The Real Threat to Free Speech Is Coming From the Right
https://www.newsweek.com/real-threat-free-speech-coming-right-opinion-1815286Open linkView original on lemmy.world787
Comments160https://www.newsweek.com/real-threat-free-speech-coming-right-opinion-1815286Open linkView original on lemmy.world
What?! The people who ban books are a threat to free speech?
"I don't think freedom is simply doing what you want. I believe freedom is simply being able to love without fear"
That always stick with me and makes me wonder what heavy conservatives think of that line
See, the thing is that they don't see themselves as living in fear. In their minds, they're fighting a righteous battle in the name of good and decency.
They're not scared, they're just looking for a fight anywhere and everywhere.
I always thought of them as terrified of gays 😄.
Source?
From the game Pyre. https://steamcommunity.com/app/462770/discussions/0/1471966894873010791/
No fucking shit
I'm glad this was in politics. Because it's certainly not news
Wow. The updoinks.. Such quality discourse and amazing insight!
How is this entire sub not considered a giant circle tug?
You're right that it wasn't a very high quality post, but with this topic, what else is there to say? Conservatives have been pretending they're free speech warriors while at the same time very publicly banning books. It's so obvious that there isn't really anything to discuss.
Because the post articulated what the majority of us already knew. That as always has been, the repression in this country comes from the conservatives. The very definition of a liberal philosophy would be against a threat to free speech. When conservatives complain their rights are being trampled on, it's normally their "right" to harm some group or person that they do not like. A liberal wouldn't say you aren't allowed to have a negative view of such person, but may consider it flawed, but wouldn't say you have a right to harm that person because you don't like them. Conservatives want to control what you can say, think, and do, to only what fits in a world that makes them comfortable, and feel better about themselves.
Please note that it is not only a US-specific issue. Right has especially in its extreme lengths always been somewhat oppressive and as the right has become more right (again) (also read as in more fascist) in recent years oppressive policies they support are getting more and more oppressive.
Ribbit
Yeah. It's only the conservatives doing it.
https://crosscut.com/news/2022/01/kill-mockingbird-hot-seat-wa-school-district
How about we let parents choose the schools and literature that their children read. No no no. Can't do that. That would be fascist!
I took a look at the “conservatives banning books” link and it says thousands of books have been banned and/or removed from libraries.
I took a look at your link, and it describes the process by which one book was removed from the required reading list, but was still allowed to be used in class.
It makes me think of the “we are not the same” meme.
Removing a book from the curriculum and removing it from the school (and possibly public libraries) entirely are very, very different. Republicans are doing the latter.
Yes, let's also let parents decide what medicine they get instead of doctors. And decide when their kids should be able to drive, not the government.
I mean why let educated professionals get in the way?
As a matter of fact, yes. As a parent, I have the responsibility to choose what medicines to allow my children to receive.
Yep. If my 17 year old is too irresponsible to drive, I can choose to not let him.
Parents have the right to withhold anything they deem to be harmful to their children.
So if you decide you don't want a medicine for your child because you think it causes cancer, even if it doesn't, then you should be allowed to prevent him from taking it? Even if it kills him? No. No, that is a horrible idea.
And you think that you should control when your kid should drive too. Great, now irresponsible parents can ask 12 year olds to drive to the store for them? Endangering everyone around them? Another horrible idea.
Yes you can withhold things. But you don't have absolute say. They are a person. If your choices would cause them harm, such as an improper education or not getting needed medication, then it's the governments job to step in and protect that child.
"Improper education". There is the crux of it. Your definition of improper may not be the same as mine. You think that you should be able to force other people's children to be taught what you want them to be taught, according to your political and/or moral standards, through the force of government.
I want parents to be able to decide for their own children how they are taught. I think parents of a child know better how to raise that child than a government bureaucrat.
Tell me again how I'm the Nazi.
Yeah cool, you decide what your property gets to do since you're responsible for them. Government, nor your doctor shall stop you from telling your creation what is right or wrong, if you eat paint for breakfast because eating plants and animals is evil/poison, thats your right as a free man on the land. Best to start early too, so they dont have the faculties to question it later on.
It's not like there are bad actors and tens of thousands of ai gemerated fake news to sway popular opinion with branding and politics. And its totally a boon for a society when we can isolate ourselves in thought bubbles and share as few values as united people as possible. Really helps us maintain our financial security and opportunities for quality of life, standards for education and licensing for professionals responsible for life altering decisions. Its not like devaluing those professional opinions im mass will lead to bad things; what do they evem know, they didnt even study at Facebook UNIV?
The idea and value of freedom is great, but there are thresholds that cross into ignorant arrogance that causes individual and systemic harm. I know gov can't solve this, but i fully believe it has a role to play in helping set standards that reduce harm, even for your kids.
Found the Trump supporter
C'mon, might just be gullible and uneducated.
So, the ones Trump said would vote for him? He loves the uneducated and gullible!
Yes. Block the guy that doesn't agree with me. Seems reasonable.
Hey look everyone, this guy is cool
Thank God you're here! I was starting to quote Marx and feelyself turning trans, but you woke me up!
Wait, no, come back! You dropped your gender!!
I don't understand. You're saying the conclusion is so obvious that the article is worthless and redundant?
I'm saying that. But also, it doesn't hurt to keep talking about it for those who haven't yet realized what's going on.
What they want is freedom to control reality. What Republicans say, every day is not real, they don't live in reality. What they want is not free speech, they have that more than ever. What they want is to dictate reality to the rest of us.
All conservative are bad, acab as it were.
I think what they want is as many big-money donors as they can get, for which they require as many reliable Republican votes as they can get, for which they require Trump, for which they are required to give prima facia credence to whatever misinformation Trump is pushing on any given day.
It didn't always used to be like this, but that was a long time ago.
Trump didn't create his voter base -- he stole it, from Rush Limbaugh, Bill Reilly, Glen Beck, Alex Jones, and all those other millionaires who spent decades feeding working-class conservatives daily servings hate for huge profit.
And in all of history, who has been the conservative pundits' all-time number-one biggest and best favorite target for this hate? It has to be Barack Obama. (Our first Black president. Coincidence?)
Trump didn't create his voter base, but he has owned it outright for going on a decade now, starting way back with his entirely bogus claims against President Obama's citizenship. It didn't matter that the claims were bogus -- all that mattered is that they were against Obama, in an outright demeaning (and overtly racist) way. Dittoheads and O'Reilly fans ate that shit up.
Now here we are, eight or nine years later, and Trump still owns it. Only now, instead of feeding that voter base, and growing it with strongman posturing and punitive policy, he's using it exclusively to try to save his own skin. And at this point, the only way Trump saves himself is in an alternate reality, with alternate facts.
Now Trump lies to save himself, and half of congress has to play along or risk losing their own reelections. Thanks Obama.
Always has been. They're just reaching as far as they can now.
Ironically from the “freedom caucus”
They're desperate since they're fading. Their party or ideology isn't attractive. Younger people have no interest and the older people are dying odf
I really hope so
You don't have to hope for that, it's happening. Hope is reserved for it happening before they take away enough voting rights or even legislative rights so that when the takeover is complete, the government that is left over isn't impotent
There's a reason they're fighting harder than ever to block voting.
I guess I say that I hope for it in case we are wrong and that they really do have a lot of sway over young adults.
I've found a pretty effective argument when dealing with right wingers at this point. I simply say that only one side is banning books and it's theirs, and I stick only to that. It's indefensible. They can try to twist it, say it's just protecting kids, and I will continue to say "Only the republicans are banning books". It's the end of discussion. Its shoving in their face that there is a clear line in the sand that republicans have crossed, and there is nothing they can say that would change that.
Fucking guns kill a lot more kids than books .
But guns don't turn kids GAY, checkmate pew pew pew
Bbbbut it's in the constitution
If the constitution said we had to sacrifice children to make God happy, they'd defend it till the end of time
Yep. When's the last time you saw a drag queen beat a kid to death with a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird?
No we only need to protect them from liberal ideas! You see, nithing us more American than dying to a good honest made in the US bullet from a proud American gun, during second term at elementary school. But imagine if those kids would have read Marlon Bundo, a book about a male bunny that likes another male bunny as more than just friends, and everyone around being supportive?! That shit is dangerous!
Ooof, I’m stealing this. This is great. Bravo.
So you can't think of any reason to ban books? Do you have any examples of a book that was banned recently by conservatives that clearly should not have been banned? What do you think about the following being in school libraries: page from Gender Queer (NSFW)?
Right wing hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug. At the end of the day it's just a form of entitlement.
Jean-Paul Sartre
As a non native speaker, I do not get the meaning of this post? And a lot of others. The word entitlement seems to have changed it's meaning. What does it mean today?
according to wiktionary:
This is the definition I am using:
The belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.
They'll ban books and then whine that they're being oppressed when people point out that they're scared of ideas.
Pretty much
Are the Antifa in the room as we speak?
Always have been. The term has been already tainted with bigotry and violence.
Something, something, fuck their feelings?
Duh.
Every conservative accusation is a confession.
Free speech for me but not for thee!
Always has been
In the U.S., yes, at this moment the major threats to free speech are coming from the so-called "right". Forbidding teaching black history, LGBT issues, etc. A few years ago, lest we forget, it was Obama cracking down on the OWS protests and trying to prosecute Julian Assange and Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Before that it was the GOP again pushing the PATRIOT Act and trying to ban Grand Theft Auto. They did it for a long time with the Red Scare. That of course, basically kicked off in response to Stalin, who was doing his own purges of opponents and censorship. Pre-war, it was Hitler, Mussolini and Franco worst of all, but was happening in the U.S. too. That all goes back even further to the Comstock laws, the Alien and Sedition Acts, you name it. There isn't some magical quality about the directions "left" and "right" by which bad people in power in government under that label don't want to silence their opponents. There is a tendency for what we call "the right" - this kind of more-or-less fascist, religious based, emotionally charged, etc. set of ideologies - to respond more eagerly to calls to silence or brutalize opponents, because they are by and large a good bit dumber at the end of the day.
Take note that this is an engaging title. I'd like to see more political science discussion in this community. These opinion pieces are part not a good part of the internet. They're made for sharing and being consumed on social media.
One does not need to invoke or debate political theory to understand the end game of Conservatives and Republicans. It's part of their ethos, and it's well defined.
This just in: the sky is blue and grass is green.
I hear water is wet, too!
We have confirmation of bears shitting in the woods.
That was the pope.
How about polar bears in the liquor tent?
And the air is hot. Everywhere! That's on them too
I heard clouds are white or grey too!
Typical bothsideism in the comments of that site as per usual. Would love to see those bothsiders on an article stating the opposite of this one.
I'm a massive bothsider, I tolerate (and don't tolerate, depends really) either, both, neither, however you wanna say it...
Why exactly would I argue the right hasn't adopted the cancel culture playbook and cranked it to 11? That is a VERY "both sides" statement... This is arguably a "both sides" article, a "both sides" point.
If anything, id point out that all the pissing and moaning is silly, because the shit the right is doing is coming straight out of the lefts playbook. The fact that they're feeding you your own shit sandwich doesn't equate to them not serving shit for lunch... It's still shit...
Moderate/centrist == the other team...
The hell they are. Where are the "leftists" banning books? Banning speech? Maybe for racial slurs, but what are some other examples? Where are they making it illegal for people to get healthcare?
No.
What liberals are trying get rid of are people being assholes, being openly racist, disallowing a person's actual right to choose something for themselves that affects no one else, disallowing children knowledge, restricting what teachers are allowed to teach.
There is no both sides here. Period. End of story.
"maybe for racial slurs"
Awfully fine line you didn't cross there.
They didn't adopt the playbook, they wrote it.
Go comment on a subreddit not approved by a liberal subreddit and see how fast you get bot banned by them. The left is just as keen to censure and shutdown free speech and thought.
No. Full stop. What they are keen on is stopping hate speech.
always. every time. this is not surprising to anyone . people who act like this is untrue, or surprising, make me sick to my stomach.
The Right Wing strategy is to simply claim you are being censored or treated unfairly so that people who don't know what you're doing give you a little more leg room.
Take that leg room and use it to advance your most extreme positions, go back to claiming you're being treated unfairly if anyone calls you on it.
The final step is that you must accuse anyone actually being censored or treated unfairly off pulling this bullshit.
The Right were never free speech advocates, and if you still think they were, try using the word "cisgender" and the word "retard" on Twitter, and tell me which one gets you banned first.
Always has been.
If you believe your partisan opponents are the only enemies of freedom, then you're already in chains.
Freedom and free speech are not the same thing.
Also, water is wet.
And before someone says water isn't wet: cohesion
We been knew
Duh
What, no way, that's craaazy...
Free speech might only be able to achieve online, and make sure you remain ANONYMOUS
That used to be true, but if you use a word that Corpos feel "damaging to their brand", you're kicked off before you can say "But I..."
Kind of like how when Elon Musk "Brought free speech back to twitter" he immediately banned anyone who made fin of him.
...but, but, but they are the party for patriots and small government! They always talk about freedom-this, and liberty-that.
oh shit this posted in politics. this may be biased
Posts like this show what a lame circlejerk lemmy is. It's much more aggressively tribal garbage than reddit was, which was already pretty lame. How lame of a person you must be to go on a forum and agree with a bunch of other losers about the same things endlessly? Go outside and talk with people who disagree with you. You might learn something.
And what did your post add?
🦗 🦗 🦗
I like hearing all sides of an argument. What say you?
The politics group is just left-wing talking points and circle jerking. They're just as nasty as a lot of religious fundamentalists.
Be warned.
how make everyone centrist tutorial 2023 updated fast
It's nice to see that /c/politics and it's denizens are just an exact clone of /r/politics and is still full of circlejerking
You mean saying the people that are championing the banning of books are a threat to free speech?
I mean, I disagree.
No they don't have a right to choose what their children are taught, and I'm sick of people acting like they do. You choosing not to teach your child crucial life skills or fundamental truths because you don't want to, because it's not what you believe, harms your child. It's child abuse and should be treated as such.
No, choosing how to raise your child, even if it deviates from the dominant positions, is a fundamental human right. Child abuse is an extreme situation and does not remotely apply to this.
Cold abuse directly applies to this. You can raise your child in a way that is abusive, and that protection from abuse is more important than your "fundamental human right".
I mean if I decide the way I raise my kid is by locking him in a box for 24 hours as my form of discipline, that would be my right? I mean that's how I chose to raise him. But according to you, that wouldn't have anything to do with child abuse...
Yes, child abuse does exist and to some extent the state has a say in how parents raise their children. But parents get to choose what ideologies, religions, and morals they teach their children, among other things. The state should have very little say other than extreme cases of abuse. Same way you don't tell a random man in Russia how to raise his child, you don't tell your neighbor how to raise his child. Just mind your own business and stop pretending to have the moral high ground.
So let parents fuck up their children and possibly destroy their lives all because "they're my children, I can do what I want", really? They're not toys you can do whatever you like with, it's a life.
I disagree with your claim that it's a right. And would you look at that? So does the UN.
I would agree that gaiting information from a child isn't abusive, but like many things it's not without nuance.
Generally I think it just comes down to under preparing them for life. It's not abusive, but intense cases of it could start approaching neglect. The Wikipedia page for child neglect does mention this:
Unless your child ends up struggling with it gender identity. Then your child is at risk of suicide, like many before then, because they have to hide who they are every day and feel hated.
People are so scared and ignorant about the topic of gender identity. You can't read a book and turn gay. What you can do is let your child know you accept and love them no matter what, and if they happen to be trans you should realize that they're still your child. Nothing changes. You're just telling your child that trans is bad and if you feel that way you're wrong.
Enlighten us, then?
What? No. The authoritarian right and left are all about free speech when out of power and all about clamping down on it when they are in power. Both are the same. Both are nasty and authoritarian.
Did anyone say they weren't?
Try to stay on topic.
No idea what you're talking about but still feel that need to speak, huh? I get it.
As a centrist, let me tell you the truth - a threat to free speech is coming from both far ends of political spectrum.
Would love to see these left wing examples of it
Deplatforming during covid is one.
Is the freedom of association counted under your definition of free speech?
If a private entity doesn't want to host your content they are exercising their right to choose who they associate with...
Yes, a private company can choose what content they allow. But to add to my argument, social media companies didn't ban that story on their own decision, it was after intelligence agencies acted towards them. (Sorry, English is my second language)
Not if they are brigaded into "exercising that right"
lol
Who was it that suppressed Hunter Biden story or asked for "antivaxxer" doctors to be shut down on FB/Twitter?
Sure, you will find some kind of excuses for the above, but the unbiased fact is that both sides engage in silencing of free speech according to their political agenda.
Who's literally burning books that were removed from schools?
Post got duplicated... Right wingers do. And who was deplatforming people during covid on social networks?
Deplatformed for what reason, exactly?
lmao
I know, it's ridiculous for people to simultaneously agree and disagree with things said on both sides of political spectrum. I should work on one party unanimity, my bad.
By the way... While you're laughing your ass of, Hunter Biden story (no matter what you think of it) wasn't supressed on all social media?
That must be why nobody's heard of it!
Yes, story broke out eventually, but it was silenced on social media when it broke because of political orders - a fact. I don't know why saying that automatically makes people wince in horror. Both sides of political spectrum engage in silencing free speech when needed.
You do realize that most people here are on some kind of social media?
You can keep saying that the story was silenced, but I've heard about it non-stop for years because the right has been pushing the story hard.
So... definitely not a fact. Your echo chamber is not reality.
Hahahaha, good one.
I know, right! You can't be a centrist if you adopt any right wing politics, that's just a disguised MAGA nutjob.
No, I completely agree. I'm center left and see a lot of this coming from the left too. I was surprised to see all the agreement that it's only from the 'right', it is totally both, without question.
More people should adopt deeper models of politics, like six or nine axis models because that's how you really get at the features that drive censorship and limiting free speech.
Completely agree. Thank you.