Workers fired over Charlie Kirk comments learn the limits of free speech on the job
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlie-kirk-free-speech-matthew-dowd-b2826523.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world297
Comments61https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlie-kirk-free-speech-matthew-dowd-b2826523.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
On the one hand this is how it’s supposed to work. Free speech as a legal concept in the U.S. only protects you from the government…
…on the other hand it would be really helpful if there were a list of companies that were firing folks for being critical of Charlie Kirk…
…you know…for reasons…
Probably easier to compile a list of those supporting free speech. Spoiler alert: there's not many.
That's what free speech is around the world, not just in America.
But "Free Speech" is often referred to as though it is some magical incantation in the USA. It may be my ignorance, but I haven't come across anything to imply it's seen that way in other countries.
Freedom of speech is often conflated with non-discrimination.
i.e. A grocery store clerk mentioning politics om the job. In a non-"at-will" state and with a non-disgusting contract between employee and employer, the employer never comes under "Free speech" violations, but discrimination ones.
Even in such a mix of specific circumstances (the state, the employee and the employer being sane rule-wise), there'd still need to be a counterexample - i.e. would the same happen if the person held a slightly different belief or posessed a slightly different shade of skin, set of chromosomes or some other discriminator.
It's a higher ask than a "Free Speech" card, but it is a protection. (Some restrictions may apply).
Thr UK has the same thing as America. Australia on the other hand, for example, doesn't have as many of those rights. https://legalclarity.org/does-australia-have-freedom-of-speech/
Free speech is protection from the government. People, especially here on Lenny it seems, (not saying you personally, just in general) have a highly gross misunderstanding of the basic law when they claim free speech is anything else.
The US being a younger nation is probably why you hear it more from Americans. Our rights are new, relative to the most of the world. Plus US culture is everywhere.
Do they? I wasn’t actually sure. I thought the government was cracking down on anti-genocide speech.
Basically the same.
UK is not In the eu.
No kidding.
So where does the clampdown on anti-genocide speech land wrt this?
There’s a difference between the legal concept as it relates to the constitution and the broader ethical principle on which the first amendment was based.
We can still talk about the ideal of free speech outside of the government. In fact, this ties into the myth of “free enterprise” which suggests that everything companies do is about freedom but everything the government does is about tyranny. This is obviously nonsense but we’re so indoctrinated to it that we rarely question it fully.
Yeah Facebook posts have been getting people fired for years. Just a few weeks ago someone at my job got fired for talking shit about the company on Facebook along with posting pictures. They framed it as he was fired for having his phone on him when it's supposed to be in your locker, but obviously it wasn't that.
Why? You think it's ideal that your livelihood is dependent on holding whatever the majority opinion of the day is?
These are legitimately funny. Really picking the best ones to highlight. "Ashley Creekbaum allegedly commented on Instagram: “I think he should be forced to carry that bullet in his body. That bullet has a right to be there because it’s a gift from god.”"
This is a great example of how we don’t live in a democracy for a large portion of our waking life. Our workplace isn’t a democracy, unless we are really lucky.
unless you fight to make it so, for the unions make us strong.
any reply regarding "anti union laws" should keep in that I'll reply that it means we need to fight more.
STUPID People! If they DIDNT want to Be Fired they SHOULD have just Publicly held The SAME Views as Charlie and told people that GAYS AND TRANNIES AND BLACKIES AND MEXICANTS deserve to DIE HORRIBLE PAINFUL DEATHS VIA Public Execution! THEN their Jobs would be SAFE!
I'm so confused. Is it okay to support political violence or not? Are we firing people for supporting Trump and Kirk now?
BigMacHole is famously a MAGAposting parody account
The hell is a parody account?
/s
I know, I was riffing off of it. The answer is that it's all hypocrisy.
Is the "lethal injection for the homeless people" guy fired yet?
He apparently apologized, though I have not read what exactly he said.
"When someone show you who they really are, you should believe them".
General advice:
Also
Did the idiot who wants to kill the homeless get fired?
None of the people who regularly say god awful things about Americans everyday will ever get in trouble. The right constantly calls for violence and when they get what they want they say it is the left's fault. It is a fucking joke for sure.
Well they work for fox news and chances are they wouldn't fire somebody for saying that. The person apologized surprisingly for saying that though.
You are free to agree with the Nazi but not question his motives.
Everyone fired over this needs to hire a lawyer and that lawyer needs to go through all the social media posts of the other employees and see what was said when George Floyd died, and every other well publicized death or attempted murder of non MAGA people, and see if there were similar firings over comments made.
I'm willing to bet there weren't and a good lawyer can use that for a nice settlement for these clients.
The right really are a bunch of snowflakes.
Found one of the groups hell bent on doxxing anyone they don't like and getting them fired. Free speech under attack by the right as usual
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1155050949879089/
I don't know too many company's who would want to be associated with that type of publicity one way or the other
On the job? Nearly 100% of the people being targeted in this pogrom commented on their own accounts on their own time on behalf of nobody but themselves. Many, if not most, of the people being targeted did not even advocate for violence, but commented on Kirk’s horrific and vile rhetoric or well documented, often recorded, statements.
Because we live in a dystopian capitalist hellscape where we are chattel for feudalist corporate overlords, we can have our livelihoods and homes and lives taken away at a moments notice for daring to speak out against our violent, dishonest, greedy fascist oppressors. This is the very outcome Kirk would have wanted, the sick, Goebbels-like nazi that he was. I’m sure he would have delighted in all the pain and suffering and injustice that resulted from his slaying.
People are deciding what side of American history they are on.
A lot of people just want to be on the winning side and have no moral compass
I mean, the only one that I could agree with is the Marine that was fired. Sorry but UCMJ has it's own very specific code for politics and limited free speech rights because military.
The rest, kind absolute BS, especially the Texas coach but honestly, when do we say enough is enough and people actually fight back and do unto others here? You know that every time something like this happens, Hortman was a good example, the Right goes on a celebration spree and there are never any consequences because the "Left" never plays Calvinball witht hem.
This is their digital night of the long knives. It’ll start with people mocking his death and end with people refuting his beliefs.
Night of the Long Knives was when the Nazi party actually went out to hunt and murder opponents in the government. This isn’t that. Yet.
Thats why I said digital, to lower it from that extreme.
It cracks me up that everyone acting with empathy and sadness is repudiating everything charlie kirk stood for.
track the businesses firing for this and if you win the civil war make them pay wages for the lost time
Some of those comments weren’t even that bad. One of them was more of a comment on right abortion stances than actually celebrating his death.
CANCEL CULTURE!
It's real and always has been, the thing liberals are upset about is that it doesn't just apply to people who say naughty words.
The Reich wingers have always been the ones who are hypocritically enacting 90% of the cancel culture bullshit.
I'm not sure what you mean and don't know why you're being down voted. It was conservatives who created the idea of cancel culture in response to social shaming.
Conservatives named it, and are currently weaponizing it. But it started with people being racist on facebook and then getting fired because online activists were complaining. This trend continues today with tik-toks that say thing like "make them famous." The online rallying cry on reddit and other spaces that freedom of speech wasn't freedom of consequences, and of course that the first amendment only applies to the government.
While those positions are legally true, in liberal fashion they never considered if the chilling effect this created could ever be weaponized. But maybe having your livelihood being dependent on having "correct" opinions could possibly be a problem that a Just society should attempt to address?
Crybully
Private enterprises do not have to honor the tenants of free speech in the employment practices, nor should they be required to. They should be able to, for example, fire someone who spouts racism, sexism, xenophobia... or any other form of hate speech, which has happened many times. But likewise, we do not have to support private enterprises that are more worried about PR blow back than basic decency and liberty to allow their employees to speak your mind, that use their position of authority to curb speech that might be distasteful to them or their customers but otherwise does nothing wrong. We can boycott and protest these enterprises, and we should. And for those enterprises that are public, that answer to us, we should make sure they know that the jobs of those responsible are on the line too.
Some of the things said in this article amount to celebrating violence, and I can see good reason to distance your company from that. But there is no reason to fire anyone that simply expresses reasonable dislike for one's behavior and words, or for warning others that words can have consequences. Actually, the irony for firing someone for warning that words can have consequences is almost comedic, except the wrong people faced the consequences. Anyone firing anyone for simply speaking ill of the dead, for pointing out that they weren't the hero or beacon of righteous truth people are pretending they are, should be fired as well.
This functionally means that the majority of worker's lives are under undemocratic and totalitarian rule by private enterprise.
I mean, they are. Unless you work for yourself, a partnership (of which you are a partner), a co-op, have tenure, or have a good union, under our 🦄🌈capitalist utopia (tm)... your employment status is subject to termination on the whims of your employer, so long as they dont violate ADA or anti-discrimination laws in the process. Welcome to the oligarchy, friend.
Edit: For clarity, when I was saying that that "should" be the way, I meant under our system as it exists, not the that is the ideal.
You're the one that said private enterprises should not have to honor the tenants of free speech. You're defending the oligarchy even as you mock it.
Read my edit. I was not defending the oligarchy. But room does need to be left for people to face non-legal consequences for hate speech, up and including unemployment, whether under the oligarchic system we have or under a more preferable socialist system.
People can and should have the choice to not associate themselves with others, particularly financially. If I hire an assistant and they call my client the n-word, even in a private context, I'm going to fire them and I should be able to, whatever the process required to do so. I don't think that is wrong. The fact that one person can do that unilaterally on a whim is wrong, but that is a separate issue. Again, though, in either case, whether the enterprise is capitalist, socialist or anything else, misuse of this power will have consequences.
If a worker is slinging slurs there should be ways to stop them, but that doesn't mean we have to empower private enterprise to have even more control over our lives. The boss shouldn't be the one that gets to decide what counts as hate speech.
Private enterprise != boss/business owned by a capitalist. A socialist business, jointly owned and run by all of the workers, is still a private enterprise. And they should still be able to collectively decide the terms and/or process around deciding to continue association between an individual and the company and revoke that privilege for anyone that violates those terms. I was not defending any boss from firing people based on their personal feelings for their Facebook posts. That is not acceptable. It's also an entirely different aspect than what I was speaking about. But neither should the enterprise itself be unallowed to hold people to account or decide that they do not wish to continue a business arrangement if the other party says some bigoted shit.
you mean… there are limits, because your employment is not decided by the government (“directly”).
There isn’t free speech on the job. I’d say the vast majority of employers have restrictions in the hiring contract about what the employee can and can’t say on social media if they’re wearing work attire, at work, or mention their employer. If you say something particularly heinous like wishing or suggesting harm or death then you probably don’t even need any association with your employer mentioned. Absurd that people are so dense they think otherwise. Used to be you could talk shit at the bar after work, it never went anywhere but those few people who heard it. Now it has a potential audience of millions if it catches and spreads on social media.