Hard-earned freedoms are wasted on societies who don't have memories of what it took to earn them. Freedom is a ratchet: slides easily and frictionlessly one way, and offers immense resistance in the other.
This is all so disheartening.
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This is all so disheartening.
There are billboards covering my local highway reminding me daily that I'm a racist antisemite because I don't support Israel's imperial occupation, political manipilation and wholesale genocide of Palestine civilians.
People in other cities who voice this same concern are getting kidnapped or become the subject of targeted harassment campaigns that include vans rolling around with the names and faces of dissenters hoping to inspire local stochastic terrorists to commit violence against them.
The federal government put out a memo attempting to ban government employees from using words such as "Black", "female", " marginalized ", "equality", "climate crisis", "sex", "victim" and more in their communications. [0]
Free speech is already dead, and is being held up in public like a puppet, brought out and paraded around when it serves the administration and then locked back in the basement when the day is over.
OP is wrong. But billboards that upset you aren’t evidence of restrictions on speech.
The billboards contribute to an overall campaign backed by billions of dollars to create a chilling effect. If you are unfamiliar with the chilling effect:
> The "chilling effect" means that people are being discouraged or intimidated from engaging in expression for fear of negative consequences, such as social disapproval, retaliation, or lawsuits.
This is a well-established phenomenon and a direct threat to freedom of speech in the US.
Very real threats of violence, disruption and social ostracization have been levied and sometimes carried out against conscious dissenters of the ongoing Palestinian genocide. If the ultimate effect of something is to chill free speech, then it is textbook restrictive.
Further reading:
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/chilling-effect-overv...
I’m not sure how anyone listening to the American discourse around Israel and Gaza can conclude there is a chilling effect around anything in the public space. (Note: not academia.)
More specifically, this argument —one side is trying to chill the other by speaking too much—could be used to justify censorship around anything.
Speech around Gaza is absolutely being suppressed. But billboards aren’t evidence of that.
You're just not being targeted, aren't exposed to it or aren't paying attention.
In my comment, I said, "People in other cities who voice this same concern are getting kidnapped or become the subject of targeted harassment campaigns that include vans rolling around with the names and faces of dissenters hoping to inspire local stochastic terrorists to commit violence against them."
CNN article on it: https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/12/business/harvard-doxxing-truc...
Excerpt:
"The “doxxing truck” appeared days after the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups, a coalition of Harvard student groups, earlier this week released a statement that held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” following the attacks by Hamas that have killed more than 1,200 Israelis and more than 25 American citizens. More than 1,400 in Gaza have also been killed since Israel started strikes on Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack.
Some students and their groups have since distanced themselves or withdrawn their endorsements from the statement amid an intense backlash inside and outside of Harvard."
Video evidence of these vans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2C7gw02WoY&t=142
If you watch the entire video, you will see people talk about the chilling effect they personally experience regarding publicly expressing their dissent against the genocide.
There is a chilling effect, it's not debatable, and it's not debatable that they are the result of well-financed disinformation campaigns seeking to protect the US-Israeli colonial empire. This is all open, well-documented information.
> More specifically, this argument —one side is trying to chill the other by speaking too much
No one made this argument. That is a straw man provided by you seemingly out of nowhere. The billboards aren't about "speaking too much", they're subtle propaganda campaigns. You have not even seen the billboards I'm talking about, have not asked me about them, you're just dismissing them out of bias before even understanding their content, purpose or who is paying to have them literally cover my local highway. They are actively creating a conflict narrative.
Called out academia as an exception.
> You have not even seen the billboards I'm talking about, have not asked me about them, you're just dismissing them out of bias
I’m dismissing them on the basis of being billboards.
> They are actively creating a conflict narrative
Yeah. That’s legitimate speech. To pretend there isn’t a debate about what to call what’s going on in Gaza is a bit insular and counterproductive.
Again: there is a chilling effect. Disagreeable billboards aren’t an example of that.
You are taking for granted how many of these damn billboards have cropped up recently and how prominent they are. Don't you make the connection to McCarthyism? We've seen all of these tactics before, and road signs have long been a prominent medium for controlling public opinion.