I am saying it is a bit foolish to make organic grassroots protests, student demonstrations, and social media critiques the same as a government explicitly banning words and ideas.
This false equivalency is what allows this administration and their followers to justify their actions.
Chris, I'm sorry, I'll try to be nice. We have a long history. You used the words "left-wing threats" and "right-wing threats." How is that not treating them as equivalent?
You go on to say the magnitude varies. That is an understatement in the extreme.
And, finally, as I reposted from Kevin Bird
Fine. You can use a word other than threats in either part of that sentence. My point is that the problem in the 2010s was real. It is simultaneously true that the problem right now is a thousand times worse.
The problem in the 2010s is that we didn't do nearly enough to silence the fascists, and now they've infested our entire society. Pity you can't understand that.
no, mate, the issue is that one *is* a threat and the other *isn't*, going "fine I guess we could call neither of them threats" is exactly the kind of equating student speech vs black-bag human trafficking that you're asserting you are against but You Keep Doing It
Gee, if only there was more transphobic rhetoric out there in the 2010s. The world was just a worse place without more people trying to explain why we should be wiped out. What a loss for free speech. You buffoon.
The “problem” then was that smug assholes like you didn’t like your priors being questioned by uppity, sniveling kids and resented them for doing so. You continue to see more value in platforming odious bigots than demonstrating that their bigotry is unwelcome in a decent society.
it is not a left-wing threat to say "we won't allow a person who threatens trans peoples' right to bodily autonomy and safety to speak on campus." That is a good and correct reaction and as others have noted one that has been around a long time.
tl;dr - you must be strongly opposed to yourself here
If a faculty member or academic unit invites a speaker, that speaker has the right to speak on campus. If you feel like that speaker's views aren't worthwhile, you can just not attend the speech. People do this all the time at the city level.
On any given day, there are thousands of speeches happening in Atlanta that I don't care to attend. If someone has relatively conservative views on transgender people, but an academic invites them, they have the right to speak.
So you're saying that students don't have a right to use their speech in opposition to someone else's speech? Also what if the speaker is a literal fucking fascist???
And when they start their presentation with a series of names and photographs of students they don't like, including their immigration status, is that merely a presentation of "views" to be considered "not worthwhile" or has something rather more serious taken place? This is not a hypothetical.
This is a stupid conception of free speech. If a faculty member or academic unit deems it okay then it is free speech but if people whose existence is threatened push back, that is censorship?
No, pretty sure we're saying that in 2015 a bunch of people pretended student free speech was a threat because they wanted to use administrative or state authority to shut down disagreement
hell, Milo Y was using his college talks to out trans of whatever college he was at to his Nazi Youth audience, and you think trying to get him disinvited was the obvious threat?
No, that the 2015 criticisms were obviously hysterical at the time and have been proven so by recent events. Pointing to a house cat and calling it a tiger isn’t reasonable simply because you have never seen a tiger in person, especially when people who have seen a tiger correct you in real time.
There were alt right uprisings and nazi gatherings in 2015. There was an extremely public nazi uprising in multiple online spaces, with dedicated journalists exposing and screaming for mainstream coverage. But unite the right was highly publicized long before charlottseville
But i was attending a big state school in that timeframe. Richard spencer/ben shapiro/TPUSA were holding events at multiple universities throughout the country, and they faced extreme backlash and counterprotest at almost every single school. The mainstream liberal/NYT line was that they had a right
Also for extra context, the alt right had SO MUCH wealthy funding. They had the fanciest printed fliers, expensive, thick cardstock, paid advertisers, paid outreach, and relationships with university boardmembers.
The “illiberal left”? Never had any money or institutional backing.
Chelsea manning was prevented from speaking at a major university in 2015, for fear of pissing off their board/right wing media. Her speech was canceled. She has no wealthy financiers.
The leftists i knew were always obviously scorned by the university. But ya’ll stood up for shapiro lmfao
Wont somebody think of the poor highly paid TPUSA operatives?? Wont somebody think of the extremely well financed and well connected right wing university infiltration machine??
Absolute baby brain that you managed to convince yourselves that college leftists and TPUSA were remotely comparable.
To hold their little white supremacy college rallies. And also that it wasn’t fair to call them white supremacists/nazis. Out of fear of being labeled as repressing speech, and mainly at the behest of boards of directors, those events were allowed to go forward with increased secruity
So they costed the universities MORE of our tuition dollars, they costed our local municipalities MORE of our tax dollars, and then the media labeled counterprotestors as the “real nazis” for denying richard spencer/shapiro free speech
So yall made our campuses host literal fucking nazi rallies while gaslighting us for a DECADE that they werent actually nazis bc we were hysterical college commies.
And, holding the same elitist pretension, you have the nerve to say that nobody could’ve predicted MAGA doing overt Nazi shit in 2015?
Yall ruined countless students’ educational experiences, put their safety at risk, smeared them as illiberal free speech destroyers, and gaslit us the whole time.
Theyve always been nazis, you were just deeply committed to being a stupid cunt about it
I knew in 2015 that this was the direction we were going since I started paying attention in 2000, when I turned 18. Lots of people did. They have spent the past couple of decades warning you. You ignored them because you thought they were an existential threat to free speech.
They told you that the 2000 election was stolen. They told you that the PATRIOT Act was a terrible idea. They protested the Iraq War. They told you that Gitmo should be shut down, and also never should have been opened.
The threat from the right has been massive and obvious for my entire adult life. The threat from the left has almost entirely been manufactured by the right. You got conned.
We are asking you to understand that this kind of "whataboutism" plays right into the hands of the most bad-faith actors.
Also, we're asking you to understand that 30 is not a particularly large number given the size of the US college system and getting hit by the buss is a bigger threat on campus.
People were saying *at the time* that y'all were being ridiculous. The left has *never ever ever* had the power the right tried to pretend it had, and look at how fucking powerful the right is now.
Be real man, how many sexual harassment complaints do you have? It’s always sex pest professors and Nazi race scientists with tenure that bitch about this. A student yelling at you for saying bad shit is not in the same reality as kidnapping people and throwing them in a death camp.
People protesting right-wing speakers were protesting the people WHO ARE DOING THOSE THINGS RIGHT NOW. The people doing these things NOW wanted to do these things 10 years ago and were working to make them a reality TODAY.
No one's saying that, but to *continue* focusing on "disinvitations" while people are being bundled up and sent to jail for writing op-eds is incredibly dumb
Also, people at the time DID warn that " cancel culture" was it b******* right-wing narrative that they would use to explode their authoritarian power.
Just because OP thought those people were wrong doesn't mean they didn't exist.
Comments
You’re the one who made the original false comparison, Einstein.
The fear was in 2015 that the Rightwing would go full Nazi if given a chance.
Those same shitferbrainz alt-right fascist speakers sanewashed and normalized exactly what we’re seeing today.
This false equivalency is what allows this administration and their followers to justify their actions.
You go on to say the magnitude varies. That is an understatement in the extreme.
And, finally, as I reposted from Kevin Bird
tl;dr - you must be strongly opposed to yourself here
kinda a weird word to miss
Complaining about speech from protests is claiming not all free speech is free; therefore, it suppresses speech.
Why do you dislike free speech?
The “illiberal left”? Never had any money or institutional backing.
The leftists i knew were always obviously scorned by the university. But ya’ll stood up for shapiro lmfao
Absolute baby brain that you managed to convince yourselves that college leftists and TPUSA were remotely comparable.
And, holding the same elitist pretension, you have the nerve to say that nobody could’ve predicted MAGA doing overt Nazi shit in 2015?
Yall ruined countless students’ educational experiences, put their safety at risk, smeared them as illiberal free speech destroyers, and gaslit us the whole time.
Theyve always been nazis, you were just deeply committed to being a stupid cunt about it
Also, we're asking you to understand that 30 is not a particularly large number given the size of the US college system and getting hit by the buss is a bigger threat on campus.
the things suggested by those who were being protested led to this.
don't be obtuse so you can feel above the moment.
Just because OP thought those people were wrong doesn't mean they didn't exist.