Comments

1
Liberals: "Deplatforming is mean and doesn't solve anything"

Nazis: "Actually literally everything that antifascists have done over the past 2.5 years has successfully prevented us from being able to organize and maintain a strong public presence."

Liberals: "Here's 2500 words on why Im right"
2
Oh, please. Virtually every civilized country in the developed world has some form of laws banning hate speech (ex. Germany) because they know exactly where the hate speech that our violent, hate-crazed KKKountry ultimately leads. They are not in a "free speech crisis," which is some truly pathetic, specious fapping on the part of the far-white.
4
The first clue that Rich is cherry picking, was that his article was titled "There is no free speech crisis on campus..."

The issues that Katie has been bringing up repeatedly exist at every level of society. Schools, workplace, politics, entertainment. If it involves American Public Life in this decade, it's effected.
6
This article, but for The Stranger: https://splinternews.com/if-you-truly-ca…
7
Thanks for writing this Katie. I know you are catching a ton of shit for posts like this, but there are a lot of people who are too cowed to stand up to their liberal friends about this stuff.

My own views overlap 99% with liberal orthodoxy, but I *definitely* feel like I'd be absolutely savaged by my peer group for my 1% views that don't conform. I also feel nervous about making mistakes that bring the tone/language police after me, even talking about topics where I do agree with the liberal orthodox view. It's really my least favorite part of the progressive movement right now, and I think it is poisonous.

I'm in a position where I occasionally have to speak publicly about sensitive topics such as race, poverty, sexuality, etc, and I'm pretty fucking nervous about making a mistake that puts me on the bad list. Keep in mind the people I'm scared of are people I fundamentally agree with! I'm really disheartened by people on "my side" feeling like the best strategy for opposing bad ideas is to silence and shame them, and even shaming people who just don't have the right lingo.
8
@5 Fetishization of it certainly offers a shield to people such as neo-nazis to recruit and expand their powerbase from behind while simultaneously not actually giving a single shit about it. In a society where vast swaths of individuals are oppressed for a variety of reasons, assuming unfettered speech is a desirable goal ignores that fact. It presumes everyone is on equal footing, which they are demonstrably not.

Free speech is a fantasy that has never and will never actually exist so long as what is free is determine by a state with the monopoly on violence. Free speech still doesn't exist for the countless organizers and activists, almost all leftists of some variety, under FBI surveillance for their 1st amendment activities. Meanwhile, the same worthless institutions continue to barely be able to react to far-right threats which have repeatedly been reported to them.

But hey, it feels better to not stand for anything so you can smugly cross your arms, proclaim "both sides" while maintaining a false sense of morale superiority.
9
I quit. All the good writers have moved away from this rag and it's increasingly produced by people I don't recognize or like. Mudede's the only thing still keeping my interest and I follow him on Twitter for links to his pieces.

If I want "woah I'm so controversial look at my nuanced contrarian opinions" bullshit I'd go read McArdle or Weiss or Sullivan or some shit. Fuck this.
10
"It's no secret that most public universities lean to the left. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with that—college professors are, in theory, in the business of teaching reality, and, as Stephen Colbert put it, “reality has liberal bias.”

Oh yeah, is that why they teach you that biological sex is a "social construct", and that's it good to give hormone blocking drugs to pubescent children, thus sterilizating them, because little Johnny played with a doll that one time? Let's not even get into the "race isn't real", discussion.

Sorry sweetie, but it's sure sign that you are wrong when you can never conceive of an instance in which you are not right. The university system of America is a farce- and everyone knows it.
11
The Guardian did a great long read a year or so ago that examines the decades-long journey that "political correctness" has taken. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016…

Looking at the early 90's fervor against "PC" language and the current fervor over "kids being too sensitive," it's interesting to see very alike arguments rise back up, even with a 30-year difference and some of the commonalities between them. (Like the plethora of elite white people, mostly men, who call into question kids protesting/advocating for more inclusion and a broader understanding of diversity and power, including who wields it.)
13
About two and a half years ago (Aug. 2015) just before the presidential campaigning season began Bernie Sanders had his free speech rights violated right here in Seattle. Sanders was about to give a speech on the subject of social security when he was interrupted and literally force off the stage. The local Black Lives Matter people took his microphone and did their own speech. I believe that the action was a set up; I believe that the local Hillary people were behind the stage seizure. The Hillary people wanted to knock out Sanders before the campaign began because they feared a possible 3rd party candidate could cause another election spoiler such as what happened to Al Gore via Ralph Nader or Jimmy Carter via John Anderson. What a better way to do in Sanders than to make him look weak and ineffectual.

The Nazis used similar tactics as they rose to power; they would infiltrate crowds at an opponent rally and on cue start a riot. Nazis would start swing fists and clubs while a truck might screech around a corner and plow through through the stage and loudspeakers. And the Nazis. like the BLM people, would never have any charges filed against them.

The same applies on campus; the authorities sit back and do nothing. I would say that Bernie Sander's free speech rights had been violated.
14
First they came for the fascist thugs, and I didin't speak up, because I wasn't a fascist thug. Then, life returned to normal.
15
Eliabun that's the dumbest shit I've read online all day, congrats.
16
You are becoming quite the defender of white supremacy aren't you?
17
Ah yes, Katie Herzog, the Stranger's version of Bari Weiss but somehow worse.
18
Of course this #oppressedytgirl naked mole rat is going to write an op-ed whining about why she has consequences for being horribly racist and transphobic.
19
@17

Been reading some interesting shit about Weiss, one of Herzog's heroes, making shit up.

Here's a law professor claiming that her free speech rights are being violated because she's being criticized for her white supremacist views. So maybe Herzog's right and there is a free speech crisis.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/penn-la…
20
Every leftwinger I see arguing against Katie's points seems to believe that all the speech being targeted on campus is hateful and fascistic. In fact, a lot of speakers who have nothing to do with fascism of hate speech are also being non-platformed. On some campuses, almost every idea that isn't 100% kowtowing to every single value or statement or action issued by the campus left is now called "fascism." Generally speaking, the average 19-year-old doesn't know enough about "fascism" or "liberalism" or anything else to call anyone a "fascist." Making this out to be fascism vs. democracy oversimplifies the argument and silences a lot of people who are not fucking fascists or even rightists.
21
And i'm saying all that as a long-time defender of Antifa who is also okay with punching Nazis.
22
Good topic, good exchange, limitless potential.

The winds of suppression blow from all sides. Not that long ago, prevailing winds blew top-down and from the right. Lately they've shifted more to bottom-up from the left. Pure democracies can willingly and democratically discard a whole bunch of stuff that makes any democracy remotely plausible -- stuff like free speech, or the idea that representatives might legitimately honor the wrong-headed preferences of voters who elect them.

Countervailing winds rarely meet head-on; they slip past each other and generate turbulent vortex systems of varying radius and intensity.

I don't read the current weather report as a crisis, but as yet another extended moment of concern. On a global scale, democracy is in a down cycle -- but we've seen these before, and they don't always result in death spirals.
23
As evinced in this and the 60 zillion articles exactly like it, liberalism is the left wing of fascism. Keep handwringing about the "free speech rights" of Nazis you fuck.
24
#23: You honestly don't know shit.
25
This isn't just about Nazis. It's that every single person who doesn't agree with 120% of everything you believe is basically a fascist or an apologist for fascism. Which is a way of dehumanizing a large chunk of the population. If you want a war with real fascists, fine, there are plenty of them out there. But most campus liberals and conservatives are not fascists. You know, there are real militant fascists out there you can take the battle to. Why hide on campus, attacking professors with unpopular opinions?
27
All of the shit going on on campus (campus rape, college debt, degrees that don't pan out in the job market), worrying about whether or not a fascist thug can "speechify" should be at the bottom of the list.
28
Don't forget the flap up at the punk rock flea market. Jewish (for lack of a better word) SJW hounded as a Nazi because a vendor sold an anti-fascist t-shirt that a customer was offended by. He ended up getting death threats.

Raise your hand if you want more of that
29
It’s funny how most of the negative comments on Rich piece where about how Rich was incorrectly using data to validate his point (which Katie also points out here), whereas most negative comments here are basically “shut up, we’re right” with some name calling added...
30
@26 go back and read the article, Katie uses data/quotes from the same survey that Rich uses, the one you are saying is the good one.
32
For me, utterly and completely free speech is America's most defining and empowering virtue. It's really the only thing about America that I think is truly great, and when you get right down to it, the only truly progressive element of our culture. This post is a useful rebuttal for people--and a few of them are evidently on this thread--who believe all it should take to deprive anyone of their rights as citizens is to yell "Nazi!!" at the top of your lungs.

I mean, that's just idealistic cowardice. Are you really so afraid and weak? Are you telling me you can't muster the minimal intellectual and moral strength required to convince people that Nazism is bad? Christ.

Win because your way is better, and because you can convince others that your way is better, not because you've forcibly shielded them from other opinions. Do I really need to write that sentence? What the fuck is going on?
33
It's true that "definition of hate speech can be stretched to encompass everything with which you personally disagree. And then expand beyond that." Yet look at all the countries that do ban hate speech and yet the definition does not expand beyond that. The definition of defamation or state secrets can be stretched to encompass anything. But is it? The definition of copyright violation could be stretched to encompass unpopular political speech. the definition of child porn could be stretched to encompass anything.

We restrict defamation and state secrets and copyright and certain kinds of porn, yet we choose to not keep stretching these definitions. We could but we don't.The argument that once we start down the road of restricting speech, then it will spin out of control, is disproven by the fact that we have been down that road since forever.

We went down that road when we restricted libel and slander, and official secrets and trade secrets and copyright and everything else. We went down that road, and then, when we had achieved a necessary goal, we stopped. All the other healthy democracies have chosen not to stretch the definition of hate speech. They could have let it stretch to encompass anything, but they chose not to.

The reason we have a free society is because we choose to. Every day, we choose to keep it free. Not because we have never dared cross some arbitrary line that the ACLU thinks is sacred.
34
I still fundamentally don't understand how people yelling (a form of speech) to drown out a speaker, or people being socially ostracized for saying something conservative is anti free speech. Literally the only way to fully stop these type of behaviors would be to make rules preventing drowning out of a speaker, or an even weirder rule that forced people to be nice to a person who just said something they believe to be either untrue or immoral. These solutions would stifle more speech then they saved.
35
@31 sorry you are right, but Rich didn’t actually link (or i’m betting read) that study. Instead he linked to (and wrote about) an article that linked to (and wrote about) a blog that wrote (but didn’t link to) the study. Katie directly linked to the study that she used. I’m sure the study Rich used is a good study but i’m warry of he understand of someone who read someone who read someone who may have read the whole study.
36
@34-you are absolutely right. The "free speech" guarantee in the Constitution prevents the government from restricting what you can say. It in no way guarantees that you will not face consequences from others in society, included but not limited to ostracism and heckling, if your speech is offensive.
38
#33 : "Yet look at all the countries that do ban hate speech and yet the definition does not expand beyond that."

Here are some examples of how hate speech laws have been used in countries that have them:

In 2015 France's highest court upheld hate speech convictions against pro-Palestinian activists for wearing t-shirts that read “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel.”

Also in France: In 2013 a leftist activist was convicted and fined for insulting former French President Nicolas Sarkozy by holding a sign that said “get lost, jerk.” That same year French judges fined Laure Pora, the former head of the Paris chapter of ACT UP, 2,300 euros for using the term “homophobe” during a demonstration against the pro-life group Lejeune Foundation and La Manif Pour Tous.”

In May 2016 Canada's (at the time) conservative government threatened to use Canada's hate speech laws against boycott Israel activists there.

In the UK in 2012 Muslim teenager Azhar Ahmed was arrested for a facebook post expressing his anger at British troops in Afghanistan.

Polish hate speech laws have been used to prosecute people who are critical of Christianity, including singer Dorota Rabczewskafor whose crime was saying that the Bible was "unbelievable" and written by people "drunk on wine and smoking some kind of herbs" and Behemoth singer Adam Darski who was prosecuted for calling the Catholic Church "the most murderous cult on the planet", and tearing up a copy of the Bible.

In Turkey, hate speech laws are routinely employed to silence critics of the Erdogan government.

And of course in the US, Republican lawmakers have proposed classifying groups such as Antifa and BLM as "hate groups." On colleges that have hate speech codes, the "national origin" protection has been invoked against protests of both Israeli and Chinese government policies.

But do they work? Is it worth it? Do the countries that enact these laws see a slackening of Nationalism and far-right political efforts? Austria and Germany have among the strongest hate speech laws ever enacted, and have recently seen far-right parties making historical gains, with Austria as of its most recent elections now governed by a coalition of right-wing parties. Italy's recent elections also saw gains for the far right. France's National Front has gone from fringe party to potent political force in the era of hate speech laws. Brexit happened in spite of British hate speech restrictions.

If the goal of such laws is to prevent right-wing extremists from gaining political power, then they aren't working. However, if the goal of these laws is to give governments broad power to suppress unpopular discourse on the thinnest of pretexts, then they are working exactly as designed.

Any law designed to curtail speech will have to be enforced by somebody. Look who the enforcers are in this country.
39
Speak up and act NOW, Millennials and Next Generations! You're all being fucked over by Trumpreich.
40
@38 Excellent post.
43
Come on now, Leftists are constantly arguing there are no biological differences between males and females. That's deeply anti-reality.
44
@38 FTW.
45
@38 Well spoken indeed. Here is a great podcast about debating hate speech from Radiolab called More Perfect, about the Supreme Court.

https://play.radiopublic.com/radiolab-pr…

They're all worth checking out, especially the one about Ruth Bader Ginsberg. When she was a lawyer she argued to an all male Supreme Court to take sex discrimination seriously based on a case about frat boys and beer.
46
IanCalvert @34 and dvs99 @36 nail the important distinction that liberals who are accustomed to having their views represented and privileged tend to ignore: natural consequences for odious speech from members of the public is not the same as government censorship. If you wish to argue for a certain set of normative values that disallow interrupting people who have been granted some kind of formal access to a platform, go ahead and do that, but understand that what you're arguing has exactly nothing to do with constitutional protection of speech. Also understand that nobody is actually under any obligation to cleave to your proposed norms - by violating them, they expose themselves to natural social consequences, just like racist speakers, which is fine, but it's NOT okay to demand government action, which is exactly the censorship that supposed free speech advocates supposedly decry.

It's arguably illegal for campuses to try to silence hecklers, becasue THAT is government censorship, and the First Amendment provides a negative right of protection from censorship, not a positive right of a guaranteed platform or audience. Indeed, hecklers do NOT actually prevent anyone from speaking; speakers may self-censor - or leave - in response, but they do have the option of continuing to speak and ignoring the hecklers. What the hecklers do is disrupt the AUDIENCE'S ability to listen, but there is no guarantee of a right to listen, nor a right to an audience (some might argue that such a right is implied by the right to speak, becasue that right is functionally useless without a right of an audience to listen, but this again misses that there is not right to speak, just a right to not be subject to government censorship). Further, it's not like lecture halls are the only venue, nor even the most accessible venue any more. None of the specific people mentioned as being silenced are actually being silenced - indeed, they were invited to the campuses in the first place because they have been quite loud on TV, in books, on blogs, on YouTube, whatever. They have plenty of platforms, and I don't think they need an extralegal guarantee of access to the specific platform of a university lecture hall or auditorium to ensure a robust exchange of ideas in the public interest.

This is all about people accustomed to power losing some of it to people who previously had little. The hecklers, protestors, etc. WERE previously being censored, often illegally by government agents, and they are less so now, in line with increasing support for free speech; the invited speakers whose speech was previously being privileged and (illegally) protected from direct challenge are no longer enjoying their privileges to the same degree. This is just another case of equality feeling like oppression to someone accustomed to a privilege.
47
But right now, students are scared to speak out. In 2017, the Foundation for Individuals in Education (FIRE) released a report on college students' attitudes about free speech. In one survey of 1,250 students, they asked them to respond to two statements: (1) “In my college classes, I have stopped myself from sharing my ideas and opinions,” and (2) “When I spend time on campus outside of my classes, I have stopped myself from sharing my ideas or opinions.” Nearly half (48 percent) of respondents said they self-censor in the classroom.

I'm appalled that you would try to frame this as a problem, and even more appalled that the response to both was not 100%. This is just called having a filter. People SHOULDN'T spew out every single thought that enters their heads; most of them are at best irrelevant. Considering what you think and wish to say before doing so in a class discussion is a GOOD thing; saying I want waffles in the middle of a discussion about the Serbian genocide doesn't contribute anything to the discussion, it derails it. Ditto for outside class - I don't call someone a shitbrained asshole at work, even when that's what I actually think, because my need to get along with my co-workers is more important than sharing my opinion in that case. Oh the horrors of ever self-censoring! Again, what I think is most disturbing is the fact that 52% of students either have no filter at all or are not self-aware enough to realize that they do indeed self-censor. It's a necessary part of social harmony in a pluralistic society.
48
While Mein Trumpfy's got me missing fucking Richard "I am not a Crook!" Nixon, one thing I do NOT miss is Gee Dubya Bush's "Free Speech Zones." Miles away from the action, news media (and civilization), surrounded by razor wire, this space gave his opponents (peeps with at least half a brain) ample time and space to protest to ... whomever happened along, I suppose....

How "legal" was that shit?

(I also miss those wonderful, adrenaline-pumping Terrorist Warnings 'Code Orange' and 'Code Red!', and wonder why the fuck Mein Trumpfy [Secret Agent Orange?] hasn't brought them back, too.)
49
'This is all about people accustomed to power losing some of it to people who previously had little. The hecklers, protestors, etc. WERE previously being censored, often illegally by government agents, and they are less so now, in line with increasing support for free speech; the invited speakers whose speech was previously being privileged and (illegally) protected from direct challenge are no longer enjoying their privileges to the same degree. This is just another case of equality feeling like oppression to someone accustomed to a privilege." --John Horstman

BINGO
50
@34, @36, @46 - are you familiar with this analysis by constitutional scholars? https://www.chronicle.com/article/Does-D…
51
It doesn’t seem like my link is active. The article is “Does Disruption Violate Free Speech?” It was written by Howard Gillman and Erwin Chemerinsky, and published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. It addresses the issues raised here about what the First Amendment actually protects. I’ll try to post the link again: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Does-D…

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