> Censorship and other forms of regulating free speech is simply never a good solution.
The almost free speech on the other side of the ocean seems to be working pretty well. You get to say anything that isn’t actively harmful to others, but you won’t be able to advertise bleach as a way to get Corona out of your system.
Sure, arresting people for quoting Churchill seems like a potential definition of "working". [1] There's no way that arresting people for a twitter post [2] could be abused. Nobody needs free speech for reposting rap lyrics. [3]
In the first case there about Paul Weston, the local Police Commisioner clarified the reasons for his arrest:
"It has been wrongly suggested that Mr Weston was arrested for reciting passages written by Winston Churchill. I understand he was not welcome outside the Winchester Guildhall, the Police were called and he was asked to move on. I also understand that he was not prepared to move on and was arrested for this reason."
> you won’t be able to advertise bleach as a way to get Corona out of your system.
you can't do this in the US either if you're actually selling bleach. are you saying in europe ordinary people aren't allowed to publicly speculate about cures for the virus?
That is misinformation. The Mesa Arizona police aren't investigating the death of Gary Lenius as a homicide. His wife Wanda isn't in prison. The poison was chloroquine phosphate, not bleach.
You heard or remember the story wrong. There wasn't a bleach couple. That was a form of chloroquine as an ingredient in fish tank cleaner. In some media, it was equated to (hydroxy)choloroquine as a medicinal drug even though this pharmaceutical drug has a high safety rating. Also, I don't think anyone went to prison even though it's assumed the engineer husband would have not knowingly drank poison. The wife also ingested some, but she survived.
In any case, the media can't pretend they rely on arbiters of truth because there is bias all around. Trump's statements on disinfectants were not as incendiary as some people made them out to be. Disinfectants can sometimes be used in the lungs or body, but this is a question for the medical field. The media speculated about poison control calls surging after Trump's statements, but any small uptick seemed to already be present since people have resorted to rigorous use of disinfectants in the home going all the way back to March. Finally, with the focus on lockdowns and isolation, we've actually somewhat missed the point of the DHS briefing on disinfectants and UV decontamination. We were supposed to be looking for simple innovations that made going to places like the grocery store safer and more manageable, but I haven't seen much progress in this area.
Nonsense. Almost free speech is censorship by another name.
Working "pretty well?" Sure, unless one tries to talk about things that really matter and strays outside the dotted lines of permissibility.
Some topics are verboten.
When you say "other side of the ocean," I assume you're talking about Europe.
Try to discuss the muslim rape gangs in the UK.
Try to discuss the surge in grenade attacks and many-fold increase in rape in Sweden.
Try to discuss the homeless migrants living on the streets and the Aljerian street wars in France.
Try to discuss Fulan Gong in China. Or tiannamen square.
Try to discuss political assassinations in Russia, or the bribes the wife of Moscow's mayor hands out.
Try to discuss alternative political parties in Ukraine.
I think there are scores of political prisoners serving time for wrongthink who might disagree with your assertion that almost free speech is working pretty well.
If you want to discover who your masters are, learn who you are not allowed to criticize.
If existing reality seems to "work", is it so bad to exclude non-establishment innovations, while the larger world/markets continue to compete and innovate?
Obviously. It’s just that I believe the people that would be/are locked up under the current laws (and the laws in my 30ish years of life) deserve what they get.
Conversely, I believe there are a lot of people in the US walking around freely that deserve to be locked up.
You're getting free speech wrong, at least by european standards. In Sweden or in France, you can certainly discuss the topics you proposed without risking prison or worse. But free speech applies to other people as well, who are equally free to refute your opinion. Free speech is not censorship merely because it stops at other people's basic rights. That's merely finding a balance between fundamental rights that may come in conflict.
Russia and China do not have free speech. If you say the wrong thing there, you go to prison (or worse). That's censorship.
Conversations about Muslim integration are sensitive enough that you wouldn't mention them in your workplace in fear of being labelled racist and possible repercussions. Not quite illegal, but its going that direction.
"If I say shitty racist things that others correctly perceive as shitty and racist people won't want to associate with me" isn't even remotely comparable to the state putting you in jail and it requires an incredibly easily bruised sense of self to suggest it.
Why do you instantly assume that anything said is "shitty and racist"? You seem to be doing the kind of thing that I am referring to - nothing in my comment was racist, but you are doing your best to imply that it is.
And potentially loosing your job is quite a big deal for most people. That's what happened to James Damore for bringing up the wrong subject.
Indeed, but you might note that happened in the US, and not Europe.
Not saying you think muslims are dangerous is at the same courtesy level as not telling your coworker his hair looks like shit every day. Nobody is going to (immediately) fire you for it, but people will definitely start avoiding you if you do it to an obnoxious degree.
I think it’s interesting that people treat Islam as closer to an ethnicity than a religion. Nobody on the left is clamoring to fight against “Christophobia”, in fact most of them actively mock religion, unless it’s Islam. I honestly don’t think organized religion should be protected from criticism, because to be fair you have to treat all religions the same. Even Scientology.
It's almost as if what you describe as mockery of Christianity is largely punching up at a secure and itself mildly- to significantly-onerous institution in the United States and that defense of Islamic people is an example of punching-down xenophobia aimed at individuals that's dressed thinly as "criticism of the religion".
If Christians were targeted by violence on American streets after 9/11 (as they were--along with, you know, completely unrelated Sikhs), "the left" would say that's wrong, too. And the reason that the status quo with regards to anti-Islam sentiment is what it is is because Americans in a whole lot of places genuinely haven't progressed much beyond that mindset.
> I think there are scores of political prisoners serving time for wrongthink who might disagree with your assertion that almost free speech is working pretty well.
So you're claiming that Sweden has put people into prison because they discussed the increase in rape? Citation please.
Your whole comment is a prime example of unfounded FUD. [1]
[1] With the exception of Russia, China, and probably Ukraine, but in what world do they belong in one bucket together with Sweden or France in terms of democracy?
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
Depends on how you enforce your acceptable opinion I think. You need to find a way that makes it socially unacceptable without literally locking people up for whatever they say.
>> The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
That sounds bad, but I wonder how Chomsky would feel if that wasn't the case and the "spectrum of acceptable opinion" included stuff like literal Nazism.
Like front page newspaper stories, senior politicians and even a dramatisation on the desperate-to-be-inoffensive BBC, you mean? Sure, not everybody approves of people whose take on the cases obsesses about the ethnicities of the perpetrators above all else, but free speech doesn't mean a point of view has to be agreed with.
People responding to someone with "that's racist" isn't censorship. It's others exercising their free speech to strongly disagree with the points raised.
That just means it's a low value conversation. The end effect is very different. In my country there are anti-racism laws that /can/ put you in jail for saying something considered racist. Btw, I'm not totally against those laws. To say free speech has to be completely, 100% free, say /anything/ and any message you can think of, seems flawed to me.
How hyperbolic. I'm struggling to imagine what you may have experienced, exactly, to put discussing such issues in the UK alongside discussing Tiannamen Square in China.
I had to google the UK and France stuff. Seems to be, as bad as they are, well covered single cases (one group of rapists in the UK and a couple of riots in Dijon). So what exactly are you not "allowed" to discuss?
Get a grip on reality, jumping from an non-Brit doing a 5 sec Google search and maybe 10 sec headline reading to the conclussion that some mind cover-up exists and works is really sad...
You flatter yourself thinking that you had that much influence over my opinions. The government have done research on this and keep flip flopping on whether this will be released to the public (currently not). Doesn't that sound like a cover up to you?
No, simply becasue they are publicly talking about it. Not much of a cover up, it seems. Especially since the government is headed by Johnson, who I would suspect to be first one to publish such things.
The report still hasn't been published after months.
Or how about MPs telling victims to keep their mouths shut for the sake of diversity. It certainly gives me the opinion that they are trying to cover it up.
That is the same bahviour Trump shows when he retweets racist stuff. Both are unacceptable. The difference being, The MP you mentioned is part of the minority, and she deleted and the retweet and ecused herself. The article also discribes the original tweet coming from "a parody account" from a journalist.
So, you just confused the opposition, it is a Labour MP after all, with the government. And you totally ignored the origin of the retweet and the fact that the MP in question re-tweeted and did not write that tweet herself. Nice job, really.
So you do admit that you have no idea what the current government party is in the UK and that you did not read or understand the article you linked. Fair enough I guess.
OK, so assuming that free speech must remain inviolate, which I don't agree with, as free speech always has limits, do you see the current state of constant misinformation working as intended? Is the United States as the founding fathers intended it?
I'm pretty sure parent meant western Europe, not China and Russia. Who would assume someone means China and Russia when talking about countries with free speech?
> The almost free speech on the other side of the ocean seems to be working pretty well. You get to say anything that isn’t actively harmful to others, but you won’t be able to advertise bleach as a way to get Corona out of your system.
Alternatively, you don't go to jail for suggesting that anybody actually implied injection of bleach as a treatment for coronavirus.
Speech that is controversial is the only speech that needs protecting. You don't need free speech to protect your cat pictures or tweets about a salad you ate.
Absurd. Who are the arbiters of truth and what can and cannot be said? There is no such thing as almost free speech in a free society except perhaps for clear cut physical threats.
Also big tech is going to end democracy as we know it unless we get serious. They can decide who gets elected into office and we are on a path to replacing elected representatives with kings.
The legal system provides the mechanism to address that specific category of speech.
“Defamation is an area of law that provides a civil remedy when someone's words end up causing harm to your reputation or your livelihood. Libel is a written or published defamatory statement, while slander is defamation that is spoken by the defendant.”
If you want free speech you need to learn to live with free speech. That means not believing everything you see, critically thinking, and actually vetting the sources yourself. Its a societal process that plays out over time. The answer is not to have content oligarchs that decide what is truth and can be seen. Statements like this eventually are just seen as noise and ignored as people look for verifiable truth via trusted sources within platforms. In short, it works itself out.
Firstly, thanks for taking my comment in the manner it was intended. I was slightly concerned it might have gone down badly.
I take your point but I think you are brave to rely on the common sense of the entire world to protect you from false or misleading claims against you. Having seen a friend being roasted in the "mainstream media" with a story which was heavily biased against her, and seeing the venomous messages sent to her in the aftermath, I think I'm ok with some limits on free speech.
The almost free speech on the other side of the ocean seems to be working pretty well. You get to say anything that isn’t actively harmful to others, but you won’t be able to advertise bleach as a way to get Corona out of your system.