Is opposition to free speech becoming mainstream?

[politicus]

This one is thought provoking:

http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/why-are-students-now-cheering-about-the-massacre-at-charlie-hebdo/

Is the belief that free speech should be curtailed increasingly becoming mainstream? (or is it already?). Denmark is (still) very pro-free speech, and not very representative on this, so I am curious about what you think.

(I know Spectator is owned by the Barclay bros., but I take it, it is still a serious publication)

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

there's so much wrong with this article i don't even know where to start

[dead0man]

Short answer, no.


Long answer, only in certain circles.  Lefties at college (students and faculty) are big on shutting down speech they don't agree with.  Not all of them, maybe not even a majority of them, but certainly a non-negligible number of them.  There is push back, but the fight is still on.

ACLU's take on it

[politicus]

there's so much wrong with this article i don't even know where to start

Try anyway, you must be able to find some core themes. Otherwise we are just left guessing.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Was it ever mainstream to begin with?

[politicus]

Was it ever mainstream to begin with?

Huh? What "it"? The question was about opposition to free speech becoming mainstream. There was no claim this opposition had ever been mainstream.

Do you mean "was support of free speech ever mainstream"?

[Marokai Backbeat]

The battle for free speech has always been ongoing. The opponents change, the issues that are en vogue shift, but there is always a fight to be had to ensure speech is as free as possible. Moral panics in particular are scary things, as they tend to lead people to make decisions they wouldn't otherwise make if they thought them through properly.

The activist Left is sadly one of the more recent inclusions to the fight. It's one of the reasons I stopped calling myself Progressive and no longer like the term. It became clear to me over the last couple years that these types did not value the liberal values of free speech and expression as I believed they did.

It is ironic, isn't it. In an ends-justify-the-means pursuit of diversity, diversity of class and thought has gone by the wayside. Oh well. As dead0 said, these people only have real power in a niche. For now, at least.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Was it ever mainstream to begin with?

Huh? What "it"? The question was about opposition to free speech becoming mainstream. There was no claim this opposition had ever been mainstream.

Do you mean "was support of free speech ever mainstream"?

Yes the latter.

[TNF]

Marokai is pretty much spot on here.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

The fringe left is becoming more vocal and more aggressive in recent years, and extremists always have the ability to come across as a bigger part of the population than they really are.

The actual threat they pose is when they decide they're no longer willing to abide by the rules of the majority.

[politicus]

Was it ever mainstream to begin with?

Huh? What "it"? The question was about opposition to free speech becoming mainstream. There was no claim this opposition had ever been mainstream.

Do you mean "was support of free speech ever mainstream"?

Yes the latter.

I think there would be fairly large national differences on that issue. It was mainstream here and still a majority view, but our free speech tradition is also closer to the American than much of the rest of Europe. Free speech has never been a mainstream position outside of the Western world. Although I dunno much about attitudes in Latin America on that (but they are a variation of western culture anyway).

[DavidB.]

People on many campuses have come to see the world in terms of oppression and non-oppression, and since Muslims in the West are seen as a stigmatized group ("oppressed") and Charlie Hebdo ridicules them ("oppressors"), people side with the "oppressed". Of course this doesn't make much sense, at least not in this extremely simplistic way, but that's not relevant for people's attitudes/behavior if they truly believe this.

However, this is a phenomenon that I only know from Tumblr and the wider interwebz, for I suspect that Dutch culture regarding free speech is, like Danish culture, on the more "liberal" end of the spectrum - probably because the Netherlands has always been a country of minorities: there was no majority during pillarization (and even before).

It might be that my perception is influenced by the people I hang out with, but even then, I haven't seen anything apologetic about the Charlie Hebdo massacre in the media coming from liberals, not even on the most PC websites. What I did see, however, was many young Muslims putting pictures with "I love my prophet" as profile picture on social media. Conspiracy theories about Charlie Hebdo not being a real thing / being staged by the US and Israel were also popular (sigh...). Many young Muslims clearly perceived the attention for Charlie Hebdo as another "Islamophobic" outrage, and they felt the need to stand up against that. This is obviously something understandable, since these people are in a hard position between Western and Moroccan/Turkish/etc. culture, but for society this raises lots of worries and concerns about our multicultural society's future and the preservation of essential freedoms. Yet because of my background I think I might understand how these people feel, even if I disagree with them. However, I don't think their "opposition" to free speech is something new. This new form of (marginal) "liberal" opposition to free speech, however, is certainly something new.

In short, my answer would be that opposition to free speech is becoming mainstream in a certain "liberal" bubble: on campus, on Tumblr, among some inner-city left-wingers... But it is not yet becoming mainstream in society as a whole.

and...

Marokai is pretty much spot on here.

[Cory]

Marokai is pretty much spot on here.

[TJ in Oregon]

Yes, but admitting it isn't.

[Simfan34]

Marokai is pretty much spot on here.

[Bigby]

Yes, sadly. People only want free speech for themselves.

[All Along The Watchtower]

There are already plenty of restrictions on speech. Context is important. But "free speech" absolutists who seem keen on defending the rights of Neo-Nazis and other such groups evidently disagree.

[ingemann]

There's always limits to free speech, the question are where we set that limit. I personally don't have a problem if Mongolia set up censorship on criticism of their southern neighbour, because in that case there's significant security concerns, but I think we should be honest about why we cencor ourselves, not tell about some crap about how it's because some people's feeling get hurt, no it's because we're afraid of the consequences. Which is also why I learned two lessons from the whole Mohammed Cartoon Crisis; violence work and Muslims shouldn't live among other people.