What?! The people who ban books are a threat to free speech?
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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politics
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"I don't think freedom is simply doing what you want. I believe freedom is simply being able to love without fear"
That always stick with me and makes me wonder what heavy conservatives think of that line
See, the thing is that they don't see themselves as living in fear. In their minds, they're fighting a righteous battle in the name of good and decency.
They're not scared, they're just looking for a fight anywhere and everywhere.
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No fucking shit
I'm glad this was in politics. Because it's certainly not news
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What they want is freedom to control reality. What Republicans say, every day is not real, they don't live in reality. What they want is not free speech, they have that more than ever. What they want is to dictate reality to the rest of us.
All conservative are bad, acab as it were.
A CPAC official even released a statement saying "stopping the circulation of these facts and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on"
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I've found a pretty effective argument when dealing with right wingers at this point. I simply say that only one side is banning books and it's theirs, and I stick only to that. It's indefensible. They can try to twist it, say it's just protecting kids, and I will continue to say "Only the republicans are banning books". It's the end of discussion. Its shoving in their face that there is a clear line in the sand that republicans have crossed, and there is nothing they can say that would change that.
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They'll ban books and then whine that they're being oppressed when people point out that they're scared of ideas.
The Right Wing strategy is to simply claim you are being censored or treated unfairly so that people who don't know what you're doing give you a little more leg room.
Take that leg room and use it to advance your most extreme positions, go back to claiming you're being treated unfairly if anyone calls you on it.
The final step is that you must accuse anyone actually being censored or treated unfairly off pulling this bullshit.
The Right were never free speech advocates, and if you still think they were, try using the word "cisgender" and the word "retard" on Twitter, and tell me which one gets you banned first.
Always has been
Free speech for me but not for thee!
Right wing hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug. At the end of the day it's just a form of entitlement.
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.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Always have been. The term has been already tainted with bigotry and violence.
Always has been though??
Something, something, fuck their feelings?
Duh.
In the U.S., yes, at this moment the major threats to free speech are coming from the so-called "right". Forbidding teaching black history, LGBT issues, etc. A few years ago, lest we forget, it was Obama cracking down on the OWS protests and trying to prosecute Julian Assange and Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Before that it was the GOP again pushing the PATRIOT Act and trying to ban Grand Theft Auto. They did it for a long time with the Red Scare. That of course, basically kicked off in response to Stalin, who was doing his own purges of opponents and censorship. Pre-war, it was Hitler, Mussolini and Franco worst of all, but was happening in the U.S. too. That all goes back even further to the Comstock laws, the Alien and Sedition Acts, you name it. There isn't some magical quality about the directions "left" and "right" by which bad people in power in government under that label don't want to silence their opponents. There is a tendency for what we call "the right" - this kind of more-or-less fascist, religious based, emotionally charged, etc. set of ideologies - to respond more eagerly to calls to silence or brutalize opponents, because they are by and large a little dumber at the end of the day.
Are the Antifa in the room as we speak?
always. every time. this is not surprising to anyone . people who act like this is untrue, or surprising, make me sick to my stomach.
Typical bothsideism in the comments of that site as per usual. Would love to see those bothsiders on an article stating the opposite of this one.
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Also, water is wet.
Take note that this is an engaging title. I'd like to see more political science discussion in this community. These opinion pieces are part not a good part of the internet. They're made for sharing and being consumed on social media.
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