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"A Letter on Justice and Open Debate"

Started by Pdine, July 08, 2020, 10:01:49 AM

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Captain Z

Quote from: Pdine on July 08, 2020, 01:35:09 PM
I sometimes wonder about the widespread use of the word 'toxic' to describe opinions.

Quote from: Buelligan on July 08, 2020, 01:37:46 PM
Should we eradicate the word toxic?  Is it toxic?  Or is it just another curated victim of bespoke ad-speak?

The saddest part is that they

RenegadeScrew

Quote from: Retinend on July 08, 2020, 11:10:00 AM
Huh? He definitely defended Faurrison's free speech and called him a "liberal."

He defended Faurrison's freedom of speech, he didn't call him a "liberal" exactly.  I'm not sure there is much value to "freedom of speech" if you only defend what you like.

I'm not familiar with Faurrison's "work" so commenting upon the "liberal" bit would be about as valuable as Chomsky's original comment.

idunnosomename

pjw's posts are always better if you read them in his silly old man Alan Partridge voice

FUCK YOUR SHIT TEA!

Barry Admin

I want to point out that two of the BBC news updates I've just finished reading are by two different "disinformation specialists."

Only noticed because I went to paste one in here, and that brought the byline to my attention. The two stories are 1) Kanye West promoting anti-vax horseshit and saying "they want to put chips inside of us." And 2) a video of Bolsanora going viral, where he says he's treating Covid with hydroxychloroquine, having caught the disease after months of downplaying the risks. Obviously Trump has pushed hydroxychloroquine also, he seemingly benefits financially from the drug, and sent 2 million doses to Brazil at the start of June.

Anyway, so that really made me do a double-take. "Disinformation specialists" for fucks sake, having to knock back absolute and utter shit circulated by world leaders, and aspiring world leaders with enormous preexisting platforms. So yeah, this whole "free speech" debate is a load of shit.

popcorn

I want to put chips inside of me every day.

Dewt

I don't know what's more depressing: Chomsky being part of this or seemingly the entire gaming press exposing themselves as smooth-brained idiots actively defending it

I don't want to say it is their GamerGate but it is absolutely their GamerGate

Dewt

Quote from: Buelligan on July 08, 2020, 11:36:35 AM
Well I think it's great that all these rich people are getting together to guard their incomes and power bases against any future shit they may perpetrate. 

Looking forward to seeing Rowling protecting the rights of trans people to live in the world and speak their brains.
Here's the best argument: "They actually did it for you, the plebs"

https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1280831170117341187


dissolute ocelot

According to the Guardian, one signatory, Kerri Greenidge, now claims not to endorse the letter although it's not clear why her name is on it (did she sign it? did she read it before signing? did they misrepresent it to her when she signed it?). Another, Jennifer Finney Boylan, says that she wouldn't have signed it if she knew who else had signed it. Which isn't really a strong argument, although maybe being surrounded by hypocrites is unfair to her.

It's also pretty disingenuous having a list of cases which obviously refer to real incidents, but don't say what they actually are. Say who you're supporting.

And no mention of the black people who can't speak out because they're prevented getting media jobs by institutional racism, get harassed on campus, get stopped by the police, or are murdered. Because free speech means the right of the rich to be comfortable in their opinions no matter how stupid, not the right of the poor to have education, freedom, and the ability to express themselves.


king_tubby


Famous Mortimer

It's a classic example of a bunch of people with no skin in the game telling the people who've never had a voice that they should shut up. People who think it's okay to be friendly with people with abhorrent opinions - see: Ellen Degeneres defending being friends with George Bush, because the hundreds of thousands of people who were killed by Bush's pointless war weren't people she knew.

It's not telling editors or TV commissioners that they shouldn't be able to hire and fire who they want - because those editors and executives go to the same parties and move in the same social circles as them. It's telling us lot on the bottom that we shouldn't have an opinion about it. The fact that some decent people have signed this is a good indicator of what side they'd fall on if the choice was between making sure black, LGBTQ+, disabled, Muslim, immigrant people are able to live their lives without fear, and them keeping every penny of their money and every bit of their "influence".

This worship of debate as if it's more important than figuring out the actual answer to a problem and then moving on is one of the more pernicious trends of modern life.

Sheffield Wednesday

If lockdown has taught us anything it should have been that famous people can go fucking hang themselves until their brains are starved of oxygen and their life force ebbs away like so much dogshit getting hosed off a driveway for what little their fuckin corpses matter.


Dewt

Quote from: Sheffield Wednesday on July 08, 2020, 06:49:12 PM
If lockdown has taught us anything it should have been that famous people can go fucking hang themselves until their brains are starved of oxygen and their life force ebbs away like so much dogshit getting hosed off a driveway for what little their fuckin corpses matter.
Yes

I wasn't expecting Chomsky to sign the "who's first for a guillotining" list but if that's the way it has to be then fine

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Sheffield Wednesday on July 08, 2020, 06:49:12 PM
If lockdown has taught us anything it should have been that famous people can go fucking hang themselves until their brains are starved of oxygen and their life force ebbs away like so much dogshit getting hosed off a driveway for what little their fuckin corpses matter.


Blunt but fair

The New New Left Twitter echo chamber is now trying to dunk on Noam Chomsky? Oh dear.

The actual text of the letter is fairly innocuous, and the wide array of people who signed it likely did so for very different reasons. People who (rightfully) dislike moronic hypocrites like Bari Weiss will now read the entire thing in bad faith, while ignoring the legitimate concerns that someone like Noam Chomsky presumably had in mind when he read it and signed it.

There is a worrying trend of social media-fication of leftist politics where anyone who does not immediately agree with the viral consensus of the echo chamber (which, as an aside, is something that would be extraordinarily easy for the establishment to manipulate for nefarious reasons.....) is deemed a reactionary traitor. That shuts off all legitimate debate about the proper course of leftist politics.

Dewt

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on July 08, 2020, 07:36:33 PM
The New New Left Twitter echo chamber is now trying to dunk on Noam Chomsky? Oh dear.
Are you really clucking about people not being mindlessly loyal to prescribed figures and actually calling people out when they act in a shitty way?

I know principles are difficult for centrists, but surely you can understand that if somebody does a thing that people think are shitty then the honest thing is to say "I think that thing was shitty"

Not everything has to boil down to a theory about how "the left" acts, sometimes people just do things. You don't need to be on a never-ending quest for catching people out and painting them all with a broad brush because you don't have the intellectual honesty to just say what you mean, which is "I think political correctness has gone mad".

Chairman Yang

This list made me say Oh Noam! Which is like 'Oh no!' but with Noam in place of the no because Noam is on this list and should Noam better, which is like know better but with Noam in place of the know.

Dewt

Typical of the new ultra post-Roy Walker era Catchphrase neo-left


Quote from: Dewt on July 08, 2020, 07:42:54 PM
You don't need to be on a never-ending quest for catching people out and painting them all with a broad brush

QuoteQuote from: Dewt

Fascinating!

Famous Mortimer

I have agreed with Noam Chomsky on many many issues over the decades. Read a lot of his books, even hosted a meeting he did for a local anti-war group (online, about 15 years ago). I think he's wrong in this instance.

Dewt

That's some very worrying trend behaviour from FM. Very worrying trends there. Better get those trends checked out

cuh

tsk

horseshoe theory

trends

Barry Admin

Quote from: Chairman Yang on July 08, 2020, 07:48:54 PM
This list made me say Oh Noam! Which is like 'Oh no!' but with Noam in place of the no because Noam is on this list and should Noam better, which is like know better but with Noam in place of the know.

I did notice that Nik Chimpsky's name was not on this list. I think that's telling, though some may argue that it's simply because he died of a massive heart attack 20 years ago.

Zetetic

Who is the letter actually to?

I don't mean that in a broad "who is it for?" sense but who is it ostensibly addressed to? The Editor of Harper's?

Cloud

Conflicted as ever.

On the one hand: If people like JK want to use their power and influence to shout out their politics to the world then, especially if it harms people who have done nothing other than want to express a gender they weren't assigned at birth, they should be prepared for a fight.  Or at least to defend themselves from some robust criticism.  You don't get to silence the opposition by claiming they're silencing YOU and that if only they'd shut up you'd be able to broadcast your bullshit unchallenged.

On the other, yes, Twitter and internet mobs can get a bit extreme.  Threats to personal safety are the obvious line crossing that I imagine most would agree is taking things too far, but would also say (probably to strong opposition on here) that "cunt" isn't an argument.

tl;dr there are some very fine people on both sides

Fry

It would be a lot more feasible to start a "let's all stop using social media" campaign. All this shit is not a bug, but a feature of social media. You gonna sign a petition and make everyone all together gather around and stop using twitter in the way it's designed to be used? Good luck, there's only about twelve of us and we can't even get it together to stop responding to trolls.

Famous Mortimer

From someone on Facebook.

QuoteAnyone who has signed and supported that very strange "cancelled" letter is essentially upholding the exclusionary apparatus of the liberal state. It's the same liberalism that treats the likes of Palestinian's lives and trans peoples lives as objects for open debate, and thus renders their humanity in a constant state of suspension.

Not going to be pretend the aphoristic structure of social media is a breeding ground for reductive (and potentially misconstrued) political views and a pretty terrible learning place in general for politics. Also not going to forgive anyone who uses the space to threaten violence, especially in the case of using someone's exclusionary views as an excuse to respond with misogyny, racism (etc). But that said, if powerful people are given free access to a massive platform to spout acerbic reactionary drivel from an ivory tower like it's still the 90s, and expect that those massive amounts of people are down with it, what do we expect? Given that they still have their platforms and are essentially reacting to people who disagree with them, doesn't that make cancel culture redundant? In the words of Sarah Ahmed:

"Whenever people keep being given a platform to say they have no platform, or whenever people speak endlessly about being silenced, you not only have a performative contradiction; you are witnessing a mechanism of power."

And this mechanism of power extends further. When people who want to end this non-existent "cancel culture" come out with their threatening lawsuits, remember that the potential for gulags, guillotines and Orwellian surveillance is not in the hands of over-zealous lefties - its in the hands of the same state of which upholds those who send the lawsuits.

chveik

very true. the letter is a little liberal fairytale trying to make us forget that right wingers control most aspects of our lives.

Mister Six

Quote from: Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse on July 08, 2020, 11:09:11 AM
Which works of literature?

https://slate.com/culture/2019/01/blood-heir-ya-book-twitter-controversy.html

Another example here, although it's in an op-ed: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/opinion/teen-fiction-and-the-perils-of-cancel-culture.html

Although Zhao subsequently published her book, I'm pretty sure a chilling effect from this kind of furore led to this:

https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/what-the-cancellation-of-alexandra-duncans-ember-days-can-teach-us-about-allyship/

You can shrug your shoulders and say "Well it's just young adult shit, who cares?" But these young adults grow into old adults, and the notion of cancelling a book before it is published rather than critiquing it afterwards is - to my mind - something that should be discouraged.

RenegadeScrew

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on July 08, 2020, 09:40:26 PM
From someone on Facebook.

Pretty much utter tripe from start to finish with the exception of the Sarah Ahmed quote.  The only part concerning the letter was the first sentence.

The Palestinian people and their lives being in a "constant state of suspension" (what an Orwellian way to put it btw) is due to the despicable and illegal Israeli occupation.  Not "liberalism". 

Offensive and ridiculous to talk about it alongside such struggles as misogyny or racism on twitter, which the author actually goes onto condone anyway.