Stuff

[The first part of this was the same as the cleaner version]

Good arguments for free speech include “I think all those state governments enacting Blue Lives Matter laws to restrict criticism of police just hate other people’s freedom”.

Similarly, “But Stalin is a mass murderer!” isn’t much of a defense of the witch-hunts and censorship that came with McCarthyism, destroying the lives of union advocates who just wanted better working conditions, and read a bit of Marx out of curiosity and with a critical eye. And if you think no greedy corporation ever took advantage of Stalin’s reputation to get away with treating their workers like shit, I have a bridge to sell you.

The danger of being too eager to censor first and ask questions later still rears its head today. When it comes to the subject of art, and how subjective it can be, how would you interpret a poem like this?

“I am saying I am a spectacle, a wonder surrounded by nothing

as huge as me, and people think I am claiming majesty. People travel for days

to look at the most important canyon, which is to say

the biggest empty space.” - How I am like Donald Trump

Personally I think it’s a more elegant take on all the jokes that Trump probably didn’t want the US Presidency, that he’s a sad, empty man inside. I think it’s a powerful poem mainly about depression, only using Trump as a device. Maybe other think that Trump is happy and hateful, but even if it were true, I still think the main value of this poem is in its depiction of one form of depression, maybe with some self-loathing that so often comes with the illness. The power of poetry, of all forms of art, is in depicting the familiar in new, interesting, and unexpected ways that might speak to an audience that had never had a work of art speak to them like that before. Not every work of art speaks to everyone. Not every person experiences depression in the same way.

I think that the best tactic to defend free speech is to base your arguments on the places where censorship and mobs do the most damage and make the least sense.

It’s all fun and games to say “I might hate what you have to say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it” in response to Nazi-level racism in order to prove how radical and hardcore a free speech advocate you are, but it does nothing for your argument.

The true value of freedom of speech - both in law and in spirit - is in the good it lets flourish. It’s in beautiful poems like Howl (which was the subject of an obscenity trial) and countless other poems like it, and the Disney musical version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the movie had to conform to the Hayes Code, and was in my opinion lesser for it). It’s in how George Orwell could publish amazingly prescient books like Animal Farm and 1984 in the UK, books that would have gotten him imprisoned or killed in the Soviet Union. It’s in how Charlie Chaplin could produce The Great Dictator in the United States, an act of humour and defiance that would have definitely gotten him killed in Nazi Germany.

I think “Well those Charlottesville neo-Nazis have a right to be awful” is a terrible argument for the value of free speech, for the simple reason that neo-Nazis are bad and their ideas are complete bunk. A good argument will be like “The anti-Nazi crowd was much bigger and really shows how much support the anti-racist cause has. I really feel heartened by their courage fighting against bigotry”, or “Man those bloody neo-Nazis sure are spouting hateful bullshit, let’s have some fun debunking the shit out of their nonsense. We don’t need to resort to lawsuits for this, we have the bigger crowd and we can solve this with community methods”. All the good free speech lets flourish are worth the risk of a few weak neo-Nazis who can’t even get fifty attendees to their second rally in a nation of more than three hundred million people.

On a related note, civility isn’t being a pushover, it’s in dunking on Nazis with well-researched arguments without a single slur and leaving them sputtering anyway. It’s about keeping discipline and standing between those assholes and the most vulnerable people without devolving into infighting. It’s value isn’t in convincing hard-core bigots, it is in not letting them drag you into the mud with them, in not using ‘but at least I’m better than Nazis’ as an excuse for your own bad behaviour.

I think I’ll never care for defending the hateful speech of neo-Nazis, but I do worry about how people who call Jews “furnace fodder” over fandom nonsense tend to shout loudest about how they’re the best anti-fascists (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), I worry about how people who go and smear the wrong artist first and blame a fellow black journalist when they’re found out tend to shout the loudest about doing lots of charity and modelling their lives on MLK, I worry about normal disagreements between feminist women turning into accusations about who doesn’t actually have any agency and is secretly just a pawn of powerful men, and I worry about people being so hysterical about youthful and obnoxious “SJWs” they want government censorship on university campuses.

I think what we lose from government censorship, from individuals being too willing to join a mob, is greater than the effort it takes to speak out against neo-Nazis rather than suing them into oblivion, greater than the effort of articulating our own interpretation of a subjective piece of art, and greater than the effort it takes to exercise our freedom of association to just stay away from people we disagree with, or the faith it takes to trust that most people who meet the truly awful will see them as you do, that you and your friends are not the only thinking people in a world of ignorant sheep waiting for a shepherd.

“One of the Russian soldiers asked me what I did in the American army. I told him I was a war crimes investigator. I explained that I tried to get evidence of what the SS did. “Don’t you know what they did?” he asked. I said that, of course, I did. “So why are you asking them?” he said quizzically. “Just shoot them!” In later years, when it became clear that we could never try more than a very small sampling of the criminals, and that almost all would escape punishment, I often thought of the advice I got from the simple Russian soldier. Being a lawman, I couldn’t accept it, but I often wondered if he was right.” - Ben Ferencz

“Public support for German war crimes trials was on the wane. The prospect of getting additional appropriations for more lawyers or trials was bleak. I countered that we had in our hands clear cut evidence of genocide on a massive scale and a trial of the leading criminals could be completed quickly. It would be unforgivable if we allowed the perpetrators to escape justice. In desperation, I suggested that if no one else was available, I could do the job myself. He asked if I could handle it in addition to my other responsibilities. I assured him that I could. “OK,” he said. “You’ve got it.” And so I became the Chief Prosecutor in what was certain to be the biggest murder trial in human history. I was 27 years old, and it was my first case. I had no idea it would make history.

It’s even worse if you follow it up with “Asking for evidence that our movement actually works or implying that we’re not the most important people/cause in the world means you are evil and deserve abuse!”.

For literally everything else, it means “If someone finally shows signs of being more socially responsible and less bigoted, don’t immediately mock them for not doing more”.

Honestly this behaviour makes me think most of Tumblr doesn’t care about social justice, and they see improvement only as a sign that this person listens to them enough to be an easy target for abuse, a sign that maybe they won’t fight back or run away.

And even if you’re sure that’s not it, anyone who is being chased by a large internet mob instead of shutting shit down and blocking people skillfully is more likely than average to have weak boundaries, to be easier to pick on, to be less able to shut shit down like a pro, and these traits tend to come from disadvantages we haven’t seen, like childhood abuse or depression or anxiety, which can in turn be because of homophobia or transphobia or all kinds of bigotry.

Even if they are awful (not true for most victims of internet mobs), internet mobs are a solution that are more likely to target the less privileged and powerful out of all the shitty people in the world.“

This isn’t new and it isn’t special. It’s as old as humanity and certainly older than Christianity.

It doesn’t even take much planning. Just reflexively say the right words when you’re about to be held accountable, and say the right words when you feel that hurting someone else will make you hurt less inside. Then only people who know the situation and your history well, people who think critically instead of blindly following scripture, will dislike and avoid you. And they won’t have the numbers and clout to stop you. It’s enough to get away with a lot.

And it’s a lot of what plagues the “social justice” community now. The core ideals of equal rights and basic decency they espouse are very well-accepted, and you need to actually look into each individual with a critical eye to see if they live up to it.