It's a very standard understanding of liberal democracy that the state should encourage more freedom and more plurality of views and restrict anything that seeks to reduce plurality and reduce freedom. Fascism is not a neutral view amongst all other views, it is directly and clearly an idea that seeks to destroy other views and other people.
Second it is about honesty and dishonesty; the Far-Right is dishonest when they claim that they should be heard for the sake of liberty when the basis of their philosophy is to reduce liberty.
Third it is about a groundwork of accepted behaviours and outcomes. Democrats accept that there are truths and untruths. Democrats accept the results of elections. Fascists and the Far-Right do none of those things - if they lose they resort to violence and lies.
It's a perversion of politics in a deep sense, subverting the ideals of Mill back on itself in order to destroy it.
…
Nothing in anything I’ve said suggests that anyone should be compelled to agree with anything anyone else says, or to refrain from disagreeing - however strongly - with anything they say. On the contrary, I think that the right to disagree with anything anyone - anyone - else says is the most fundamental part of freedom of speech as I understand it.
If your position is that government should not legally prohibit any form of speech, and therefore that no form of speech should attract criminal penalties, but that individual people should be free to decide not to associate with those whose views they find abhorrent then that’s fine with me.
Thanks Marvin the Martian.
I just don't think this is the presenting issue. Governments make laws to restrict speech in certain ways, and that's subject to the democratic process if you live in a liberal democracy. I presume you can live with that.
The immediate issue is how speech is mediated in the specific shared space in which it occurs. Parliament itself only directly mediates speech in a limited range of spaces so, as I said, it comes down to the individuals, groups, communities, organisations or other entities that mediate speech in the online and offline spaces in which it occurs.
The underlying issue I see with the rest of your post is that you seem to think that all shared spaces should operate according to democratic principles. My advice to Person B would be that if you want to participate in a shared space that operates democratically, don't join one that doesn't.
...it is about honesty and dishonesty; the Far-Right is dishonest when they claim that they should be heard for the sake of liberty when the basis of their philosophy is to reduce liberty.
Is this meant to be an argument for the suppression of far-right views by the state? Because I don't think there's any litmus test that the right to free-speech only applies to people who are sincerely commited to it.
I am against capital punishment. And I oppose it even in cases where the person being executed is an unrepentant murderer, ie. someone who clearly has no problem killing others, and is only complaining because he does not want to die himself. His own personal hypocrisy doesn't change my low evaluation of the state's competency to make those sorts of decisions.
Pluralism is worth defending in its own right, and has totally gone by the by. The point of pluralism is that, whatever view one is advancing, other views have the right to exist. Not the right to be implemented simultaneously, as this would require a genuine multiverse, but the right to exist. There cannot be a genuine debate without pluralism. Pluralism has to have limits, especially in respect of views which do harm by their very expression, but there is still the need to facilitate debate, including legitimate and far-reaching challenging of ideas. Attacks on the people holding them are emphatically not the same thing.
This has been an increasingly unfashionable, even silent, position since the Brexit referendum and the first time the USA elected Trump. By a total non-coincidence, they both happened in 2016. Something in political culture in Anglophone countries has broken down, possibly irretrievably.
This is where a certain version of identity politics, where the political becomes so personal that the distinction between a person and their ideas no longer operates on any level, is a fundamental distortion making liberal democracy arguably impossible.
The underlying issue I see with the rest of your post is that you seem to think that all shared spaces should operate according to democratic principles.
That would be my preference, certainly.
My advice to Person B would be that if you want to participate in a shared space that operates democratically, don't join one that doesn't.
That’s the rub, isn’t it? Because when the shared space we’re talking about is society as a whole then the option to simply not join doesn’t exist.
I hope this isn’t actually the case, but it feels to me like you’re advocating for society as a whole to abandon democracy in order to ensure that your own preferences for how it should be run can never even be challenged, much less overturned. But if that was the case then you’d be no better than any other tinpot dictator that has ever come before, so it can’t be true.
In practice, communities of human beings have their own strong ideas about what you can or can't say, typically expressed through social norms, and typically mediated according to context.
Yes--but often, down through history, to the detriment of many people. Heresy laws (not merely declaring some ideas heretical, but with actual legal penalties), speaking out against anything in the government, speaking out in favor of various notions in the sciences, speaking out in favor of the rights of various minorities (particularly LGBTQ people), and so on. I think this part of why we need to be extremely careful about restricting freedom of speech (and freedom of thought, etc.).
Apart from people's freedoms in general, we've seen where it leads over millennia, and even now in various places. I believe we should not do that again. This is less than a theoretical "slippery slope" and more of a "oh look at that mountain we kept sliding down over and over, which led to the deaths of countless people over the centuries who said what those power decided was 'the wrong thing.'"
I'd also add that "the norms" in a given time and place largely means "what the majority likes"--or "what those in power like"--but protecting the rights of those in the minority, or who are not in power (which are two different things, but both still matter) is very, very important.
Thanks, ChastMastr.
As you say, those are two different things. I would say that being persecuted for what you say, and being excluded from a particular shared space for what you say, are also two different things.
I think it's also that times change. Looking at freedom of speech as having being conceived as a means to an end, once it starts to become weaponised against that end, its usefulness and effectiveness diminish.
Speech is limited within societies. They only question really being addressed is what the nature and boundaries of those limitations should be.
Harm. Speech can actually cause harm, through intimidation and inciting violence, especially by the powerful and influential against those with less power, disadvantaged or as parts of society with minority characteristics.
In other words, if it looks like “punching down”, it ought to be called out and condemned as inherently evil. You can determine which kind of -ism afterwards.
The underlying issue I see with the rest of your post is that you seem to think that all shared spaces should operate according to democratic principles.
That would be my preference, certainly.
It's not currently a reality, though. And by virtue of different shared spaces being mediated by different entities for different purposes, it's unlikely to become one.
Unless you want to restrict the freedom of assembly or the freedom of association.
My advice to Person B would be that if you want to participate in a shared space that operates democratically, don't join one that doesn't.
That’s the rub, isn’t it? Because when the shared space we’re talking about is society as a whole then the option to simply not join doesn’t exist.
If you can't leave it or join it, then "society as a whole" isn't a shared space.
I hope this isn’t actually the case, but it feels to me like you’re advocating for society as a whole to abandon democracy in order to ensure that your own preferences for how it should be run can never even be challenged, much less overturned. But if that was the case then you’d be no better than any other tinpot dictator that has ever come before, so it can’t be true.
I'm still not advocating for "society as a whole".
In other words, if it looks like “punching down”, it ought to be called out and condemned as inherently evil.
I don't think anyone would disagree with this. The debate seems to be about whether such speech should be subject to state restrictions.
The legal sanctions do exist but the concept of “hate speech” which we have in England (not sure about Scotland, suspect it’s the same), could use some clarification for lay people, if only to put to bed the concept of “cancel culture”, although the judiciary and the legal profession seem to understand it well enough.
In other words, if it looks like “punching down”, it ought to be called out and condemned as inherently evil.
I don't think anyone would disagree with this. The debate seems to be about whether such speech should be subject to state restrictions.
The legal sanctions do exist but the concept of “hate speech” which we have in England (not sure about Scotland, suspect it’s the same), could use some clarification for lay people, if only to put to bed the concept of “cancel culture”, although the judiciary and the legal profession seem to understand it well enough.
You're assuming people actually don't understand rather than just performing outrage about "cancel culture" to hide their own bigotry.
Just addressing freedom of speech, I find the concept underlying the prevailing view somewhat inane, and not inherently compatible with promoting the common good or flourishing
So what, you think everyone would be better off and happier if they were only allowed to say the things the government permits them to say?
Assuming society needs a centralised form of government, why would it need to get involved in the mediation of speech?
I think this place is a fairly straightforward example of a community where freedom of speech is curtailed for the common good.
I'm not sure I understand the point of your comment.
Another significant aspect is inequality. But I do think it's the end of the line for liberalism, and about time. Roll on post-liberalism (if we're lucky).
Since you appear to be welcoming this, what exactly do you mean by liberalism in this case? I know there are some differences in meaning, depending on where in the world one is located. How would you distinguish it from “liberal democracy“ or for that matter “liberal politics“ as understood in the United States (liberal as contrasted with conservative)?
"Liberal" and "democracy" are two different things. Democracy isn't inherent to liberalism - it's more-or-less compatible, but the combination has given rise to a particular conception of what modern societies look like, and how they function.
My understanding is that there's a distinction between social liberalism and classical liberalism, in that social liberalism allows for more government intervention.
Just addressing freedom of speech, I find the concept underlying the prevailing view somewhat inane, and not inherently compatible with promoting the common good or flourishing, as anyone who has ever said the wrong thing (which is all of us) knows from experience. My guess is that it's a corrective to historically draconian punishments for saying the wrong thing about the wrong person at the wrong time.
Also, returning to individualism, modern libel laws illustrate to me the extent to which freedom of speech has become wrapped up in an ideological expression of individualism.
If you're moving toward the "common good", in restricting Freedoms, you are naturally moving away from a liberal democracy. Because you are defining what the "common good" is and forcing others to comply with your views.
Like I said, this happens both on the left and the right. The extremes of which are communism ( on the left) and facism ( on the right). But really, they're the same thing pretty much.
I don't think you really understand the history and development of liberal democracy. Nobody, including John Stuart Mill, ever described a state where there are no boundaries to behaviour. Therefore the discussion is not whether there are any in a liberal democracy but where the lines should be drawn.
The way you frame the discussion is incredibly disingenuous.
The discussion is not being framed by myself but by many in the world. I gave an example in the OP.
The International IDEA is also framing the discussion with it's Global State of Democracy report here or it's more recent article here.
Or you can look to the Variaties of Democracy recent survey here.
Or even academic articles from Oxford if you prefer.
The evidence is liberal democracies are becoming more authoritarian.
Have you read them? They are becoming more authoritarian because Nazis and the Far-Right are on the rise. How you think "liberal democracy" is in decline somehow because they are doing liberal things like protecting others and increasing rights is completely beyond my understanding.
In short none of these reports are suggesting that liberal democracies are becoming authoritarian because of the "woke mind virus" or because Nazis do not have freedom to shout slogans.
Even in the left wing articles I posted, a closer reading will show authoritarianism is not just restricted to the right but across the board. Even the UK is in the process of autocratisation according to the V dem report, which is considered quite left wing.
Looking at freedom of speech as having being conceived as a means to an end, once it starts to become weaponised against that end, its usefulness and effectiveness diminish.
Uh... um... that might be the case if one conceives it as a means to an end, rather than something which is simply right. I'm a bit shocked by the idea of "freedom of speech" merely being the means to an end, with the conclusion being that perhaps it should be, I don't know, jettisoned?
Just addressing freedom of speech, I find the concept underlying the prevailing view somewhat inane, and not inherently compatible with promoting the common good or flourishing
So what, you think everyone would be better off and happier if they were only allowed to say the things the government permits them to say?
Assuming society needs a centralised form of government, why would it need to get involved in the mediation of speech?
I think this place is a fairly straightforward example of a community where freedom of speech is curtailed for the common good.
I'm not sure I understand the point of your comment.
Another significant aspect is inequality. But I do think it's the end of the line for liberalism, and about time. Roll on post-liberalism (if we're lucky).
Since you appear to be welcoming this, what exactly do you mean by liberalism in this case? I know there are some differences in meaning, depending on where in the world one is located. How would you distinguish it from “liberal democracy“ or for that matter “liberal politics“ as understood in the United States (liberal as contrasted with conservative)?
"Liberal" and "democracy" are two different things. Democracy isn't inherent to liberalism - it's more-or-less compatible, but the combination has given rise to a particular conception of what modern societies look like, and how they function.
My understanding is that there's a distinction between social liberalism and classical liberalism, in that social liberalism allows for more government intervention.
Just addressing freedom of speech, I find the concept underlying the prevailing view somewhat inane, and not inherently compatible with promoting the common good or flourishing, as anyone who has ever said the wrong thing (which is all of us) knows from experience. My guess is that it's a corrective to historically draconian punishments for saying the wrong thing about the wrong person at the wrong time.
Also, returning to individualism, modern libel laws illustrate to me the extent to which freedom of speech has become wrapped up in an ideological expression of individualism.
If you're moving toward the "common good", in restricting Freedoms, you are naturally moving away from a liberal democracy. Because you are defining what the "common good" is and forcing others to comply with your views.
Like I said, this happens both on the left and the right. The extremes of which are communism ( on the left) and facism ( on the right). But really, they're the same thing pretty much.
I don't think you really understand the history and development of liberal democracy. Nobody, including John Stuart Mill, ever described a state where there are no boundaries to behaviour. Therefore the discussion is not whether there are any in a liberal democracy but where the lines should be drawn.
The way you frame the discussion is incredibly disingenuous.
The discussion is not being framed by myself but by many in the world. I gave an example in the OP.
The International IDEA is also framing the discussion with it's Global State of Democracy report here or it's more recent article here.
Or you can look to the Variaties of Democracy recent survey here.
Or even academic articles from Oxford if you prefer.
The evidence is liberal democracies are becoming more authoritarian.
Have you read them? They are becoming more authoritarian because Nazis and the Far-Right are on the rise. How you think "liberal democracy" is in decline somehow because they are doing liberal things like protecting others and increasing rights is completely beyond my understanding.
In short none of these reports are suggesting that liberal democracies are becoming authoritarian because of the "woke mind virus" or because Nazis do not have freedom to shout slogans.
Even in the left wing articles I posted, a closer reading will show authoritarianism is not just restricted to the right but across the board. Even the UK is in the process of autocratisation according to the V dem report, which is considered quite left wing.
The UK has had right wing governments for decades.
In other words, if it looks like “punching down”, it ought to be called out and condemned as inherently evil.
I don't think anyone would disagree with this. The debate seems to be about whether such speech should be subject to state restrictions.
The legal sanctions do exist but the concept of “hate speech” which we have in England (not sure about Scotland, suspect it’s the same), could use some clarification for lay people, if only to put to bed the concept of “cancel culture”, although the judiciary and the legal profession seem to understand it well enough.
In other words, if it looks like “punching down”, it ought to be called out and condemned as inherently evil.
I don't think anyone would disagree with this. The debate seems to be about whether such speech should be subject to state restrictions.
The legal sanctions do exist but the concept of “hate speech” which we have in England (not sure about Scotland, suspect it’s the same), could use some clarification for lay people, if only to put to bed the concept of “cancel culture”, although the judiciary and the legal profession seem to understand it well enough.
You're assuming people actually don't understand rather than just performing outrage about "cancel culture" to hide their own bigotry.
Whether or not people are using it to "hide bigotry," I believe "cancel culture" exists--on both the left and the right (and perhaps elsewhere). There's a whole article on its history (and while not under that name, it's arguably been around for a very long time) on Wikipedia:
Whether or not "cancel culture" is a good, bad, or mixed thing, it is a real thing.
(It's also possible that people, even bigots, can be genuinely outraged about "cancel culture," even if they're wrong. Heck, someone getting outraged about seasonal Starbucks coffee cups* could be sincere about it, even if it's ridiculous...)
In other words, if it looks like “punching down”, it ought to be called out and condemned as inherently evil.
I don't think anyone would disagree with this. The debate seems to be about whether such speech should be subject to state restrictions.
The legal sanctions do exist but the concept of “hate speech” which we have in England (not sure about Scotland, suspect it’s the same), could use some clarification for lay people, if only to put to bed the concept of “cancel culture”, although the judiciary and the legal profession seem to understand it well enough.
In other words, if it looks like “punching down”, it ought to be called out and condemned as inherently evil.
I don't think anyone would disagree with this. The debate seems to be about whether such speech should be subject to state restrictions.
The legal sanctions do exist but the concept of “hate speech” which we have in England (not sure about Scotland, suspect it’s the same), could use some clarification for lay people, if only to put to bed the concept of “cancel culture”, although the judiciary and the legal profession seem to understand it well enough.
You're assuming people actually don't understand rather than just performing outrage about "cancel culture" to hide their own bigotry.
Whether or not people are using it to "hide bigotry," I believe "cancel culture" exists--on both the left and the right (and perhaps elsewhere). There's a whole article on its history (and while not under that name, it's arguably been around for a very long time) on Wikipedia:
Whether or not "cancel culture" is a good, bad, or mixed thing, it is a real thing.
(It's also possible that people, even bigots, can be genuinely outraged about "cancel culture," even if they're wrong. Heck, someone getting outraged about seasonal Starbucks coffee cups* could be sincere about it, even if it's ridiculous...)
What's amazing is the way people on the right can do absolutely anything whereas people on the left can do nearly nothing wrong at all.
In the UK at the moment we have extremely hard right media, and the politicians they are calling out have done objectively very minor things wrong. There's a place for discussing them but they in no sense deserve the volume of coverage. Politicians on the hard-right, coincidentally friends of the media moguls, get very little coverage.
There's also the phenomena where the "cancelled" get to complain about it on multiple platforms, which almost always promote the talking points that they say they are being canceled about.
So no. Not even close.
Also see the USA. Clinton made a mistake with emails, Harris laughs in a weird way, Obama wears a tan suit. Trump.. fill in your own gaps.
Looking at freedom of speech as having being conceived as a means to an end, once it starts to become weaponised against that end, its usefulness and effectiveness diminish.
Uh... um... that might be the case if one conceives it as a means to an end, rather than something which is simply right. I'm a bit shocked by the idea of "freedom of speech" merely being the means to an end, with the conclusion being that perhaps it should be, I don't know, jettisoned?
In fairness I think you are in the USA so you have a different history and conception of these things.
That said I do not think a system which allowed racists to abuse people with impunity up to and including lynchings really has much going for it.
Germany being the clear opposite example, a country which struggled to come to terms with it's own recent history of fascism and concluded that some speech was not acceptable.
It's hard to claim that Germany is less a liberal democracy than the USA at the moment
I'm a bit shocked by the idea of "freedom of speech" merely being the means to an end, with the conclusion being that perhaps it should be, I don't know, jettisoned?
Me too. Makes me wonder if they also think democracy is nothing more than a means to an end that should be abandoned once their end has been achieved.
After all, once you’re in power and can run things the way they should be run, why would you want to let all those stupid and/or evil people who disagree with your perfect conception of how society should be run go round changing things. It’s for their own good, after all.
I'm a bit shocked by the idea of "freedom of speech" merely being the means to an end, with the conclusion being that perhaps it should be, I don't know, jettisoned?
Me too. Makes me wonder if they also think democracy is nothing more than a means to an end that should be abandoned once their end has been achieved.
After all, once you’re in power and can run things the way they should be run, why would you want to let all those stupid and/or evil people who disagree with your perfect conception of how society should be run go round changing things. It’s for their own good, after all.
How you could read this thread and come to that conclusion is beyond my ken.
I'm a bit shocked by the idea of "freedom of speech" merely being the means to an end, with the conclusion being that perhaps it should be, I don't know, jettisoned?
Me too. Makes me wonder if they also think democracy is nothing more than a means to an end that should be abandoned once their end has been achieved.
After all, once you’re in power and can run things the way they should be run, why would you want to let all those stupid and/or evil people who disagree with your perfect conception of how society should be run go round changing things. It’s for their own good, after all.
How you could read this thread and come to that conclusion is beyond my ken.
Well, if you’re going to say certain ideas are so wrong that they cannot be expressed in any shared space then the logical outworking of that is that those ideas cannot be campaigned for in an election by a Party who would put them into practice were they to win that election, and indeed that such a Party should not be allowed to exist. Which is an abandonment of democracy.
Most people in this thread are ok with that, because everyone’s thinking about Epiphanic beliefs which are to them so self-evidently Right that nobody could or should ever disagree. But consider (for example) a group who earnestly and genuinely believe that socialist redistribution of wealth is wrong, and as a result when in power they utterly ban any advocacy thereof. Or religious fundamentalists who gain power and use it to ban all other religions and beliefs that don’t conform to their own. I think everyone here would agree that those examples would be undemocratic, but they’re exactly the same thing.
Cue a bunch of people saying words to the effect of “it’s not the same thing at all, because we’re Right and they’re Wrong”…..
tl;dr: the freedom for everyone to advocate for their beliefs - whatever they are - to become the law of the land is fundamental to democracy. No freedom of speech, no democracy.
I'm a bit shocked by the idea of "freedom of speech" merely being the means to an end, with the conclusion being that perhaps it should be, I don't know, jettisoned?
Me too. Makes me wonder if they also think democracy is nothing more than a means to an end that should be abandoned once their end has been achieved.
After all, once you’re in power and can run things the way they should be run, why would you want to let all those stupid and/or evil people who disagree with your perfect conception of how society should be run go round changing things. It’s for their own good, after all.
How you could read this thread and come to that conclusion is beyond my ken.
Well, if you’re going to say certain ideas are so wrong that they cannot be expressed in any shared space then the logical outworking of that is that those ideas cannot be campaigned for in an election by a Party who would put them into practice were they to win that election, and indeed that such a Party should not be allowed to exist. Which is an abandonment of democracy.
Most people in this thread are ok with that, because everyone’s thinking about Epiphanic beliefs which are to them so self-evidently Right that nobody could or should ever disagree. But consider (for example) a group who earnestly and genuinely believe that socialist redistribution of wealth is wrong, and as a result when in power they utterly ban any advocacy thereof. Or religious fundamentalists who gain power and use it to ban all other religions and beliefs that don’t conform to their own. I think everyone here would agree that those examples would be undemocratic, but they’re exactly the same thing.
Cue a bunch of people saying words to the effect of “it’s not the same thing at all, because we’re Right and they’re Wrong”…..
None of that is true and nobody has said that. It's a subversion of what has actually been said.
Which to repeat is that there are lines of what is and is not acceptable behaviour for everyone. The question is about where the lines are rather than whether they exist.
You are seriously trying to tell me that it is unacceptable for any subset or group within a liberal democracy to put limits on the speech and action that is acceptable in their space?
Nazis are not excluded because of some weak sensibility that "we are Right and they are Wrong" but because the ideology of hate and violence was given an opportunity to take over politics in countries in Europe and ended up murdering 6 million people.
It's not about it being unpalatable, it is because we tried that experiment and saw the results.
Which to repeat is that there are lines of what is and is not acceptable behaviour for everyone. The question is about where the lines are rather than whether they exist.
The real question for me is about who gets to decide where the lines are, and by what means. My answers are “everybody” and “via regular free and fair elections”.
You are seriously trying to tell me that it is unacceptable for any subset or group within a liberal democracy to put limits on the speech and action that is acceptable in their space?
No. I’m talking about the very nature of liberal democracy itself. And I’m doing so on a thread where others are very openly saying that liberal democracy has had its time and should be replaced by something else (which logically would be have to be either not liberal, not democratic, or not either).
Oh, and by the way: are you talking about things being acceptable or not for everyone or about specific groups being able to limit what can or can’t be done within their own spaces? Because those are two very different things, and you seem to be switching between them from paragraph to paragraph. It’s the difference between saying the Liverpool Supporters Club can ban the wearing of Manchester United shirts on their premises (which is fine) and saying nobody should be allowed to wear a Manchester United shirt anywhere, at any time (which isn’t).
Nazis are not excluded because of some weak sensibility that "we are Right and they are Wrong" but because the ideology of hate and violence was given an opportunity to take over politics in countries in Europe and ended up murdering 6 million people.
It's not about it being unpalatable, it is because we tried that experiment and saw the results.
12-17 million depending on definitions. The 6 million were specifically Jewish victims.
The rules are set by Parliament which was elected by free and fair elections. Just like the anti-Nazi laws in Germany were set by laws made by elected officials.
Liberal democracy is destroyed by fascism. It just is.
The rules are set by Parliament which was elected by free and fair elections. Just like the anti-Nazi laws in Germany were set by laws made by elected officials.
Yep. But are you prepared to accept another Parliament, also elected by a free and fair election, changing those rules?
If push comes to shove, which would you rather do? Keep the rules we currently have even if it means getting rid of free and fair elections, or keep free and fair elections even if it means changing the rules we currently have?
Liberal democracy is destroyed by fascism. It just is.
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
I suppose what it comes down to is how do you prevent the rise of the Nazis? Weimar had (more or less) free and fair elections and free speech, which allowed the Nazis to flourish. In MtM land how do you prevent Nazis gaining power? Or Stalinists, for that matter?
No. I’m talking about the very nature of liberal democracy itself. And I’m doing so on a thread where others are very openly saying that liberal democracy has had its time and should be replaced by something else
Except the 'others' would have to include you (as in this post).
So your commitment seems to be to 'liberal democracy (but only for people who look like MtM)'.
The rules are set by Parliament which was elected by free and fair elections. Just like the anti-Nazi laws in Germany were set by laws made by elected officials.
Yep. But are you prepared to accept another Parliament, also elected by a free and fair election, changing those rules?
If push comes to shove, which would you rather do? Keep the rules we currently have even if it means getting rid of free and fair elections, or keep free and fair elections even if it means changing the rules we currently have?
Liberal democracy is destroyed by fascism. It just is.
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
This has the air of a schoolboy learning about the Weimar republic and the rise of the Nazis who insists on telling the class that "the Germans voted in the Nazis so that was democracy in action".
The fact that 6 million were murdered seems to matter less than the belief in a mythical sense of democracy.
It's so strange that virtually nobody who actually encountered the wrong end of Nazism, fascism, the KKK and Jim Crow agrees.
I suppose what it comes down to is how do you prevent the rise of the Nazis? Weimar had (more or less) free and fair elections and free speech, which allowed the Nazis to flourish. In MtM land how do you prevent Nazis gaining power? Or Stalinists, for that matter?
I suppose one aspect of the free speech issue is whether and when it leads, or could be seen to lead to actual harm. If it does cause harm, then there is a probably a crime to be investigated, if on the other hand it could cause or incite crime then it ought to be investigated too: after all, robbery is not merely the use of violence, but to cause a perceived threat of violence upon the victim.
Looking at freedom of speech as having being conceived as a means to an end, once it starts to become weaponised against that end, its usefulness and effectiveness diminish.
Uh... um... that might be the case if one conceives it as a means to an end, rather than something which is simply right. I'm a bit shocked by the idea of "freedom of speech" merely being the means to an end, with the conclusion being that perhaps it should be, I don't know, jettisoned?
Freedom of speech can be seen as being both as an end in itself and as a means to an end. For example, the establishment of forums where issues, such as competing theories of government, can be debated in public.
I'm a bit shocked by the idea of "freedom of speech" merely being the means to an end, with the conclusion being that perhaps it should be, I don't know, jettisoned?
Me too. Makes me wonder if they also think democracy is nothing more than a means to an end that should be abandoned once their end has been achieved.
Democracy is rather more clearly a means to an end, one of those ends being government by consent.
The type of democracy for which you are advocating is majority rule. This is traditionally OK for the majority, but there is a long track-record of it not being so good for minorities, as has already been referred to. It appears you consider discrimination against minorities to be an acceptable price to pay.
After all, once you’re in power and can run things the way they should be run, why would you want to let all those stupid and/or evil people who disagree with your perfect conception of how society should be run go round changing things. It’s for their own good, after all.
One thing that isn't clear in your idealised world is what you do about turkeys voting for Christmas. The only way to stop a majority of people voting for an end to democratic majority rule is to establish a non-democratic rule forbidding it. For their own good.
I am not about to give up on liberal democracy. I remember my political science prof saying the pendulum swings both ways. It will go from hard right to hard left almost in the blink of an eye. Let's just say the Obama era in the US was about as hard left as one could get, especially with the equal marriage ruling by SCOTUS at the time. We had six rather liberal justices who were not afraid to admit our equality clause met equal rights for all. Now we have six conservative justices who want to roll everything back. But they will eventually retire or die. Depending on who has the presidency at the time, they will be replaced. Our presidency swung hard right and now he is doing everything he can think off to keep it hard right, but his base is crumbling as we speak. Even if he passes all the redistricting bills he wants, he is not making the country more red as he is making it more purple. Trying to eliminate mail in voting will go nowhere. Putting the military at polling stations will not keep angry people from expressing their opinions Even the stacked SCOTUS has shown it can stand up to him from time to time. When he falls, and he will, you will see a very liberal government emerge.
An example of that is what happened after Nixon resigned. The presidency stayed in the conservative camp, but congress became quite liberal, passing laws. overriding vetoes when necessary. Then came Clinton and we were off to the races.
This time, though, I do not think we will have an interim government. The Republicans don't have another Reagan in the wings. The Democrats have begun to coalesce around Newsom, Harris, Kelly and Buttigieg
The USA will have another liberal government. How long it will last is another question.
Freedom of speech can be seen as being both as an end in itself and as a means to an end. For example, the establishment of forums where issues, such as competing theories of government, can be debated in public.
looks like an attempt to resurrect a discussion that has already been ruled out of bounds for Purgatory. Please desist.
There's also the phenomena where the "cancelled" get to complain about it on multiple platforms, which almost always promote the talking points that they say they are being canceled about.
On both sides, yes.
So no. Not even close.
Right this moment, the scary far-right people are in political power in the US, yes, but that does not mean cancel culture only exists on one side, or has only existed on one side down through history (again, it goes back a very, very long time). It is a real thing on all sides.
Also see the USA. Clinton made a mistake with emails, Harris laughs in a weird way, Obama wears a tan suit. Trump.. fill in your own gaps.
Those aren't really comparable (and arguably Trump is his own vortex, with no comparison on the left--scarcely any comparison among conservatives, really). People weren't really trying to cancel Harris or Obama over laughing or fashion sense, but over the idea that their positions or actions (or, in some cases, bizarre conspiracy theories about them) were bad. (Ironically, the claims that Obama was going to try to act like a king have come true with Trump...) Clinton was slammed about the emails, and about the whole Benghazi thing, which is closer to cancelling. But "cancel culture" often applies to people who aren't running for or in office, or to companies and businesses seen as "on the wrong side" in some way. (That doesn't make it always bad to shun or boycott things (or actors or writers etc.), in my view, though I don't actively boycott companies for the most part these days. There are a few exceptions...)
Or religious fundamentalists who gain power and use it to ban all other religions and beliefs that don’t conform to their own.
And we've had this for millennia, and seen where it leads, or even where it starts. We've even seen it in atheistic systems. It always Goes Very Badly Indeed. It's part of why various people have advocated for freedom of speech and freedom of thought.
Cue a bunch of people saying words to the effect of “it’s not the same thing at all, because we’re Right and they’re Wrong”…..
Which was also the general justification for those laws against free speech, free exercise of religion, etc. (Of course this means you could get persecuted under one regime, and then if you survived, you might be OK or even praised under the next one, and vice versa.)
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
Amen, oh God, amen.
I have to limit how much I can interact right now due to the end of the semester and a likely grading all-nighter (past midnight already) so I will just say, again, Amen, Amen, Amen.
tl;dr: the freedom for everyone to advocate for their beliefs - whatever they are - to become the law of the land is fundamental to democracy. No freedom of speech, no democracy.
I will add that people can advocate for their beliefs to become the law of the land, but there can also be rules--arguably ones created by democratic agreement--which could be very hard to change, so that a brief period of very bad mob rule can't change them very easily (such as the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, etc.). Right now we're seeing how strong those institutions are here in the US (pray for us!), and I hope we survive.
Please God, I literally pray so. Every or almost every day. Honestly at the moment I'd take something more like more old-school conservatives (and genuine conservatives, unlike Trump--there are a bunch who believe in the Constitution, rule of law, basic human rights, basic human decency, who are very anti-MAGA and anti-Trump, but they're not in power in the GOP at all now) in government over this nightmare. But I'd prefer liberal. I miss Obama so much...
Sainted Jimmy Carter, pray for us!
And now I need to step onshore for the night so the grading will get done.
Or religious fundamentalists who gain power and use it to ban all other religions and beliefs that don’t conform to their own.
And we've had this for millennia, and seen where it leads, or even where it starts. We've even seen it in atheistic systems. It always Goes Very Badly Indeed. It's part of why various people have advocated for freedom of speech and freedom of thought.
Cue a bunch of people saying words to the effect of “it’s not the same thing at all, because we’re Right and they’re Wrong”…..
Which was also the general justification for those laws against free speech, free exercise of religion, etc. (Of course this means you could get persecuted under one regime, and then if you survived, you might be OK or even praised under the next one, and vice versa.)
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
Amen, oh God, amen.
I have to limit how much I can interact right now due to the end of the semester and a likely grading all-nighter (past midnight already) so I will just say, again, Amen, Amen, Amen.
None of this is correct. It's the violence implicit in fascism and the millions dead that make it toxic to liberal democracy.
Please accept that if you think the media landscape in the UK is in any way balanced you are sorely mistaken. That The Guardian is second on a list of "left wing" publications should tell you that. It's a centrist liberal publication that occasionally has left wing columnists (and right wing, especially transphobic, ones too). The Daily Mirror is a corporate-owned tabloid playing the pro-Labour part in the media pantomime. The rest of the list is made up of occasional magazines and niche publications by Stalinists and Trotskyite sects that I wouldn't know where to start looking for even if I wanted to read them. Also note that there are no left-wing radio or TV stations compared with. Meanwhile on the right:
Daily Telegraph
Daily Mail
The Times
Daily Express
The Sun
GB News
TalkTV/Radio
And this saturated media landscape means that the supposedly neutral BBC and ITV are guided in their coverage by what the right wing outlets take interest in and what they complain about.
All print media in the UK is in decline, but the Daily Mail, which is objectively very right-wing, is by far the biggest by circulation.
Lies spread fast on Facebook, pushed by the Far-Right. The left do sometimes try the same tactics but usually such things get little traction.
It is interesting to consider the post-Brexit period. Criticisms from the left did sometimes get attention, usually based on factual information, but ultimately had little impact. Memes and lies from the right get a lot of attention and set the agenda.
The idea that the two things are equal is quite laughable.
I'm still waiting for an example where someone has been unfairly silenced by a leftist. And as suggested above, protesting and boycotting something or someone does not count (as far as I'm concerned, those are examples of democratic actions unless they lead to violence).
The only people who complain about "cancel culture" (which isn't a real phenomenon) are people who either got caught doing something awful or want to do something awful and don't like the fact that there are consequences for their actions. Not to mention that "cancel culture" as a term really caught on with the backlash against #MeToo, where men exposed as creeps and sexual predators started to complain about being held accountable for those things.
The only people who really truly got cancelled were The Dixie Chicks (now known as The Chicks) when they spoke out against the 2003 Gulf War, and nobody then called it "cancel culture".
I'm still waiting for an example where someone has been unfairly silenced by a leftist. And as suggested above, protesting and boycotting something or someone does not count (as far as I'm concerned, those are examples of democratic actions unless they lead to violence).
I mean, really, if the left were capable of silencing anyone wouldn't Linehan have STFU by now. As it is I can only quote his words in my avatar's mouth:
"That gobshite again! Is he never off the air?"
Sometimes people fear mobs and feel that their lives have been made unbearable by online trolls. This I can sympathise with.
Even there, I am not immediately aware of anyone who has actually withdrawn from the public eye because of leftist pressure. It seems like the people complaining usually have a big platform where they continue saying the same things.
I guess there's a Registrar who refused to marry a gay couple and the pharmacist who refused to dispense prophylactics and the science teacher who refuses to teach evolution. Is that what is meant?
The fact that 6 million were murdered seems to matter less than the belief in a mythical sense of democracy.
If democracy had been maintained in 30s Germany the the Nazis would probably have been voted back out again and all those murders (not to mention WW2) wouldn’t have happened.
The fact that 6 million were murdered seems to matter less than the belief in a mythical sense of democracy.
If democracy had been maintained in 30s Germany the the Nazis would probably have been voted back out again and all those murders (not to mention WW2) wouldn’t have happened.
The Nazis literally destroyed German democracy in the 1930s.
Comments
Second it is about honesty and dishonesty; the Far-Right is dishonest when they claim that they should be heard for the sake of liberty when the basis of their philosophy is to reduce liberty.
Third it is about a groundwork of accepted behaviours and outcomes. Democrats accept that there are truths and untruths. Democrats accept the results of elections. Fascists and the Far-Right do none of those things - if they lose they resort to violence and lies.
It's a perversion of politics in a deep sense, subverting the ideals of Mill back on itself in order to destroy it.
I just don't think this is the presenting issue. Governments make laws to restrict speech in certain ways, and that's subject to the democratic process if you live in a liberal democracy. I presume you can live with that.
The immediate issue is how speech is mediated in the specific shared space in which it occurs. Parliament itself only directly mediates speech in a limited range of spaces so, as I said, it comes down to the individuals, groups, communities, organisations or other entities that mediate speech in the online and offline spaces in which it occurs.
The underlying issue I see with the rest of your post is that you seem to think that all shared spaces should operate according to democratic principles. My advice to Person B would be that if you want to participate in a shared space that operates democratically, don't join one that doesn't.
Is this meant to be an argument for the suppression of far-right views by the state? Because I don't think there's any litmus test that the right to free-speech only applies to people who are sincerely commited to it.
I am against capital punishment. And I oppose it even in cases where the person being executed is an unrepentant murderer, ie. someone who clearly has no problem killing others, and is only complaining because he does not want to die himself. His own personal hypocrisy doesn't change my low evaluation of the state's competency to make those sorts of decisions.
This has been an increasingly unfashionable, even silent, position since the Brexit referendum and the first time the USA elected Trump. By a total non-coincidence, they both happened in 2016. Something in political culture in Anglophone countries has broken down, possibly irretrievably.
This is where a certain version of identity politics, where the political becomes so personal that the distinction between a person and their ideas no longer operates on any level, is a fundamental distortion making liberal democracy arguably impossible.
That would be my preference, certainly.
That’s the rub, isn’t it? Because when the shared space we’re talking about is society as a whole then the option to simply not join doesn’t exist.
I hope this isn’t actually the case, but it feels to me like you’re advocating for society as a whole to abandon democracy in order to ensure that your own preferences for how it should be run can never even be challenged, much less overturned. But if that was the case then you’d be no better than any other tinpot dictator that has ever come before, so it can’t be true.
As you say, those are two different things. I would say that being persecuted for what you say, and being excluded from a particular shared space for what you say, are also two different things.
I think it's also that times change. Looking at freedom of speech as having being conceived as a means to an end, once it starts to become weaponised against that end, its usefulness and effectiveness diminish.
Harm. Speech can actually cause harm, through intimidation and inciting violence, especially by the powerful and influential against those with less power, disadvantaged or as parts of society with minority characteristics.
In other words, if it looks like “punching down”, it ought to be called out and condemned as inherently evil. You can determine which kind of -ism afterwards.
I don't think anyone would disagree with this. The debate seems to be about whether such speech should be subject to state restrictions.
Unless you want to restrict the freedom of assembly or the freedom of association.
If you can't leave it or join it, then "society as a whole" isn't a shared space.
I'm still not advocating for "society as a whole".
The legal sanctions do exist but the concept of “hate speech” which we have in England (not sure about Scotland, suspect it’s the same), could use some clarification for lay people, if only to put to bed the concept of “cancel culture”, although the judiciary and the legal profession seem to understand it well enough.
You're assuming people actually don't understand rather than just performing outrage about "cancel culture" to hide their own bigotry.
Even in the left wing articles I posted, a closer reading will show authoritarianism is not just restricted to the right but across the board. Even the UK is in the process of autocratisation according to the V dem report, which is considered quite left wing.
Uh... um... that might be the case if one conceives it as a means to an end, rather than something which is simply right. I'm a bit shocked by the idea of "freedom of speech" merely being the means to an end, with the conclusion being that perhaps it should be, I don't know, jettisoned?
The UK has had right wing governments for decades.
Whether or not people are using it to "hide bigotry," I believe "cancel culture" exists--on both the left and the right (and perhaps elsewhere). There's a whole article on its history (and while not under that name, it's arguably been around for a very long time) on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture
Whether or not "cancel culture" is a good, bad, or mixed thing, it is a real thing.
(It's also possible that people, even bigots, can be genuinely outraged about "cancel culture," even if they're wrong. Heck, someone getting outraged about seasonal Starbucks coffee cups* could be sincere about it, even if it's ridiculous...)
* https://www.eater.com/2015/11/10/9705570/starbucks-holiday-red-cups-controversy-history
What's amazing is the way people on the right can do absolutely anything whereas people on the left can do nearly nothing wrong at all.
In the UK at the moment we have extremely hard right media, and the politicians they are calling out have done objectively very minor things wrong. There's a place for discussing them but they in no sense deserve the volume of coverage. Politicians on the hard-right, coincidentally friends of the media moguls, get very little coverage.
There's also the phenomena where the "cancelled" get to complain about it on multiple platforms, which almost always promote the talking points that they say they are being canceled about.
So no. Not even close.
Also see the USA. Clinton made a mistake with emails, Harris laughs in a weird way, Obama wears a tan suit. Trump.. fill in your own gaps.
In fairness I think you are in the USA so you have a different history and conception of these things.
That said I do not think a system which allowed racists to abuse people with impunity up to and including lynchings really has much going for it.
Germany being the clear opposite example, a country which struggled to come to terms with it's own recent history of fascism and concluded that some speech was not acceptable.
It's hard to claim that Germany is less a liberal democracy than the USA at the moment
Since at least 1979.
Me too. Makes me wonder if they also think democracy is nothing more than a means to an end that should be abandoned once their end has been achieved.
After all, once you’re in power and can run things the way they should be run, why would you want to let all those stupid and/or evil people who disagree with your perfect conception of how society should be run go round changing things. It’s for their own good, after all.
How you could read this thread and come to that conclusion is beyond my ken.
Well, if you’re going to say certain ideas are so wrong that they cannot be expressed in any shared space then the logical outworking of that is that those ideas cannot be campaigned for in an election by a Party who would put them into practice were they to win that election, and indeed that such a Party should not be allowed to exist. Which is an abandonment of democracy.
Most people in this thread are ok with that, because everyone’s thinking about Epiphanic beliefs which are to them so self-evidently Right that nobody could or should ever disagree. But consider (for example) a group who earnestly and genuinely believe that socialist redistribution of wealth is wrong, and as a result when in power they utterly ban any advocacy thereof. Or religious fundamentalists who gain power and use it to ban all other religions and beliefs that don’t conform to their own. I think everyone here would agree that those examples would be undemocratic, but they’re exactly the same thing.
Cue a bunch of people saying words to the effect of “it’s not the same thing at all, because we’re Right and they’re Wrong”…..
None of that is true and nobody has said that. It's a subversion of what has actually been said.
Which to repeat is that there are lines of what is and is not acceptable behaviour for everyone. The question is about where the lines are rather than whether they exist.
You are seriously trying to tell me that it is unacceptable for any subset or group within a liberal democracy to put limits on the speech and action that is acceptable in their space?
No, because that is obviously stupid.
It's not about it being unpalatable, it is because we tried that experiment and saw the results.
The real question for me is about who gets to decide where the lines are, and by what means. My answers are “everybody” and “via regular free and fair elections”.
No. I’m talking about the very nature of liberal democracy itself. And I’m doing so on a thread where others are very openly saying that liberal democracy has had its time and should be replaced by something else (which logically would be have to be either not liberal, not democratic, or not either).
Oh, and by the way: are you talking about things being acceptable or not for everyone or about specific groups being able to limit what can or can’t be done within their own spaces? Because those are two very different things, and you seem to be switching between them from paragraph to paragraph. It’s the difference between saying the Liverpool Supporters Club can ban the wearing of Manchester United shirts on their premises (which is fine) and saying nobody should be allowed to wear a Manchester United shirt anywhere, at any time (which isn’t).
12-17 million depending on definitions. The 6 million were specifically Jewish victims.
Liberal democracy is destroyed by fascism. It just is.
Yep. But are you prepared to accept another Parliament, also elected by a free and fair election, changing those rules?
If push comes to shove, which would you rather do? Keep the rules we currently have even if it means getting rid of free and fair elections, or keep free and fair elections even if it means changing the rules we currently have?
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
Except the 'others' would have to include you (as in this post).
So your commitment seems to be to 'liberal democracy (but only for people who look like MtM)'.
This has the air of a schoolboy learning about the Weimar republic and the rise of the Nazis who insists on telling the class that "the Germans voted in the Nazis so that was democracy in action".
The fact that 6 million were murdered seems to matter less than the belief in a mythical sense of democracy.
It's so strange that virtually nobody who actually encountered the wrong end of Nazism, fascism, the KKK and Jim Crow agrees.
I suppose one aspect of the free speech issue is whether and when it leads, or could be seen to lead to actual harm. If it does cause harm, then there is a probably a crime to be investigated, if on the other hand it could cause or incite crime then it ought to be investigated too: after all, robbery is not merely the use of violence, but to cause a perceived threat of violence upon the victim.
Democracy is rather more clearly a means to an end, one of those ends being government by consent.
The type of democracy for which you are advocating is majority rule. This is traditionally OK for the majority, but there is a long track-record of it not being so good for minorities, as has already been referred to. It appears you consider discrimination against minorities to be an acceptable price to pay.
One thing that isn't clear in your idealised world is what you do about turkeys voting for Christmas. The only way to stop a majority of people voting for an end to democratic majority rule is to establish a non-democratic rule forbidding it. For their own good.
An example of that is what happened after Nixon resigned. The presidency stayed in the conservative camp, but congress became quite liberal, passing laws. overriding vetoes when necessary. Then came Clinton and we were off to the races.
This time, though, I do not think we will have an interim government. The Republicans don't have another Reagan in the wings. The Democrats have begun to coalesce around Newsom, Harris, Kelly and Buttigieg
The USA will have another liberal government. How long it will last is another question.
@pease This:
looks like an attempt to resurrect a discussion that has already been ruled out of bounds for Purgatory. Please desist.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
A different history, but the principle of the intrinsic value of free speech is a different matter.
And less hard right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_left-wing_publications_in_the_United_Kingdom
On both sides, yes.
Right this moment, the scary far-right people are in political power in the US, yes, but that does not mean cancel culture only exists on one side, or has only existed on one side down through history (again, it goes back a very, very long time). It is a real thing on all sides.
Those aren't really comparable (and arguably Trump is his own vortex, with no comparison on the left--scarcely any comparison among conservatives, really). People weren't really trying to cancel Harris or Obama over laughing or fashion sense, but over the idea that their positions or actions (or, in some cases, bizarre conspiracy theories about them) were bad. (Ironically, the claims that Obama was going to try to act like a king have come true with Trump...) Clinton was slammed about the emails, and about the whole Benghazi thing, which is closer to cancelling. But "cancel culture" often applies to people who aren't running for or in office, or to companies and businesses seen as "on the wrong side" in some way. (That doesn't make it always bad to shun or boycott things (or actors or writers etc.), in my view, though I don't actively boycott companies for the most part these days. There are a few exceptions...)
And we've had this for millennia, and seen where it leads, or even where it starts. We've even seen it in atheistic systems. It always Goes Very Badly Indeed. It's part of why various people have advocated for freedom of speech and freedom of thought.
Which was also the general justification for those laws against free speech, free exercise of religion, etc. (Of course this means you could get persecuted under one regime, and then if you survived, you might be OK or even praised under the next one, and vice versa.)
Amen, oh God, amen.
I have to limit how much I can interact right now due to the end of the semester and a likely grading all-nighter (past midnight already) so I will just say, again, Amen, Amen, Amen.
I will add that people can advocate for their beliefs to become the law of the land, but there can also be rules--arguably ones created by democratic agreement--which could be very hard to change, so that a brief period of very bad mob rule can't change them very easily (such as the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, etc.). Right now we're seeing how strong those institutions are here in the US (pray for us!), and I hope we survive.
Unless of course it's not mythical.
@Gramps49 said
Please God, I literally pray so. Every or almost every day. Honestly at the moment I'd take something more like more old-school conservatives (and genuine conservatives, unlike Trump--there are a bunch who believe in the Constitution, rule of law, basic human rights, basic human decency, who are very anti-MAGA and anti-Trump, but they're not in power in the GOP at all now) in government over this nightmare. But I'd prefer liberal. I miss Obama so much...
And now I need to step onshore for the night so the grading will get done.
None of this is correct. It's the violence implicit in fascism and the millions dead that make it toxic to liberal democracy.
Please accept that if you think the media landscape in the UK is in any way balanced you are sorely mistaken. That The Guardian is second on a list of "left wing" publications should tell you that. It's a centrist liberal publication that occasionally has left wing columnists (and right wing, especially transphobic, ones too). The Daily Mirror is a corporate-owned tabloid playing the pro-Labour part in the media pantomime. The rest of the list is made up of occasional magazines and niche publications by Stalinists and Trotskyite sects that I wouldn't know where to start looking for even if I wanted to read them. Also note that there are no left-wing radio or TV stations compared with. Meanwhile on the right:
Daily Telegraph
Daily Mail
The Times
Daily Express
The Sun
GB News
TalkTV/Radio
And this saturated media landscape means that the supposedly neutral BBC and ITV are guided in their coverage by what the right wing outlets take interest in and what they complain about.
Lies spread fast on Facebook, pushed by the Far-Right. The left do sometimes try the same tactics but usually such things get little traction.
It is interesting to consider the post-Brexit period. Criticisms from the left did sometimes get attention, usually based on factual information, but ultimately had little impact. Memes and lies from the right get a lot of attention and set the agenda.
The idea that the two things are equal is quite laughable.
The only people who really truly got cancelled were The Dixie Chicks (now known as The Chicks) when they spoke out against the 2003 Gulf War, and nobody then called it "cancel culture".
I mean, really, if the left were capable of silencing anyone wouldn't Linehan have STFU by now. As it is I can only quote his words in my avatar's mouth:
"That gobshite again! Is he never off the air?"
Even there, I am not immediately aware of anyone who has actually withdrawn from the public eye because of leftist pressure. It seems like the people complaining usually have a big platform where they continue saying the same things.
I guess there's a Registrar who refused to marry a gay couple and the pharmacist who refused to dispense prophylactics and the science teacher who refuses to teach evolution. Is that what is meant?
If democracy had been maintained in 30s Germany the the Nazis would probably have been voted back out again and all those murders (not to mention WW2) wouldn’t have happened.
The Nazis literally destroyed German democracy in the 1930s.