So this one is too ironic not to bring up. After conservatives creating a culture of "waaah college students are mean to us on campus", a conservative campus group is now...suing two other campus groups for their speech and demanding that NO ONE but this pro life group is allowed to speak.
Popehat is a lawyer and right but-not-completley-insane commentator
Okay. College students, like any other group, can be censorial assholes. I think the hyper-focus on them as the Worst Censors Ever is misplaced and partisan-adjacent. But sometimes . . . wow. They go all in.
/2 George Mason Students for Life made a campus display decrying abortion, arguing that it devalued life in a way that encouraged other devaluations of life like slavery. The Black African Heritage and Caribbean Coalition took offense and posted a critical letter on Instagram. /3 The Coalition’s letter is, in my view, extremely mild. So far so good. You have speech, you have response speech. /4 Then GMU’s “Equity Center” posting the Coalition’s letter and expressing support, and Students for Life went absolutely batshit censorship-crazy. /5 Students for Life sent — and now proudly displays — a letter DEMANDING that GMU engage in censorship — that all posts critical of Students for Life be deleted, and that there be official apologies and reprimands.
I would quote the letter here, but SFL put it in a format that's difficult to copy paste. Instead see the screenshot from the continuing thread:
/6 It would take me more than five (5) calendar hours to express how completely unhinged the Students for Life demand is. /7 Here you’ve got nearly every moronic trope that plagues free speech discourse: Your Criticism Is Censorship; Your Speech Violates My Human Rights; My School Criticizing Me Is Censorship; I Have A Right Not To Be Unfairly Criticized; Your Speech Can’t Make Me Uncomfortable. /8 I considered, briefly, that this was satirical, meant to lampoon bumptious and extravagant demands that the campus Left sometimes makes in response to speech it doesn’t like. But it seems sincere in its lunacy. /9 It’s written by someone who is, apparently, a lawyer for nonprofit orgs, but the legal arguments are utterly fatuous. The Coalition’s (again, almost painfully mild) letter objecting to the rhetorical use of slavery is absolutely protected speech. /10 Note that George Mason is a public university, so doing any of what the Students for Life demand to punish and censor the Coalition would violate the First Amendment.
What utter buffoonery. /11 Note: free speech is under constant threat from every side of the political spectrum. Recently there’s been a lot of news — though not enough coverage — of university speech under official threat by censorious laws passed by the GOP. Here, by contrast, is the campus Right…/12 ….openly advocating for official censorship of the sort they normally purport to decry.
Watch to see if any of the “OMG Campus Censorship” political sites cover it (lol). Also watch for @TheFIREorg which I suspect will have a sensible and apt response.
Something that pops up a lot from freeze peech types. They can talk, but if you do? Oh it's time for the cancelation whining, the claims of censorship, and the demands that you be censored for "defamation" or such.
The anti-choice set is the demonstration of Sartre's famous statement on bad faith invocation of free speech:
Never believe that anti‐ Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.
It's not surprising that once they face actual free speech, they run screaming from it.
That said, White hasn't exactly covered himself in glory in this area either, with his arguments attacking students for pushing back against bigotry - it's telling that in his denunciation of the anti-choice group and their behavior, he just can't help himself from taking a swipe at them. Lines like "Your Speech Can’t Make Me Uncomfortable" and "Your Speech Violates My Human Rights" as "moronic tropes" are used by free speech "absolutists" like White to avert their eyes from actual harms occurring to actual people - how public displays of bigotry and eliminationist rhetoric can be just as if not more chilling to speech and association as government action. Reading his response to the first Alex Jones trial struck my as atypical of his usual writing, lacking his normal bombast - and I had to wonder if the testimony of Jones' victims and the actual harm they suffered from his speech struck a nerve.
(If you have the stomach for it, I would recommend reading/listening to the recent testimony by Jones' victims in the current trial, about how they have to live lives in fear purely because Jones lied about their dead family members and themselves in part because it made him money, in part because Jones believes that the world is out to get him. It's harrowing stuff, and it shows the harm this sort of behavior actually causes.)
I feel like what happened here is different. Popehat guy doesn't really care about the tone of the pro-choice response (at least in the tweet) and disapproves of the blatant attempt at censorship by the anti-choice group. Unless I'm missing something.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I feel like what happened here is different. Popehat guy doesn't really care about the tone of the pro-choice response (at least in the tweet) and disapproves of the blatant attempt at censorship by the anti-choice group. Unless I'm missing something.
In his response, he takes a swipe at groups like the Yale Law protestors:
I considered, briefly, that this was satirical, meant to lampoon bumptious and extravagant demands that the campus Left sometimes makes in response to speech it doesn’t like.
Concluding it with a classic piece of free speech "absolutist" bad faith (that being "speech you don't like", a phrase built on a lie of omission to attack an argument while dodging its content) is illustrative to me at least. White strikes me as the sort of "white moderate" that Ian Danskin talked about in his latest video, especially given his association with FIRE:
The satirical site that manages to persuade people to believe the absurd has filed a Supreme Court brief in support of a man who was arrested and prosecuted for making fun of police on social media.
...
The Supreme Court case involves Anthony Novak, who was arrested after he spoofed the Parma, Ohio, police force in Facebook posts.
The posts were published over 12 hours and included an announcement of new police hiring “strongly encouraging minorities to not apply.” Another post promoted a fake event in which child sex offenders could be “removed from the sex offender registry and accepted as an honorary police officer.”
After being acquitted of criminal charges, the man sued the police for violating his constitutional rights. But a federal appeals court ruled the officers have “qualified immunity” and threw out the lawsuit.
One issue is whether people might reasonably have believed that what they saw on Novak’s site was real.
But the Onion said Novak had no obligation to post a disclaimer. “Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original,” the Onion said, noting its own tendency to mimic “the dry tone of an Associated Press news story.”
...
The brief concludes with a familiar call for the court to hear the case and a twist.
“The petition for certiorari should be granted, the rights of the people vindicated, and various historical wrongs remedied. The Onion would welcome any one of the three, particularly the first,” lawyers for the Onion wrote.
The University of Florida is going to start enforcing a decades-old prohibition against indoor protests following a raucous demonstration earlier this month against the selection of U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse as a finalist for the school president’s job.
Sasse, a Republican in his second Senate term, has drawn criticism from some at the school for his opposition to same-sex marriage.
Current (soon Former) University President Fuchs had this amazing statement about it, and somehow did not immediately burst into flames
While the university supports the First Amendment right to free speech, “with this commitment comes an obligation to protect the rights of everyone in our community to speak and to hear,” Fuchs said.
The University of Florida is going to start enforcing a decades-old prohibition against indoor protests following a raucous demonstration earlier this month against the selection of U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse as a finalist for the school president’s job.
Sasse, a Republican in his second Senate term, has drawn criticism from some at the school for his opposition to same-sex marriage.
Current (soon Former) University President Fuchs had this amazing statement about it, and somehow did not immediately burst into flames
While the university supports the First Amendment right to free speech, “with this commitment comes an obligation to protect the rights of everyone in our community to speak and to hear,” Fuchs said.
Telling college students not to do something always goes so well for the administration of said college.
Oh, wait. I mean the opposite of that. It usually ends up with more protests, lawsuits, and a reduction of their academic standing.
Good work, Florida!
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
The University of Florida is going to start enforcing a decades-old prohibition against indoor protests following a raucous demonstration earlier this month against the selection of U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse as a finalist for the school president’s job.
Sasse, a Republican in his second Senate term, has drawn criticism from some at the school for his opposition to same-sex marriage.
Current (soon Former) University President Fuchs had this amazing statement about it, and somehow did not immediately burst into flames
While the university supports the First Amendment right to free speech, “with this commitment comes an obligation to protect the rights of everyone in our community to speak and to hear,” Fuchs said.
Ah, an appeal to the nonexistent right to monologue. Because in the eyes of these people, free speech means having a right to a captive audience.
The University of Florida is going to start enforcing a decades-old prohibition against indoor protests following a raucous demonstration earlier this month against the selection of U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse as a finalist for the school president’s job.
Sasse, a Republican in his second Senate term, has drawn criticism from some at the school for his opposition to same-sex marriage.
Current (soon Former) University President Fuchs had this amazing statement about it, and somehow did not immediately burst into flames
While the university supports the First Amendment right to free speech, “with this commitment comes an obligation to protect the rights of everyone in our community to speak and to hear,” Fuchs said.
Ah, an appeal to the nonexistent right to monologue. Because in the eyes of these people, free speech means having a right to a captive audience.
More that free speech means freedom from consequences and opposing opinions
Posts
I demand that Captain Inertia be banned from this thread.
EDIT - Correction, I agree there should be no speech in this thread. Page 101, new thread?
Wrong thread, CI. The Star Wars/Star Trek/Movies/Streaming literally every single media thread is over there.
The anti-choice set is the demonstration of Sartre's famous statement on bad faith invocation of free speech:
It's not surprising that once they face actual free speech, they run screaming from it.
That said, White hasn't exactly covered himself in glory in this area either, with his arguments attacking students for pushing back against bigotry - it's telling that in his denunciation of the anti-choice group and their behavior, he just can't help himself from taking a swipe at them. Lines like "Your Speech Can’t Make Me Uncomfortable" and "Your Speech Violates My Human Rights" as "moronic tropes" are used by free speech "absolutists" like White to avert their eyes from actual harms occurring to actual people - how public displays of bigotry and eliminationist rhetoric can be just as if not more chilling to speech and association as government action. Reading his response to the first Alex Jones trial struck my as atypical of his usual writing, lacking his normal bombast - and I had to wonder if the testimony of Jones' victims and the actual harm they suffered from his speech struck a nerve.
(If you have the stomach for it, I would recommend reading/listening to the recent testimony by Jones' victims in the current trial, about how they have to live lives in fear purely because Jones lied about their dead family members and themselves in part because it made him money, in part because Jones believes that the world is out to get him. It's harrowing stuff, and it shows the harm this sort of behavior actually causes.)
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
In his response, he takes a swipe at groups like the Yale Law protestors:
Concluding it with a classic piece of free speech "absolutist" bad faith (that being "speech you don't like", a phrase built on a lie of omission to attack an argument while dodging its content) is illustrative to me at least. White strikes me as the sort of "white moderate" that Ian Danskin talked about in his latest video, especially given his association with FIRE:
As a layperson this seems... ridiculous.
Probably was supposed to be calendar days (which is typical for this sort of excretion), but someone messed it up.
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https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/university-florida-enforce-protest-ban-anti-sasse-rally-rcna54080?fbclid=IwAR2cMHhMOYropOGZ0HNG4HxCqofbrMtAsSIpTeFCw_ZxIKgRNU7RIK_7vXs
Current (soon Former) University President Fuchs had this amazing statement about it, and somehow did not immediately burst into flames
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Telling college students not to do something always goes so well for the administration of said college.
Oh, wait. I mean the opposite of that. It usually ends up with more protests, lawsuits, and a reduction of their academic standing.
Good work, Florida!
Ah, an appeal to the nonexistent right to monologue. Because in the eyes of these people, free speech means having a right to a captive audience.
More that free speech means freedom from consequences and opposing opinions