Is Today’s Left More Opposed to Free Speech Than Yesterday’s?

The RCP is very strongly against pornography, to the extent of having protests about it. Anti-fa groups engage of disruptive protests against fascists, including beating them up in the streets. I don’t know if this points to a broader left tendency, but these are two data points worth knowing.

Oh heck yeah!

Anything to escape that obnoxious strain of libertarianism that valorizes the failures of free speech rather than protect what free speech is good for!

I’d assume like lots of things this goes up and down so it depends on the time horizon. I think Freddie is right if you’re looking at a 1990-2014, you’re right if you’re looking since 1940 or 1840.
My guess for the reason of left-wing skepticism about free speech are the increasing troll-ish tactics of the right (and the abortion-porn images used at UCSB are a case in point as is the entire existence of Rush Limbaugh.) If public discourse resembles YouTube comments, a strict moderator looks like a very good idea. I’m 100% with Freddie that this is a bad idea, but I don’t find it hard to understand.

Unless the Left ever decides to organize to affect elections, I don’t know that it’s ever going to matter that much which side of the free speech fence it’s on. But I think generally across the political spectrum outside the Republican — tent? lean-to, maybe? — people are losing patience with the intransigent right and a willingness to dialogue with people who show no interest in dialogue is breaking down. Which is understandable to some extent, though on principle Freddie of course is right.

“Free speech” does not necessarily protect fraudulent or irresponsible speech or hate speech, so there’s that to consider. Climate change denialism is basically the equivalent of shouting “Everything’s fine!” in a burning theatre.

The suppression of free speech, etc., requires power. The Left has no power. The issue seems … academic.

MacKinnon and Dworkin’s denials of favoring content-based prohibitions on porn don’t deserve serious consideration. Their private civil action approach was just a legal dodge to try to circumvent 1st Amendment law. Sections of the left have long had puritanical tendencies in addition to run-of-the-mill Leninism. I can’t say whether these tendencies have grown or diminished over the past few decades, leftists being an endangered species outside of a few academic preserves.

Russell touches on something I see with my friends active in LGBT rights efforts. Any attempt to ask “What harm is done by X kind of speech, and what do we need to do, on whatever front, to reduce that harm?” gets treated by some vocal respondents as completely synonymous with totalitarian censorship. Even if the question exists entirely in a context of, say, training people likely to be verbally assaulted in rhetorical tools for good response and extending stress-related counseling, it’s always the same thing for some people. Their concept of free speech does not permit acknowledging that anything this side of direct incitement to violence has, or can have, any down side.

Frustration at dealing with this reality does sometimes bubble over into venting remarks about how the First Amendment is just a bad idea. I don’t see this translating into any sustained effort at actually undoing speech rights, though. It’s jut a wish for more of reality to matter to public discourse.

Probably I’d say shah8 and David get at two of the main points. Basically we’ve had 30 painful years of working out in detail in any number of venues academic and popular that speech is about power relations and positionality. That symbols are important. How media discourses are shaped and in turn how they normalize or valorize certain attitudes and behaviors. How access to media platforms and public spaces is created & regulated. Which persons are licensed to exercise free speech and which are strongly policed. That sexual harassment and racial slurs aren’t just jokes but tools for reinforcing hierarchies.

The reaction to that has been a naive, shoddy South Park style anti-PC edgy contrarianism resting on the sacred right of ~free speech~. To hell with that garbage. I think Stewart Lee’s answer is sufficient.

From David’s angle I think we get a pretty good case study on how framing processes work in translating (or obfuscating) specialist knowledge into lay terms for political purposes. Oreskes and Conway, the analysis of the Wegman report, etc. are solid examples of how journalistic weaknesses (truth is in the middleism, overton windowing, unseen errata or retractions, horse racery, absence of accountability, murky credentialing of sources, decontextualization, burying of nuance, etc) work to facilitate the ability of powerful actors to manipulate public reception. On the reception end there’s a giant stack of socsci from the cognitive to the sociological on how reader reception and narrative formation works.

Going back to the Patriot movement, Dave Neiwert got into how re-transmission of extremism works, the amplification and patchwork assembly of innocuous news items or science into evidence for conspiracy.

Jason Antrosio has a good snapshot of how this works out in the classroom with an examination of how careless framing of otherwise justified critique of SJ Gould’s /Mismeasure of Man/ wound up supporting the cause of “race realism”:
http://www.livinganthropologically.com/2011/06/14/mismeasuring-gould/

In short, Antrosio is saying that the authors did a piss poor job of anticipating the nature of the discourse into which they were launching their critique and that they failed to recognize that their article would be quote-mined, weaponized, and re-transmitted via authoritative media figures. As Antrosio laments, he’s going to be busting that myth in Anth101 as it emerges from the mouths of undergrads from now until the end of his days. And he’ll probably get scolded for quashing their ~free speech~ while he’s at it.

Antrosio writes that “the results of science must still be presented within a particular historical and political context”. I’ll go farther — if authors know their work is fodder for racists & reactionaries, not only should they demote and defuse the “explosive” lede by burying it in necessary context, authors should also ramp up the adjectival qualifiers and crank the obscuring academese to 11. In short, make it so that enthusiastic lay racists cannot understand it, and so that their media lack the terminology to quote-mine repurpose the study.

They should make their paratexts, form, and style conducive to being /politically correct/.

Climate and environmental scientists had long practice supplementing their native caution with similar rhetorical tactics, in an effort to prevent themselves from becoming targets. Its only with the Mann witch hunt and CRU hack that it became clear textual niceties and PR dept. press release vaguity mostly protects denialists.

As framed this “more” question is useless. Which left? What time frame? Who cares?

Yes compared to Communism where making mildly critical comments against the state could get you killed or sent to the gulag the left isn’t ‘more opposed to free speech’ than before.

Yes compared to the ACLU in the 1960s, the left is dramatically more opposed to free speech than before. Hell the ACLU isn’t even as for free speech as it used to be. It used to be committed enough to free speech to defend it for neo-NAZIs and clan members (back when they were actually very live political forces). Now ACLU chapters split over whether or not pro-life protesters should be allowed to have placards.

A much more interesting question is whether or not the left currently remembers the importance of procedural freedoms. Free speech has a large component of procedural freedom. Both sides go back and forth on whether or not they care about procedural protections/freedoms. My current read of the political landscape is that the US right has completely abandoned procedural freedoms, and the left’s pendulum is pretty close to abandoning procedural freedom. Everything for both sides is essentially an instrumental freedom or useless.

A lot of procedural freedoms/ protections are about intellectual humility–you know that you aren’t right about everything so you realize it is stupid to shut yourself off from disagreement and it is stupid to put even people who agree with you beyond easy checks and balances. At the moment both sides are extremely convinced of the rightness of their own doctrines, so neither side sees much value in procedurally based freedoms.

Ellen Willis has a fine essay on the subject: “Freedom, Power, and Speech” in Don’t Think, Smile, which I reviewed here: http://www.georgescialabba.net/mtgs/1999/10/don-t-think-smile-notes-on-a-d/print/.

What about another case: in Chile in the early 1970s, in Nicaragua in the late 70s and early 80s, and in Venezuela today, virtually all the private media were or are well to the right of Fox News and all but explicitly committed to bringing down the government by violence. The damage wrought in the first two cases was enormous. What, in retrospect, should the Allende government and the Sandanistas — and by extension any popular left-wing government subjected to a well-financed propaganda campaign in support of domestic and international violence against the regime — have done? It seems to me that, for prudential reasons, they were right to refrain from censorship: it worked out in the Nicaraguan case, though not in the Chilean. But given the unscrupulous nature of the right-wing opposition and the degree of US subversion in both (all three?) cases, I’m not sure what to think as a matter of principle.

This comment thread strongly argues in favor of Freddie’s position. In none of the arguments against free speech absolutism above do I see any recognition a) that in the absence of absolutism, there is no particular reason to believe that the speech you dislike will be what is censored, b) that we ought be humble about understanding the value of different types of speech, no matter how odious or damaging they might be, c) that procedural justice is important in and of itself, or (most importantly) d) that the liberal project for literally three centuries has been predicated on the rights of individuals, that a perfectly adequate response to speech you don’t like is to walk away (harassment, where the speech follows you, is already illegal) or to use your own speech to convince the other side.

I mean, look at some of the examples above. It is not just “Westboro Baptist harassing funerals” that should be restricted by government, but “disinformation” about climate change, or mass media opposed to an existing government! If advocating a position on a scientific issue, even disingenuously, ought be illegal, then it is very easy to find people on any side of the political spectrum who would be restrained. If mass media a la Venezuela or Nicaragua cannot speak against, or even advocate the replacement of, governments they dislike, then what are we to think of, say, the involvement of many internet firms in the Arab Spring?

Why don’t the crooked timbers care more about their own little forest? “Concepts of ‘censorship’ are not applicable.” Ergo, you have no right to speak of such ideas in this forum.

A question about the original incident. Is taking a sign (one of many) and tearing it up suppression of free speech? There’s a (fairly trivial) breach of property rights involved if the sign was taken by force, but if there were simply a bunch of posters stuck up somewhere, I’d say that ripping one of them up is an exercise of free speech rights rather than the contrary. Compare flags (expression of patriotic sentiment) and flag burning (repudiation of same).

I have wanted to read Jeremy Waldron’s The Harm in Hate Speech. See that it was reviewed by Brian Leiter at ndpr.nd.edu

To address the flag-burning comparison: if we regard flags as speech, they are the speech of the government and deliberately ubiquitous. Therefore, the intent of flag-burning cannot actually be to prevent people from seeing flags – that would be ridiculous. Precisely because the burning can have no censorial effect, it has to have another purpose and that is why it can be speech (but is not necessarily. If a drunk teenager burns a flag to start a beach bonfire, that is neither speech nor censorship, but another category). I would put book-burning in the same category, provided it cannot have any actual censorial effect, but is being done to make a statement. If someone at this point in time bonfires some copies of Tropic of Cancer, The SCUM Manifesto, Satanic Verses, whatever, I would consider that speech. However, the content of the speech is, in every case I know of or could imagine, advocacy of censorship. Bonfiring the only copy of an unpublished manuscript is a different matter. Tearing down a poster is in the latter category because no specific poster is so ubiquitous that one could not possibly prevent anyone from seeing it by tearing down all the copies you could.

Echoing Anarcissie@13 – The really convenient thing about the universal principle of free speech is not just that it’s an extraordinarily effective topic for concern trolling, but that it lets those with power claim they’re being oppressed by those who try to oppose them.

“Tearing down a poster is in the latter category because no specific poster is so ubiquitous that one could not possibly prevent anyone from seeing it by tearing down all the copies you could.”

But no-one tore down all the copies they could. A group of people ripped up one copy that been taken away from the scene of the demonstration. There was no attempt to suppress the demonstration, just one person getting annoyed and expressing it to others who shared this annoyance. The impact on speech was zero, unlike DOS attacks etc.

On your view, it would be improper to deface a poster, even one of hundreds, just in case hundreds of other people did likewise. Do you really think that?

These days, it seems that the 2nd amendment is the only amendment people feel passionate about protecting.

And it seems that Americans are passionate about free speech only when the speech aligns directly with their values. All other expressions should be banned. This desire to stop free expression is not just found among the lefties, though.

[40]

I’ve read plenty of liberals on liberal blogs ripping Snowden/Greenwald (usually ad hom with little actual reasoning involved). They’re not false flag liberals. They are people whose reaction to negative information about their team (Democrats/liberals) circled the wagons.

I find the comment section here pretty depressing. I’m not included, as this is about “leftists” not liberals, and I’m a liberal. Still, ugh.

MSM wrote:

These days, it seems that the 2nd amendment is the only amendment people feel passionate about protecting.

I think you can find plenty of 10 amendment wackos out there if you start to look. For the record, I’m a third amendment absolutist (much more so than the 2nd amendment or even the first, fourth or eight), but it has been sometime since I’ve felt it was seriously threatened.

One of the main effects of free speech is to give outsiders the possibility to voice their opposition.
It would make sense if liberals are more hostile today to free speech than in the past: they have more power.

Barry: “Heck, which liberals opposed his leaks?”
All of Obama’s administration: or is it an exercise in “no true liberal”?

Burning a flag and tearing up a poster are both capable of being expressive acts. But if it’s your flag, then the only harm is that you might upset people. If it’s not your poster, then there’s obvious harm to a property right, though it might be de minimus depending on context. If the tearing up if the poster is part of an effort at stopping people from seeing the poster, then we have harm to someone else’s free speech. If tearing up the poster is an expressive act and the expressive intent is “no one should be able to see posters such as this,” the attack on free speech values is pretty clear.

These things are rarely that complex if you break them down. Instead of looking at rights as absolute realities, look at them as competing interests that have been identified as particularly important. Then you will avoid mistakes like presuming that tearing up a poster can’t be speech if it is also censorious, or vice versa. It can be both.

Just to add, equally I would not leave those decisions in the hands of Mireille Miller-Young.

I would have said that I’m with deBoer (and afinetheorem @25) about the (lack of) wisdom of most proposed restrictions on free speech, but with Corey Robin on the decreasing frequency of the left’s support for such restrictions (even over the last quarter century). However, this thread makes me think deBoer might be right about trends in the left’s general commitment (or lack thereof) to free speech, too. But so far this discussion about these trends (by deBoer, Corey, and in this thread) is largely anecdotal. I also think it might be useful to distinguish between thorough critiques of free speech (a la Marcuse) and more casual and ad hoc support for suppression of speech that one disagrees with, as in the UCSB case that deBoer discusses. It may be the case that the critiques may be decreasing and the support for ad hoc suppression increasing (though, again, all we’re dealing with so far are anecdata).

I am pretty close to being a free speech absolutist. However, what conservatives want isn’t free speech but freedom from the consequences of their speech.

And Thornton Hall — what a great comment!

My sense is that leftist enthusiasm for restricting free speech peaked in the late 80s/early 90s and has mostly diminished since then. I certainly haven’t heard much about “speech codes” and the like for decades, despite working on university campuses.

There was the MacKinnon-Dworkin anti-pornography crusade in the 80s, but that didn’t accomplish much in the U.S., and in Canada obscenity laws heavily influenced by them were used to selectively go after gay and lesbian materials. Which I suppose served as an object lesson in how speech restrictions* won’t necessarily be used the way you want them used. Like the fracas over campus speech codes, it seems like it was all over by the mid 90s.

I think the place where some new thinking about how to deal with harmful speech would be most useful is in the area of threats made online. It’s become clear that if your on the internet and identified as a woman, breathing and having a pulse is enough to get you death and/or rape threats. There seems to be a whole little subculture that considers it a normal thing to do. I’m not sure what should be done to try to push back against that while not enabling the kind of idiocy that happened a few months ago when right wingers went after Eric Loomis for calling for some NRA leaders “heads on sticks”.

*I’m familiar with the “but it’s not technically censorship” argument. Not impressed.

Can anyone point to either a systemic critique, a la Marcuse or MacKinnon, that’s been made in the last 20 years?

Fish–people who have a goal and common values have no reason to permit speech that interferes with their activities (obviously when it comes to the practical and strictly political his issues are right-tending ones)–presumably doesn’t count as systemic?

Aargh. “someone,” “variations,” “Sullivan,” “content-based,” “ex post.” Sorry.

When somebody frames a question like “Is the social justice left really abandoning free speech?”, you don’t even have to know the details to know it’s a propaganda hit piece. Why does this BS even merit a response?

If anything, one might take it as grounds for a different investigation: why are isolated incidents of leftist “intolerance” blown up in ways that never happen in other contexts? Nobody seems to ask why conservatives are “abandoning free speech”, when you could come up with plenty of evidence for that (e.g. David Horowitz, Nadia Abu El Haj, Fox News to name a few). What is so endlessly frustrating about posts like this, Corey, is that again and again liberals are allowing the right to frame the debate. Just stop it!

Fish’s later books handled free speech related issues from two different points of view: (1) Does what professionals do, particularly in literary interpretation and law, have to be subjected to self-criticism from the point of view of universal reason? Or can those in particular professions consider for themselves what counts as a good reason? (2) Does the actual practice of law set first amendment principles above others, or does it always balance freedom of speech with other policies?

In politics, people can always say, “We have a policy preference for not allowing that kind of speech,” and for Fish this should trump (and does trump) any free speech considerations. (My copy of the law book is packed away somewhere, because Fish didn’t seem very far from other people who were actually legal scholars when it came down to points regarding religious practice and political speech.)

At a plausibly more personal level, Fish says those in a practice can always say, “We don’t do that here,” with no explanation, and those who want to engage in the practice have no argument to make in favor of doing things differently. He’s talking about the seminar room, but he uses the generic term “professionals,” and anyway the argument plausibly applies to any community or group.

On the porn cases in the 90s: Workers at at least one publisher refused to handle “American Psycho.” If the Rushdie controversy had been handled differently, the same might have happened with that book.

Academiclurker – there have been successful prosecutions in those types of cases

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-25641941

Academic Lurker: An anecdote, but just after the US paperback came out, I was visiting Columbia’s campus and casually picked up a copy in the campus bookstore, and was sneered at by a student working in the store. I gathered, at the time, that the feeling was not so much “who are we to judge” but that Rushdie had adopted Western bourgeois values and of course the West was supporting him against the global South, so leftist solidarity implied at least condemnation of the book and refusal to read it or send the author money for it.

On the other hand, though I tended to assume the mainstream of the Columbia left was closely tied to the New York elements of the Democratic Socialists of America–there was a semester where the student newspaper became an overt DSA recruiting vehicle–I’m not sure how typical they were otherwise.

TM: holding oneself to higher standards than the opponent may be laudable but politically it’s idiotic.

Well, that’s Fish’s argument, and it’s why at first it wasn’t at all obvious he wasn’t (still) on the left.

I think the examples given in this thread, including some remarkably clumsy misreadings of people’s statements, have pushed me into the “stop slandering us” camp. Best I can tell, the link @8 didn’t actually propose that the government restrict climate denialism or make it illegal, as afinetheorem @25 suggests, it proposed that the d’Aquila earthquake case offered a way to punish climate denialists using existing laws. Martin Bento’s responses to John Q @32 & 33 are also misreading in a pretty clumsy way the question that John posed. One poster vs all the posters you can see is a pretty crucial difference.

And then Red Vienna’s comment @19 is AFAICT only talking about rhetoric (and maybe that was your point?). Using a certain rhetorical strategy and recommending that other like-minded people (e.g. other non-racists) use the same strategy does not even remotely challenge free speech. If what we (should) value is procedural protections to free speech, then the rhetorical strategies people use are completely beside the point.

Manta @45 & Barry @40, the “liberal”[1] Obama administration being the most visible group opposing the Snowden leaks is kind of the exception that proves the rule that the social justice left values free speech. The division between the left and liberals you would expect to see would have the left circling wagons around Obama and liberals giving priority to procedural protections. Instead, the social justice left generally seems to criticize the surveillance state as being mostly about opportunistically punishing brown and black people for the sake of security theater.

The one place where I see a a potential for a split within the left on free speech is protection of anonymity on the internet, which is useful for online harassment, revenge porn, &c.

My two cents:
“free speech” is a very general right, that can collide with other rights or requirements (e.g. Manning and Snowden free speech rights vs. USA’s security concerns and Manning’s supposed duties as a soldier).
Judges and lawmaker will draw a line to tell where one right will prevail, and where will the other.
As a consequence, there can’t really a “general theory of free speech”, but rather a lot of different conflicts of rights that every political side will try to solve differently.
For example, in my opinion there is no particular contradiction in holding those four opinions:
– Manning right to free speech is more important than his duties as a soldier (pro free speech);
– Hate speech against minorities should be be blocked (anti free speech);
– Copyright law should be limited (pro free speech);
– Privacy laws should be such that you can’t record my private actions without my consent and then put me on youtube (anti free speech).
This is because each of these conflicts is very different from the others and it makes no sense IMHO to speak of a “tendency” with regard of so different things.

The essence of the postings so far is:

“I’m totally in favor of free speech. As long as the speaker agrees with me. The other side lies and distorts so they ABUSE their freedom of speech and should not have it.”

That view isn’t just on the left. It is a feature of the right also.

@Ronan(rf) 84

Well if you take an “absolutist” view of free speech, then people can’t sign away their free speech rights, anymore that they can sign away their voting rights.

Would a “he signed for the army so he can’t vote communist” clause have value in american law? I think not.

John Quiggin, you seem to have picked up an incorrect view of the case. You write: “A question about the original incident. Is taking a sign (one of many) and tearing it up suppression of free speech? There’s a (fairly trivial) breach of property rights involved if the sign was taken by force, but if there were simply a bunch of posters stuck up somewhere, I’d say that ripping one of them up is an exercise of free speech rights rather than the contrary” and then you write “But no-one tore down all the copies they could. A group of people ripped up one copy that been taken away from the scene of the demonstration. There was no attempt to suppress the demonstration, just one person getting annoyed and expressing it to others who shared this annoyance. ”

This is not correct. The pro-life protest and fliers were already taking place in a very limited “free speech zone” and were not permitted throughout the campus. There were only three posters. Professor Miller Young was offended by the photos and claimed that other people were triggered by them. She demanded that all of the posters be taken down. When the pro-life protestors refused to take all of the posters down Professor Miller-Young grabbed a sign out from the protestors hands (her own words were “I’m stronger so I was able to take the poster”) removed it from the site and destroyed it.

She said to the police officer that she felt she could take the poster because it was upsetting to her and some college students and in her opinion the activists did not have a right to be there. (This last is incorrect as UCSB had specifically set up that area as a free speech zone, and protesters from outside the campus were regularly welcome there).

Her intent to suppress all of the speech (your DOS analogy) is clear. She wanted to get rid of all the signs, she physically wrested one of them from the other woman’s hands, and she did not believe that the protestors had a right to be there at all. Further this case doesn’t implicate the global warming subthread, as she wanted the protest shut down because it was “offensive”.

I find this whole thread troubling, and I kind of wonder if this isn’t a case of people not seeing the waters they swim in. The free speech norms of the US are hugely beneficial to leftists wanting to get their message out. If the norm were “political messages that are uncomfortable can be squelched” I can promise that law makers on the right could hit ‘false propaganda about capitalism’ much earlier than you are going to get speech which in your opinion improperly defends powerful military or monied interests suppressed.

Nobody cares about what other people say, per se. I don’t care about what a neo-Nazi say, and I don’t think anyone else does. Neo-Nazi beliefs don’t impact me, all the way up until they hold a threatening demonstration of belief that they view you as the enemy. That’s because I view the right to feel secure on my premises as being at least as important as my right to say anything.

What people want are carve outs to deal with trolling, saying that it causes bad things to happen.

Of course, I’d object Willis’ characterization that there is some unbalanced tilt towards healing on the part of speech. Too many things that could be said are just as powerful as physical blows.

As for the idea that the people in power would abuse any such restriction…Yup, and so? Abusive people with power abuse everything, every custom, every law. It’s not as if the Fourth Amendment exists in any real sense anymore is it? The Fifth is only honored in the breech. We all know how people abuse a nuance like drug war here, or the way libel suits are handled in the UK. It’s perfectly possible to write nuanced laws that take social position and/or abuse in mind, such as how the US treats “public personalities” versus the UK. Here, powerful entities have to use a SLAPP lawsuit at their expense and with no anticipation of success, rather than a libel lawsuit that’s cheap and completely costless.

You know, it can actually be done. You just have to write it a certain way, and understand that future people are going to do what they are going to do. You’ll just have to hope that the wisdom of the words you write into law has its own compelling strange attractor that brings the focus back to why you took the time and effort to write this law.

And what would I want that would stop that possibility?

That’s what’s fucking up your world, isn’t it, Manta et al?

Another reason why I’m pissed about the absolutism is that it’s a profound rejection that craft means anything. That skill means anything. Like those stupid goldbugs that can’t be bothered to understand that gold is no more money-like than “fiat currencies” are, because gold offers them some illusitory independence from the whims of the state.

But guess what, you’re not independent when you hoard gold, or every sort of free speech. You never were. You have to judge what you want, go out there and advocate for what you believe in and help craft a regime that suits you, whether that be trading gold for a home, with zoning laws and collectible/currency/commodity markets, where home, markets, all–they are all *crafted*.

Absolute free speech and multi-ethnic societies (where everyone has rights) don’t mix, and never had, and as the disease of nationalism retreats from the world stage, we should stay engaged in the issues that pop up, and craft the best response possible.

MSM@39: “And it seems that Americans are passionate about free speech only when the speech aligns directly with their values.”

That seems to me to much too broad a brush, both in terms of the domain (speech that “aligns directly with their values”) and the range (“Americans”). A great many Americans of all political stripes are free speech absolutists, and many that aren’t are tolerant of speech they disagree with. It’s the edge cases, where speech that seems to verge on unhinged ranting or harassment or DOS attacks tends to push people towards censorship.

Of course, the First Amendment is hardly absolutist in any case, as it applies only to governmental action against speech. Individuals and non-governmental entities are (within pretty broad limits) allowed to censor anything or anyone they want. If I say that Barack Obama is a terrible President, there’s nothing the government can do about it (other than audit me, of course, or tap my phone and email). If I say the same thing in my capacity as an employee at Big Company, they are within their rights to fire me, all other things being equal.

So, arguing over whether the “left” or anyone else is more or less tolerant of free speech than previously, especially given the left’s impressive track record of never holding elective office, seems rather about angels and pins. (I could substitute “libertarians” in the previous with equal truth.)

The real question is more what to do about the soi disant “liberals” such as Harry Reid who are promoting restrictions on constitutionally protected speech by the unwashed, and redefinitions of eligibility for 501(c)(4) status by “social welfare” groups they disagree with politically. The former seems to have gotten some opposition from left and right, but the latter seems to have only animated the right, as more of their oxen are up for goring.

I.e., what is government actually up to in the censorship area?

PGD@88: Willis’ essay first appeared as “Porn Free” in Transition#63, Summer 1994 and is reprinted in her Don’t Think, Smile, Beacon Press, 1999.

That was always the hard part, no?

One thing I was noodling on are civil or criminal liabilities for “disturbing the peace” as it relates to speech. That is, people are liable for diminishing the perceived safety *and* utility of the “public space” wrt other people (not corporations, governments, etc). As in, any means of protest can’t, in practice, deny people of rightful access to services or places of labor (whether for money or not), nor can they imply future retribution. If your group or cause has a history of violence, then just being where your historical victims live and work would violate such laws.

Now, specifically for hecklers like the Westboro folks, I would only say that they are permitted to do what they do as a matter of policy. People don’t normally allow hecklers in public gatherings to remain, except at the discretion of the speaker or some other leader. Do you really think that, say, a nasty band of Oneida folks can go and protest at Ralph Wilson’s funeral with every bit of the nastiness Fred Phelps nurtures? There is a tradition of right wingers doing more or less illegal/untolerated activities because hey, IOIYAAR. Making everyone equal in terms of enforcement of norms will cure most of it.

As far virulent speech goes, like blood libels and chain emails go, more speech usually is effective, because in harsh daylight, their nastiness (and clumsiness) is usually pretty evident. Here, the only thing I want to do is figure out some way to end the use of repeating lies in order to fillibuster other people’s speech by drowning them out. The thing is, more speech here doesn’t work, and the harm done by empowered (usually industrial/corporations) folks that use it is utterly massive and lethal–tobacco, lead paint, asbestos, etc, etc. This part is hard to craft well, but it’s also important in a way I think that is missed by many people. When you read books like Bending Science by McGarity and Wagner, it gets pretty obvious that this is a pretty big issue. Somehow, knowingly repeating and magnifying lies does have to be dealt with.

Aaaaaahhhhh-mennnnnnn.

@Sebastian I just read the linked Gawker article and based my comment on what was stated there. If the facts were different, you can take my argument as a hypothetical one

“If your group or cause has a history of violence, then just being where your historical victims live and work would violate such laws.”

Thanks for stating openly that you are insane.

Kudos to Kaveh @96 for asking the right question.

Well, Manta, are the civil rights of men (or women) who have a restraining order against them being impaired because they can’t be at the residence or any other location of the people who obtained the restraining order?

Thanks for the report, Sebastian.

Judging from it (i.e., assuming that it is truthful and complete), she seems unfit to teach; but YMMV.

Moreover, she teaches “reproductive rights” and
1) does not know the relevant laws
2) is “triggered” by anti-abortion posters?

She is *particularly* unfit to teach reproductive rights.

A strong trend visible among left-leaning groups in fights started by feminist radicals is their belief that free speech has ‘consequences.’ Which is, essentially, an argument that people who use–or might use–free speech in ways said radicals dislike should be bullied, harassed, intimidated, or hounded out of society entirely.

Not that long ago a blogger here on CT defended a professor who poisoned the academic environment for two student journalists who reported that the professor brought her infant to a lecture class and allowed it to be disruptive to her students’ learning experience. It’s impossible to reconcile intimidating journalists for doing their jobs with any kind of support for freedom of speech.

More recently, the denouement of the Jonathan Ross/Worldcon incident saw Ross’ SO and child subjected to torrents of abuse by feminists on Twitter who were afraid that their husband/father might tell a fat joke. Whatever weight of legitimacy one places on fat jokes, harassing someone’s family for speech they might use speaks to an attitude that is fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed to the exercise of free speech.

These, any many other examples, make it very clear that the identity politics left prefers speech chilled if not frozen solid.

One tricky issue is alluded to a few times, and in my observation is where most libertarian-leaning (e.g. Eugene Volokh) complaints about the left and freedom of speech come from.

Of course, the First Amendment is hardly absolutist in any case, as it applies only to governmental action against speech. Individuals and non-governmental entities are allowed to censor anything or anyone they want.

This opens up the possibility of government pressuring non-governmental entities to suppress speech. It’s clear that I can refuse to hire someone to rake my lawn who curses continually. It seems reasonably to follow that I could refuse to hire someone to work in my(hypothetical) store who does so. But it is distinctly problematic if the law enables me to be punished legally (sued for harassment, refused a business permit) UNLESS I refuse to hire that person.

The same comes up in the professional speech context; it makes perfect sense that the “Association of Freudian Psychologists” can refuse membership to Jungian psychologists if it wants to; it’s much less clear that the government can require psychologists to be licensed, and allow the licensing agency to deny licenses to Jungian psychologists; and it becomes problematic if the government requires the licensing agency to to deny licenses to Jungian psychologists.

(All examples are intended to be made up; any resemblance of names to real groups is accidental.)

Sam, what about credit card companies that (after some thoughtful prodding from the vice-president) refuse to deal with a news organization because it exposed government’s dirty secrets?

(Again, a completely made-up example)

” Recently in the UK there was a large campaign (still running I think) to ban lad mags from display at local stores”

What do you mean by “ban”? Having to buy your porn in an opaque plastic envelope or a sex store isn’t really censorship.

re the shift to ‘the Nordic model’, afaict in the UK anyway this would be a progressive change, as it criminalises the person buying sex rather than the sex worker.Personally my preference would be for complete decriminalisation but the ‘Nordic model’ seems much more preferable than the current one in the UK. (as far as I know it)

Katherine: it seems that the actual prostitutes (as opposed to politicians and activists) do agree with faustusnotes (but maybe “disastrous” is too strong: very bad would suffice).
http://www.petraostergren.com/pages.aspx?r_id=40716

Or “hire”, like in “hire people for sex”.
(But I agree with Katherine: I don’t see what it has to do with free speech, so I won’t pursue this topic any further).

Man, those goshdarn feminists just went way over-board didn’t they? Identity politics are the suck!

I guess Mirelle Miller-Young has been teaching about how rape isn’t sex, and that anti-abortion politics has nothing to do about life, for just a little too long, and she was overcome by the power of her ideology when she saw those protesters.

Banning the distribution of pornography is really censorship. Controlling the packaging in public accommodations is pretty weak sauce run of the mill regulation with little effect on expression,

“whether the speech should or should not be “free” is precisely the point in issue.”

It depends on your background assumptions and where you think the burden of proof lies. The background assumption in the US is for very broad free speech freedoms. You seem to be arguing against that US levels of free speech are inappropriate. Ok, but you do so in very general terms and without evidencing much in the way of understanding why free speech got the way it did. In the case here, a professor wanted to shut down pro-life protests using pictures of dead fetuses because she was offended. Abortion in the US is a hotly contested political issue, not at all subject to the idea that it is well settled. So are we really advocating the idea that some ruling class gets to shut down even face to face interactions on hotly contested political topics on the basis of offense?

Everyone, including the left is better protected by not allowing that kind of ground rule. So I presume you would want some other kind of ground rule. But you don’t bother saying what it would be.

And those who do say what they want it would be seem to naively imagine a world where their hotly contested political issues get aired, while their opponents get theirs squelched. I don’t know where you get the idea destroying or largely modifying the background assumptions about free speech will get you that result, but I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.

GiT, the lose the lads’ mags campaign aims to “stop selling sexist, pornographic lads’ mags like Nuts and Zoo”. It is connected with Object, an explicitly anti-pr0n campaign. The logic of these campaigns is that viewing naked women is somehow “harmful.” Any plain packaging or under-the-counter type sales goals are simply milestones on the road to the stated objective.

Object is also opposed to strip clubs and sex work – again, trying to control the avenues of sexual expression available to consenting adults. This is a type of conservatism that imho has grown in strength in the left since the 1970s. It’s consistent with a) a new conservatism generally in the rich world and b) the growing influence of conservative American feminism (and yes, identity feminism) in what should be a worldwide movement.

Ronan, it’s not a progressive change if it increases the risk of violence towards women, which is what the nordic model achieves.

Sigh. Cite please? Or am I just supposed to take your word for it?

I agree with SH 131 but more important is to point out hat this incident is not representative of anything and its use for sweeping generalizations of “the left” is made in bad faith. More important also than the details of the case is to understand the very peculiar dynamic that tends to unfold in these cases when a transgression like Miller Young’s, which I regard as poor judgment but hardly terribly injurious to her opponents (as compared to many other cases I could cite when people were really victimized solely for their speech, which is rather more common than Americans tend to imagine), gets full media attention and then people like Freddie deBoer and Corey Robin start framing an entirely unproductive debate about “the left” and free speech, and then it goes where it always goes. And one despairs over the impression that the left just can’t learn from its tactical mistakes (but I admit I’m guilty of generalization).

And I promise I won’t comment any more to this idiotically wrong-headed debate. Also, 100.

Katherine, pretty much every sex worker organization involved objects to the law on this basis. Methods for improving the safety of sex work are pretty well understood, if you talk to sex worker organizations they will tell you pretty clearly what they think. You could try the international union of sex workers for starters. These organizations can be pretty critical of the anti-trafficking campaigns generally mounted by these same groups claiming to be working in women’s interests. Do you think they might have a right to a say over the working conditions in their industry?

And the claim that the nordic model doesn’t criminalize sex work is just a furphy. It criminalizes the purchase of sex work, which means it criminalizes the exchange, it interferes with the right of adults to consent, and it forces women to work in hazardous conditions (i.e. alone and out of sight).

I guess you also think that age of consent laws don’t criminalize underage sex, since one party is not punished for them. Right?

As an aside on sex work decriminalization, what percentage of sex workers would actually benefit from decriminalization? I’m not sure the distinction between only criminalizing johns and criminalizing both johns and the prostitute is meaningful. While saying that might seemingly support faustusnotes, I’m inclined to disagree, mostly because sex as a utility is (or almost) always free. Men who want to *buy* sex aren’t typically just buying the sex (unless they’re taking care of some fetish, in some cases). Therefore, while I might have “harm reduction” mentalities were I to be benovolent dictator, but I’d always prefer to more or less eliminate cheap prostitution because there’s always a huge pool of nastiness behind the facade of voluntary exchange.

“As an aside on sex work decriminalization, what percentage of sex workers would actually benefit from decriminalization? ”

Decriminalization, labour protection, right to unionise, access to welfare/healthcare etc, safer work enviornment, greater access to the legal system, no criminal records would be some of the benefits. Of course there would always be those outside the system, but there are clear benefits for potentially *a lot* of sex workers.

Yeah I’m pretty sure they do. It’s not Alabama circa 1930.

name one, then.

Shah8’s 140, with its Only certain people ever get real free speech. Never did matter if said speech was in clear bad faith or harmful. The rest of us are invited to shut up. is pretty true. In practice, most speech debate ends up, if there’s any practical application at all, about whether anyone else will be allowed to make the Freddies of the world experience any discomfort on their way to saying whatever the hell they want. Whether those who are actually getting beaten up can say “For fuck’s sake, stop beating me up!” without getting beaten up again for it, that’s a different kind of matter.

Restricting speech based on harm is tricky. That’s why restraining orders and gag rules have to be very narrowly tailored to specific incidents, usually a very credible threat of actual harm.

Broader speech rules like “no racism” are subsets of the Infliction of Emotional Distress torts, and these torts have always been difficult to quantify and enforce fairly. A racist quip might devastate one person but amuse the next. My using the n-word is likely to be a lot more harmful than a black person calling me a cracker, which I find funny. Additionally, given American history, I would expect the “no racism” rules to be enforced mostly against the poor and people of color.

An absolute right of free speech is workable only in a society consisting of one person. Otherwise, your free speech rights are necessairly limited by the rights of others. You can’t use speech to commit crimes–Bernard madoff is not a free speach marty, and there really was a guy who shouted, “fire” in a crowded theater, causing mass casualties:
http://coreyrobin.com/2013/02/17/falsely-shouting-fire-in-a-theater-how-a-forgotten-labor-struggle-became-a-national-obsession-and-emblem-of-our-constitutional-faith/

And there can be reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, as a matter of common sense–no bullhorns at 2:00 am in residential neighborhoods.

As usual when dealing with conflicting rights, there are going to be close questions at the margins. But it’s not a betrayal of the value of free speech to recognize limits based on the rights of others.

A. Talking about something called “the left” in the contemporary US political landscape has a definitely misleading symmetry to it. As though the two sides were balanced parts of a whole. When the thing is way lopsided, and what even just sounds left in public/mediated forums is not symmetrical weighted viz. the noise volume of the right. Sort of what TM was saying.

B. Free speech is not ice cream, nor is it even potatoes. It is not a consumer item to which all customers have the legal right of purchase.
So the debate isn’t, or shouldn’t be, about withholding that right.
Willis via geo’s “It’s not that speech is never wounding, she argues, but that freedom is healing” moves toward it. But only healing in the context of we are presently ill, so need it. Something even finer than healing is possible, and the idea is free speech increases the likelihood of that possibility.
It’s about what comes out of the nutrient bath of free expression. And like most of the really groovy stuff we don’t have yet, it can’t be entered into evidence, because it doesn’t exist yet. So that’s a serious disadvantage in an argument about its potential benefits.
Especially when the consumerist mindset is reducing everything to retail transaction.
The future is the most valuable thing we have, yet by its nature it isn’t on the shelves, so doesn’t have legitimate standing in the marketplace. But that seems to have been at least part of the idea behind the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to secure some basic freedoms for those who came after.
The tension between a present right to an exercise of freedom and the right of some theoretical members of some theoretical community in some theoretical future to have better lives is hard to see for what it is, because there’s so much loud idiotic partisan confusion over present day rights, and the future is silent. One has to assert its inevitable factuality, over and over.

The idea of “shaming” as a counterbalance to noxious speech is so hideous and retrograde it’s hard to address. Spectator vigilantism, without guns. Censorship by flash-mob. Group tantrums as political acts.
As if mob rule were the truest form of democracy. Because the people.

“But it also reflects the impotency of the left/liberals/scientists in communicating information to the general public.”

Indeed, a scientific establishment that can’t convince the public that the climate is worth doing something about certainly isn’t going to convince them to ban the opposition. If climate denialism is powerful enough to prevent legislation from being enacted, it’s already too powerful to ban. (Conversely, if it wasn’t too powerful to ban, you wouldn’t want to ban it.)

I think there is a good argument that we should go further in restricting speech that’s intended to intimidate or harass minorities, but you can’t prevent the general public from being deceived if they want to be deceived.

To say that one’s rights to speech are limited by the rights of others is to say nothing at all, unless one spells out what those restrictions should be. In India books are banned on the basis of insulting one particular religion or another. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was de facto banned in much of the South, to the extent of running booksellers out of town who sold it.

More recently, the US newspapers and publishers have quietly and cravenly agreed to submit to violent demands to refrain from publishing visual works critical of Islam because of a risk of violence.

No one claims the right to censor out of a political motive. Instead it is “to avoid insult”, to “assure civic peace”, or some other excuse. Out of concern for the souls of Englishmen, the Spanish prepared the Inquisition. The law which bans some titillating textual depiction of the rape of a minor would no doubt ensnare Lolita.

Many of the pivotal free speech cases in the US involve an embattled and disliked minority against a majority, who do not only believe they are right, but are so right that they seek the power to forcibly silence those who speak against them. Are we so wrong to presume that, absent some tangible harm, they should have the opportunity to spread their message to those who may wish to hear it? As disgusting as pictures of aborted fetuses or the dead in war are, should our public debate be sanitised of the consequences of our actions? Should judges be in charge of deciding that “I am Curious: Yellow” is not porn, but “Debbie Does Dallas” is?

(It was this issue that doomed the government side in Citizen’s United)

Free speech as it exists in the US came out of a long series of court cases, some well decided, some not. We have learned, through a long and painful process, that judgements of censorship are rarely justified in hindsight, and can do great harm, while an excess of speech has usually not been regretted.

Okay, so your solution is ban them all, rather then ‘put them all on the same shelf’?

… although free speech would also be enhanced by Crooked Timber having functional html.

The issue is that these people are protected in their right to abuse and threaten people

The specific legal issue yes. But the moral issue is not the same thing. The moral issue is why are there people like that doing that in the first place, and what can be done about them?
And that leads pretty straight to the mind-influence bordering on mind-control those poor benighted souls are subject to, because that’s why they’re doing that. Attack chihuahuas. Independent bile contractors.
Quibbling about whether they have a right to foam at the mouth on someone’s phone while ignoring the intentional infecting of their minds, the enabling of their pathologies, is sort of a past-time, rather than a serious attempt to address the problem.
The problem being there’s a dark side obverse to the healing and promise of truly free speech. Where a crowd of feral human drones gets to virtually stone the designated recipients of their masters’ contempt.
Where the lone wolf hater is pumped on broadcast nerve poisons and shown a suitable cathartic target. Rush Limbaugh’s hands are perfectly clean and well-manicured.

Examples of hate mail/hate speech etc. that are dropped into the discourse of people who don’t have much experience of it, its volume and intensity, are propaganda tools. Look! Someone being mean to a puppy!
What decent person wouldn’t want that stopped?
Measured against the bulk of its actual presence, the amount of that shit happening, mostly outside public awareness – it’s a security thing, you wouldn’t understand – it loses immediacy. And points to a larger problem: What good is free speech in an arena of fools and reptilian monsters?
Because we’re here too, still here, and freedom heals.

@19

Antrosio writes that “the results of science must still be presented within a particular historical and political context”. I’ll go farther — if authors know their work is fodder for racists & reactionaries, not only should they demote and defuse the “explosive” lede by burying it in necessary context, authors should also ramp up the adjectival qualifiers and crank the obscuring academese to 11. In short, make it so that enthusiastic lay racists cannot understand it, and so that their media lack the terminology to quote-mine repurpose the study.

They should make their paratexts, form, and style conducive to being /politically correct/.

The problem with that approach is that there is no shortage of intellectuals who are willing to translate that jargon into language that lay racists can understand. For example, a book like Nicholas Wade’s ‘A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History’ is fodder for the entire racialist agenda, and it’s written for a lay audience.

Wade has been the NY Times science reporter for years and is a mainstream respectable figure. It would look bad if the left chose to censor him and declare him persona non grata. Yet his book contains many troubling implications for the left, such as providing scientific evidence that not only is race a biological reality, but that there are important genetic differences between the races which influence the kinds of societies they can create and maintain. Nor have the political implications of Wade’s book been lost on far right ideologues. As one of them put it, in a review of Wade’s book: “next thing you know, someone might say the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should be repealed or that women have no business on submarines.”

So the left finds itself in a real dilemma. Should they ignore the book, and thus practice de factor censorship, in order to promote a Noble Lie, or should they contend with it, even if it means damaging their commitment to equality? This is doubly problematic, because the left has historically been proud of its commitment to the empirical sciences and mocked the backwardness and obscurantism of reactionaries. Now the biological sciences appear to have become the left’s most formidable enemy.

Politically, I think ideologies depending on the suppression of free speech will fail, the suppression itself being an idealistic impossibility and perhaps even counterproductive, tending to have a “Streisand effect.”

You can’t police every whisper and every encrypted online message. Wherever you focus your policing, you also shine a spotlight. I think people are pretty dumb, but ideologues seem to think they’re even dumber – that people can’t see through the policing.

You need widespread condemnation by individuals, and I’m talking child porn level, not racism level.

Wade’s book hasn’t even been published yet. It comes out in May. Seems a bit premature to assume anyone is ignoring anything.

Based on the police report, Sebastian, I agree with your view of the issue.

This entire comment section has been Grade A Terrible, but Jacob McM is taking it to new heights. What does it even mean to suggest that the biological sciences are “the Left’s” (as though the US has a Left) enemy? Racial egalitarianism is no more based on the “equality” of different races than classical liberalism is based on the literal equality of every human being.

Free speech as it exists in the US came out of a long series of court cases, some well decided, some not. We have learned, through a long and painful process, that judgements of censorship are rarely justified in hindsight, and can do great harm, while an excess of speech has usually not been regretted.

But the US experience is by-and-large the experience of an apartheid state, and while the US isn’t an apartheid state currently… well.

If your laws and jurisprudence were worth anything, Jim Crow wouldn’t have happened, surely.

Bruce @164 No I dont think thats a useful frame, but its Shah8’s not mine (afaict)

I realize that, on an abstract level, racial egalitarianism need not and should not rest on biological egalitarianism, and people like Steven Pinker have made that argument. Problem is, I don’t think this argument holds up in real life.

I won’t beat around the bush: everyone here knows that Black people would bear the brunt of a racialist resurgence, so I’ll use them as my example. If Wade’s arguments are true, then the implication is that Black people, in the aggregate, are not capable of maintaining a First World level of civilization. The evolution of the Black race has adapted them to a completely different, pre-modern environment. It follows that if the number of Blacks in your neighborhood passes a certain threshold, more likely than not you’re going to end up with Detroit, Oakland, East St. Louis, Haiti, Zimbabwe, etc. Crime rates skyrocket. Property values and school quality plunge. White flight ensues. Wade mentions the fact that the MAO-A gene, the “warrior” gene, which is linked to hair-trigger temper and violence, is found fifty times more often among American Blacks than among Whites, and his pleading not to draw too many conclusions from this rings hollow when compared to the tenor of the rest of his book. Wade also touches on the Black-White IQ gap while refusing to take any firm stance on the issue.

Now if this knowledge became widespread among the general population, do you really think the average person is going to care one whit about equal rights? I’m very skeptical of that. They’re probably going to want to keep the number of Black people in their neighborhood to a bare minimum, if they allow any at all. This means that segregation and discrimination, both de facto and de jure, will become more acceptable, and have “scientific” backing. A revival of Jim Crow is possible. At a certain point, people might even decide that Blacks are simply too much of a liability to keep around, and there could be calls for mass deportations or worse. If genetic differences are too stark, “equal rights” won’t survive the implications.

By the way, Wade makes reference to the research of Gregory Clark, whose work in the NY Times (see his piece “Your Ancestors, Your Fate”) is laying the groundwork for a resurrection of genetic determinism, even though Clark astutely avoids the racial issue.

So those are the stakes. Classical liberalism was first developed within the context of relatively homogeneous societies, racially speaking. It’s worth remembering that some of its major figures, such as Thomas Jefferson, felt that the innate differences between Whites and Blacks were too insurmountable for them to ever live side by side in a state of equality.

Of course, scientists could attempt to prove Wade wrong, and I’ve no doubt that Wade is incorrect on some matters. But what if his claims are for the most part scientifically valid? Do we allow Pandora’s Box to be opened?

“I’ll go farther — if authors know their work is fodder for racists & reactionaries, not only should they demote and defuse the “explosive” lede by burying it in necessary context, authors should also ramp up the adjectival qualifiers and crank the obscuring academese to 11”

Seems quite unethical advice: a “scholar” who followed it should be ashamed of him/herself.

Jacob McM: The Netherlands in the 17th century was not racially homogeneous. Sephardic refugees, Portuguese merchants, Frisian farmers (no, they are not Dutch: look up Pier Gerlofs Donia), Catholics and Protestants all lived together. European traditions of religious freedom emerged from a bloody centuries long conflict about the Pope. Today the whole world lives in New York: Abyssinians, Hassids, Nigerians, Egyptian Copts, etc. all find a refuge in the liberal order that their home countries failed to maintain or adopt.

By contrast the millets of the Ottoman empire lead to genocide and slavery as tensions between peoples who barely knew each other spilled into violence.

Collin Street: The original gag rule was to prevent discussion of slavery on the floor of the house. Abolitionist speakers were beneficiaries of liberal free speech laws, that let one discuss the moral necessity of violence against slaveowners without being jailed. Martin Luther King could only march in Selma because of the First Amendment.

Bruce, tbh Im genuinely not sure what I was arguing, so I might well have been arguing something along those lines at one stage. ; ) It wasnt very clear or coherent on my part. I’m still at a loss as to what my point was!

Jacob – I just read the Clark article at the NYT which you forgot to link to :

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/your-fate-thank-your-ancestors/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

He doesn’t ‘astutely avoid the racial issue’, he rejects it :

“But to be clear, we found no evidence that certain racial groups innately did better than others. Very high-status groups in America include Ashkenazi Jews, Egyptian Copts, Iranian Muslims, Indian Hindus and Christians, and West Africans. The descendants of French Canadian settlers don’t suffer racial discrimination, but their upward mobility, like that of blacks, has been slow.”

I am a little sceptical of your take on Wade’s book after this dooodgy analysis of a 2000 word article.

An addendum to Bruce’s comment: when people present new “scientific evidence” as a potential threat to (other) people’s willingness to support racial equality, they are always ignoring the fact that the vast majority of people who object to racial equality measures do so without any consideration of the scientific “facts” about race – they do so because they are racists. So the existence of scientific evidence supporting or refuting their position is irrelevant, and serves largely only to provide cover for sophisticated racists to be racist without looking coarse. It’s a kind of boutique racism for real specialists.

@191 Faustusnotes:

What seems to be lacking in general consciousness is the extent to which this is true for ALL issues. People begin with foundational emotional commitments and construct “facts” post hoc to support them.

Which is the biggest reason that the “Just use better arguments to convince climate denialists” side of this argument looks so painfully naive.

One of the things I look for as a sign of truthfulness is how a new work deals with its predecessors. I’m in the midst of Margaret Macmillan’s The War That Ended Peace, and as with her previous works, she gives good consideration to a bunch of different interpretations of people, trends, and events, looking at where the evidence has accumulated, what guesses didn’t pan out, and so on. Likewise with “Starts With a Bang”, the blog of astronomer Ethan Siegel. He routinely writes about ongoing research and tentative interpretations, and is completely upfront about what ideas didn’t work out and why – including his own.

There’s none of that that I’ve ever seen in would-be scientific racism. Proofs of fraud by fellow racists don’t appear. Long-debunked ideas surface again and again with no serious engagement, if any at all, with their refutations. There is no real history to the field at all. It’s possible for a work to be correct about its own claims despite that…but the odds are against it. The ghost of Bayes is over here saying “Don’t count on it.”

Some of them ended up in Louisiana. Why was that? Exile.

I wonder if comments 198-200 aren’t unfair to Jacob @181. I had the impression that he wasn’t endorsing the arguments (Wade’s) he set out, or even proposing them for discussion, but merely pointing out that they exemplified the kinds of assertions that those concerned for racial equality might be — understandably — tempted to try to suppress. If that was his purpose, then it fits squarely with the main theme — ie, the left and free speech — of the thread.

@161:

Wade has been the NY Times science reporter for years and is a mainstream respectable figure. It would look bad if the left chose to censor him and declare him persona non grata. Yet his book contains many troubling implications for the left, such as providing scientific evidence that not only is race a biological reality, but that there are important genetic differences between the races which influence the kinds of societies they can create and maintain. …

So the left finds itself in a real dilemma. Should they ignore the book, and thus practice de factor censorship, in order to promote a Noble Lie, or should they contend with it, even if it means damaging their commitment to equality? This is doubly problematic, because the left has historically been proud of its commitment to the empirical sciences and mocked the backwardness and obscurantism of reactionaries. Now the biological sciences appear to have become the left’s most formidable enemy. [emph. added –js.]

If not racist, then definitely racist-curious.

Collin Street: The original gag rule was to prevent discussion of slavery on the floor of the house. Abolitionist speakers were beneficiaries of liberal free speech laws, that let one discuss the moral necessity of violence against slaveowners without being jailed. Martin Luther King could only march in Selma because of the First Amendment.

I’m aware of this. The US first amendment, and the surrounding jurisprudence, was good law for the time it arose in because the US federal courts [once they decided that racism was bad, m’kay] couldn’t rely on local enforcement of anything even slightly ambiguous or discretionary, and didn’t have the authority [the power, yes, but not the authority] to micro-manage and dictate discretionary/interpretative actions.

The US has a very unusual history: law being contingent, it’s thus likely that legal measures and responses that are [or, increasingly, were] appropriate in the US may not be the best choice for other times and other places.

It’s not always 1930s alabama. Sometimes it’s 1920s germany. Different situation, different key problems, different legal frameworks become appropriate.

Hyperbolic Godwin, much?

There are different questions:

1) Is “race” a valid concept, and if so, are there biological differences between the races? This is NOT relevant to the OP, hence not something we should discuss.

2) If the answer to the above questions were “yes,” would that justify racism, ie, differential treatment on the basis of race? This, too, is NOT relevant to the OP, hence not something we should discuss.

3) If a great many people among the general public believed that the answers to the first two questions were “yes,” would that fact justify efforts by the left to prevent or discredit discussion of those questions? This is what I took Jacob to be asking. If so, it IS highly relevant to the OP, hence perhaps something that should be discussed, if not here then somewhere, sometime, by someone.

“How is interpreting the law so that retailers can be sued for selling lad mags notan attempt to censor them?”

Retailers can be brought to court and fined or otherwise penalized for selling alcohol, tobacco, and even packaged foods without the appropriate labels or markings. Is this an attempt to censor them?

Not wanting to discuss it, but it does sound like this Wade book is going to be the “Bell Curve” of the present decade. Not looking forward to it.

But to bring it back to the OP, no, discussion of it when it comes out shouldn’t be suppressed.

Retailers can be brought to court and fined or otherwise penalized for selling alcohol, tobacco, and even packaged foods without the appropriate labels or markings.

I don’t think this a good analogy. Obviously, sale of tobacco, alcohol, etc. is regulated, but it seems pretty clear that the regulation in question is of the sale (and perhaps marketing) of these products, and it seems not at all plausible that the regulation in these cases is of speech. Whereas if you’re talking about regulating displays of nude (or partially nude) images—which is what the regulation of lad mags is about—then it’s at least somewhat more plausible to suggest that the regulation is of speech. At least, there’s a plenty of precedent for treating this sort of thing as a speech/expression issue.

one of the best in the word in this aspect

Yes yes yes. But what are the costs? If freedom-of-speech were also free of consequences, it would be worthless, no?

[you might think that the benefits of freedom-of-speech outweigh the costs. But the costs are very real and can’t be ignored entirely: obviously, an insistence on discussing freedom-of-speech without any regard to any other freedoms people might/should have is not going to show up most of the costs and is not productive.]

mdc 03.27.14 at 1:08 pm:

The positive aspects in your illustration are secondary effects, following a primary change in the social context.
I’d be more than willing to take on an explication/criticism of that as well, because I don’t think simply because some act has a sometimes beneficial result it gets an automatic pass, but what you’re replying to was me replying to an assertion that “shaming” was an effective alternative to regulation of hate speech. Not an adjunct bolstering, confirming, but a go-to alternative to regulation.
And that’s what’s hideous, and super-dangerous, because it empowers something that’s a lot less visible, and a lot less ethically clear when it is visible, than just nice people not liking not-nice people, and letting them know that.
The same water-cooler awkwardness was delivered to countless other, other side of the coin, statements, before that use you approve of.
Someone says, in say 1964: “Well, what’s wrong with a Negro marrying someone white, if they love each other?” and there’s discreet coughing, change of subject, and a reputational mark applied to the speaker.
There’s nothing in the general act of social ostracism that moves inevitably toward enlightened behavior, and lot that goes, potentially,the other way.
It’s not _____ if we do it, cause we’re the good guys. And what the good guys do is always right. The nucleus of danger, there.

“Manners are the analogue 0f morality”, a wise man once said.

“it seems not at all plausible that the regulation in these cases is of speech. Whereas if you’re talking about regulating displays of nude (or partially nude) images—which is what the regulation of lad mags is about—then it’s at least somewhat more plausible to suggest that the regulation is of speech. At least, there’s a plenty of precedent for treating this sort of thing as a speech/expression issue”

Such regulations compel, and prohibit, particular sets of expressions. Particularly they prohibit the expression of particular things without particular qualifications. If I want to sell tobacco, I cannot express things about tobacco without also expressing the qualification that they have been categorized by the surgeon general as yadda yadda yadda. This clearly prohibits particular expressions in a specific context. What if I want my sale of tobacco products to *not* express the fact that they have been classified as such and such by so and so? Tough shit, I’ve been censored.

Of course, covering up a lad mag does “censor” something, insofar that in a particular situation, part of the content of the lad mag is not immediately publicly accessible. This merely means that the content of the lad mag is not always everywhere accessible. Locally, yes, it has been “censored”. Does that add up to censorship in any larger sense, in a world where that particular content is always accessible somewhere, and somewhere accessible always, for not de minimis definitions of somewhere? If you want to make a mockery of the word censorship, I guess so.

Oh, I didn’t mean to say that it was or necessarily would be censorship in a meaningful sense–I was being a bit cagey because I frankly don’t have a strong opinion on the matter. But I think I mostly agree with your 222, though I also think you might be underplaying the importance of visibility issues (both literally and metaphorically). E.g., “free speech zones” do seem to me affect exercise of speech rights even though they don’t involve an outright ban on expression. Mutatis mutandis, etc.

I’m also not sure how much this information can be kept secret in the Internet age. I’ll give you one example from earlier this year:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/jamiebartlett/100012093/meet-the-dark-enlightenment-sophisticated-neo-fascism-thats-spreading-fast-on-the-net/

Take a look at the comment section.

Better to be on one’s guard than to be caught unsuspectingly. So…yes, this brings us back to the OP.

@226 Those theses sound like something from the 1880’s.

you got all that from a discussion about hypothetical discussion of a book that hasn’t been published yet?

Why hasn’t the left embraced my research into the phrenelogical aspects of orgone energy travelling through the aether?

Rampant political correctness, that’s why.

Let’s get Welteislehre its proper place in the history books before we worry about phrenology. Priorites.

“When a theorem loves a data set very much…”

Manta 03.27.14 at 10:25 pm, see:
Alot of what counts as “hate speech” has been most effectively stifled by public shaming.
by Matt 03.26.14 at 3:07 pm.
Or Matt, see Manta, either way.

It’s a few timid steps, and a few contextual clicks, from spontaneous public shaming to ad-hoc public stoning, formerly a most effective means of curbing adulterous behavior in wanton wives etc.
Distributed fascism. Because we are right, and we are many.

Wouldn’t Amy Chua, or her fans, have something to contribute to this discussion? Taboo-breaking acknowledgment of racial superiority is not “racism” because … because it’s true, darn it, it’s not irrational fatuous bigotry, it’s just true.
And where does “austerity” function as a motivational boost to the rational and appropriate exclusion of a given, provably genetically-limited, unter-people?

Or could it be that human beings are far more complex and less easily evaluated than in given structures like the current economy and its institutions?
That a few hundred millennia of survival-proven attributes shouldn’t be discarded wholesale because in the present, artificial and very tenuous, situation they aren’t as useful as what it takes to make it to the top of the money-pile.

“but that’s what the bio-diversitists — oops i mean racists, sorry corey! — have been saying, that (in a completely unrealizable world) a reality-based social policy could replace outmoded and phantasmically corrupted crypto=machiavellianism as the status-quo “liberal” policy regime!”

All to stave off the Angry White Males (t) that they are doing their best to rile up.

i guess this thread’s beat. you probably off organizing a boycott of waves audio and halvah

David @174: “Racial egalitarianism is no more based on the “equality” of different races than classical liberalism is based on the literal equality of every human being.”

Thanks for that. I’m stealing it at once, and without apology!

This is just the formulation that gets past those inane and interminable “Factor G” discussions that white racists love to drone on about. (Coama Shalizi is good but very tough if you’re not a statistician.)

i guess some human beings are more perfectible than others. does this mean that the coming dictatorship of the adjunct professoriate will be universal yet not homogenous? hurry please so i can exhale

“more perfectible”

Examine that.

No problem. The CT police will be around shortly to confiscate your computer.

“Distributed fascism”

Whoah. Every culture and every subculture includes notions of the shameful. You yourself think certain things are shameful, and others who interact with you can tell (that’s the public part). As far as I know, you are no sort of fascist.

Manners aren’t necessarily conducive to morality, but there’s no getting rid of manners as such, so why not be pleased when they do promote better conduct?

I have a slightly different take, mdc: shame is the way the village enforce its norms without resorting to violence.

Contra roy it’s NOT “a few timid steps, and a few contextual clicks, from spontaneous public shaming to ad-hoc public stoning”: the whole point of shaming is to avoid violence and prevarication.
Vice versa, it IS a few timid steps from law to stoning: the force of law comes precisely from the very concrete threat of violence.

I think the racial distraction in this thread illustrates one way in which the left could be incorrectly accused of censorship. Someone comes along and in a tone of sweet reasonableness, claims that “science” supports views on race that are similar to those of white South Carolinians circa 1860, and that we need to be mature and discuss the policy implications, which include, it seems, possibly cutting all foreign aid to countries populated by people who marry their cousins and other genetically inferior types, who live in the region population geneticists have apparently dubbed “The Third World”. How does “the left” react? Lefties who happen to have some expertise in the relevant area and who manage to keep their tempers will react by pointing out weaknesses in the position that, we are told without any qualification, “science” supports. The rest of us will express varying levels of anger, disgust, and contempt at what looks like concern trolling.

The result is that the advocate of the racist views can wave the banner of John Stuart Mill simply by adopting a civil tone while making outrageous claims, while those who react with outrage are portrayed as politically correct lefties waving the banner of Lysenko and Stalin.

If on top of the outrage someone actually does propose censorship, that’s just gravy. The “politically correct censoring lefty” label doesn’t need actual censorship in order to stick.

Which is not to say that Freddy is wrong. I don’t know. But I can see where the problem of lefty censorship could easily be exaggerated.

It occurs to me that I’m carrying another bit of familial bias in the form of Mom’s dictum that there are some things you can’t say nicely. I’ve had a bias in favor of substance since childhood, apparently – I think that if you say that someone looking for help controlling tumor growth is an oversexed slut, or that someone is necessarily your intellectual inferior because of their melanin level, or whatever, you’ve already lost the “let’s be nice and calm” ground.

Having taken part in some of those battles in the Sixties, pretty much on the side of the Millians, as you call them, I’d really, really like to think that the American left has abandoned its contempt for this particular bourgeois freedom. Right-wing demagoguery about race, class and gender is annoying, yes, and it can be downright scary when there’s enough money driving it. Here in AZ, for example, I sometimes find myself standing in the supermarket line behind some belligerent moron with a smirk on his face and a Glock on his hip. On those occasions, I admit that I entertain fantasies of a watchful and fastidious government deporting the entire staff of the National Rifle Association, with or without their chosen fetish objects, to someplace like Somalia.

Yeah, well…. Critiques of the nefarious uses to which free speech can be put in the hands of the usual hegemonists are one thing, deciding who’s going to run the Department of Propriety, Even-handedness, and Right Thinking is another. Not everyone on the left has gotten the message, especially in Europe, which has always been somewhat contemptuous of absolutist American views on the subject of free speech — British libel laws, German legal shrines to a certain delicacy about the recent past, etc. In America, though, the homeland of oppo research, professional character assassination, and a government which seem to think its responsibilities include knowing everything about everybody, I wouldn’t mind at all if the left put a sock in some of its more egregious analyses of bourgeois hypocrisy.

My reaction to this–will react by pointing out weaknesses in the position–by Donald Johnson is that to react that way is a mistake. It only draws attention to the “sweet[ly] reasonable” claims and makes them appear to be a serious argument that’s worthy of serious consideration.

That said, @226.3 is pernicious. It isn’t science. It’s speculation based on the idea that what he’s thinking about is “sciency,” and that the first thing that comes into his head is a theory worthy of consideration.

Anyone who’s spent five minutes with SimCity or a similar game will know the guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. What is the point of considering him seriously enough to point out his weaknesses? The only possible answers are, “No, you’re wrong,” and “Well, you’re right insofar as change does happen, lets list out some of the factors and and some of the possible ways they could fit together.” And what’s the point of the latter–unless you also believe that the first thing that comes into your head is a theory worthy of consideration?

To say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and you don’t want to discuss it further isn’t censorship. What would be censorship is refusing to countenance an answer to certain persons that began, “No, he’s wrong, and here’s why: . . . ,” where the reasons given were internal to science and the reasons for censoring had to do with politics.

If Wade’s argument amounts to, “Current distributions of test scores display racial disparities, therefore there are innate differences of ability between races, which are real,” there’s no scientific reason to take him seriously.

WT 263: Thanks for letting us know that the left is always to blame for everything! The British libel laws were hardly invented and certainly not supported by the left (ever heard of McLibel?). The German case is more complicated but again these laws were not primarily pushed by the left. And while many Americans may have “absolutist views” on free speech, reality is far less absolutist. It is doubtful whether the factual hurdles to unpopular speech are on balance lower in the US than in most of Europe, in reality it is more that the line is drawn differently but there are definite lines (e. g. think of ag-gag laws).

Darn, I broke my promise. I just can’t help trying to inject some common sense into a hopeless thread that is getting more bizarre by the day. Sorry.

TM @ 267

Either you’ve misread, or I’ve been guilty of abbreviating too much of my reasoning, probably the latter. There were two ideas driving the passage you object to, which, at the time, I didn’t think needed unpacking. The first is that Europeans in general have rarely shared the intensity of American concerns about free speech — largely for historical reasons which admittedly have little to do with the left specifically. The second is that the European left reflects European values in this regard more than it does American ones, which shouldn’t be all that surprising even without the echoes of Marxist/Leninist theory, which in my view remain more broadly a part of the relevant discourse there than they ever were in the U.S.

As for ag-gag laws and suchlike, they don’t seem to have much to do with the left’s past and present ambivalences about free speech which are at issue here. (See the OP author’s reminder @ 251.)

TM @ 270

I wasn’t chiding, not intentionally, anyway. Maybe a one sentence quote from the Marcuse essay cited in the OP might help clarify the issue as I see it:

In the firmly established liberal society of England and the United States, freedom of speech and assembly was granted even to the radical enemies of society, provided they did not make the transition from word to deed, from speech to action.

This is the core of the left’s –the Marxist left’s at any rate — traditional ambivalence about the liberal guarantee of free speech. In a one-dimensional society, where the hegemony of certain ideas is presumed, and, if necessary, maintained by a gamut of measures from propaganda to force, freedom of speech becomes a less essential freedom than its liberal defenders would have us believe. That’s the claim.

I’ve never bought that claim entirely. Freedom of speech — in the abstract, at any rate — seems a good thing, in that even in parlous times, it tends to preserve the diversity of ideas. Revolutionaries, on the other hand, should hardly expect a state to protect them as they go about trying to forcibly dismantle it, no matter how great the perceived need. Flip the card over, and you encounter this: if you can’t persuade abortion providers that justice requires them to close up shop, blowing up their clinics is a regrettable necessity. I ask you, are we talking universal principles here, or whose-ox-is-being-gored?

In the past some on the left have hand-waved this sort of contradiction away. Maybe atrocities like the ad-gag laws you mention have indirectly contributed to a rethink of positions like Marcuse’s. In that context, you may have a point, but I still don’t think it’s the central one.

“will react by pointing out weaknesses in the position–by Donald Johnson is that to react that way is a mistake. It only draws attention to the “sweet[ly] reasonable” claims and makes them appear to be a serious argument that’s worthy of serious consideration.”

Someone with relevant expertise could point out the weaknesses and express contempt at the same time. This happens all the time in the creation/evolution pseudo-debates, where a scientist will go into detail about what is wrong with this or that creationist argument, and then express disgust over the intellectual dishonesty.

But anyway, in keeping with what this thread is supposed to be about, I was suggesting that when the left is accused of “censorship”, at least part of the time what people are really talking about istone of voice. Some people put a lot of stock in “civility”. Lefties get openly angry at people like Charles Murray when they claim that “science” demonstrates that blacks are stupid. I’m not suggesting we should change our tone of voice–in fact, I think I let a certain amount of disgust creep into my earlier post.

Ronan, about surnames: I’ve seen good discussion of studies about the impact of different kinds of surname on things like hiring out of a pool of equally qualified applicants in recent years, and all of this discussion has been among people who are liberal to left. I only ever see right-wingers drop in to insist that there’s no such discrimination and, often in the next paragraph or the same one, it’s a very sensible discrimination since you know how those people always turn out anyway.

TM @ 274

I’m not aware of any laws that prohibit the dissemination of anything; the prohibition is always on the crimes committed in the production process. I’d be happy for a pointer to a law that prohibits dissemination, and I’ll agree I was wrong if you have one.

These laws, generally, are in the same category as hate crime/stalking legislation; nothing is criminal that was not previously criminal.

Regarding the myth of “free speech absolutism” in the US, for those interested in these matters, I would also point out that in a number of “eco-terrorism” prosecutions – successful prosecutions with serious jail time -, mere speech in the absence of any physical contact was found to constitute the crime of terrorism, for example the publication of the names and addresses of certain individuals (see http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/). Such incidents also exist in islamic terrorism cases (remember Lynne Stewart). Happy week-end.

Bruce @275 – I hear ya, and don’t doubt that aspect of it. I’ve seen similar studies(though about race in the US – also I remember a friend telling me (which surprised me at the time) back in 2002 or so, when she was working in HR, that it was legal to *officially* refuse someone a job because of their address. This was afaicr and has probably been changed since)
I think Clark’s point was that if it takes 10-15 generations for the wealth of ‘low and high status families’ to regress to the mean (or whatever the term) then more than likely it is *primarily* something else, aswell as the enviornmental factors.

Now I don’t really buy this more than 35%; or personally care as my sympathies politically are redistribute rather ‘than send everyone to grad school’. Provide a good education and then when they turn 18 give everyone 200k. Some will blow it, but who cares, give them a generous dole after.
If at Harvard they find out intelligence = X + 4 < Y -1billion (y-w+ 2244 + ; ( X : ) = yzxs – 1) then this is a reasonably interesting argument within the academy until it's disproven. In the meantime lets just give people money and stop listening to the 'scientists'.

Now, since my ideal isn't politically (or probably economically) feasible, and since everyone is obsessed with 'mobility' these days, in the meantime we should look at the whole fish – social, economic, intelligence whatever, and use 'science' to guide us (because people like using science, rather than just giving people money, houses, booze, healthcare, childcare etc)
Better to do it my way, but who's listening ?

mdc 03.28.14 at 12:40 pm

We’re talking past each other some. I’m not discussing “shame”, it’s the use of “shaming” as it came into the discussion. A tool for suppression of unwanted speech, that was presented as more organically effective than overt regulation. Whose dangers go pretty much unrecognized by those not experiencing them.
Feeling “shame” or “being ashamed” are not at all the same as being the target of an intentional “shaming”.
No problem with me on embarrassment or shame or any of the other emotional reactions that help us recognize and correct mistakes.
–
As to the OP, sort of tangenty but the place where free speech and censorship are operating in the present are synonymous with a still undefined landscape that people now inherit from their machines. The initial was TV-world, now it’ something else, but deeper in, not out.
It’s mediated, yeah, but it’s also where all the stories and songs and pictures of your friends and everything are. And there’s a tacit sense of ownership of that, the way people who own a television think, or rather feel, that they own what’s on that television. Not the artifact, the movie or clip, but the narrative, the sounds, the human faces and bodies, the miniaturized elements of the real, the things within the thing.
So speech, especially political or moral speech, coming out of that landscape is not like speech in previous times coming off the speaker’s podium at a town hall, or from the deck at the back of a railroad car. Or a stump. Or a soap-box.
It comes out of an entertainment machine, and people can’t tell the difference anymore,and people like to be in charge of their entertainment.
Whether this increases or decreases the urge toward censorship of unwanted or offensive speech I don’t know. But it’s definitely had an effect on how personally some people take things, even remote utterances are treated as local and immediate now. And that’s a big change.