speech are far, far greater than those who protest for it. Rallies and gatherings like this one, and "Unite the Right" type white supremacist rallies have, in all cases, been hugely outnumbered by counter-protestors. The people may not have spoken, but they are in the process of doing so - forcefully!

More importantly, if the right to "moral free speech" would allow such speech to be accepted, then it also must allow the right for people to reject that speech and not be a party to its promulgation. This means that platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google, as well as newspapers and other media outlets, are under no obligation to participate in such speech, or allow such speech to be hosted on their platforms, or published in their newspapers. When Twitter bans right wing extremists, and Facebook bans Holocaust Denial, this is not an infringement on anyone's right to free speech, this this them exercising THEIR right not to have their platform associated with speech they find unacceptable. Its their right to "moral free speech", and they are exercising it.
 
Ziggurat said:
That someone was violently assaulted for expressing their opinions.

I thought that would have been obvious.
Click to expand...

If we are going to be true absolutists about this then punching someone based on their political views is in and of itself speech in the same way burning a flag is speech. An act with the intent of sending a message of disapproval.

Whether legal or moral isn't of consequence to this absolutist view. Which is why absolutism always ends in absurdity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom