RSS
Audacious Epigone has a great post on what demographic traits correlate most with support for freedom of speech in the long-running General Social Survey.
The GSS asks if you would allow five controversial speakers to speak: atheists, communists, and homosexuals on the left; militarists and racists on the right. “Free Speech Absolutists” say okay to all five.
In the past, Audacious has found unsurprising (but not enormous) demographic correlations: for example, 56% of Jews say yes to all five versus only 30% of Hispanics.
But now he’s hit the motherlode trait for broadly defending free speech: vocabulary or IQ. The GSS includes a 10 word vocabulary test whose results correlate surprisingly well with a full-scale IQ test. To avoid the problem of immigrants having a smaller English vocabulary, he restricted the sample to 12,370 individuals born in U.S. and who were surveyed in this century. That’s a spectacular correlation.
It’s not obvious whether the stronger correlation is to IQ or to vocabulary. The GSS’s 10 question vocabulary test is a somewhat noisy test of IQ, so it could be that the actual correlation with IQ is even higher. On the other hand, a large vocabulary itself might correlate better with support for free speech than overall IQ, perhaps because people who like reading (and thus have larger vocabularies on average) might like speech in general and therefore favor free speech.
In any case, this graph supports an intuition I’ve had for some time: the academics who complain the most about how they are exhausted from all the emotional labor they must do fending off all the racist microaggressions on campus generally sound kind of stupid for college professors.
In contrast, Steven Pinker has a book coming out in late February that, I presume, will defend freedom of speech. Why am I so confident of that? Because Pinker has an extremely good vocabulary. (Also, because the book’s title will be Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.)
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Extra credit: Who decides what’s ‘offensive to minorities’?
I mean first, we must define "minority", a task that can be extremely complex.
Then, what does "offensive to minorities" mean? It's not really hyperbolic to say that we live in a society where literally anything one could say would be offensive to at least one person. Some people are naturally more prone to taking offense, and our culture very strongly encourages offense-taking more generally. So if we must censor any speech that offends at least one single person, we will essentially be censoring all speech.
But most "minority" groups have a large number of members, some of whom are very thick-skinned. If I said "Jews are stingy," a significant proportion of Jews who heard me say that would likely be offended, but obviously not 100% would be, at least given a large enough sample size (the proportion of Jews offended would also be a function of the context of my claim). So if speech must be offensive to 100% of a group in order to justify its censorship, then practically no speech should be censored.Replies: @Anonymous, @ScarletNumber
The number for Democrats is lower for millennials, I have to wonder if some older Democrats have any regrets about everything they unleashed on the country by letting their party go the direction it did.
Here’s a great quote, with which I wholeheartedly agree, from Audacious Epigone’s post:
(emphasis mine)
He is absolutely right. However, there is one anomaly currently running counter to that statement: What about legislation — making the rounds in the US now and already on the books in other White countries — making it illegal to freely speak against Israel or to speak critically about certain topics in Jewish history?
Is the minority non-free speech percentage of our “high IQ white and Jewish male” cohort writing the laws for the rest of us?
Because if not, the answer to your question is very simple: You're full of sh*t.
And by the way, it's pretty common for anti-Israel activists to falsely claim that their free speech rights are under attack when in reality they are the censors. For example, they will aggressively disrupt a campus talk by a pro-Israel speaker and insist that the First Amendment protects their right to do so.
But I'm really looking forward to you quoting these proposed laws which "make it illegal to freely speak against Israel." In other words, put up or shut up. Although somehow I expect you will do neither.
2nd, there are no "White countries" where it is illegal to speak against Israel - again show us any country that has any such law.
Lastly , I love your euphemistic "certain topics" - what might be those topics be? Perhaps the murder of six million Jews in certain "White countries"? Yes, in some countries (lacking the equivalent of a 1st Amendment) denying the Holocaust or glorifying Nazism is indeed a crime. After WWII, the Germans, not wishing to allow the revival of the party that had brought such damage upon their country, made any expression of pro-Nazi sentiment (and Holocaust denial is a type of that) illegal.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @Jus' Sayin'..., @Cloudbuster, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Randal
Nearly all the smart Jews who work in the media these days are all for censoring freedom of speech. A large amount of Jewish academics in our colleges want to suppress freedom of speech. They constantly harp about microaggressions and how nearly everyone is mortally offended by freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech was written into our constitution and supported by our Founding Fathers, white non-Jewish men of British Anglo-Saxon and Celtic origin, many of them professional politicians and holders of elected office who spent a fair amount of time being hammered by newspapers of the time for various this-that-and-the-other. Nonetheless, with the exception of John Adams, who went wobbly for a bit, they still supported freedom of speech. This is remarkable because many of them were the targets of attacks by the press.
Ultimately, when it comes to freedom of speech, your character is lot more important than your IQ. Men with courage and natural self-confidence support freedom of speech because they feel confident the sky won't fall if people say what they really think. Cowards think it will.
In this day and age it would be difficult to kill those who dare to speak out, so they forced through laws that imprison people like Ernst Zundel and David Irving.
The attacks on freedom o speech is another sign of the collapse of western civilization.
The Russian people now enjoy more freedom than Americans.
It's not just nonsense. It's deliberately misleading and dishonest nonsense.
Note that the term 'free speech absolutist' is tendentious. How can you have 'free' speech if you are limited to certain opinions?Replies: @Randal
Pinker is a very good writer, besides every book of his I’ve read since the Blank Slate being a dud. Including the Language Instinct, one of whose whose theses was contradicted by the quality of his writing.
By the way, would saying you’d allow all those people to speak actually make you a free speech “absolutist?” Did they specify circumstances? I would want some of those people in my house, but a publicly-funded college campus is different.
Also, must absolutist not believe in libel laws or obscenity laws?
“Absolutism” is an exaggeration.
Pinker is a buffoon. The guest commentator read his books and said they were duds.
Pinker's "yiddische kopf" has been inflated by semitophiles who refuse to deal with the truth of "Jewish brains." The Jews don't have that much in the kopf.
Reason and Science… sure, sounds good. Humanism? As in Corvinus-lauded universal humanity? Bleah. Followed by Progress? Pretty vague term.
Judging the title alone, it’s two in the Pinker and two in the stinker.
It’s (not quite) like when I first read one of Chomsky’s political works and realised that the linguistic Master had no feel for the real colloquial language. Pinker has spent too much time feint-bowing to the academic praise givers.
Oh – “Enlightenment Now!” to be published in springtime (quite appropriate time Steven Pinker chose to publish this book – neat!) – a very welcome sign of hope and reason in a time which is at risk to resemble more and more the “Coat, that’s Torn & Frayed” (The – Christmas is coming: – – The Glimmer Twins – – – Jagger/Richards – exiled on Main St.***).
*** estranged from the majority of their contemporaries – – –
**** As so often Jagger said at the end of their Cuban Free-Concert something along the lines of: “God night everybody – God bless you all!”
(You might now understand better that I put some asterixes to the word estanged- the more verbal of the iSteve lectorate & commentariat knows this, of course, but maybe not everybody, so I feel free to mention it: Feeling estranged/ estrangement was made popular by Marx and Marcuse (Fromm!) – but it does not originate from Marxism, it originates from middle agean Christian mysticism (it was indeed invented by the Dominican prior and writer Heinrich Seuse).
*** estranged from the majority of their contemporaries - - -**** As so often Jagger said at the end of their Cuban Free-Concert something along the lines of: "God night everybody - God bless you all!"
(You might now understand better that I put some asterixes to the word estanged- the more verbal of the iSteve lectorate & commentariat knows this, of course, but maybe not everybody, so I feel free to mention it: Feeling estranged/ estrangement was made popular by Marx and Marcuse (Fromm!) - but it does not originate from Marxism, it originates from middle agean Christian mysticism (it was indeed invented by the Dominican prior and writer Heinrich Seuse).Replies: @Buzz Mohawk
Being an outcast is as old as humanity itself. No, it’s older, as old as primate group dynamics.
The Stones recorded that album in the basement of a very nice place Keith Richards* was renting at the time. Somehow though, Income Tax Exile to a Mansion on the Mediterranian doesn’t sound as cool as Exile on Main St.
Smoking dope and cooking bangers and mash at a beachfront estate is a little bit different from being a naked ape sitting on your ass outside in the cold, hoping the dominant male of your group doesn’t come and kill you.
The album is an overrated, muddy-sounding miss-mash of stuff they recorded in a basement, but we all love it anyway.
*Keith keeps his main home out in the woods not far from here. He and his wife have long been normal, outstanding Connecticut citizens. Often seen around here over the years, they even went to parent-teacher conferences at the local public high school where they sent their daughters. From the beginning, the badass, exiled Stones thing was a nice act by middle class English boys.
PS:You live in the same town as he does,I call white privilege!
It’s highly disappointing, but completely unsurprising, that Pew would use such a meaningless term.
I mean first, we must define “minority”, a task that can be extremely complex.
Then, what does “offensive to minorities” mean? It’s not really hyperbolic to say that we live in a society where literally anything one could say would be offensive to at least one person. Some people are naturally more prone to taking offense, and our culture very strongly encourages offense-taking more generally. So if we must censor any speech that offends at least one single person, we will essentially be censoring all speech.
But most “minority” groups have a large number of members, some of whom are very thick-skinned. If I said “Jews are stingy,” a significant proportion of Jews who heard me say that would likely be offended, but obviously not 100% would be, at least given a large enough sample size (the proportion of Jews offended would also be a function of the context of my claim). So if speech must be offensive to 100% of a group in order to justify its censorship, then practically no speech should be censored.
Correct
He is absolutely right. However, there is one anomaly currently running counter to that statement: What about legislation -- making the rounds in the US now and already on the books in other White countries -- making it illegal to freely speak against Israel or to speak critically about certain topics in Jewish history?
Is the minority non-free speech percentage of our "high IQ white and Jewish male" cohort writing the laws for the rest of us?Replies: @AndrewR, @LondonBob, @sabril, @biz, @Jack D, @Anon, @JohnZ, @dfordoom, @anon
That is really a bizarre claim. Was it all low-IQ, non-white goyim who wrote all the laws in Europe criminalizing critical examination of The Shoah™?
Freedom of speech as an ideal comes from the enlightenment. Classical liberals believe in it. No one else does.
Yeah of course. But then: The heart of art is not reality – it’s to s h i n e (Goethe & Schiller). – And t h a t they did (& performed) neat & nicely throughout. – And I agree, hehe, Keith Richards is no outsider ape, but he does manage to look like one, or resemble one, at times: Almost perfectly, doesn’t he? – A very charming lad (at times…)!
Oh – and how am I experienced? – “Ahh doo” have a flexible armband in the basement, I guess, could be in the garage as well, I have to admit, which reads in bold letters: Rolling Stones – Europe Tour – Photogpher or some such – – and that was me, really – and that’s not bad either, isn’t it?!
(Thanks for sharing your Richards-family-experiences!)
Much of Pinker’s “hard” stuff is a recapitulation of David Marr’s computational neuroscience. It’s really fascinating material, but then he goes off into the wilderness of linguistics – like a Chomskyite Don Quixote – and he’s stumped.
So basically, our account appears to be that high-verbal people are more apt to play with words and terms [not the cargo-cult jargon mimicking these games] while at the same time being more likely to deceive others within word games.
Not to mention themselves.
Speaking of enlightenment, I'm coming to believe that's what it's all about: elaborate intellectual deception. (Certain things the Enlightenment claims credit for, like the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Electric Age, and so forth, might've happened anyway.)Replies: @Samuel Skinner
He is absolutely right. However, there is one anomaly currently running counter to that statement: What about legislation -- making the rounds in the US now and already on the books in other White countries -- making it illegal to freely speak against Israel or to speak critically about certain topics in Jewish history?
Is the minority non-free speech percentage of our "high IQ white and Jewish male" cohort writing the laws for the rest of us?Replies: @AndrewR, @LondonBob, @sabril, @biz, @Jack D, @Anon, @JohnZ, @dfordoom, @anon
Jews lead the legislative fight against free speech. In the ghetto there was no free speech.
This reminds me of a thought that came once listening to John Lennon saying something sarcastic about The Establishment: Those who feel strongest about promoting use of the pen over use of the sword are those who are pretty good with the pen, particularly the art of verbal combat. Free speech appeals most to those who are better with words than with their fists. For those who are better with their fists, free speech may seem like just a swindle that smart guys use to disarm them.
When they get power they'll forget the freedom of speech nonsense and employ people with swords to stomp anyone who disagrees with them.
Jordan Peterson says, about 55 mins into this video, that low verbal intelligence is highly correlated to opposition to free speech.
Another data point is the free fall in graduate IQ, from 112 in the 60s to 100 now:
https://anepigone.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/average-iq-of-college-graduates-by.html?m=1
In fact, it may be less than 100 now. So going to college is now signifies that you have low IQ and high debt. And you probably don’t support free speech.
“The album is an overrated, muddy-sounding miss-mash”
“You can only listen to Sticky Fingers so many times” was an answer I once read as to why a certain person was obsessed with collecting records. (Perhaps in connection to the movie High Fidelity.) And that’s part of the way it works with rock critics. They get sick of things.* The other part is fashions change.
Same reason Revolver is now considered the best Beatles album instead of Sgt. Pepper (not that I don’t like Revolver myself) Sticky Fingers, Let It Bleed, or any number of Stones albums with more hits can’t be it. Has to be the less listener-friendly and more obscure Exile on Main St.
I’m not sure if that’s technically true anymore, because my impression of Exile as the Stones album is out of date. I stopped paying attention like a decade ago. They could have moved on to Their Satan Majesties Request by now. Which I wouldn’t mind. Or one of the later albums, just to be contrary.
Exile is grubby, but “they” like that style. Tumblin’ Dice is the only popular track (though I hear Happy from time to time), and they like unpopular things.
For me, personally, a lot of the songs are trash, and it’s not my style. But I like the album more than albums from outside the Satanic Majesty to Goat’s Head Soup era, which is the classical Stones era. Rocks Off, Tumblin’ Dice, Happy, Sweet Virginia (though not Mick’s seemingly drunken singing), and Loving Cup I like.
*Though some reputations get locked in. You’d have to invade Critically with an army, round up undesirables, sack their cities, ravage their women, reeducate their children, and sow their fields with salt to get them to turn on Picasso. Citizen Kane is forever the best movie of all time because we need an official best movie of all time.
So I live in hope that Picasso may yet be consigned to the dumpster to which he belongs.Replies: @guest, @Kylie
This is so bad that it might as well be a shark-jumping moment for the IQ crowd. The deepest thinkers of all have always known that the question of free speech is meaningless, for there are only two types of people in the world: Those who do not dare to think freely, and those would dare but cannot. Most people will say only what the spell of their surroundings constrains them to say. For the handful of brave souls interest in some bit of truth for its own sake, free speech is the farthest thing from their minds.
As an explicitly political matter, free speech is nothing but rabble-rousing catchword. The revolutionary set demands free speech when they wish to attack the power, and they demand suppression of free speech when they wish to be the power, all for the very same reasons.
The angle of the IQ crowd here seems to be: “We all agree that free speech is good, am I right? Well, us spergy White and Jewish guys are naturally inclined towards free speech, and that makes us the light-bearers of civilization. The goodness that is free speech is rooted in our instincts and our special genetic endowment.” Such an exercise in plain bandwagoning ought to be insulting to anyone of good taste, especially when the point at issue is nothing but a cuck-out to the revolutionary Left. The Right, to the extent that it still exists at all, must be steadfast in its opposition to free speech both in principle and practice. It is a truth very far out of season, but it must still be confessed.
“more likely to deceive others with word games”
Not to mention themselves.
Speaking of enlightenment, I’m coming to believe that’s what it’s all about: elaborate intellectual deception. (Certain things the Enlightenment claims credit for, like the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Electric Age, and so forth, might’ve happened anyway.)
The Enlightenment was an intellectual fad that was about telling everyone how awesome and important intellectuals are.Replies: @dfordoom
I mean first, we must define "minority", a task that can be extremely complex.
Then, what does "offensive to minorities" mean? It's not really hyperbolic to say that we live in a society where literally anything one could say would be offensive to at least one person. Some people are naturally more prone to taking offense, and our culture very strongly encourages offense-taking more generally. So if we must censor any speech that offends at least one single person, we will essentially be censoring all speech.
But most "minority" groups have a large number of members, some of whom are very thick-skinned. If I said "Jews are stingy," a significant proportion of Jews who heard me say that would likely be offended, but obviously not 100% would be, at least given a large enough sample size (the proportion of Jews offended would also be a function of the context of my claim). So if speech must be offensive to 100% of a group in order to justify its censorship, then practically no speech should be censored.Replies: @Anonymous, @ScarletNumber
It’s just classic SJWism, a millennial specialty. ‘Don’t bother us with the details, we’re busy signaling our virtue. Also, stfu racist nazi!’
The Establishment is full of people of middling intellect, however. Now, not all the smarter people are smarter in a verbal sense. Some of them only care about numbers, for instance. But there are plenty of genius wordsmiths outside, looking down on the boobs running things.
He is absolutely right. However, there is one anomaly currently running counter to that statement: What about legislation -- making the rounds in the US now and already on the books in other White countries -- making it illegal to freely speak against Israel or to speak critically about certain topics in Jewish history?
Is the minority non-free speech percentage of our "high IQ white and Jewish male" cohort writing the laws for the rest of us?Replies: @AndrewR, @LondonBob, @sabril, @biz, @Jack D, @Anon, @JohnZ, @dfordoom, @anon
Are you able to quote this proposed legislation and cite the proposed bill numbers?
Because if not, the answer to your question is very simple: You’re full of sh*t.
And by the way, it’s pretty common for anti-Israel activists to falsely claim that their free speech rights are under attack when in reality they are the censors. For example, they will aggressively disrupt a campus talk by a pro-Israel speaker and insist that the First Amendment protects their right to do so.
But I’m really looking forward to you quoting these proposed laws which “make it illegal to freely speak against Israel.” In other words, put up or shut up. Although somehow I expect you will do neither.
So we have a seeming contradiction, the resolution of which might (or might not) be informative.
Notwithstanding this percentage, it is a fact that, as Buzz Mohawk and LondonBob pointed out, Jews lead the legislative fight against free speech. In England an explicitly jewish organisation is leading the attempt to establish a “holocaust denial” prohibition via the back door of prosecuting a singer for supposedly transmitting “grossly offensive” material (by posting it online).
https://alisonchabloz.wordpress.com/
(Opponents of this attempt to control speech could do worse than to support Alison Chabloz in her fight against that prosecution, by the way, whether or not you agree with her or approve of what she says.)
So is it that jewish people (and perhaps other groups, or all humans) are just liars or hypocrites on the topic? Do high IQ people claim to defend freedom of speech in theoretical terms, and perhaps believe honestly in what they say when they declare it, but actually act to the contrary when their own direct group interests are involved?
Over my own lifetime I have observed the shift in left/liberal thinking as they have achieved ever greater power, from defending freedom of speech absolutely in Voltairean terms, which was common three to four decades ago, to the situation today in which they (often the very same people – then radical students, today powerful middle aged pillars of society) seek to rationalise and enact suppression of free speech by dissenters from their dogmas, now that they feel safe from such laws being used against them.
A similar hypocritical evolution can be seen in their approach to “McCarthyism” and blacklisting etc, of course.
” Free speech appeals most to those who are better with words than with their fists.”
Yep, I’m inclined to agree. Maybe it’s the human condition (original sin?) to want to drape the stuff we’re good at as a sort of universal, desirable good thing, maybe especially if one can hitch it to a foundational legalistic scaffold. This has me wondering in a mischievous way what would happen if American citizenship were conditional upon meeting tests of, say, physical fitness, virility, fecundity, marksmanship, and so on. Would Blacks and Scots-Irish folks be America’s top dogs if, say, turf protection and truculence were somehow planted in the Constitution?
It is entirely possible that support for open debate is popular with Jewish males, simply because it was always to the benefit of Jewish males to support questioning of the established order. Once Jewish males become the Alawites of America, open debate no longer serves the interests of Jewish males, so they wheel around against it, like we see on campus, in the media, Hollywood and on-line.
Maybe it’s somewhere in the links, but I couldn’t find the exact phrasing of the question, and this can make an enormous difference in surveys. “Be permitted to speak publicly” needs some refinement. To begin with, is the venue itself public (a city park or public university), private (my front porch), or somewhere in between (a shopping mall)? Does the speech contain fighting words or obscenities? Is it amplified electronically? All these things and many more would make a difference.
Verbally skilled people are in favor of free speech? Next you’ll tell me that rich people like tax cuts.
But smart people gave us PC and control the institutions that indoctrinated the masses with the notion of ‘hate speech’.
And Google is run by smart guys but works with ADL to censor people.
https://www.amren.com/commentary/2017/11/youtube-sends-another-amren-video-to-the-back-of-the-bus-censorship/
Judging the title alone, it’s two in the Pinker and two in the stinker.Replies: @Cloud of Probable Matricide
I am surprised how dated Pinker’s title sounds. It suggests that he really is out of step with the spoken Zeitgeist.
It’s (not quite) like when I first read one of Chomsky’s political works and realised that the linguistic Master had no feel for the real colloquial language. Pinker has spent too much time feint-bowing to the academic praise givers.
Don’t assume that answering a survey question about supporting offensive speech is the same as actually supporting speech one finds personally uncomfortable. Every official, employee, attorney or donor of the heavily Jewish ACLU would cheerfully answer in the affirmative about protecting speech that is offensive to minorities, in the general sense. But when push has come to shove in the specific sense, the ACLU and other claimed proponents of free speech have repeatedly supported buffer zones and anti-free speech zones around abortion clinics. They have refused to use their influence to counter the abuse of the RICO statute against abortion protestors.
RBG is a typical example. She would undoubtedly claim to support freedom of speech. But in her actions, as counsel for the ACLU, she continually worked to suppress pro-life advocacy that she found offensive. And as a Supreme Court justice, she voted in favor of leaving in place the McCain-Feingold restrictions on political speech and advocacy by corporations and unions. What does it matter that she would theoretically let the Nazis march in Skokie again when in reality she supports suppressing abortion protestors and filmmakers who make unflattering movies about Hillary Clinton?
McCain-Feingold would be a good consistency check on anyone who claims to support free speech in the abstract. Find out their actual opinion on political speech and action by Exxon and Monsanto.
A surprising number of Americans, especially younger ones, think that the First Amendment does not protect “hate speech”. Not that there should be such a legal exception to freedom of speech, but that in fact there is. They’ve heard about such anti-hate speech laws in other countries and incorrectly believe we have them here. And that mistaken belief would be correlated with IQ.
I doubt that, but any correlation would be in the positive direction, i.e. some ideas are so stupid that only a smart person could believe them.
No, Millennials want to censor truthful speech about minorities – until whites lose their demographic dominance in the U.S.
I find it interesting that popular intellectuals like Steven Pinker and Michael Shermer have felt the need lately to prop up the Enlightenment’s reputation after a quarter millennium. Perhaps they realize on some level that important parts of the Enlightenment’s agenda simply don’t work, but these brainiacs feel the need to double down on them any way as a form of virtue-signalling.
The modern delusion that education can turn anyone into anything comes from a specific philosophe in the Enlightenment named Claude Adrien Helvétius, probably the most influential bad philosopher you’ve never heard of. He made such absurd claims about equality and the powers of education and environment that even his friend Denis Diderot mocked him, asking why, in that case, didn’t one of Helvétius’s servants write his books for him.
In other words, a lot of today’s social-justice ideology comes from 18th Century pseudoscience, and it ignores of all the empirical data about human biodiversity that we’ve accumulated since the time of Charles Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton.
He is absolutely right. However, there is one anomaly currently running counter to that statement: What about legislation -- making the rounds in the US now and already on the books in other White countries -- making it illegal to freely speak against Israel or to speak critically about certain topics in Jewish history?
Is the minority non-free speech percentage of our "high IQ white and Jewish male" cohort writing the laws for the rest of us?Replies: @AndrewR, @LondonBob, @sabril, @biz, @Jack D, @Anon, @JohnZ, @dfordoom, @anon
What legislation is criminalizing speaking against Israel? I find that hard to believe because if such a thing existed 3/4 of the internet would be illegal.
Did you read the article? Can you read at all? The article says that Jews are the biggest supporters of free speech. The story of Jews in America is that of LEAVING the ghetto and adopting American ways. Even the Jews’ famous leftism was adopted from WASPs – the hero of American Jewish socialists was Eugene V. Debs. The Yiddish radio station in NY was called WEVD in his honor. The heavily Jewish ACLU was so in favor of free speech that they defended Nazis in the famous Skokie case. It’s the latest generation of Leftists (who are much less Jewish and much browner than previous generations) that is anti-free speech (and anti-Israel).
And I generally don’t like to get too conspiratorial, but surely Frank Collin, the leader of the Skokie Nazis, has a very odd biography for a “Nazi.”https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Collin
https://www.unz.com/isteve/new-york-times-2017-george-zimmerman-the-white-man-who-shot-the-black-teenager/#comment-2093929Replies: @Anonymous
The Sephardic Jews in Spinoza’s congregation in 17th Century Netherlands certainly didn’t support his freedom of speech, though Spinoza characterized it more as “the freedom to philosophize” without political interference.
The chart is odd
39% Asians
36.7% Blacks
29.7% Hispanics
That doesn’t seem to line up well with an IQ correlation.
Anyway I believe free speech is incompatible with democracy because it inevitably leads to what we have. Only when citizen’s opinions are irrelevant can they be allowed to voice their opinions.
He is absolutely right. However, there is one anomaly currently running counter to that statement: What about legislation -- making the rounds in the US now and already on the books in other White countries -- making it illegal to freely speak against Israel or to speak critically about certain topics in Jewish history?
Is the minority non-free speech percentage of our "high IQ white and Jewish male" cohort writing the laws for the rest of us?Replies: @AndrewR, @LondonBob, @sabril, @biz, @Jack D, @Anon, @JohnZ, @dfordoom, @anon
1st of all, I have no idea what you mean about “making the rounds in the US”. Can you give us a link? Any such law is impossible in the US because the 1st Amendment does not permit such restrictions on free speech.
2nd, there are no “White countries” where it is illegal to speak against Israel – again show us any country that has any such law.
Lastly , I love your euphemistic “certain topics” – what might be those topics be? Perhaps the murder of six million Jews in certain “White countries”? Yes, in some countries (lacking the equivalent of a 1st Amendment) denying the Holocaust or glorifying Nazism is indeed a crime. After WWII, the Germans, not wishing to allow the revival of the party that had brought such damage upon their country, made any expression of pro-Nazi sentiment (and Holocaust denial is a type of that) illegal.
You grossly understate the impact of "Holocaust denial" laws in, e.g., Canada, the UK, and much of Europe. They are used to stifle political dissent. There's been a slop over into "anti-hate speech" laws in general. In the UK right now, a woman is facing prison time for posting pictures of "asians', i.e., mooslims, committing crimes against native Brits. I cannot believe you are unaware of this, since our President got dragged into a brouhaha as collateral damage. All across Europe, opponents of mass immigration of dysfunctional populations from Africa, the Near East, southwest Asia, and other areas are muzzled from speaking openly by legislation that dampens free speech.
The anti-Nazi laws in Germany and the anti-right-wing activities of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz may have served a purpose in the immediate aftermath of WW II but now they are encumbrances preventing free speech beyond a certain degree of conservative and nationalist sentiment. This speech suppression is even more effective in that the boundaries of acceptable speech are hazy and ill-defined. I suspect that Merkel would have been long gone except for this. A similar situation holds in Austria although to a lesser degree.Replies: @sabril
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/720/text
Boycotting is a fundamental exercise of freedom of speech and association.Replies: @Jack D
Even declining to travel to Israel is beyond the pale:Imagine taxpayer-funded PBS back in the day blacklisting personalities and artists who merely passed on appearing in Apartheid South Africa.Schlesinger and Schuster—two Jews using official power to punish even passive disassociation with Israeli policies.Replies: @clyde
All the laws against "hate speech" that include "anti-Semitism" (and they pretty much all do that inherently) are in effect laws designed and operated to criminalise speaking freely against Israel - exactly as Mohawk wrote.
The "official" definition of anti-Semitism, recently adopted by the UK government, makes this explicitly clear even whilst trying to pretend it is not doing so:
UK adopts antisemitism definition to combat hate crime against Jews
"More detailed guidance on this, released by the IHRA in May, said this could include criticisms which target Israel, if this was “conceived as a Jewish collectivity”. It added: “However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
The guidance says it could be considered antisemitic to accuse Jews of being more loyal to Israel or their religion than to their own nations, or to say the existence of Israel is intrinsically racist."
Of course, the whole point of criticising Israel is precisely to criticise it for the ways it is not similar to other countries, and also a lot of the valid criticism of Israel is precisely that it benefits from the dual loyalty of jews in other countries to the only jewish state, or that it is intrinsically racist to have a "jewish state". In other words, under these laws, you cannot speak freely against Israel if they are enforced fully, as their proponents intend for them ultimately to be enforced.
Most of these laws are relatively new and rarely applied as yet. Mostly they work to suppress criticism of Israel by forcing people opposed to Israel and the Israel lobbies to watch their words, thereby inhibiting their effectiveness. But they will be applied ever more rigorously if they are allowed to remain and the appropriate precedents are allowed to be set.
It is no secret that the jewish organisations pushing these laws seek to suppress criticism of Israel. That's been made clear to me directly by people involved with them, though they insist that it's not about suppressing criticism of Israel "except where the criticism amounts to anti-Semitism". In insisting that last, they are either dishonest or hypocritical.
It's entirely understandable that jewish people should seek to suppress criticism of Israel. And jews are absolutely not alone in being hypocrites on freedom of speech. But let's at least face up to the truth rather than try to deny it.Replies: @sabril
Cool. Not bad at all. Cheers!
I vaguely recall a magazine profile re Keith and his family. He comes across as a good husband and family man. So yeah he’s smart,middle class family loving and all of that,but still,he’s Keith Richards,with all that entails.
PS:You live in the same town as he does,I call white privilege!
2nd, there are no "White countries" where it is illegal to speak against Israel - again show us any country that has any such law.
Lastly , I love your euphemistic "certain topics" - what might be those topics be? Perhaps the murder of six million Jews in certain "White countries"? Yes, in some countries (lacking the equivalent of a 1st Amendment) denying the Holocaust or glorifying Nazism is indeed a crime. After WWII, the Germans, not wishing to allow the revival of the party that had brought such damage upon their country, made any expression of pro-Nazi sentiment (and Holocaust denial is a type of that) illegal.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @Jus' Sayin'..., @Cloudbuster, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Randal
Really?
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/pandering-to-israel-has-got-to-stop/
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/avi-benlolo/anti-semitism-canada_b_973587.html
Beyond these easy links, you’re not getting me into a debate. I’m lazy and I have better things to do on a Saturday morning.
I do not have to cite sources for you. I do not have to provide footnotes. Comments are not academic papers. If you don’t know the truth of what I say, if you refuse to admit that grass is green, I refuse to help you.
As far as Germany goes, y0u will never get me to agree that it’s laws against free speech are good. Paranoia about a Nazi movement growing in Germany is just that, paranoia. After we bombed the shit out of them, causing the starvation of those in the prison camps whose emaciated bodies you see on film, Germans have no illusions. They are even willing to re-elect their destroyer and let in more millions who will pull down Europe even further.
Freedom of speech is one of the most important, signature creations of Western Man. Not Semitic Man, Western Man. The United States is one of the very very few places where this hallmark is holding on now. With continued non-Western immigration, and continued dumbing down of how we teach our children, this idea, this way of thinking about speech, will “perish from the Earth.” (Shall I cite for you who wrote that too?)
Your statement implying that our 1st Amendment will protect us is the kind to thing I too would have said…back in high school. It is in serious danger, and interpretation of it (which is what really matters) is already on a slippery slope.
You now have the freedom of speech to respond and make a fool of me, which you can easily do and will probably do. I will not continue with this thread argument with you.
Makes no sense. In order to obtain free speech in the first place, you’re probably going to have to be pretty good in with your fists, figuratively in the beginning at least.
It isn’t like free speech is a menu option people can just select in their lives or society, although censorship certainly is.
Laws follow custom. As noted, support for free speech has been eroding for generations and is already effectively dead in contemporary America. The laws will eventually be tailored to suit modern sensibilities.
In the meantime, it is becoming like all those rights people always had on the books in communist countries but were nothing but fluff. Anyhow, the internet now provides so much social pressure, you don’t even really need laws for some things anymore.
I’m thinking maybe legal codes are becoming anachronistic for some things in our era of instant judgment by the yowling, recently deputized social media mob.
For instance, sexual harassment. At the moment, if you were a petit sexual harasser, I dunno, maybe inappropriate behavior, more of a Franken than a Weinstein, would you be more scared these days of the legal consequences or the outing on the internet?
Some things we may not need laws for going forward – these days, the internet allows us to do what a lot of groups do to violating members, shunning, unpersoning, etc.
The GSS asks if you would allow five controversial speakers to speak: atheists, communists, and homosexuals on the left; militarists and racists on the right. “Free Speech Absolutists” say okay to all five.
I like how all the terms are defined by the left. The only thing they can think of that is “right” is “racists” and “militarists.” Let’s just ignore that WW 1, WW 2, Korea, Vietnam and Kosovo were all wars run by Democrats. The right doesn’t by any means have a corner on”militarism.” Meanwhile, the party of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, eugenics and Jim Crow pretends “racism” is a trait of the right.
2nd, there are no "White countries" where it is illegal to speak against Israel - again show us any country that has any such law.
Lastly , I love your euphemistic "certain topics" - what might be those topics be? Perhaps the murder of six million Jews in certain "White countries"? Yes, in some countries (lacking the equivalent of a 1st Amendment) denying the Holocaust or glorifying Nazism is indeed a crime. After WWII, the Germans, not wishing to allow the revival of the party that had brought such damage upon their country, made any expression of pro-Nazi sentiment (and Holocaust denial is a type of that) illegal.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @Jus' Sayin'..., @Cloudbuster, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Randal
In the US he’s talking about anti-BDS legislation. I find it hard to believe you are ignorant of this. If you are, just type “anti-BDS” into Google and familiarize yourself.
You grossly understate the impact of “Holocaust denial” laws in, e.g., Canada, the UK, and much of Europe. They are used to stifle political dissent. There’s been a slop over into “anti-hate speech” laws in general. In the UK right now, a woman is facing prison time for posting pictures of “asians’, i.e., mooslims, committing crimes against native Brits. I cannot believe you are unaware of this, since our President got dragged into a brouhaha as collateral damage. All across Europe, opponents of mass immigration of dysfunctional populations from Africa, the Near East, southwest Asia, and other areas are muzzled from speaking openly by legislation that dampens free speech.
The anti-Nazi laws in Germany and the anti-right-wing activities of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz may have served a purpose in the immediate aftermath of WW II but now they are encumbrances preventing free speech beyond a certain degree of conservative and nationalist sentiment. This speech suppression is even more effective in that the boundaries of acceptable speech are hazy and ill-defined. I suspect that Merkel would have been long gone except for this. A similar situation holds in Austria although to a lesser degree.
2nd, there are no "White countries" where it is illegal to speak against Israel - again show us any country that has any such law.
Lastly , I love your euphemistic "certain topics" - what might be those topics be? Perhaps the murder of six million Jews in certain "White countries"? Yes, in some countries (lacking the equivalent of a 1st Amendment) denying the Holocaust or glorifying Nazism is indeed a crime. After WWII, the Germans, not wishing to allow the revival of the party that had brought such damage upon their country, made any expression of pro-Nazi sentiment (and Holocaust denial is a type of that) illegal.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @Jus' Sayin'..., @Cloudbuster, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Randal
Here’s a law passed by Congress. “Israel Anti-Boycott Act”
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/720/text
Boycotting is a fundamental exercise of freedom of speech and association.
I think culture is what is being measured rather than IQ, which would explain why blacks and Asians have similar scores.
Judaism encourages debate and questioning, something that Islam and most branches of Christianity do not. A significant percentage of Hispanics and Asians born in the United States are the children of immigrants. Neither Latin America nor Asia are hotbeds of democracy.
No one is concerned about the opinions of lower IQ people, even on matters that effect them directly, so it is no surprise that low IQ people are less likely to free speech absolutists.
If it is a white person speaking, each individual, self identified minority gets to decide what is considered offensive.
The number for Democrats is lower for millennials, I have to wonder if some older Democrats have any regrets about everything they unleashed on the country by letting their party go the direction it did.
In other words, you got nuthin’. There are no countries where speaking against Israel is illegal, not even (especially not) in Israel. There are places with anti-boycott laws, which is something else entirely. Yes, the supporters of Israel are not going to allow Israel to be South Africanized without a fight – that’s the 1st step to extinction.
With or without American bombs, the Germans planned to starve their Jewish prisoners to death (and their Soviet prisoners too). The Germans had carefully calculated the minimum # of calories needed to keep the prisoners alive for a few months of useful labor until they died – dying was the main point – the labor was incidental. Here is what the Wansee Protocol (the framework for the Holocaust) said:
And that’s for the “able-bodied”. The other than able-bodied went straight to the gas chamber.
People with lower IQs tend to have crummier jobs, the kind where they are fired for questioning anything. So they might bring their ‘Yes Sir I need this job’ attitude to other aspects of their life.
“The selection of five types of speakers does a pretty good job running the political gamut (atheists, communists, and homosexuals on the left; militarists and racists on the right). ”
Those are all within the “Overton window” of acceptable discussion. Communists are sort of irrelevant these days.
i.e. you’re full of sh*t. There are no laws in the United States making it illegal to freely speak against Israel. To be sure there are laws making it illegal to boycott Israel (and other allied nations), just as there are many other kinds of anti-discrimination laws on the books.
Derb posted an audio of Lindsay Shepherd being “educated” by three professors at Wildfred Laurier University about why it was “problematic” to show a Jordan Petersen video in her class.
Lots of treacly slogans. Lots of smothering coercion. Not a lot of logic or self-awareness.
(Scroll down to video)
https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/roy-moore-the-pervnado-witch-hunts-and-the-need-to-bomb-liberal-arts-colleges-from-the-air-and-sow-the-ground-with-salt/
I think this is an important point. Anti-Israel activists are constantly pushing for laws and policies which are aimed at undermining Israel. And yet they still feel it’s somehow it’s an improper tactic for those on the pro-Israel side to push for laws and policies to counter them.
Name a single law passed by any state legislature or the federal government that "undermines" Israel in anyway.
"And yet they still feel it’s somehow it’s an improper tactic for those on the pro-Israel side to push for laws and policies to counter them."
Why is any American so wrapped up in supporting a foreign country?Replies: @sabril
In any case, this graph supports an intuition I’ve had for some time: the academics who complain the most about how they are exhausted from all the emotional labor they must do fending off all the racist microaggressions on campus generally sound kind of stupid for college professors.
Your non-stupid faculty do not one godforsaken thing to improve campus climates re public discourse. They won’t use department slush funds to bring dissenting speakers to the campus (you get the same porridge they’re feeding their students). Faculty committees will, however, do things like award ‘honorary doctorates’ to creatures like Mary Frances Berry. Talk is cheap, including talk with the pollster.
Free speech really a high IQ thing or ideological driven?
Facebook, Google, Twitter employees voted for Hillary at about 96% and oddly enough the biggest promoters of censorship on the web.
Yet they employee some the brightest people around. By Epigones logic they should be the biggest supporters of free speech but are in fact the enemies of it.
I have to point out that the Germans weren’t just doing this for shits and giggles. The Reich was a net food importer and the raw materials that were previously used for making fertilizer were re-purposed to make explosives. Someone was going to starve to death and Hitler was damn sure those people weren’t going to be German. The fact they got to eliminate people they hated was one of those coincidences they were willing to exploit to the fullest.
All sophists and pharisees might have high verbal IQ, but not all with high verbal IQ are sophists and pharisees.
Here’s the latest on the Gersh/SPLC case against the Daily Stormer:
http://beta.latimes.com/nation/la-na-daily-stormer-lawsuit-20171201-story.html
If only Col. McCormick were still with us:
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/12/books/colonel-mccormick-to-the-rescue.html
http://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1223&context=all_fac
He is absolutely right. However, there is one anomaly currently running counter to that statement: What about legislation -- making the rounds in the US now and already on the books in other White countries -- making it illegal to freely speak against Israel or to speak critically about certain topics in Jewish history?
Is the minority non-free speech percentage of our "high IQ white and Jewish male" cohort writing the laws for the rest of us?Replies: @AndrewR, @LondonBob, @sabril, @biz, @Jack D, @Anon, @JohnZ, @dfordoom, @anon
There can be a BIG difference between what people self-report on an academic survey, and what they actually do in real life. There are plenty of high IQ people who say they support freedom of speech because they want to be patted on the head and praised, but who actually try to suppress other peoples’ speech by their actions.
Nearly all the smart Jews who work in the media these days are all for censoring freedom of speech. A large amount of Jewish academics in our colleges want to suppress freedom of speech. They constantly harp about microaggressions and how nearly everyone is mortally offended by freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech was written into our constitution and supported by our Founding Fathers, white non-Jewish men of British Anglo-Saxon and Celtic origin, many of them professional politicians and holders of elected office who spent a fair amount of time being hammered by newspapers of the time for various this-that-and-the-other. Nonetheless, with the exception of John Adams, who went wobbly for a bit, they still supported freedom of speech. This is remarkable because many of them were the targets of attacks by the press.
Ultimately, when it comes to freedom of speech, your character is lot more important than your IQ. Men with courage and natural self-confidence support freedom of speech because they feel confident the sky won’t fall if people say what they really think. Cowards think it will.
I don’t think the defending Nazis thing was what it’s purported to be. Besides being a PR stunt, the real effect of that sort of precedent is to destroy the ability of local communities to enforce standards. Consequently, local communities are undermined with obscenity and protests and “free speech” becomes an increasingly legalistic concept; meanwhile large scale, highly organized but nominally private suppression of actual political speech increases, primarily though mass media.
And I generally don’t like to get too conspiratorial, but surely Frank Collin, the leader of the Skokie Nazis, has a very odd biography for a “Nazi.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Collin
People that believe in freedom of speech are people that read. (People that have a good vocabulary tend to be people that spend time reading. The Mainstream is increasingly semi-literate; people don’t acquire vocabulary from it. A post-literacy culture tends to be a police state.
Here is what Pinker thinks about “goyische kopf.” https://newrepublic.com/article/77727/groups-and-genes
Pinker is a buffoon. The guest commentator read his books and said they were duds.
Pinker’s “yiddische kopf” has been inflated by semitophiles who refuse to deal with the truth of “Jewish brains.” The Jews don’t have that much in the kopf.
Judaism encourages debate and questioning, something that Islam and most branches of Christianity do not. A significant percentage of Hispanics and Asians born in the United States are the children of immigrants. Neither Latin America nor Asia are hotbeds of democracy.
No one is concerned about the opinions of lower IQ people, even on matters that effect them directly, so it is no surprise that low IQ people are less likely to free speech absolutists.Replies: @attilathehen
“Judaism encourages debate and questioning, something that Islam and most branches of Christianity do not.” Actually, no. Judaism only encourages bizarre Talmudic debate and questioning, where in the end Jews believe they are God.
Islam is a Christian heresy, everything it says is based on an incorrect premise, ie, that is the final religion after the New Testament. Look at the current Muslim situation.
Jewish has 2 sides: ethnicity and religion. If you look at Jews from ethnicity/race, they are mixed Asian/black/Semitic/some European. They had nothing to do with Western civilization.
If you look at from religion, Christianity ended their covenant with God. That’s why the temple was destroyed and will never be rebuilt. Also, Old Testament Judaism would be what modern day Islam is trying to impose: stoning thieves, adulterers, polygamy, etc.
When you tell “Jews” they are not the chosen, not the smartest tribe ever, you get a unified Jewish opposition to these statements. Debating and questioning go out the window.
I doubt it. The title of the book makes it sound like this isn’t going to be about free speech at all, but about the Bill Nye/pussyhat kind of Science.
An intellectual is a person who repeats back to us what we already believe, but with a more intimidating vocabulary. They earn their money making us feel clever about what we remember from the tv.
Isn’t Pinker pretty successful in the pop-sci field? That must mean that he has a sense of what will sell. No writer wants sales figures that can be described by “meh”, and few things are less cool at the moment than freedom of speech.
It will never be a convincing argument that the Nazis, who knew they were all for it if they lost, gave the people who made their rifles and bullets only enough to eat to barely keep standing.
Not even the Nazis would prefer bond-villain type petty evilness over the extension of their own lives.
because millennials are dumber than previous generations. much less white.
if i were dictator i would impose trade sanctions on all countries that punished speech. i’d also eliminate the “fighting words” exception and fire any policeman who applied it. they all do.
if trade sanctions and a naval blockade didn’t work i’d bomb france, germany, canada, and blighty among others until they changed their laws.
“In other words, you got nuthin’. “
That’s not an argument, it’s a debate claim. And maybe arguments don’t really matter, it’s hard enough work just to try to see things without a lot of rationalization. If AI gets to a certain point, it will be interesting to see if it can “de-argument” all this narrative/argument stuff.
gag orders are evil too. speech as communication should have no restrictions. not even obliquely. government should have no secrets. snowden should be awarded the medal of honor.
speech as nuisance is another matter. it’s annoying even if you don’t know the language. the muslim call to prayer should be illegal.
Your links in no way support what you have claimed. There is no country where speaking against Israel is criminalized, nor any proposal in any country to criminalize speaking against Israel.
Jack D, fellow White person, big supporter of free speech.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/new-york-times-2017-george-zimmerman-the-white-man-who-shot-the-black-teenager/#comment-2093929
“It’s not obvious whether the stronger correlation is to IQ or to vocabulary.”
Isn’t there a pretty tight causitive correlation between I.Q. and vocabulary and between I.Q. and reading? Those with high I.Q. make their own environments, and part of that is finding, getting ahold of, and reading books, whether or not the books are easily at hand or are forced on them by extracurricular supplementary education programs.
One of the reasons why free speech is under threat is the wishy-washy arguments that educated liberals and moderates use to defend it. For example, you’ll here some moderate liberal say that white nationalists may have evil, totally non-factual arguments but they have a right to have to be heard. This argument is based on the liberal principle of personal autonomy, but what is the point of personal autonomy if it has no practical value? A better argument, is that we don’t want a society of yes men who are afraid to tell the boss when he’s wrong. People should be free to point out possible faults with society because they may have important insights and solutions. However, that would mean that liberals would have to accept that hated groups like white nationalists may not be 100 percent wrong and evil. At the moment, even moderate liberals aren’t prepared to do that. And if they aren’t prepared to do that, the far left certainly isn’t going to support free speech for the right.
He is absolutely right. However, there is one anomaly currently running counter to that statement: What about legislation -- making the rounds in the US now and already on the books in other White countries -- making it illegal to freely speak against Israel or to speak critically about certain topics in Jewish history?
Is the minority non-free speech percentage of our "high IQ white and Jewish male" cohort writing the laws for the rest of us?Replies: @AndrewR, @LondonBob, @sabril, @biz, @Jack D, @Anon, @JohnZ, @dfordoom, @anon
Those behind the laws in Europe that have outlawed free speech are the descendants of the Marxist /Kazarian jews who ravaged Russia for nearly 70 years. Their philosophy is no different: silence any and all who dare to question.
In this day and age it would be difficult to kill those who dare to speak out, so they forced through laws that imprison people like Ernst Zundel and David Irving.
The attacks on freedom o speech is another sign of the collapse of western civilization.
The Russian people now enjoy more freedom than Americans.
The problem with diaspora Jews, and educated whites for that matter, is that while most of them probably support free speech, a fairly large minority don’t, and that minority is very loud and influential. Hence, the anti-free speech elements in these groups need to be attacked and isolated, not united against the alternative right.
You grossly understate the impact of "Holocaust denial" laws in, e.g., Canada, the UK, and much of Europe. They are used to stifle political dissent. There's been a slop over into "anti-hate speech" laws in general. In the UK right now, a woman is facing prison time for posting pictures of "asians', i.e., mooslims, committing crimes against native Brits. I cannot believe you are unaware of this, since our President got dragged into a brouhaha as collateral damage. All across Europe, opponents of mass immigration of dysfunctional populations from Africa, the Near East, southwest Asia, and other areas are muzzled from speaking openly by legislation that dampens free speech.
The anti-Nazi laws in Germany and the anti-right-wing activities of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz may have served a purpose in the immediate aftermath of WW II but now they are encumbrances preventing free speech beyond a certain degree of conservative and nationalist sentiment. This speech suppression is even more effective in that the boundaries of acceptable speech are hazy and ill-defined. I suspect that Merkel would have been long gone except for this. A similar situation holds in Austria although to a lesser degree.Replies: @sabril
The claim he made was that the proposed laws “mak[e] it illegal to freely speak against Israel,” that’s not what these anti-BDS laws do. They simply prohibit certain types of discrimination against Israel and other allied countries. The United States has had various anti-discrimination laws on the books for decades and the courts have consistently held that they are constitutional.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/720/text
Boycotting is a fundamental exercise of freedom of speech and association.Replies: @Jack D
Nope, boycotting is not “speech” , it’s an act. If you say “I don’t enjoy serving blacks in my restaurant” that’s speech, if you actually refuse to serve them, it’s an act.
What are the 10 vocabulary words mentioned in the article?
They differ over time.
He is absolutely right. However, there is one anomaly currently running counter to that statement: What about legislation -- making the rounds in the US now and already on the books in other White countries -- making it illegal to freely speak against Israel or to speak critically about certain topics in Jewish history?
Is the minority non-free speech percentage of our "high IQ white and Jewish male" cohort writing the laws for the rest of us?Replies: @AndrewR, @LondonBob, @sabril, @biz, @Jack D, @Anon, @JohnZ, @dfordoom, @anon
This whole General Social Survey thing is complete and utter nonsense. The five controversial speakers have been carefully selected to exclude speakers who would upset Jews. If you included such a speaker in the list then you could be sure that 99% of Jews would want that speaker silenced.
It’s not just nonsense. It’s deliberately misleading and dishonest nonsense.
Those who feel strongest about promoting use of the pen over use of the sword are those who do not currently have access to swords. Freedom of speech is not a principle. It’s a tactic. A weapon used by those currently out of power because it’s the only weapon they have.
When they get power they’ll forget the freedom of speech nonsense and employ people with swords to stomp anyone who disagrees with them.
I was under the impression that Vertigo was now the best movie of all time.
So I live in hope that Picasso may yet be consigned to the dumpster to which he belongs.
Yes, it now tops the list of the Sight & Sound poll of critical favourites. I'm delighted that Bernard Herrmann composed the scores for both films.
I like Citizen Kane a lot but have always preferred The Magnificent Ambersons (also scored by you-know-who).
That’s completely wrong. You’re clearly less of a legal expert than you are a talented troll.
The precedent that disproves your argument is the Supreme Court ruling that students have a constitutionally guaranteed right not to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance in classrooms – an act – under the first amendment.
Besides, when is speaking not an act? Have they redefined what a verb is these days? You’re attempting to draw a false distinction when none of significance exists in order to justify your view point.
Contrariwise to the Sabril troll above (and yourself by tacit implication in your argument ), most discrimination laws in the US only protect persons within US jurisdiction. In other words, anti-discrimination laws do not protect foreigners unless by treaty, so the examples you cite mean nothing. They certainly can’t be used as justification for abridging American civil liberties. Israel has precisely zero right to American constitutional protections as they are outside American jurisdiction.
Your entire argument is simply an exercise in fooling people into thinking that they never had the rights you want to take away from them. I find it ironic that you cited the ACLU in your defense of Jews supporting free speech when several ACLU chapters are on record opposing the Israel boycott laws you support as a gross violation of the First Amendment.
Making boycotts, similarly protected acts of speech, illegal is an encroachment of protected free speech. Anyone who says otherwise either doesn’t know what he’s talking about (you) or is a hypocrite who’s in favor of abridging American civil rights when they think it benefits their cause (also you).
Not buying a product or service is not the same thing as refusing a product or service to another in US jurisdiction based upon a protected category - race, gender, veteran status, etc. I can refuse a vaccination, for example, but I cannot refuse to vaccinate another based on race, etc. A white racist can refuse to eat at a black man's restaurant, but he cannot refuse service to a black man just because he is black should he own a restaurant himself.
I have every right to not buy a product I don't want in most circumstances (that was the big republican stink about the ACA) or not say anything I don't want to with rare exception. I also have every right to tell others to do the same.
The discrimination laws some are trying to use here don't apply for two reasons: 1. no one is refusing to offer a product or service to another based upon a protected category but simply refusing the product or service themselves and telling other people to do the same 2. anti-discrimination laws usually don't apply to persons outside US jurisdiction. Even if they did, they still wouldn't make these boycott laws legal.
It's not likely the people who support these illegal anti-free speech laws have looked at the issue objectively. It is more likely that they came to the conclusion first as a result of bias and now attempt to justify it by grasping at straws. Johnathan Hait has a wonderful book dealing with the phenomenon, "The Righteous Mind."
These boycott laws will eventually be struck down by the federal courts as unconstitutional. Trump may delay that with his judicial picks, but the day will eventually come regardless.Replies: @Cloudbuster
Imagine defending laws trying to make it illegal to boycott Israel and arguing that such laws are not an assault on constitutionally protected free speech.
Chutzpah indeed.
And by the way, anti-discrimination laws absolutely encroach on free speech as you broadly interpret that phrase. Which I suppose suits you, since the real problem here is that there is evidence that Jewish people support free speech more than non-Jews; this is a fact that you don't like; so the solution is to redefine "free speech" in such a way that more Jewish people will oppose it.Replies: @Anonymous
Neat. The anti-Semite faction might take note of the fact that Jewish support for free speech is higher than the white average. Probably won’t sit well with the Kevin MacDonald fans who want to believe in some kind of SJW gene amongst our people.
http://jpfo.org/articles-assd02/why-jews-hate-guns.htm
“I think this is an important point. Anti-Israel activists are constantly pushing for laws and policies which are aimed at undermining Israel.”
Name a single law passed by any state legislature or the federal government that “undermines” Israel in anyway.
“And yet they still feel it’s somehow it’s an improper tactic for those on the pro-Israel side to push for laws and policies to counter them.”
Why is any American so wrapped up in supporting a foreign country?
Do you understand that "pushing" does not necessarily mean that anything was passed?
Do you understand that "laws and policies" includes things that are not laws?
Ok, now do you dispute my actual claim and not the strawman you have invented?Mostly because so many people are singularly obsessed with undermining the same country.
I mean first, we must define "minority", a task that can be extremely complex.
Then, what does "offensive to minorities" mean? It's not really hyperbolic to say that we live in a society where literally anything one could say would be offensive to at least one person. Some people are naturally more prone to taking offense, and our culture very strongly encourages offense-taking more generally. So if we must censor any speech that offends at least one single person, we will essentially be censoring all speech.
But most "minority" groups have a large number of members, some of whom are very thick-skinned. If I said "Jews are stingy," a significant proportion of Jews who heard me say that would likely be offended, but obviously not 100% would be, at least given a large enough sample size (the proportion of Jews offended would also be a function of the context of my claim). So if speech must be offensive to 100% of a group in order to justify its censorship, then practically no speech should be censored.Replies: @Anonymous, @ScarletNumber
> then practically no speech should be censored
Correct
> And that mistaken belief would be correlated with IQ
I doubt that, but any correlation would be in the positive direction, i.e. some ideas are so stupid that only a smart person could believe them.
So I live in hope that Picasso may yet be consigned to the dumpster to which he belongs.Replies: @guest, @Kylie
Vertigo has better music, at least. Also, Kim Novak.
One thing that movie has over Citizen Kane for film critics is that according to modernist and postmodernist aesthetics, all art is “self-referential.” Meaning no matter the subject matter, it’s all about the act of creating art. And Vertigo works if you imagine James Stewart is Hitchcock, obsessed with molding his “actress” into the vision he has in his mind of what he thinks is his dead paramour. Oh, critics eat that up.
Kane, on the other hand, is boring old William Randolph Hearst. You can think of him as being Welles as well, since he gains weight and fails at various things. Welles’ reputation being one of ultimate failure and decrepitude, despite his many accomplishments. But it’s not as obvious, and not as sexy.
And I mean “sexy” literally. Critics are perverts. I can’t help but think that their veneration of Picasso derives in part from that guy banging his way through the known dimensions of time and space.
Agree about Kim Novack.
Just to further clarify, the Supreme Court has ruled that students have every right not to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance under the First Amendment. Likewise, I can refuse suggested medical treatments, vaccinations (although a school can refuse to admit me), etc.
Not buying a product or service is not the same thing as refusing a product or service to another in US jurisdiction based upon a protected category – race, gender, veteran status, etc. I can refuse a vaccination, for example, but I cannot refuse to vaccinate another based on race, etc. A white racist can refuse to eat at a black man’s restaurant, but he cannot refuse service to a black man just because he is black should he own a restaurant himself.
I have every right to not buy a product I don’t want in most circumstances (that was the big republican stink about the ACA) or not say anything I don’t want to with rare exception. I also have every right to tell others to do the same.
The discrimination laws some are trying to use here don’t apply for two reasons: 1. no one is refusing to offer a product or service to another based upon a protected category but simply refusing the product or service themselves and telling other people to do the same 2. anti-discrimination laws usually don’t apply to persons outside US jurisdiction. Even if they did, they still wouldn’t make these boycott laws legal.
It’s not likely the people who support these illegal anti-free speech laws have looked at the issue objectively. It is more likely that they came to the conclusion first as a result of bias and now attempt to justify it by grasping at straws. Johnathan Hait has a wonderful book dealing with the phenomenon, “The Righteous Mind.”
These boycott laws will eventually be struck down by the federal courts as unconstitutional. Trump may delay that with his judicial picks, but the day will eventually come regardless.
2nd, there are no "White countries" where it is illegal to speak against Israel - again show us any country that has any such law.
Lastly , I love your euphemistic "certain topics" - what might be those topics be? Perhaps the murder of six million Jews in certain "White countries"? Yes, in some countries (lacking the equivalent of a 1st Amendment) denying the Holocaust or glorifying Nazism is indeed a crime. After WWII, the Germans, not wishing to allow the revival of the party that had brought such damage upon their country, made any expression of pro-Nazi sentiment (and Holocaust denial is a type of that) illegal.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @Jus' Sayin'..., @Cloudbuster, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Randal
Is Germany a white country? Government sanctions can apply if anti-Israel speech is automatically considered ‘anti-Semitic.’
Even declining to travel to Israel is beyond the pale:
Imagine taxpayer-funded PBS back in the day blacklisting personalities and artists who merely passed on appearing in Apartheid South Africa.
Schlesinger and Schuster—two Jews using official power to punish even passive disassociation with Israeli policies.
What really mystifies me is why any adult would want to see Roger Waters (or anyone) do "The Wall".Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
On the other hand, even other Jews recognize their massive support for “Gun Control.”
http://jpfo.org/articles-assd02/why-jews-hate-guns.htm
Are East Asians big on free speech? In my experience they are big on euphemism.
Even declining to travel to Israel is beyond the pale:Imagine taxpayer-funded PBS back in the day blacklisting personalities and artists who merely passed on appearing in Apartheid South Africa.Schlesinger and Schuster—two Jews using official power to punish even passive disassociation with Israeli policies.Replies: @clyde
Israel is not South Africa. Roger Waters is very active in BDS, pressuring all artists to boycott Israel. (The Rolling Stones ignored him.) So a few German radio stations decided to retaliate and boycott broadcasting Roger Waters live concerts. Why are you complaining? At any rate, what you call apartheid South Africa was a happier place than today’s gawd awful mess.
What really mystifies me is why any adult would want to see Roger Waters (or anyone) do “The Wall”.
Re the Guardian article: Personally, I don’t care if bands play in Israel or not (and I agree with you on South Africa). It’s true that Waters is being a jerk towards other artists—if they want to go, or not, they shouldn’t either be hounded by Waters or penalized by the German / (((German))) government.Replies: @clyde
The Hasbara are out in force on this one.
Imagine defending laws trying to make it illegal to boycott Israel and arguing that such laws are not an assault on constitutionally protected free speech.
Chutzpah indeed.
So I live in hope that Picasso may yet be consigned to the dumpster to which he belongs.Replies: @guest, @Kylie
“I was under the impression that Vertigo was now the best movie of all time.”
Yes, it now tops the list of the Sight & Sound poll of critical favourites. I’m delighted that Bernard Herrmann composed the scores for both films.
I like Citizen Kane a lot but have always preferred The Magnificent Ambersons (also scored by you-know-who).
Isn't there a pretty tight causitive correlation between I.Q. and vocabulary and between I.Q. and reading? Those with high I.Q. make their own environments, and part of that is finding, getting ahold of, and reading books, whether or not the books are easily at hand or are forced on them by extracurricular supplementary education programs.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
The correlation between IQ and Wordsum is a respectable .71.
See here.
Bernard Herrmann scored both Kane and Vertigo. The music for Vertigo is more beautiful than Kane’s but not “better”. Both scores are perfectly tailored to their respective movies.
Agree about Kim Novack.
What really mystifies me is why any adult would want to see Roger Waters (or anyone) do "The Wall".Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
I’m not complaining, I simply pointed out Jack D’s b.s. In the context of Jews, Israel, free speech, and government restraint on said speech, I gave an example (along with those of other commenters) that proves his dishonesty. Buzz Mohawk asked a reasonable question about some Jews successfully pushing for censorship in the West, and Jack deflected as usual. I won’t even mention sabril. 🙂
Re the Guardian article: Personally, I don’t care if bands play in Israel or not (and I agree with you on South Africa). It’s true that Waters is being a jerk towards other artists—if they want to go, or not, they shouldn’t either be hounded by Waters or penalized by the German / (((German))) government.
The…
Name a single law passed by any state legislature or the federal government that "undermines" Israel in anyway.
"And yet they still feel it’s somehow it’s an improper tactic for those on the pro-Israel side to push for laws and policies to counter them."
Why is any American so wrapped up in supporting a foreign country?Replies: @sabril
I am not aware of any such law. Now please re-read what I wrote:
Do you understand that there are other legislative bodies in the United States and elsewhere in the world besides state legislatures and the federal government?
Do you understand that “pushing” does not necessarily mean that anything was passed?
Do you understand that “laws and policies” includes things that are not laws?
Ok, now do you dispute my actual claim and not the strawman you have invented?
Mostly because so many people are singularly obsessed with undermining the same country.
Are you serious? Karl Marx predated E. V. Debs. The ACLU only defended the Nazis for PR purposes. It no longer defends racists even when they are clearly in the right. The organization was founded to defend beleaguered Communists, many of whom were Jews and many of whom were Soviet agents. As surveys by Pew Research reveal, Jews are way to the left of the rest of the public, including blacks and Latinos, since blacks and Latinos are fairly conservative on social issues.
He is absolutely right. However, there is one anomaly currently running counter to that statement: What about legislation -- making the rounds in the US now and already on the books in other White countries -- making it illegal to freely speak against Israel or to speak critically about certain topics in Jewish history?
Is the minority non-free speech percentage of our "high IQ white and Jewish male" cohort writing the laws for the rest of us?Replies: @AndrewR, @LondonBob, @sabril, @biz, @Jack D, @Anon, @JohnZ, @dfordoom, @anon
I have long regarded Jews as the chief opponents of free speech and chief advocates of indoctrination as a means of bringing about social progress. I grant that Jews strongly defended free speech for communists and pornographers in the 1950s. Jewish groups and individuals have pushed relentlessly and with much success for Holocaust Denier laws and their many spinoffs, campus speech codes, diversity training, hate crime sentencing and hate speech laws. Censorship and indoctrination are central features of the Communist movement in whose funding and leadership Jews have played a large part. Since most Jews fall in the high-IQ and above-average categories, 56% support for free speech likely puts them below average for the groups they fall in.
Note that the term ‘free speech absolutist’ is tendentious. How can you have ‘free’ speech if you are limited to certain opinions?
Re the Guardian article: Personally, I don’t care if bands play in Israel or not (and I agree with you on South Africa). It’s true that Waters is being a jerk towards other artists—if they want to go, or not, they shouldn’t either be hounded by Waters or penalized by the German / (((German))) government.Replies: @clyde
J I E __ I objected to you implying that Roger Waters was being bombed because he skirted Israel as just his personal choice. When he is a vocal leader in getting musicians to go BDS boycott on Israel, so some Germans (Jews?) went BDS on him and banned his live concerts. Turnabout being fair play.
As far as Jews being able to limit criticism of Israel, this can be done in the US sometimes but very difficult in Europe. Not enough Jews or J money there. My take is Jewish influence in Europe is nil. The worst thing they have accomplished has been to influence France to allow in more North African Muslims from French colonies. This is coming back to bite Parisian Jews big time. And France as a whole.
Let me know when they pull this off. Censorship of Israel criticism? What you will see first will be crypto-anti-blasphemy laws pushed by Muslims and passed into law by Euro-eunuch-cucks and their feminist leaders. Where you cannot make real criticisms of Islam and million man Muslim migrations. Europeans are already being fined and jailed for this.
The whole subject of this subthread is Jewish influence and enforcement through state power in “White countries” to suppress criticism of Israel. I provided a concrete example. You refuse to believe it. Or are maybe pro-censorship.Lol wut. That may be your “take,” but I just gave you an actual example of Jewish-ordered censorship in a Western government, something that you, Jack D, sabril, etc. are claiming is a fantasy. The hasbara ain’t working.
Now go listen to some Jan Hammer and get your shit together, mang.Replies: @clyde, @Clyde
2nd, there are no "White countries" where it is illegal to speak against Israel - again show us any country that has any such law.
Lastly , I love your euphemistic "certain topics" - what might be those topics be? Perhaps the murder of six million Jews in certain "White countries"? Yes, in some countries (lacking the equivalent of a 1st Amendment) denying the Holocaust or glorifying Nazism is indeed a crime. After WWII, the Germans, not wishing to allow the revival of the party that had brought such damage upon their country, made any expression of pro-Nazi sentiment (and Holocaust denial is a type of that) illegal.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @Jus' Sayin'..., @Cloudbuster, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Randal
This is for the record, in response to the misleading posts by you, biz and sabril, in which you all tried to criticise Buzz Mohawk’s post based upon what you thought was a technicality he could be caught on, despite the basic truth of his post. Presumably because you all seek to protect Israel and its jewish and other lobbyists from legitimate criticism.
All the laws against “hate speech” that include “anti-Semitism” (and they pretty much all do that inherently) are in effect laws designed and operated to criminalise speaking freely against Israel – exactly as Mohawk wrote.
The “official” definition of anti-Semitism, recently adopted by the UK government, makes this explicitly clear even whilst trying to pretend it is not doing so:
UK adopts antisemitism definition to combat hate crime against Jews
“More detailed guidance on this, released by the IHRA in May, said this could include criticisms which target Israel, if this was “conceived as a Jewish collectivity”. It added: “However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
The guidance says it could be considered antisemitic to accuse Jews of being more loyal to Israel or their religion than to their own nations, or to say the existence of Israel is intrinsically racist.”
Of course, the whole point of criticising Israel is precisely to criticise it for the ways it is not similar to other countries, and also a lot of the valid criticism of Israel is precisely that it benefits from the dual loyalty of jews in other countries to the only jewish state, or that it is intrinsically racist to have a “jewish state”. In other words, under these laws, you cannot speak freely against Israel if they are enforced fully, as their proponents intend for them ultimately to be enforced.
Most of these laws are relatively new and rarely applied as yet. Mostly they work to suppress criticism of Israel by forcing people opposed to Israel and the Israel lobbies to watch their words, thereby inhibiting their effectiveness. But they will be applied ever more rigorously if they are allowed to remain and the appropriate precedents are allowed to be set.
It is no secret that the jewish organisations pushing these laws seek to suppress criticism of Israel. That’s been made clear to me directly by people involved with them, though they insist that it’s not about suppressing criticism of Israel “except where the criticism amounts to anti-Semitism”. In insisting that last, they are either dishonest or hypocritical.
It’s entirely understandable that jewish people should seek to suppress criticism of Israel. And jews are absolutely not alone in being hypocrites on freedom of speech. But let’s at least face up to the truth rather than try to deny it.
Note that the term 'free speech absolutist' is tendentious. How can you have 'free' speech if you are limited to certain opinions?Replies: @Randal
It would be interesting to see what the percentage would be if “antisemite” or “Nazi” were one of the five categories.
This seems OT but its what comes to mind reading some comments, especially those of a (hyper)conservative bent who are opposed to free speech.
I’m reminded of Steve Sailer recalling I think Huxley who imagined a time when memory is a crime and I’m also reminded of a post somewhere nearby here on Unz where commenters are found lamenting the collapse of the Catholic Church’s authority in the wake of the pedophile priest crisis, although their laments took the form of misguided apologia.
But here is what to remember: 30 years ago the church had not yet lost its authority. From the 1940s to well into the 1990s the church had potent moral authority that could be and was leveraged to protect and promote Catholic communities and their traditional values and all of this was channeled into a meaningful political force.
The forces it was honed, evolved, designed to oppose, were themselves evolved to oppose a force as great as the Catholic Church and community. Now those forces act without restraint…it may be that they were designed for restraint, that their own seemingly mortal opponent was in some ways an erstwhile friend.
The Catholic Church, when it still functioned, was the basis of a powerful community that served a democratic function of gathering common civic intent and transcending tribe and ethnicity.
Labor unions also served a similar role both of gathering civic force as well as offsetting or restraining the excesses of capital.
If all this is true I doubt free speech per se is in the causal stream, its just a symptom. The disease condition is atomization.
In the Holocaust, Jews were mocked and vilified long before they were killed.
All the laws against "hate speech" that include "anti-Semitism" (and they pretty much all do that inherently) are in effect laws designed and operated to criminalise speaking freely against Israel - exactly as Mohawk wrote.
The "official" definition of anti-Semitism, recently adopted by the UK government, makes this explicitly clear even whilst trying to pretend it is not doing so:
UK adopts antisemitism definition to combat hate crime against Jews
"More detailed guidance on this, released by the IHRA in May, said this could include criticisms which target Israel, if this was “conceived as a Jewish collectivity”. It added: “However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
The guidance says it could be considered antisemitic to accuse Jews of being more loyal to Israel or their religion than to their own nations, or to say the existence of Israel is intrinsically racist."
Of course, the whole point of criticising Israel is precisely to criticise it for the ways it is not similar to other countries, and also a lot of the valid criticism of Israel is precisely that it benefits from the dual loyalty of jews in other countries to the only jewish state, or that it is intrinsically racist to have a "jewish state". In other words, under these laws, you cannot speak freely against Israel if they are enforced fully, as their proponents intend for them ultimately to be enforced.
Most of these laws are relatively new and rarely applied as yet. Mostly they work to suppress criticism of Israel by forcing people opposed to Israel and the Israel lobbies to watch their words, thereby inhibiting their effectiveness. But they will be applied ever more rigorously if they are allowed to remain and the appropriate precedents are allowed to be set.
It is no secret that the jewish organisations pushing these laws seek to suppress criticism of Israel. That's been made clear to me directly by people involved with them, though they insist that it's not about suppressing criticism of Israel "except where the criticism amounts to anti-Semitism". In insisting that last, they are either dishonest or hypocritical.
It's entirely understandable that jewish people should seek to suppress criticism of Israel. And jews are absolutely not alone in being hypocrites on freedom of speech. But let's at least face up to the truth rather than try to deny it.Replies: @sabril
Even if you read his post as charitably as possible, it’s extremely misleading. Here’s what he said:
Any reasonable person reading this would think he is saying that there are proposed laws which would ban criticism of Israel. It’s not that he was technically wrong, he was being dishonest.
Do you agree that there are no such laws being proposed in the United States? If you disagree, please cite and quote some of these laws.
How exactly is Israel not similar to other countries? Please identify 3 of these “ways” in which Israel is not similar.
You are mistaken. That is not what I wrote. I emphasized the Guardian article about RBB threatening to ban other potentially uppity artists from its network:
You write:
You’re equating civilian Roger Waters’ advocacy with state officials (yes, they’re Jews) sanctioning his speech? Ooof.
The whole subject of this subthread is Jewish influence and enforcement through state power in “White countries” to suppress criticism of Israel. I provided a concrete example. You refuse to believe it. Or are maybe pro-censorship.
Lol wut. That may be your “take,” but I just gave you an actual example of Jewish-ordered censorship in a Western government, something that you, Jack D, sabril, etc. are claiming is a fantasy. The hasbara ain’t working.
Now go listen to some Jan Hammer and get your shit together, mang.
Not to mention themselves.
Speaking of enlightenment, I'm coming to believe that's what it's all about: elaborate intellectual deception. (Certain things the Enlightenment claims credit for, like the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Electric Age, and so forth, might've happened anyway.)Replies: @Samuel Skinner
There is zero connection between the Enlightenment and those things. For starters the Scientific Revolution predates the Enlightenment by 150 years.
The Enlightenment was an intellectual fad that was about telling everyone how awesome and important intellectuals are.
The Enlightenment was also very much an anti-Christian thing. In fact fanatically anti-Christian.
Perhaps it is, and perhaps it isn’t, but you are dishonestly attempting to reframe the discussion. Here’s the original comment:
The reasonable interpretation of this is that it refers to criticism, not boycotts.
And by the way, anti-discrimination laws absolutely encroach on free speech as you broadly interpret that phrase. Which I suppose suits you, since the real problem here is that there is evidence that Jewish people support free speech more than non-Jews; this is a fact that you don’t like; so the solution is to redefine “free speech” in such a way that more Jewish people will oppose it.
I read it so fast I did not see that this was state owned radio stations that nixed Roger Water’s being broadcast live. Still a big fat nothing burger. How did Jan Hammer get mixed into this?
The whole subject of this subthread is Jewish influence and enforcement through state power in “White countries” to suppress criticism of Israel. I provided a concrete example.
A huge example…lol You prolly think Barbara Spectre calls the shots in Sweden. That she got Swedes to admit 100,000 Muslim and African migrants two years ago.
Which European Jews got Angela Merkel to unilaterally let in one million Muslims and Africans?
The whole subject of this subthread is Jewish influence and enforcement through state power in “White countries” to suppress criticism of Israel. I provided a concrete example. You refuse to believe it. Or are maybe pro-censorship.Lol wut. That may be your “take,” but I just gave you an actual example of Jewish-ordered censorship in a Western government, something that you, Jack D, sabril, etc. are claiming is a fantasy. The hasbara ain’t working.
Now go listen to some Jan Hammer and get your shit together, mang.Replies: @clyde, @Clyde
Jan Hammer.. OK got the reference.
Nick Cave is playing Israel just because he finds BDS annoying. Johnny Rotten has some interesting quotes about this, too:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/autonomy-uk-15575.html
Not buying a product or service is not the same thing as refusing a product or service to another in US jurisdiction based upon a protected category - race, gender, veteran status, etc. I can refuse a vaccination, for example, but I cannot refuse to vaccinate another based on race, etc. A white racist can refuse to eat at a black man's restaurant, but he cannot refuse service to a black man just because he is black should he own a restaurant himself.
I have every right to not buy a product I don't want in most circumstances (that was the big republican stink about the ACA) or not say anything I don't want to with rare exception. I also have every right to tell others to do the same.
The discrimination laws some are trying to use here don't apply for two reasons: 1. no one is refusing to offer a product or service to another based upon a protected category but simply refusing the product or service themselves and telling other people to do the same 2. anti-discrimination laws usually don't apply to persons outside US jurisdiction. Even if they did, they still wouldn't make these boycott laws legal.
It's not likely the people who support these illegal anti-free speech laws have looked at the issue objectively. It is more likely that they came to the conclusion first as a result of bias and now attempt to justify it by grasping at straws. Johnathan Hait has a wonderful book dealing with the phenomenon, "The Righteous Mind."
These boycott laws will eventually be struck down by the federal courts as unconstitutional. Trump may delay that with his judicial picks, but the day will eventually come regardless.Replies: @Cloudbuster
I’m a bit of a first amendment absolutist, but I’d argue that the portions of the civil rights act that ban discrimination by private businesses against protected classes are clear first amendment violations, regardless of what the Supreme Court has said.
Which is all well and good, but if you took that survey, and turned around and said "See, Jewish people are overwhelmingly against free speech!," it would be dishonest. Which is exactly what the )))usual suspects((( are trying to do in this thread.
You can certainly make that argument, but what does it mean for purposes of this discussion? For one thing, if you polled people and asked if it should be legal for restaurants, hotels, and other businesses to refuse service on the basis of race, religion, etc., you can bet that most people (and especially Jewish people) would overwhelmingly respond “no.”
Which is all well and good, but if you took that survey, and turned around and said “See, Jewish people are overwhelmingly against free speech!,” it would be dishonest. Which is exactly what the )))usual suspects((( are trying to do in this thread.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/new-york-times-2017-george-zimmerman-the-white-man-who-shot-the-black-teenager/#comment-2093929Replies: @Anonymous
I believe this is called ‘shape shifting’ and it is something of a specialty. Rest assured, only newcomers to this site (or this game) are even slightly surprised. Or impressed.
And by the way, anti-discrimination laws absolutely encroach on free speech as you broadly interpret that phrase. Which I suppose suits you, since the real problem here is that there is evidence that Jewish people support free speech more than non-Jews; this is a fact that you don't like; so the solution is to redefine "free speech" in such a way that more Jewish people will oppose it.Replies: @Anonymous
I agree with you. The Jewish people are clearly and consistently in favor of free speech so long as that free speech supports Jewish causes. Fortunately their virtual stranglehold upon the mass media means we goyim can safely leave the details of implementation to them. Win-win, amirite?
Anyway, if you believe that Jewish people are uniquely own-biased when it comes to free speech, let's see your evidence.Lol, nice attempt to change the subject. But let's see your evidence on that too.
No, the opposite is the case. The fact is that there are laws in force in other countries that increasingly prevent people speaking freely on Israel (I referenced them and explained how they work), and such laws are coming to the US once the identity lobbyists and leftists can get enough SC members to “reinterpret” the First Amendment to exclude “hate speech”.
Furthermore, contrary to the false assertions by you and by other protectors of Israel/jewish lobby interests here, anti-BDS laws are also laws designed to suppress freedom of speech on Israel. Even some of the less self-deluding or dishonest (on this issue at least) organisations that are neutral or on your own pro-jewish/Israeli side admit that, such as the ACLU and J-Street:
State anti-BDS laws are hitting unintended targets and nobody’s happy
Times of Israel 24th October 2017
Of course, Mohawk didn’t have to restrict his point about the obvious anomaly in the supposed “56% jewish support for freedom of speech” to laws about Israel, which you opportunistically picked on. He could have referred to the widespread jewish support for legal suppression of free speech not just on Israel but in terms of general “anti-Semitism” (real or self-servingly concocted) and “Holocaust denial” (for which numerous people across Europe have faced state harassment, with the enthusiastic support of jewish organisations).
Well, it’s the only country that is largely composed of settler colonists imported within living memory and their descendants at the expense of the former inhabitants, it’s the only country that operates a significant fifth column of co-ethnics/co-religionists who are (as Steve has documented repeatedly) massively over represented amongst US elites, and it’s the only country that has the clout to get the US to use its UN veto to protect it from critics, on a seemingly almost permanent basis, for things that any other country would be condemned as a pariah state for doing.
And that’s without listing anything particularly controversial or open to plausible dispute.
Next, please identify three proceedings in some other country where a person was sanctioned for "speaking freely against Israel." Just three.
In other words, put up or shut up. Although somehow I expect you will do neither.You are free to define "speaking freely against Israel" to include boycotts, but that's not how any reasonable person would understand the phrase.Even ignoring the fact that Jewish people are in fact indigenous to Israel, you are wrong. For example, even as Jewish people were moving in from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese people were moving to Singapore. Israel became independent in 1948; Singapore in 1965.
But for some strange reason, people all over the world care a great deal about Israel and far less about Singapore.
See, people who support Israel are not idiots. Those who support Israel know perfectly well why people like you are so anti-Israel even if you pretend otherwise to yourselves and others. And that why it's disingenuous in the extreme for people like you to complain that some attempts to undermine Israel are being labeled as anti-Semitic by some authorities. If you want a presumption of good faith, then you might try stopping acting in bad faith.
The Enlightenment was an intellectual fad that was about telling everyone how awesome and important intellectuals are.Replies: @dfordoom
Agreed, but it went even further, to the point of telling us that really we should let intellectuals run things. In fact we should let them run everything. To a tragic extent we believed them.
The Enlightenment was also very much an anti-Christian thing. In fact fanatically anti-Christian.
Sure, that’s why the heavily Jewish ACLU defended the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie.
Anyway, if you believe that Jewish people are uniquely own-biased when it comes to free speech, let’s see your evidence.
Lol, nice attempt to change the subject. But let’s see your evidence on that too.
First things first: Please quote and cite some of these proposed American laws or at least show evidence that there are ANY kind of significant efforts to enact such laws.
Next, please identify three proceedings in some other country where a person was sanctioned for “speaking freely against Israel.” Just three.
In other words, put up or shut up. Although somehow I expect you will do neither.
You are free to define “speaking freely against Israel” to include boycotts, but that’s not how any reasonable person would understand the phrase.
Even ignoring the fact that Jewish people are in fact indigenous to Israel, you are wrong. For example, even as Jewish people were moving in from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese people were moving to Singapore. Israel became independent in 1948; Singapore in 1965.
But for some strange reason, people all over the world care a great deal about Israel and far less about Singapore.
See, people who support Israel are not idiots. Those who support Israel know perfectly well why people like you are so anti-Israel even if you pretend otherwise to yourselves and others. And that why it’s disingenuous in the extreme for people like you to complain that some attempts to undermine Israel are being labeled as anti-Semitic by some authorities. If you want a presumption of good faith, then you might try stopping acting in bad faith.
On the series:
but smarter people are better to hide their ”racism’…than ”less clever-age”…
Most neo-leftists are for ”free speech” …
After the conquest of France and Ukraine, Germany had no shortage of food.
The whole subject of this subthread is Jewish influence and enforcement through state power in “White countries” to suppress criticism of Israel. I provided a concrete example. You refuse to believe it. Or are maybe pro-censorship.Lol wut. That may be your “take,” but I just gave you an actual example of Jewish-ordered censorship in a Western government, something that you, Jack D, sabril, etc. are claiming is a fantasy. The hasbara ain’t working.
Now go listen to some Jan Hammer and get your shit together, mang.Replies: @clyde, @Clyde
Good comment.
Sorry for noticing: If you check the history you’ll see that Jewish groups consistently oppose free speech for anti-Semites and extend the concept to sexists, homophobes, racists, Islamophobes, and xenophobes. By the time they’re done, the only people not breaking the law are SJWs. If you throw an old man in jail for disagreeing with you about how many Jews Hitler killed I will regard you as a brutish totalitarian with an alarming amount of influence, and any anger that comes your way as fully earned. Wouldn’t any fair-minded person?
Put me down as one of those people who opposes free speech. The modern left is not wrong in opposing ‘free speech’, which is at any rate inevitable; rather, they are wrong about the content of which speech should be restricted.
There is no such thing as truly neutral free speech: there is always some implicit moral code that is presupposed in determining what counts as free speech. The left has been making this more explicit recently by saying that speech that denies the humanity of others does not count as free speech.
Those on the right who defend free speech do the same sort of thing, limiting what counts as free speech by some more fundamental moral commitments. It’s just that they don’t typically realize that this is what they’re doing. For example, conservatives today would not regard speech that is intended to incite violence as free speech. In the 19th century, there were laws making it illegal to advocate for polygamy (in response to Mormonism) and laws outlawing literature advocating contraception and abortion (the Comstock Laws), and these laws were not generally viewed as running afoul of free speech protections. I’m even told that back in the racist, misogynist past, speech that was obscene or blasphemous did not count as free speech (ah, those were the days!). There is no stable definition of ‘free speech’, since it is informed by the more basic moral commitments of society.
No society can tolerate speech that undermines its legitimizing principle if it wants to maintain itself. For America, that used to be a generic Protestantism. In the West today, that legitimizing principle is liberalism: tolerance and inclusiveness. The Holocaust is modern liberalism’s major foundational and legitimizing myth, so from that perspective, it makes sense why European nations would criminalize Holocaust denial.
So, I’m hopeful that the left’s re-definition of free speech will make all this more apparent, and so those on the right can start defending our principles by explicit appeal to the truth rather than by appeal to free speech.
In a healthy society, there might still be howling mobs protesting and shouting down speakers. The difference would be that the speaker being shouted down would be someone advocating sodomy rather than someone defending the white race.
By the way, the survey should have made the choices more stark. Homosexuality and atheism are mainstream. They should have instead made one of the choices pederasty for example.
Right. From what I can tell, the boycott law extends the current law to cover boycotts by international government organizations in addition to those by foreign governments (which the law already did). The whole purpose is to prevent Arab nations (and now organizations like the U.N.) from strong-arming or extorting U.S. businesses into not doing business with our allies, viz., Israel.
Of course the merits of the bill can be debated, but it is perfectly reasonable for the U.S. not to allow hostile nations or organizations to prevent us from doing business with our allies. The reason these bills are crafted to ‘privilege’ Israel is because Israel is the only nation that is targeted by such boycotts. Nations like Canada and the U.K. are not (although the bills would also apply to them if they were).
Eugene Volokh had a couple of articles that I thought covered the bill in a fair and reasonable way, see here and here, in contrast with the tendentious ways in which the ACLU or Glenn Greenwald (for example) have covered it.
There is no such thing as truly neutral free speech: there is always some implicit moral code that is presupposed in determining what counts as free speech. The left has been making this more explicit recently by saying that speech that denies the humanity of others does not count as free speech.
Those on the right who defend free speech do the same sort of thing, limiting what counts as free speech by some more fundamental moral commitments. It’s just that they don’t typically realize that this is what they’re doing. For example, conservatives today would not regard speech that is intended to incite violence as free speech. In the 19th century, there were laws making it illegal to advocate for polygamy (in response to Mormonism) and laws outlawing literature advocating contraception and abortion (the Comstock Laws), and these laws were not generally viewed as running afoul of free speech protections. I’m even told that back in the racist, misogynist past, speech that was obscene or blasphemous did not count as free speech (ah, those were the days!). There is no stable definition of 'free speech', since it is informed by the more basic moral commitments of society.
No society can tolerate speech that undermines its legitimizing principle if it wants to maintain itself. For America, that used to be a generic Protestantism. In the West today, that legitimizing principle is liberalism: tolerance and inclusiveness. The Holocaust is modern liberalism's major foundational and legitimizing myth, so from that perspective, it makes sense why European nations would criminalize Holocaust denial.
So, I’m hopeful that the left’s re-definition of free speech will make all this more apparent, and so those on the right can start defending our principles by explicit appeal to the truth rather than by appeal to free speech.
In a healthy society, there might still be howling mobs protesting and shouting down speakers. The difference would be that the speaker being shouted down would be someone advocating sodomy rather than someone defending the white race.
By the way, the survey should have made the choices more stark. Homosexuality and atheism are mainstream. They should have instead made one of the choices pederasty for example.Replies: @dfordoom
Agreed. And the concept of free speech was invented specifically to undermine western society. The intention was purely destructive.