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450 points pseudolus | 141 comments | | HN request time: 1.604s | source | bottom
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necubi ◴[] No.43576821[source]
Oh hey, Wesleyan on HN! I’m an alumnus (matriculated a year or two after Roth became president). Wesleyan has a rich history of activism and protest, and not always entirely peaceful (Roth’s predecessor, Doug Bennet, had his office firebombed at one point).

I’ve had a few opportunities to speak with Roth since the Gaza war started, and I’ve always found him particularly thoughtful about balancing freedom of expression with a need to provide a safe and open learning environment for everyone on campus. In particular, he never gave in to the unlimited demands of protestors while still defending their right to protest.

In part, he had the moral weight to do that because—unlike many university presidents—he did not give in to the illiberal demands of the left to chill speech post-2020, which then were turned against the left over the past year.

I don’t see any particularly good outcome from any of this; the risk of damaging the incredibly successful American university system is high. Certainly smart foreign students who long dreamed of studying in the US will be having second thoughts if they can be arbitrarily and indefinitely detained.

But I hope the universities that do make it through do with a stronger commitment to the (small l) liberal values of freedom of expression , academic freedom, and intellectual diversity.

replies(7): >>43578254 #>>43578551 #>>43578928 #>>43579619 #>>43582082 #>>43585458 #>>43586399 #
kevingadd ◴[] No.43578928[source]
People are being abducted off the street for writing tame op-eds and we're still complaining about the left chilling speech post-2020? What are we doing here?
replies(4): >>43579250 #>>43580751 #>>43581013 #>>43587658 #
1. decimalenough ◴[] No.43579250[source]
The left banning the use of certain words and the right banning the use of certain words are flip sides of the same coin.

Of course, if you point that out, you get yelled at by both sides.

replies(8): >>43579289 #>>43579321 #>>43579360 #>>43579383 #>>43579749 #>>43579804 #>>43583320 #>>43587542 #
2. yieldcrv ◴[] No.43579289[source]
Reminder to anyone triggered by a “both sides” comment:

just like you, we are all aware of how the sides are different, it is valid to be more annoyed by the ways they are the same

replies(1): >>43584255 #
3. hellotheretoday ◴[] No.43579360[source]
Except one side of the coin complains on twitter and maybe gets you fired from your job whereas the other side of that coin systematically removes over a hundred million dollars of research grants based on language and is literally disappearing people for their writing

but yeah, same thing. sorry someone put you through the absolute hell of saying they/them at work

replies(6): >>43579598 #>>43579751 #>>43579792 #>>43581910 #>>43583339 #>>43585202 #
4. nomonnai ◴[] No.43579374[source]
It's not an equation in what it does to people. Yes, abduction is worse than being yelled at.

However, it's pointing out that the general principle has been established: "People whose opinion I don't like can be banned from society." At first, it's only removing individuals from public discourse (cancel culture), then it's removing people physically (deportation).

This is always the endgame of eroding core liberal values. This has been pointed out to the illiberal left time and time again, to no avail.

replies(3): >>43579455 #>>43579588 #>>43580473 #
5. vkou ◴[] No.43579383[source]
One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you.

The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.)

It's odd that one ban operates within the constraints of freedom (the freedom to associate requires the exercise of the freedom to not associate), while the other does not. It's almost like there's a categorical distinction.

It's utterly pointless to say that the starting point is the same, when one is an utter sabotage of all of society's rights and values... While the other is people affirming those rights.

replies(2): >>43579657 #>>43587544 #
6. sussmannbaka ◴[] No.43579455{3}[source]
First it’s people disagreeing with me, then it’s deportation to the death camps. There is zero nuance and the slippery slope is basically guaranteed so I should have freedom of consequence for everything I do!
replies(1): >>43580046 #
7. jajko ◴[] No.43579598[source]
Extremism on any side is bad, period. 'But they are worse' is sort of moot point and most people don't care about details, you simply lose normal audience and maybe gain some fringe.
replies(1): >>43579775 #
8. robertlagrant ◴[] No.43579657[source]
> One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you.

Many people have been fired / expelled / and many more silenced by those examples. If you can't tell the truth about your side (from how you're writing I assume you think in sides) then there's no point saying it.

> The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.)

I haven't heard about this. Who has been sent to a Salvadoran gulag for speech?

replies(4): >>43579778 #>>43580320 #>>43580378 #>>43585879 #
9. 0xEF ◴[] No.43579712[source]
Not really. In both cases, compulsion is the problem. Neither side has the right to compel anyone to do anything, but they operate on the premise that they do, usually characterized by indignant self-rightiousness. The irrational extremists of both sides, the ones screaming the loudest, naturally, seek to enforce their version of "how things should be" on to other people, regardless if their objections are rational or not, while also constantly changing the rules or shifting goal posts, which keeps us forever locked in a state of not knowing if we are breaking them. It's mind-numbing to a degree that apathy starts to seem like a perfectly valid option. It's also a tactic historically used by totalitarianism.

They are two sides of the same monster, like Jekyll & Hyde.

replies(1): >>43580263 #
10. rob_c ◴[] No.43579749[source]
Good luck in that case ;)
11. rob_c ◴[] No.43579751[source]
Thanks for proving his point...
12. immibis ◴[] No.43579775{3}[source]
Telling your employer you were a dick is extremism?
replies(2): >>43580205 #>>43583442 #
13. immibis ◴[] No.43579778{3}[source]
I agree that at-will employment is a problem. So is a lack of safety nets. Do you know who supports at-will employment and a lack of safety nets?
14. emptysongglass ◴[] No.43579792[source]
Your attitude and inability to see anything but your own view is exactly the problem we've seen in the new left.

"Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire livelihood you're trivializing.

Any attempt to control speech and silence opposition is wrong, no matter how you slice it. "Your side" isn't any better than the other's.

replies(10): >>43579833 #>>43579916 #>>43580171 #>>43585057 #>>43586164 #>>43586240 #>>43586736 #>>43586862 #>>43587632 #>>43588669 #
15. foldr ◴[] No.43579804[source]
Everything is a flip side of the same coin if you abstract away from all the important details.

Oh the right say that some things are bad? Well the left say that some things are bad too!

These lazy equivalencies only breed cynicism and give intellectual cover to the Trump administration’s executive power grab. By all means criticize the left as much as you like. But the specifics are important. The current administration’s deportation of green card holders without due process isn’t somehow a mirror image of whatever excesses of left wing ‘cancel culture’ you may be upset about.

16. foldr ◴[] No.43579833{3}[source]
How many of the conservatives complaining about it would support government regulations preventing people from being fired for expressing controversial viewpoints? AFAIK those complaining are the same people who support ‘at will’ employment and the liberty of religious organizations to impose more or less arbitrarily discriminatory hiring standards. So yeah, in that lax regulatory environment, your employer might decide to fire you if you (e.g.) feel the need to be an asshole to your trans colleagues.
replies(1): >>43580077 #
17. ◴[] No.43579916{3}[source]
18. breppp ◴[] No.43580046{4}[source]
talk about zero nuance, people here started comparing to concentration camps, and now you are at death camps

just a quick reminder, the ghettos which had far better living conditions than concentration camps (not death camps), had people living on 180 calories a day and ended with more than a half a million dead

so please, proportions, this is an insult to history

19. hellotheretoday ◴[] No.43580171{3}[source]
Well for brevity I did trivialize it but I will expand:

The left side got people fired. This is objectively not as bad as getting people disappeared. You can get a new fucking job. You can’t get freedom from detention and you cannot easily return to the country (if at all)

Additionally there is the motivational factor behind both sides:

The lefts argument in policing language was to reduce harm to marginalized groups. You may not agree with it, but that is the rational.

The rights argument is to erase those marginalized groups.

These are extremely different in motivation. Asking you to respect a persons gender identity in professional contexts is far different than forcing someone to not be able to express it on federal documentation.

One side of this was “we want to create inclusive spaces that make people comfortable and if you don’t want to participate in that there is the door”. The other side is “we did not want to participate in that so go fuck yourself and we will do whatever we can to deny your right to express your identity”

“Any attempt to control speech” is an absolutist statement that is absurd in its fallacy. So I can say I can murder you? I can say you’re planning a terrorist attack? I can say you want to kill the president? Of course not. Speech is limited contextually and by law

replies(1): >>43583550 #
20. hellotheretoday ◴[] No.43580205{4}[source]
You can’t win with these people. They don’t care if they aren’t personally impacted. The “sjw boogeyman” that could theoretically impact their cushy livelihood matters more than the very real right wing government that exists right now and is disappearing people.

But as long as they can still say the n word on twitter and call of duty everything will be okay. Who cares about those disappeared people anyway, they weren’t even citizens

replies(2): >>43584933 #>>43585775 #
21. low_tech_love ◴[] No.43580263{3}[source]
Surely one can find ways to fight the irrational, inconsequential leftists (which there are many) without bullying institutions by cutting their funding, or kidnapping people in broad daylight in the street?

Civilized western countries do it all the time.

replies(1): >>43580348 #
22. vkou ◴[] No.43580320{3}[source]
If the past decade is any indication, nothing has stopped the long list of cancelled right wing grifters, racists, and various other flavors of fools and bigots from finding gainful employment and signal boosting and platforming among like-minded people who do exercise their right to associate with them, despite their behavior.

For (allegedly) being so persecuted and silenced, it's weird how so many of them have so much more power, reach, and wealth than ever before.

Perhaps getting booed at in the last college campus they held a rally at is not quite the yellow star, or the mark of Cain that they convinced you it is.

replies(2): >>43581834 #>>43587488 #
23. 0xEF ◴[] No.43580348{4}[source]
Absolutely. A functional civilization hinges on rational, equitable and cooperative solutions. Extremists are not interested in those things, though. They want what they want and they want it now with all the petulance and emotional regulation of a spoiled toddler.
24. aswanson ◴[] No.43580378{3}[source]
Is wearing an "autism awareness " tattoo considered speech?
25. clonedhuman ◴[] No.43580473{3}[source]
Part of the problem here is that you're abstracting the actions of a handful of relatively powerless people to a principle: "People whose opinion I don't like can be banned from society." The 'I' here is, from your framing, the 'left' or something.

Strawman. The fired people you're talking about weren't banned from society by the people pointing them out on the internet. If someone's on an international flight yelling racial slurs and causing a commotion, and someone else publishes video of that person yelling racial slurs on an international flight, it's not the people commenting on the video who fired that person from their job. It's their employers. What would be the alternative? No one takes video of the person yelling racial slurs? Or, if the video is posted, no one comments on it? Or, maybe, the person yelling racial slurs could simply avoid losing their employment by not yelling racial slurs on a flight full of people with their phones out? Or maybe the employer could choose to ignore the negative publicity and keep the person on staff despite the risk to their revenue? Who exactly is the responsible party here?

I generally find it pointless to point out that 'right' perspectives suffer from a lack of practical logic--pointing out the fundamental irrationality of a position rarely changes the mind of the person holding that position. But, your position ignores power differential between people--your argument is a matter of 'principle,' but this isn't fundamentally about principles.

Is your argument then that a person yelling racial slurs on a full airplane shouldn't have their employment threatened by their behavior? That their employer shouldn't fire them?

replies(1): >>43585008 #
26. throw10920 ◴[] No.43581814[source]
> while the present behavior of the illiberal right is abductions and overseas slave camps

Can you provide examples of people getting abducted and sent to "overseas slave camps" purely for their speech?

replies(1): >>43582028 #
27. pclmulqdq ◴[] No.43581834{4}[source]
In the past decade, the left got so cancel-happy that "cancellation" by the left-wing activist crowd lost pretty much all of its weight among anyone who isn't an ideologue. In 2016-2018, if you got canceled, you would have a very hard time finding any white-collar job afterward.
replies(1): >>43583397 #
28. ls612 ◴[] No.43581910[source]
This strikes me as someone on the left complaining that they fucked around and now they are finding out. I don’t mean this in a malicious way but the lack of self reflection and perspective is staggering.
29. jquery ◴[] No.43582028{3}[source]
Took me all of 5 seconds to find an example. Tattoos are a form of protected speech: https://archive.is/2025.04.03-041258/https://www.theatlantic...
replies(1): >>43582164 #
30. lelanthran ◴[] No.43582093[source]
> That's because the extent of the illiberal behavior of the radical left was yelling and "cancel culture" while the present behavior of the illiberal right is abductions and overseas slave camps. You can see why people might find having the two equated a little ridiculous, right?

You are correct - one is objectively worse than the other.

The unfortunate truth is that, also, one is a consequence of the other.

Trump is simply doing what his voters wanted[1]. And they voted for him precisely because `of the illiberal behavior of the radical left was yelling and "cancel culture"`.

Had the first thing not happened, then the consequence would have been a fictional story in an alternate timeline.

But here we are, and we don't get to say "Sure, we were assholes to 50% of the population, but your response is worse".

[1] Spoiler - they may not even want it anymore!

replies(3): >>43585532 #>>43585658 #>>43587099 #
31. kenjackson ◴[] No.43582608{5}[source]
Here’s another one: https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/03/24/what-to-kno...
32. selectodude ◴[] No.43583218{5}[source]
The administration admitted that they deported a legal resident to a fucking concentration camp in El Salvador! How is this something we’re like “oh but the illiberal left!” This is literally Stalinism!
33. Bluescreenbuddy ◴[] No.43583320[source]
Oh bugger off with your both sides horsewash
34. Bluescreenbuddy ◴[] No.43583339[source]
They got themselves fired. People who wrote things didn't get themselves disappeared to a holding site in Louisiana.
replies(1): >>43584864 #
35. Bluescreenbuddy ◴[] No.43583368{5}[source]
You have no intention of having a discussion in good faith. You're going to use whatbaoutisms, pedantry, and goalpost moving. Kindly stfu
replies(1): >>43589132 #
36. Bluescreenbuddy ◴[] No.43583397{5}[source]
Well what did they do to get called out?
replies(1): >>43583905 #
37. freedomben ◴[] No.43583442{4}[source]
You really don't see a problem with this? I consider myself more on the left, but this practice has always seemed highly antithetical to liberal values to me.

If somebody in their off hours says something assinine, and telling (some might call that "snitching to") their employer in a public forum like Twitter (in a clear attempt to get a social media frenzy going to ultimately get them fired) is a good thing, then wouldn't it logically follow that an employer should not only be permitted but actively encouraged to monitor employees 100% of the time so they can fire them if they ever step out of the corporate line? Amazon does this to many low-level employees just on-the-job and most people think that's creepy and unfair, I can't imagine extending that to off-hours as well. At a minimum wouldn't it follow that it would be great for employers to set up a snitch line so anybody could (even anonymously) call to make reports on people? Is that a world you'd want to live in?

On the next line, let's say the person is fired from their job for a gross tweet. Should they be able to get a new job after that? If so, how does the previous history get erased so the prospective new employers don't see it and avoid them (this very type of thing is by the way, a huge problem for formerly incarcerated people especially felons). Add in that there was no trial, no standard of evidence, no due process, just a swinging axe from an executioner. Should this person (and often their families) just be relegated to extreme poverty the rest of their lives? Blacklisted from employment like the communists in Hollywood were?

replies(2): >>43584400 #>>43585064 #
38. vimax ◴[] No.43583550{4}[source]
You're still trivializing. The cancel culture would often follow the people it wanted to cancel to make it hard for them to get another job again.

Also, I'll add that the "there is the door" comment is entirely wrong. There are countless stories of open source maintainers being harassed to make language changes to their code base, master/slave, whitelist/blacklist. The harassers never offered to do the work themselves just demanded it be done for them or they'll keep harassing. These were people matching into someone else's "safe space" to police their private language.

The government disappearing people and dismantling the country is very bad, and nothing good can be said about it. What I'm talking about are the individuals on both sides not formally in power, and their equal efforts to stifle what they see as "bad speech". It's that mentality, on both sides, that led us to where we are.

replies(5): >>43584137 #>>43584307 #>>43584518 #>>43585697 #>>43586879 #
39. robertlagrant ◴[] No.43583905{6}[source]
This is called "victim blaming".
replies(1): >>43585245 #
40. paulryanrogers ◴[] No.43584137{5}[source]
Harassment is bad. Extraordinary rendition is bad. One of them is significantly worse than the other. And the side complaining about A whilst celebrating B is significantly more hypocritical.
replies(1): >>43584489 #
41. paulryanrogers ◴[] No.43584255[source]
> it is valid to be more annoyed by the ways they are the same

Is it? One side has a vocal minority who took defense of minorities to the point of harassment and was ultimately rebuffed. The other side controls the government and is enthusiastically renditioning legal residents to prisons and defying the constitution and courts to keep doing it.

To be more upset about both sides being imperfect than the injustice of irreversible deportations to foreign prison seems ... absurd.

replies(1): >>43584394 #
42. wat10000 ◴[] No.43584307{5}[source]
You’re the one trivializing things by putting job loss and prison on the same footing.
43. yieldcrv ◴[] No.43584394{3}[source]
all parties are beneficiaries of the institutional structures that allow for a party to do those things

so the things you are bothered by and demand everyone to prioritize are actually solved by addressing the underlying mechanisms, as opposed to simply trying to propagate your preferred party's numbers

something... both sides... might actually be into. if the other party is afraid of the opposition party doing the same thing to different people, then there might actually be overwhelming consensus to change the thing that a "both sides" person is trying to point out

replies(1): >>43584701 #
44. wat10000 ◴[] No.43584400{5}[source]
In a free country, private employers should be allowed to choose who they employ, with very narrow exceptions for discrimination based on race, religion, etc.

In a free country, citizens should be allowed to read what other citizens write in public.

Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that?

IMO the real issue isn’t that employers can make decisions based on this stuff. It’s that employers are far too big. If we had 20 Amazons, getting fired from one of them wouldn’t be such a big deal.

replies(3): >>43585763 #>>43585844 #>>43586216 #
45. vimax ◴[] No.43584489{6}[source]
What about the side that complains about A and complains about B, and complains that constant polarizing rhetoric has been ratcheting up to get us from the less bad A to the very bad B?
replies(3): >>43584564 #>>43586204 #>>43586849 #
46. ytpete ◴[] No.43584518{5}[source]
> never offered to do the work themselves just demanded it be done for them or they'll keep harassing.

I mean if you've worked much in open source, that is pretty much how nearly every feature request and bug report goes unfortunately.

47. paulryanrogers ◴[] No.43584564{7}[source]
Ah yes, it is the left's fault the right is spiraling the country into despotism. Feeling a lot of "Why do you make them hit you?" energy in this thread.
replies(2): >>43589229 #>>43589784 #
48. paulryanrogers ◴[] No.43584701{4}[source]
I'm making no demands. Only pointing out an absurd false equivalence.

Change to the polarizing system would be great. I doubt that will happen by softening protests to obscene injustice. Rather it's likely to reenforce the shifting Overton window further into authoritarianism and kleptocracy.

To break the two party system we need things a large portion of the populous has been (falsely) taught are bad for them: same day primaries, ranked choice voting, making campaign bribery illegal, unwinding corporate personhood, etc. Can you guess which side is most attached to the system of political machines and the lies that reinforce them?

replies(1): >>43585375 #
49. hsiuywbs630h ◴[] No.43584864{3}[source]
By the same logic the students got themselves vanished by not strictly following the rules of the visa ( one example, student had a dui ). It is not better, but the moment you erode basic speech protections it spills over to a lot of other areas.
50. hsiuywbs630h ◴[] No.43584933{5}[source]
Listen, this is not theoretical. In my realm, we had people getting in trouble for otherwise benign speech, because someone's feeling matter more than basic.common sense. The pendulum has swung pretty hard not because sjw bogeyman, but because it has gotten to the point people skilled in ignoring corporate idiocy had enough AND the chronic complainers were demanding increasing superpowers.
replies(3): >>43586231 #>>43586245 #>>43587022 #
51. slg ◴[] No.43585057{3}[source]
>"Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire livelihood you're trivializing.

>Any attempt to control speech and silence opposition is wrong, no matter how you slice it.

I don't know why "Hey company, this person you employ sucks, you should fire them" doesn't qualify as speech that should be protected. It shows that you aren't asking for free speech, you are asking for speech without consequences.

replies(1): >>43585764 #
52. immibis ◴[] No.43585064{5}[source]
I agree the pervasiveness of at-will employment and the gig economy, when combined with the way our economy is set up to require employment for survival, are a problem.
53. kylepdm ◴[] No.43585202[source]
Very refreshing to finally see people on HN call out the ridiculousness of the "both sides" arguments when it comes to this topic.
54. Bluescreenbuddy ◴[] No.43585245{7}[source]
If a bigot acts like a bigot then gets outed, that's their own fault. They're not victims.
replies(1): >>43585934 #
55. saalweachter ◴[] No.43585532{3}[source]
Eh, you can prove anything but starting history at a particular point.

For instance, "GamerGate", where a bunch of anonymous people on the internet tried to get a number of women in the game industry fired, predates "cancel culture" by a year or two.

Or how the whole #MeToo movement was, you know, a response to powerful people abusing people in their power, and firing or otherwise limiting their careers if they resisted.

If <insert famous talking head from ten years ago> didn't want to be "canceled", well, he could have always just not sexually harassed his underlings.

replies(1): >>43585816 #
56. throwaway389234 ◴[] No.43585658{3}[source]
Free speech in the US is about not having consequences for what you are saying. In particular not having consequences from the government. Therefor you can only say that it is a legitimate consequence if you disregard free speech. Free speech in the US is about being able to be an asshole to 10%, 50% or 90% of the population without having to be responsible for what that part of the population does. And even more so what they do with the government. As such if you believe in free speech the government's actions stand on their own. What you actually don't get to say is that it is a consequence. Because that is what free speech in the US is supposed to prevent. Consequences from the government.

In many countries in Europe we have hate speech and defamation laws, we don't have at-will employment and many of our universities are public. This means there is less freedom to make others upset, questioning someone's character, firing them and ways to affect our education. This is by definition illiberal. (Worse or not is an open question). In Europe we can't say that "I might have offended 50% of the population, but sending me to prison is worse" because our laws says it isn't. In the US you can.

Does US law also say that the government can do all kinds of things, including pardoning criminals? Yes, but it still goes against the credibility of free speech in the US. One of the things the US still had over other countries.

replies(2): >>43585826 #>>43588883 #
57. aaronbrethorst ◴[] No.43585697{5}[source]
I renamed my codebase's primary branch to main because someone complained.

versus

I was abducted by ICE agents and shipped to a supermax prison in El Salvador without due process.

replies(1): >>43586166 #
58. freedomben ◴[] No.43585763{6}[source]
I mostly agree with you.

> Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that?

If the employer happened to see it, then yes I think that's well within rights. But I think having some random stranger see something and actively campaign against the employee to their employer is a little bit different. It's not illegal, nor should it be, but there are plenty of things that are legal but still not good behavior. I would consider this under that umbrella.

replies(1): >>43586841 #
59. mancerayder ◴[] No.43585764{4}[source]
Not part of the rest of the conversation, just narrowing in on the idea of speech being free if there are consequences. That sounds like some sort of 1950's-era doublespeak. If there are consequences, how would speech be free? It's a very American-centric perspective that "Free Speech" is defined as "1st Amendment". Free speech means not getting fired, jumped, killed, poisoned, expelled, etc. Fired is something that would happen in Soviet Times as well, in the USSR, and in the McCarthy era, in the U.S.

Apologies for the "two sidesism".

replies(2): >>43586008 #>>43586243 #
60. tacitusarc ◴[] No.43585775{5}[source]
I am terrible at following the news, so just for clarification: are you talking about deportations? Or is there something else going on?
61. lelanthran ◴[] No.43585816{4}[source]
> Eh, you can prove anything but starting history at a particular point.

I'm not trying to "prove" anything; I'm merely pointing out that while it is true that $BAR is objectively worse than $FOO, it is equally true that $FOO is a direct consequence of $BAR.

In my other response to another poster I pointed out that many of us on forums that effectively silenced opposing viewpoints reminded readers that it's best to refrain from going to extremes because the pendulum always swings back, and that is what we are seeing now.

In much the same way, I'll point out that the pendulum always swings back and we are going to see a return to the previous extremes when people get tired of this extreme.

62. lelanthran ◴[] No.43585826{4}[source]
> Therefor you can only say that it is a legitimate consequence if you disregard free speech.

I didn't say it was a legitimate consequence. I was aiming for "it was a predictable consequence".

replies(1): >>43586608 #
63. nradov ◴[] No.43585844{6}[source]
Why should we make an exception based on religion but not on political viewpoint? That is logically inconsistent. There's nothing special about religion.
replies(1): >>43587032 #
64. cess11 ◴[] No.43585879{3}[source]
There's been a lot in usian news about people having been deported because of things like tattoo of the logo of some spanish or other soccer club.

Here's one case where the deportation seems to be based mainly on having worn sports branded merch and a hoodie, and some supposed anonymous snitch, which the state has agreed was an error:

https://www.newsweek.com/kilmar-armando-abrego-garcia-deport...

replies(1): >>43585951 #
65. noworriesnate ◴[] No.43585934{8}[source]
We’re talking about people having their lives judged by thousands of people online based on a 5-second video from someone with an agenda.

There’s no way for them to clarify, no way for them to “have their day in court,” apologizing just makes the mob smell blood. The only point is revenge and sadism, there’s no redemption, no point other than pain, pure and simple.

People are complicated and I don’t want a video of me on a bad day edited and then posted online for everyone to see.

66. theultdev ◴[] No.43585951{4}[source]
they agreed it was an error, to send him to that particular prison, not out of the country in general.

he is an illegal and his deportation defense in 2019 was he feared for his life from a "rival gang" indicating he was in the MS-13 gang that the feds and judge found him to be part of.

he's not just some "father", as the left leaning news likes to portray. he participated in human trafficking and himself admitted he was a gang member.

it seemed that the left did not care about vetting when gang members were coming into the country.

...but now they're being deported, it seems vetting is crucial (which is being done, but you're not always privy to (or aware of) the information)

and "anonymous snitch" is quite derogatory. you do know how evil MS-13 is right? listen to yourself.

they chop people up without blinking an eye. the fact someone risked their life to "snitch" saved so many people. this isn't playground shit.

replies(2): >>43586708 #>>43587194 #
67. foldr ◴[] No.43586008{5}[source]
Free speech doesn’t mean not getting fired. You can get fired in any county for things that you say (e.g. insulting your coworkers, lying to your boss, defaming your employer on social media, …). The exact laws and social conventions obviously vary from country to country, but this shouldn’t be a difficult concept in general.
replies(1): >>43586038 #
68. theultdev ◴[] No.43586038{6}[source]
Someone doxxing you and pressuring your employee to fire you because you said something they don't agree with politically is the same as you insulting your coworkers in your eyes?

You don't see any discrepancy between those two scenarios?

And you don't see anything wrong with the former scenario?

replies(2): >>43586290 #>>43588712 #
69. JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.43586164{3}[source]
Eh, I’ve railed quite a bit against the left. But looking back, we should have fired and deplatformed more aggressively. The social menaces who weren’t fired or arrested went on to become a plague.
replies(2): >>43587080 #>>43589100 #
70. adamc ◴[] No.43586204{7}[source]
1) Plenty of "Polarizing rhetoric" has come from the side of the current administration. 2) "Polarizing rhetoric" is not remotely a valid justification of disappearing people.
71. cduzz ◴[] No.43586216{6}[source]
I think you're missing the basic distinction between private parties and government.

Private parties (including companies) largely have freedom of association. There are (theoretically) protections in "commerce" against a company discriminating against a person or group based on "innate" factors (such as skin color or gender).

But largely, people and companies have a wide degree of latitude about what they are and are not allowed to do.

The government, on the other hand, (theoretically) is largely not allowed to stop people from saying things or associating with each other, and when these prohibitions are in effect they're subject to both documentation and review. This is "theory" because the government has done lots of shady things.

The government, similarly (and theoretically), is bound by a variety of procedural constraints, such as due process, right to see an attorney, right of the attorney to request your presence, right to a trial, etc.

There's a categorical distinction between:

I, a private party, am offended that I face consequences of offending someone else when I would prefer not to face any consequences.

and

I, a private party, am abducted by the organization in this country with a monopoly on violence and which interprets all laws, and I vanish with no recourse from anyone.

replies(1): >>43587037 #
72. adamc ◴[] No.43586231{6}[source]
"Getting in trouble" at work and being disappeared are so freaking different that there is no discussing it. If you cannot see a difference, you are blind.
replies(1): >>43589090 #
73. nothrabannosir ◴[] No.43586240{3}[source]
When I see the left's recent brazen devotion to "winning" and "sticking it to the other side", sometimes it feels like Democrats have started acting like Republicans.

And it turns out that wasn't sustainable.

I know it's glib and coarse and lacking in nuance but when I hear American conservatives complain about the ways of the liberal countrymen I can't help but think, "That's how you guys sounded for a long time. Now they're doing it, lo and behold: everyone loses."

74. slg ◴[] No.43586243{5}[source]
How do you define which speech is speech worthy of protection and which speech is a consequence of speech and therefore not worthy of protection?

For example, imagine some CEO says something politically objectionable, as is their right granted by allowing free speech. Do I have the right to protest or boycott their company as part of my free speech rights or would that be illegal because I'm rendering a consequence for the CEO's speech?

I just have trouble conceptualizing what you think a world with consequence free speech would actually look like.

replies(2): >>43587116 #>>43588263 #
75. cduzz ◴[] No.43586245{6}[source]
Are these people in your realm being picked up off the street by the police, drugged, put into an airplane, and then being dropped into the ocean over international waters?

Or are these people having the things they've said repeated widely, perhaps out of context, to other people, who then decide "sheesh, maybe I don't want to hang out with / work with this dude." ?

replies(1): >>43587200 #
76. ziddoap ◴[] No.43586290{7}[source]
They didn't say it was the same. You're arguing with what you imagined they said.
replies(1): >>43586310 #
77. theultdev ◴[] No.43586310{8}[source]
They presented a strawman. I'm unravelling it.

I want to know where their values are and if they contradict.

I'm re-presenting the original scenario being discussed and the scenario they introduced.

Comparing the two while also redirecting back to the original moral dilemma.

replies(2): >>43586341 #>>43586943 #
78. ziddoap ◴[] No.43586341{9}[source]
Unraveling it by creating your own?

Maybe we can have a strawman party after.

replies(1): >>43586398 #
79. aaronbrethorst ◴[] No.43586368{7}[source]
lol, are you seriously taking JD Vance and puppy-killer Kristi Noem[1] at their word when they claim he's part of MS-13? Good lord, dude.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-trump-accidentally-...

[1] why is this relevant? Because anyone who shoots a puppy that they considered untrainable and then brags about it in their own book is a stone-cold sociopath.

80. ziddoap ◴[] No.43586478{11}[source]
Right into the ad hominem, fantastic debate tactic. Very dialectic of you.

The irony of saying "maybe you'll figure out how to have a real debate." after a string of personal attacks is *chef's kiss*.

>yet you complain when you get a meta level comment about your behavior.

I'm not complaining. And you're not giving me a "meta level comment about my behavior". You're just attempting to insult me.

81. throwaway389234 ◴[] No.43586608{5}[source]
Sure, that is what I said as an argument. Free speech being a right means there is no merit to it being a consequence.

Being in a car crash might be the consequence of driving a car. But if someone drives at high speed in the wrong lane and then crashes into you it is a consequence of them not respecting traffic laws and not of you just being in a car. That is why we have traffic laws, so you are able to be in a car without someone crashing into you.

You could never be in a car, and you could also never speak. But then you wouldn't need free speech. Free speech exist so you can speak. In the US without consequences from the government. If you then speak the consequences of that speech aren't a consequence of you speaking but of the government not respecting free speech. Because to not have consequences you would have to not speak and then you wouldn't have free speech.

Someone getting deported by the democrats once they get into power would now be a predictable consequence. They then equally can't say "Sure, we were assholes to the other 50% of the population, but your response is worse". So then you have no free speech.

82. sjsdaiuasgdia ◴[] No.43586708{5}[source]
He's not illegal, he had protected status.

What precisely changed between the granting of that protected status and his arrest that warranted the change of status?

83. cultofmetatron ◴[] No.43586736{3}[source]
> "Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire livelihood you're trivializing.

yes, the left doing that was pretty bad and I have gotten into many arguments over my left leaning friends over it. But it was largely private companies capitulating to pressure. To compare that to people being abducted and incarcerated by the government without trial or even an actual law being broken is worse.

You do understand why thats worse right?

84. wat10000 ◴[] No.43586841{7}[source]
OK, it's bad behavior. Now what? That means nothing.
replies(2): >>43587100 #>>43588843 #
85. 8note ◴[] No.43586849{7}[source]
i think that puts you in case A, harassing people for their speech, in this case, the "polarizing rhetoric" is the speech to be protected
86. anigbrowl ◴[] No.43586862{3}[source]
The problem with such reflexive absolutism, as I've pointed out many times, is that you end up advocating for the speech rights of people who are advocating for genocide. I shouldn't need to point out that killing people also terminates their speech rights and that advocacy of genocide is thus an attack on free speech.

You do not have to defend the free speech rights of people who are themselves attacking free speech (and free life). In fact, it is foolish to do so.

replies(3): >>43587152 #>>43589238 #>>43589835 #
87. 8note ◴[] No.43586879{5}[source]
Generally i think harvey weinstein should be unemployable in any position of power. if people hear about what he's done and still want to hire him, sure, they can go for it, but they'd probably appreciate knowing about him before doing that.
88. anigbrowl ◴[] No.43586943{9}[source]
You're just abstracting it and trying to draw concrete conclusions form abstract cases. Of course it depends on what someone says; to ignore this is asinine.
89. anigbrowl ◴[] No.43587022{6}[source]
What sorts of trouble and benign speech are you talking about?
90. wat10000 ◴[] No.43587032{7}[source]
The historical answer is because Congress wanted to be sure that employers could fire Communists for being Communists.

Of course, that's not my view. I think political affiliation should probably be protected, but it needs to be very narrow. You shouldn't be able to be fired for being a Republican. But if you post "Gay people should be executed," you shouldn't be able to hide behind "I'm a Republican, that's a political view!" any more than you should be able to hide behind "I'm a Christian, that's a religious view!"

replies(1): >>43589226 #
91. wat10000 ◴[] No.43587037{7}[source]
I don't understand where you think I've missed that distinction.
92. noworriesnate ◴[] No.43587080{4}[source]
The thing is, right wingers are very likely to protest over losing jobs. In Covid times, what made the right finally start actually marching in the streets was losing their jobs. They don’t protest over most things, but threaten their livelihood and yeah they’ll come for you.
replies(1): >>43589051 #
93. anigbrowl ◴[] No.43587099{3}[source]
The unfortunate truth is that, also, one is a consequence of the other.

This is just the 'you made me do it' defense argued by every abuser ever. Someone is behaving as an ass, they get told 'you're an ass, stop that' and then they escalate and say 'you made me do this'. It happens in families, it happens in schoolyards, it happens on streets, it happens in business, it happens in dictatorships. Just yesterday, the president of South Korea was formally removed from office after trying to stage a military coup and this was his whole defense.

94. freedomben ◴[] No.43587100{8}[source]
Should we encourage bad behavior? I tend to think not. Agreeing it is bad behavior is a critical step! Now we can start discouraging it
95. noworriesnate ◴[] No.43587116{6}[source]
This is a good question that would require a long debate to answer, but the answer obviously is neither of these two extremes:

- Every entity except the US govt is allowed to enforce consequences for speech

- there should never ever be any consequences for any speech ever

replies(2): >>43587808 #>>43589209 #
96. cess11 ◴[] No.43587194{5}[source]
It's borderline insane to call Newsweek "left leaning".

'His attorneys claimed, and ICE later confirmed, that the only verification came from a form filled out by the Prince George County Police Department, which based his membership on the fact that "he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique" – a group based out of Long Island, New York.'

The state has confirmed to the press that it doesn't have any evidence of the claims you're making.

MS-13 is less evil than the Biden and current Trump administrations, who are guilty of genocide. I think you're part of an attempt to distract from that and other crimes, as well as the ongoing turmoil in the financial system.

97. umbra07 ◴[] No.43587200{7}[source]
who did that happen to?
replies(2): >>43587393 #>>43587415 #
98. anigbrowl ◴[] No.43587362{5}[source]
I bet you're thinking you're really clever with that context switch. I was actually talking about nazis, because posts above were complaining about left-wing cancel culture getting people fired from their jobs which is the sort of consequence that happened to quite a few extremely online nazis over the last decade.

Who taught you to argue like this? They didn't do you any favors.

99. cduzz ◴[] No.43587393{8}[source]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights
100. cduzz ◴[] No.43587415{8}[source]
Or did you mean

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/455751-engineer-claims...

?

101. kyralis ◴[] No.43587483{5}[source]
Advocating for the end of a state is not the same as advocating for the eradication of a people.

Someone can firmly believe that the existence of the state of Israel is a mistake that should be corrected while still also believing that the Jewish people have every right to their own existence and freedom of religion.

replies(1): >>43588168 #
102. Edman274 ◴[] No.43587488{4}[source]
If the argument is that it's not a big deal because it doesn't even work, then why collectively are we even bothering? Either it works and is something for reactionaries to fear and is effective social pressure, or it's a bunch of ineffective sound and fury that gives cover to your right wing aunt to tell stories about how "someone she knows" got fired for telling a joke. If it works, then let's own it completely, with all its flaws. If it doesn't work, then why bother at all? If it doesn't even work, then why try to defend the practice? Do we want it to work? Do we want it to be an effective form of social control?
103. kurikuri ◴[] No.43587542[source]
This false equivalency, if you honestly believe it, is shallow at best.

The ‘left’ has identified speech that is likely used to belittle or negate someone else’s existence and will appropriately label it as hate speech. Any structural changes to make these words frowned upon have taken years to get into place; people were allowed to adjust (and the length of time to do so is ridiculous in its own right), and what little change has happened did so in a way where the people who must change are barely inconvenienced. There have been few legal repercussions for the use of hate speech by anyone with a modicum of power. Sure, you could identify a few, but there are a ludicrous number of flagrant violations of any such laws (which are few) which go unpunished. The ‘left’ here being any sane member of society which has publicly pointed out that certain words are singularly incendiary.

Meanwhile, the grifters of this ‘right’ have conned the honest conservatives into believing that DEI is a term of hatred against conservatives. The ‘right’ has identified that they wish to say whatever without punishment and are structurally creating a cost for using inclusive language in any official capacity. The grifting part of the ‘right’ also doesn’t mind breaking any semblance of stability for everyone else. The ‘right’ here being the near-narcissistic people who have happened upon positions of privilege and believe that they are superior, have earned it, and that only those similar to themselves should ever attain such a position in the future.

But no, you have reduced your observation to ‘two sides are banning words.’

104. themaninthedark ◴[] No.43587544[source]
>(The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.)

As one of the 'Free Speech folks', I'll bite.

I absolutely condemn the administration rounding up someone like Mahmoud Khalil if the only thing he did was speak a rallies. If you look up Uncivil Law's video on Mahmoud Khalil Deportation, he is saying the same thing.

Now, let's flip this around. Where are all my left wing friends willing to condemn the investigation into Trump for his Jan. 6th speech? Are you willing to join us now?

replies(1): >>43588242 #
105. albedoa ◴[] No.43587584{5}[source]
I suppose one way to prevent the left from getting you fired from your job is by making yourself unhirable in the first place with these embarrassing displays.
106. sterlind ◴[] No.43587632{3}[source]
> Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire livelihood you're trivializing.

People are being shipped to a Salvadorean mega-prison for having autism awareness tattoos. Law-abiding students who write peaceful op-eds are being disappeared to a facility in Louisiana. Yes it sucks to lose your job, but it sucks a lot more to be indefinitely detained without even seeing a judge.

> "Your side" isn't any better than the other's.

Your argument reminds me of high schoolers that argue the US was just as bad as the Nazis for operating Japanese internment camps. Yes, both were wrong, but one was much, much worse.

107. slg ◴[] No.43587808{7}[source]
It is funny to see this type of comment downthread of a criticism of bothsidesism. You set up a spectrum in which one "extreme" is the status quo of American culture going back generations and the other "extreme" is a seemingly impossible to achieve idea for which I have never seen a single reasonable person advocate. One of those is a lot more extreme than the other. The only reason we are even having this conversation in this thread is because the Trump administration is trying to be more extreme than your first "extreme" by having the US government inflict consequences for speech.
108. yyyk ◴[] No.43588168{6}[source]
If someone argued against existence of Ukraine, we'd normally understand their position as hostile to Ukrainians, and definitely one that ignores everything they want or deserve. This isn't different, except it also ignores the historical context to an absurd degree, not just the current context
109. vkou ◴[] No.43588242{3}[source]
The speech isn't why he would go to prison in a just world (that would be Georgia, the fake electors, and the toilet paper documents), and the impeachment that was a consequence of the speech is always a purely political trial. Someone can be impeached for any reason and no reason whatsoever, that is unfortunately how the system is designed. Two kinds of justice, with a few batshit SCOTUS rulings that make a criminal president unprosecutable as long as 34 senators are willing to go to bat for him.

It's not his speech that gave him trouble with the DOJ (before he dismissed all charges against himself), it's all the other parts of his conspiracy to steal the election.

Notice how none of the talking heads on TV were in legal trouble over their speech on the matter.

Every one of the cases against him had a bit more to it than 'well he said some bad words', the same way that a conman doesn't go to prison just for saying some bad words, or the same way that a war criminal gets a noose, despite simply saying words - giving orders.

replies(1): >>43589896 #
110. mancerayder ◴[] No.43588263{6}[source]
Are you arguing with me or the person I am replying to?

I object to people casually paraphrasing, you have a right to free speech but not consequences of that speech. "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences" Aside from sounding vaguely like a threat, it's a paradoxical attack on freedom of speech. Here's my point again:

Freedom of speech means a lot of things. One of them is the American-centric perspective of "1st Amendment" + Supreme Court precedent, which is that the government should not be involved in unduly prohibiting speech, and we define a bunch of speech as protected. For example, we exclude imminent threat, which in the U.S. is not protected - I can't go up in a speech and rile people up to go attack another race tomorrow. But I can rail against a race (which in most of Europe would be prohibited speech as it's Incitement)).

Now that I've established it means a few things, let's talk about 'consequences.'. The 1st Amendment protects you from government prosecution for protected speech. It doesn't protect you from getting fired, people following you around with placards because of your speech, Instagram banning you, your ISP blocking you, your bank canceling your accounts, etc.

Yet these are the (non-1st-Amendment-centric) attacks on Freedom of Speech. You can argue they're good, they're not good, whatever.

Summary of my argument: freedom of speech CAN mean freedom from SOME consequences.

Consequences are the WHOLE point. In the U.S. we had McCarthyism, where if you were vaguely left-wing you would lose your job, you would lose your life. In the USSR if you didn't follow party lines you'd lose your job, or be reassigned a shitty job. These are Consequences.

In the Reign of the last decade of a new racialized political activism, some people lost jobs for reasons that were dubious, because they had unpopular views. The Left did it.

Today, the Right is doing it, and they're taking in an extra step.

When does it stop? Ahh, good question! It stops when we begin respecting Freedom of Speech as a principle and not a recycled way to attack our enemies.

Again, apologies for both-sides-ism, as someone who believes in civil liberties, I am a both-sides-ist.

replies(1): >>43588757 #
111. paulryanrogers ◴[] No.43588320{6}[source]
> if any party can do something you are afraid of, focus on the enabling factors that allows them to do that

Perhaps you can enlighten me what these enabling factors are? Because I thought vigorous debate, a free press, and a balance of power between branches of government were the controls; not what enables problematic politics.

Yet it would appear criticism is increasingly cause for expulsion, journalism seen as a justification for lawfare, and that 2.5 of the 3 branches have been captured by an irrational fear and a cult-like trust in a second rate celebrity.

> we can bridge consensus on what everyone is afraid the other party might leverage

Can we? Within my circle those leaning right are too wedded to their tribe affiliation to see the hypocrisy and inconsistencies in their conclusions. If they are unwilling to agree on a consistent set of rules for all then there won't be consensus.

replies(1): >>43588534 #
112. yieldcrv ◴[] No.43588534{7}[source]
> Perhaps you can enlighten me what these enabling factors are?

Sure, yeah

So both parties accept campaign donations and quid pro quo for the support of Political Action Committees that support them.

Both parties are beneficiaries of a toothless Federal Election Committee enabling non-compliance with the stated regulations, with any remaining accountability existing upon shaky legal ground, completely nullified when in front of a court like with Citizens United. there might be enough consensus for a constitutional amendment though.

Both parties trade securities with material non public information that they can influence, representatives and constituents of any affiliation are not pleased with this. But it is a prisoner's dilemma in the legislative process, there might be enough consensus for a constitutional amendment though.

Presidents of both parties have leveraged the pardon power preemptively and at their discretion, unsettling constituents and representatives on all sides. Revealing a discomfort that is enabled by an archaic aspect of the constitution. Go for it, prioritize a campaign to amend that.

You see the common theme here is that you have to prioritize these causes, over simply being a powerless opposition party going to marches for things that will never gain consensus or that the current power in power will never be held accountable for.

The 17th amendment for directly electing our senators was done in a vacuum. And this likely broke many pillars of our constitution by not also addressing what the senators do, and how that chamber interfaces with the rest of the country. Being appointed likely wasn't better, just more cohesive with the rest of this constitution. Right now we see the folly and redundancy of the Presidential nomination and Senate confirmation process to federal agencies and other position. Should probably amend that too.

replies(1): >>43589147 #
113. singleshot_ ◴[] No.43588669{3}[source]
If you get fired for saying something stupid, you might want to consider the notion that you deserve not to have a job. They’re called consequences, and if you don’t like them, remaining silent is free.

Put otherwise, it’s very possible that your livelihood is trivial.

replies(1): >>43588768 #
114. fabbari ◴[] No.43588712{7}[source]
Not the op, but no - I don't see anything wrong with the scenario: the employer is making the call, and if they find the speech of the employee doesn't fit with their worldview they have all the rights to fire them.

Practical example: the employer is an LGBTQ+ friendly establishment, the employee is on social media saying that LGBTQ+ people are all deviants and will all burn in hell for their sins. I think the employer should have the freedom to fire the person, right?

Forcing the employer to keep the employee is the equivalent of compelled speech.

Edit: fixed - no joke - pronouns

115. slg ◴[] No.43588757{7}[source]
>Are you arguing with me or the person I am replying to?

The way some people use the internet truly puzzle me. A username is on each comment. I made a comment, you replied, and I replied back. I wasn't arguing with myself. You took the time to reiterate your philosophy in more depth without even bothering to first take the literal second to check the usernames to clear up your confusion or pausing for a moment to actually engage with anything actually said in my last comment? I wasn't asking you for more details on your philosophy, I was asking you direct and specific questions on how this philosophy meshes with the complexities of the real world. I frankly don't know how to respond beyond just referring you back to the questions in my previous comment.

replies(1): >>43589997 #
116. strken ◴[] No.43588768{4}[source]
This is just asinine. Consider the same argument flipped around:

"If you get deported for saying something stupid, you may want to consider the notion that you do not deserve to live in the US. They’re called consequences, and if you don’t like them, remaining silent is free."

Both arguments are ridiculous because they present no evidence as to whether someone deserves a job or a visa stay.

replies(2): >>43588996 #>>43589017 #
117. stale2002 ◴[] No.43588843{8}[source]
Harassment can be punished by the law. So that is the "now what".

No, freedom of speech doesn't mean that you can engage in serious harassment of people, their workplace, or their children or family.

replies(1): >>43589244 #
118. stale2002 ◴[] No.43588883{4}[source]
> Free speech in the US is about not having consequences for what you are saying.

If a mob harasses you, your friends, you family, your workplace and your children with mass amounts of harassment and death threats, I would say that the target of the harassment has had their rights infringed on even though it wasn't literally the government.

No, you cannot have a mob send mass death threats to people, stalk them, and harass them because you didn't like a tweet that they made a decade ago.

The person who called it "cancel culture" chose the wrong word.

They should have called it "death threat culture" or "illegal mob harassment culture", as that would really drive the point home about what the issue is.

But, of course, you don't care about that or what happens to people's families when they are targeted. Instead, the only thing people care about is "Oh, but what was in that tweet that they made 10 years ago? I need to figure out if their family deserved it!" ("it" being the death threats and harassment, of course)

119. ◴[] No.43588996{5}[source]
120. singleshot_ ◴[] No.43589017{5}[source]
Consequences as “asinine”? Let’s agree to disagree.
replies(1): >>43589266 #
121. JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.43589051{5}[source]
> right wingers are very likely to protest over losing jobs

Everybody protests over losing jobs. Currently, the MAGA crowd is busily putting itself out of work, so this really only comes down to taking action in the cities.

122. iugtmkbdfil834 ◴[] No.43589090{7}[source]
Hmm. Allow me to offer a counter perspective. You are arguing for a complete dismissal of someone's point of view, because you perceive the presented argument to be not an appropriate comparison. However, your response is that the conversation should be shut down and not address the points given. I do not think anyone in this thread is arguing it is not happening. Some of us are actually saying that there is a quite a slippery that we were taken down on. If it helps, it did not start in 2018 ( although some tactics did escalate in that period ).

And, I might add, in US, your work is not just your work. It is your healthcare, your network, your family's wellbeing. If you do not see why some of us consider it an issue, you, if you allow this blatant repetition of your phrase for a specific effect, are blind.

123. iugtmkbdfil834 ◴[] No.43589100{4}[source]
Good grief man, deplatforming, chilling speech and all that is how we got into this mess to begin with. Have you learned nothing from the past 10 years?

edit: Holy mackarel, I am this close to accepting the argument that the people on 'the left' need to be treated that exact way you described just so that they can understand why 'the right' feel aggrevied. I simply cannot accept Soviet Union style 'do not employ this man' brand. I feel dirty just thinking about it as an option.

124. throw10920 ◴[] No.43589132{6}[source]
No, I don't think I will. I enjoy exposing lies like "while the present behavior of the illiberal right is abductions and overseas slave camps" by pointing out that 2 out of 346 million is simply not that at all. I also enjoy pointing out lies like this:

> whatbaoutisms, pedantry, and goalpost moving

All three of these things are false. You know very well that 2 instances out of 346 million is none of those things. I don't know what to call this other than malice, because it's extremely clear to anyone with basic reading skills that the two data points provided do in no way support the claim "the present behavior of the illiberal right is abductions and overseas slave camps".

125. paulryanrogers ◴[] No.43589147{8}[source]
All good ideas. Let's do them too. Instead of dismissing the differences between the choices we have today as inconsequential.
replies(1): >>43589381 #
126. bluGill ◴[] No.43589209{7}[source]
Fire in a crowded theator is the type of speech often used as an example serious terrorism plans should be stopped before they turn into acts.

i don't know how you enforce the above though.

replies(1): >>43590127 #
127. Ray20 ◴[] No.43589226{8}[source]
But if it is political/religious view? I don't quite understand how we can draw a line here. In general, belonging to a religion or political movement literally means that the subject has a set of certain explicitly stated views.
128. bluGill ◴[] No.43589229{8}[source]
It is everyone who kept on the path instead of saying 'I don't care what you say I'll defend your right to say it'. If you can't allow someone else to say things you don't like you are at fault - it doesn't matter how good hou think you are.
replies(1): >>43590294 #
129. bluGill ◴[] No.43589238{4}[source]
If you don't feel bad about it you are not a defender of free speech. Eventially a line must be drawn and you have to not allow things. However it should make you uncomfortable no matter how bad thone things are.
130. wat10000 ◴[] No.43589244{9}[source]
The scenario being discussed is employers looking at employees’ public statements, or third parties telling employers about those public statements. I don’t think that’s anything close to harassment.
replies(1): >>43589415 #
131. strken ◴[] No.43589266{6}[source]
No, I'm not going to disagree with your empty statement; there's nothing there to even take a stance on. The problem with your original position is that there are real differences between A) getting deported for saying there are too many civilian casualties in Gaza, B) materially supporting Hamas, C) getting fired because you have a secret twitter account where you're overtly racist, and D) refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding then getting sued and becoming a media spectacle.

Your argument can be used to support consequences for every single one of these scenarios because it's just "maybe when a bad thing happens it was deserved". Sure, yeah, sometimes people deserve things and sometimes they don't, but pointing this out is a useless addition to a conversation.

replies(2): >>43589315 #>>43589331 #
132. ◴[] No.43589315{7}[source]
133. ◴[] No.43589331{7}[source]
134. yieldcrv ◴[] No.43589381{9}[source]
I wasn't dismissing them, you chose to read that

given that I’m surrounded by partisans and you are more familiar with being one, how would you reword my point

the commonality I see is that the partisan wants to only talk about things that potentially add power to their party and are offended by talk that doesn’t suggest an interest in doing that

to me that seems like its not working and is unproductive, but to you, how would you cut through that filter towards doing something that is productive and would affect both parties

135. stale2002 ◴[] No.43589415{10}[source]
No actually. It is never just that.

The question was about "to get a social media frenzy going".

And this is never just an employer randomly looking at a tweet, for which they are almost never going to do anything about it. Most employers don't care.

Instead, the much more likely scenario is mass points of harassment, stalking, and death threats targeted at people's friends and family, when such a "social media frenzy" happens.

You cannot ignore the actual mostly likely result of your advocacy. And when you just say that this is all "free speech" you are doing disservice to the massive amount of illegal harassment that these internet mobs cause.

You do not control the mob, yet you are response for its harm anyway if you try to start one.

136. ThrowawayR2 ◴[] No.43589784{8}[source]
Because it actually is, in no small part, the illiberal left's fault for going all out to emphasize identity instead of unity, dividing and polarizing the U.S. population.

The illiberal left must be held accountable for their role in the Democratic defeats of 2024, expelled and publicly repudiated, and then the Democratic Party can work on rebuilding trust with voters.

137. ◴[] No.43589835{4}[source]
138. themaninthedark ◴[] No.43589896{4}[source]
Wrong.

Yesterday the House January 6 Committee unanimously voted to recommend that former President Donald Trump be criminally prosecuted, for charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstructing an act of Congress, and, the most serious, insurrection. A congressional criminal referral of a former president is unprecedented, and if Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Department of Justice decide to prosecute Trump, they will have to address a formidable defense: that Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, no matter how irresponsible or how full of lies about a “stolen” 2020 election, was, after all, a political speech and thus protected by the First Amendment.

Prominent legal scholars—and one lower-court judge—have rejected that argument, countering that Trump’s speech, in which he urged his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” was sufficiently inflammatory to permit criminal prosecution.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/january-6-...

When Congress' January 6 select committee asked the Justice Department to prosecute Trump in connection to the Capitol riot

>https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-january-6-criminal-ind...

Here is some other ink that has been spilled on the topic as well:

>Trump impeached for 'inciting' US Capitol riot https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55656385

>Trump ‘lit that fire’ of Capitol insurrection, Jan 6 Committee report says https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-lit-that-fire-of...

>Trump incites mob in violent end to presidency | CNN Politics https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/06/politics/donald-trump-capitol...

So I will ask again, Do you condemn all those who called for Trumps prosecution for his Jan 6th speech?

I still call the charges and prosecution of Mahmoud Khalil as a first amendment violation, why will you not join me?

Or, do you believe that Trump incited the Jan. 6th riots? If so then the same fact pattern holds for Mahmoud Khalil.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/04/30/p...

139. mancerayder ◴[] No.43589997{8}[source]
Because it's not that great a question: How do you define protected speech when the same speech is used to punish someone else, and if it's an expression for example, that performs an action, how do we draw the line if it should be protected? That's what you asked. It's not a username issue. I didn't read it as a direct reply because I hadn't conceptualized that stopping speech is protected speech. Or is the Internet perplexing us again and I'm making no sense?

I re-iterated my point that freedom of speech is loosely defined and we have a problem with weaponizing protection of one side at the expense of the other. The Consequences argument. I maintain that consequences of speech are the issue. Let me phrase it like this: the general principle of respecting differing views, however repugnant, has fallen by the wayside. The ACLU of the 20th century has excellent arguments for why we should consider respecting repugnant views. You're throwing in a curve ball of defining speech as also potentially blocking or causing 'consequences', but that's missing the bigger picture.

You don't agree, but does that better address the problem you raised?

140. int_19h ◴[] No.43590127{8}[source]
"Fire in a crowded theater" was originally a strawman introduced by the Supreme Court to justify their ruling in Schenck v. United States. To remind, Schenck was a Socialist Party member who was distributing flyers encouraging resistance to the draft during WW1, and was convicted for the same under the Espionage Act of 1917.

SCOTUS affirmed his conviction, saying that "the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils".

Here's the flyer itself, in case you want to read those very dangerous words for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States#/medi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States#/medi...

So, all in all, a good reminder that not only the slippery slope very real, but sometimes it's there from the get go.

141. paulryanrogers ◴[] No.43590294{9}[source]
So because a vocal minority 'cancelled' speech in private spheres for a few years, it's the fault of (all?) progressives that the right wildly overreacted and installed facism and government enforced censorship?

By this logic if one member of my family makes you feel unwelcome then its my own fault that you got the cops to beat me up?