Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences. Much like you're free to offend, the other side is free to be offended and employment goes both ways. Firing someone because they fundamentally disagree on how the company should be run is not censorship, it's keeping only people who align with the direction you're headed.
Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, just like in the USA?.
Yes. In the USA you can stand in front of the White House and shout "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished. Equally, you can stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell "Down with Reagan!", and you will still not be punished.
I think what you are saying can be perceived (and maybe it inherently is) partisan, in the sense that it focuses on one aspect entirely to prove a larger point - I think we are missing out on many of the things that the right restricted - good ol' Fifties' McArthyism of course comes quickly to mind, but I think through much of the history (but not all!), and certainly throughout the global geography, it was the conservative / establishment voices that had the power to restrict progressive speech. If instead, in your post you made a point that going against the cultural zeitgest of the times is always inherently risky and with consequences, you'd have been far more engaging and accepted rather than focusing on one side and attaching a ranty YouTube about "wokeness". It especially doesn't sound non-conspiratorial and non-partisan once you talk about "evil influences" and "this war will be won" - that means we're not having a discussion, you're preaching a specific point of view.
(FWIW, I don't like either side overzealously restricting what's permissible to discuss - I'm in my own world of no mental or verbal taboos and a marketplace of ideas, which is the rarest side of all it turns out -- neutral simply means all sides can gang up on you :D )
I actually appreciate your reply being relatively measured. You're right in that my post would be more accurate if I said "what I said above is neither partisan nor conspiratorial", because later on I do take a very partisan stance.
I also didn't mention things like McCarthyism because:
A) I'm not very familiar with it.
B) From what little I've heard, McCarthyism seems to me like an failure in that it didn't go far enough where it should and went too far where it shouldn't.
C) I don't see it as relevant to today's culture war, which is a consequence of the left having successfully gained cultural ascendancy and become an incredible threat to our country.
Edit 2: I remembered faintly reading about McCarthyism once, and it turns out I'm right: I read chapter six of "Debunking Zinn", titled, "Writing the Red Menace out of history." To quote from the chapter:
"Senator Joesph McCarthy -- always an easy mark for the left -- is presented as representative of all anti-Communists. But it's a fact that Soviet expansion was enabled by Americans' lack of due diligence when it came to weeding out Communist spies."
And, to McCarthy's inffectiveness, the book says:
"Christopher Anddrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, among other anti-communists, claim that 'McCarthy ultimately did more for the Soviet cause than any agent of influence the KBG ever had'."
And later: "[McCarthy] was also not careful in making his charges, and he became more reckless as his drinking, some say, got worse."
Edit: "Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds" makes brief mention to this 1954 book defending Joe McCarthy: https://www.amazon.com/McCarthy-His-Enemies-William-Buckley/.... I have not read it, but if I were to learn more about McCarthyism I would probably personally start there.
From one book review:
"However, what I love most about this book is the authors challenge the reader to do his or her own thinking about communism in the 50's and what needed to be done during that time. They ask questions and then provide hypothetical answers which returns over and over again the same verdict. That rooting out communism and subversives in government was an extremely tough job, and it required a tough man to do the job, and he would have to play "hardball" to get the facts. To make the job even more difficult is that McCarthy was up against powerful establishments in all aspects of society."
Here's the deciding coin toss: can we both imagine there equally exist books defending current left restrictions on discussions, as there exist books defending mcarthyism? :)
Your comment is partisan. The implication you are making is the right does not participate in the activities you are pointing out. Regardless of how correct you are, you are making a political comment against the left on a site that tries to avoid political arguments. You are also using partisan trigger words.
Hmmmm. PathOfEclipse replied here with a similar quality comment to that I answered, which I replied to with HN guidelines. Now the comment is gone - confusing. This is off-topic, but I need this sentinel. Topic now removed from front page so I presume I am not creating refuse.
> truth, objectivity, and tolerance for opposing viewpoints
I think you are in the right place.
Here’s my opinion: make your own points without regurgitating obvious partisan “positions”; avoid flamebait partisan language such as “woke”; before writing perhaps consider if HN is the right forum for your content and choose the appropriate forum for your points; consider steel-manning your argument rather than right-handed punches to low hanging straw piñatas.
Reading your reply, you are repeating the same mistakes that I was responding to. An inappropriate comment about the “left”. Your response comes across to me as a hidden political dismissal that doesn’t acknowledge or respond to the simple point I made - I think your response is an irrelevant shift of the goalposts.
Meanwhile this thread is off-topic and a tree of responses is not appropriate. Your original comment has triggered divisive and controversial (flaming) responses from others - a strong indication your comment is objective and intolerant. If your comment is worthwhile, other people will defend your comment for you. At least you are checking your threads link.
Edit: meta: I am engaging with you for two reasons: 1) if your near future comments are too divisive then I would expect this thread to be looked at, and 2) I truly wish to read your future high quality, strong, thoughtful and substantive contributions. I try to analyse how good/bad my own comments are: https://danluu.com/hn-comments/
Neat, but juvenile. Now Show me the seminal research paper, or influential book, speech, or editorial from the right denouncing tolerance, objectivity or truth. Because I've already done that for the left, and I've provided references, one of which is from someone who is not overtly conservative (Ryan Chapman).
White Mythologies: Objectivity, Meritocracy, and Other Social Constructions ... Students will explore how systematic logics that position “the West” and “whiteness” as the ideal manifest through such social constructions as objectivity, meritocracy, and race.
It's not a trick. Fascists hate tolerance. The Klu Klux Klan - a very conservative group did not, in any way, want to tolerate black people. Rightists marched a few years ago chanting "Jews will not replace us". In the 1940s there was an effort by right-wing fascists to exterminate an entire race.
And they were not "conservative" in any sense except trying to "conserve" slavery. The elite intellectual "progressive" democrats of the time were also the most racist. They were the ones, for instance, that pushed eugenics for blacks (Planned Parenthood), and racial superiority based on scientific data:
> The elite intellectual democrats of the time were also the most racist.
Then as now, both parties were big tents and this isn't true, but it is true that the elite intellectual racists were more likely to be Democrats; that weakened in the overlapping pair of political realignments starting with the New Deal, especially the second one triggered by LBJ’s support of the Civil Rights Act.
The first schism between the national Democrats and the racists that went to form the “Dixiecrats” (itself triggered by integration policies supported by national Democrats) fell apart because the Dixiecrats weren't viable as a major party on their own, but the the second schism triggered by LBJ became permanent when the Republicans made attracting the disaffected racists a durable political strategy. That group of proud and open racists migrated from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party between the 1960s and the 1990s, which is why the Confederate-flag waving, openly anti-black, slavery-justifying-and-minimizing, etc., crowd is now consistently behind (or in front leading) the GOP.
> Then as now, both parties were big tents and this isn't true, but it is true that the elite intellectual racists were more likely to be Democrats
Forget it, you're arguing against a bad faith argument.
OP said something along the lines of the "KKK was a conservative groups". GP's response was "ackchully the KKK was Democrats, as if "Democrat" was the opposite of "Conservative".
You're right. I falsely equated "progressive" and "democrat". I wasn't very familiar with KKK politics, but reading up, it looks they definitely had some strong conservative aspects.
"During the heyday of the Progressive movement in the early 20th century, people on the left were in the forefront of those promoting doctrines of innate, genetic inferiority of not only blacks but also of people from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, as compared to people from Western Europe.
Liberals today tend to either glide over the undeniable racism of Progressive President Woodrow Wilson or else treat it as an anomaly of some sort. But racism on the left at that time was not an anomaly, either for Wilson or for numerous other stalwarts of the Progressive movement."
I agree with that, and apologize for taking such an antagonistic view towards your original comment. There are certain lines or prases that make my mind jump directly to cliche. It's easy to go all "to arms" after you've wasted too much time on the internet.
>The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated and people are free to express a non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized from society
This leftist vs non-leftist idea doesn't seem to align with the article. You seem to be saying that if the letter had been more leftist, they wouldn't have been fired from SpaceX. I don't think that's the case.
That's because the left have so far failed to exert their influence on SpaceX like they have other companies. I can cite plenty of other cases where a tiny minority of leftists pulled a similar stunt on or at a different company and succeeded in their objectives.
"An official Target company Twitter account announced Thursday they had removed author Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” from the retailer’s “assortment” after an unverified Twitter user complained the book questions transgender ideology, especially the concept of irreversible hormonal and surgical experimentation on minors."
This article is proof that non-leftists are firing people. If the goal is to stop people being fired for speech, then we shouldn't be focusing purely on leftists, but on all sides.
1930s consertatives in many places in the world were literally the original fascists. The ones in the US might not have been, but they were probably too busy forming the second Ku Klux Klan and trying to whitewash the Confederacy.
1930's German fascists took a lot of ideas from the US South's Jim Crow laws. I didn't realize this until I saw a display about it at the Dokumentationszentrum in Nuremberg.
The Nuremberg racial laws were particularly influenced by the laws implementing American anti-Black racism once the descendants of Africans abducted into enslavement were nominally free.
If you never want to sleep easy again, tour the section exploring how Germany went from fragile democracy into the state that was, within less than a decade, willing and able to systematically murder millions. Germans aren't special.
> the KKK was entirely aligned with democrat party
You might be interested to look a bit more at the history of the parties and how their conservative/progressive tendencies wax and wane over time. Saying the KKK was aligned with Democrats as not helpful without context of time.
Kevin Kruse (https://mobile.twitter.com/KevinMKruse) writes a lot about this, which is how I learned that in days gone by, I would have despised the state of the Democrats and embraced the Republicans - their policies were almost the total opposite of what you'd expect.
It's the Democratic party, there is no such thing as the democrat party.
I take it you're not at all familiar with Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, and it's embrace of the Dixiecrats, or actually quite a lot of relevant American political history
I never mentioned any political parties, but ideology. The social order was slavery and racism, and people that wanted to conserve it were conservatives.
Other than your first paragraph, which is reasonable, your name dropping is doing a poor job of hiding your very weak understanding of history, philosophy, and political theory.
Get off the internet and talk to an actual human who knows what they're talking about.
> The culture war is really around the fruits of the labor of leftists who have fought extremely hard to shift our tolerance window as far left as possible. If you say something they don't like, they will work to impose every consequence they can to both silence you and scare others into compliance.
are you talking about people being fired from their jobs for saying/doing things the company didn't like?
> The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated and people are free to express a non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized from society, and when the left starts prioritizing truth and objectivity over winning.
is that why fox news is the #1 most-watched new channel? how about on youtube? how many views do ben shapiro and tucker carlson get vs insert-any-leftist-here?
im not seeing this vast left-wing conspiracy, but maybe you can enlighten me....
An example of suppression and silencing is: twitter! https://lidblog.com/twitter-censors-conservatives/. There are, of course, many other examples. Twitter silenced the hunter biden scandal at election time. The story turned out to be true and could have swung the election. Youtube has been restricting, shadowbanning and explicit banning conservatives for a long time as well:
It's always great when all the falsehoods are attributed to "anonymous sources".
A culture war is fought by winning hearts and minds, one by one, and also taking back influence, institutions, and power.
A non-leftist political opinion would be that the 2020 riots were worse for our country than January 6. an NFL coach recently got fined $100,000 and faced severe backlash for expressing this opinion: https://www.dailywire.com/news/nfl-coach-jack-del-rio-apolog....
Elon takes the “freedom from consequences” interpretation of free speech when it comes to his complaints about twitter and “cancel culture”, then turns around and effectively cancels these employees for speaking their mind.
Twitter is hardly the only platform you can use to broadcast your opinions. Being fired from your job is just as likely to massively reduce your ability to get your message out to others as is being blocked from posting on a single privately owned messaging service, if not more so.
Legally I doubt either could be seen as being in contravention of any free speech laws, but it's fair enough to see Elon's actions as somewhat hypocritical.
"Being fired from your job is just as likely to massively reduce your ability to get your message out to others."
Sorry what ? This is objectively incorrect. If you get banned from social media - twitter, facebook/whatsapp, youtube, your messaging reach is utterly destroyed compared to simply getting fired from a job.
If you're Elon Musk perhaps.
But for most people being banned from a single social media site is hardly a great imposition (there's little they can do to stop you signing up for a new account).
Whereas losing your job (or even the knowledge you're likely to) could very well leave an average person in a situation that they no longer have the resources or wherewithal to continue broadcasting their message to as wide audience (especially if previously that had been their co-workers in a large firm, as was the case in this situation).
Other than all the other social media tools out there, blogging, mailing lists, various online forums (including this one), letters to the editor, building your own networks with their own distribution channels etc., you're obviously right, before Twitter there was no such thing as free speech.
That's not what I meant by "building your own networks" - was referring to the traditional ways of building networks before the internet was even a thing.
Arguing that Twitter has some sort of magical status as the ultimate channel for broadcasting your opinions to the world strikes me as absurd. I barely use it, and when I do it's not to read opinions (I only subscribe to institutions/organisations that use it to broadcast important information). Pretty sure most people I know would say the same.
Twitter has a significantly bigger audience than every other channel combined. It’s like saying who cares if you’re banned from tv, radio and telephones, just send carrier pigeons like the old days
This is classic HN “introverted programmers don’t use it so clearly it’s worthless”. The “normies” aren’t on HN or IRC or browsing your obscure forum - they’re on Twitter and that’s it.
Numbers to back that up? Just googled and Twitter seems to have a pretty modest market share compared to FB. And I don't know how you'd compare it to other channels that aren't classified as social media (including non-digital ones).
Free speech laws protect individuals from government prosecution, full stop. It has nothing to do with private employees and employers. There's a potential labor law (retaliation) issue here, but it's not a free speech issue.
Twitter is a public space, because being a public forum for speech is the essence of what Twitter does. It's privately owned, but like a privately owned mall, it is "open to the public" and therefore at least some free speech protections apply.
“the more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.” (Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 506 (1946).
The Supreme Court has since backtracked on the Marsh opinion somewhat, but some states such as California have ruled that reasonable exercise of speech and of petition rights on privately owned shopping malls are protected activities.
> Where do you click "I agree" when visiting a shopping mall?
There is usually an inconspicuously posted sign that indicates 'no loitering, no spitting, no foul language' etc. or they reserve the right to throw you out.
Twitter isn't a public forum for speech. You need to have an account to use Twitter, for which you agree to abide by Twitter's terms of service, in which Twitter reserves the right to moderate and ban content as they see fit. Marsh v. Alabama applied to physical property and AFAIK hasn't been definitively extended to online "properties" like Twitter.
In Manhattan Community Access v. Halleck[0], however, the Court ruled against the premise in regards to a public access television station, and maintained that the station remained a private actor despite being a "public forum."
Freedom of speech means very specifically being free from consequences/prosecution from the governing body, and makes no claims about speech in the private sector or private houshold.
To focus the scope, it means openly criticizing the governing body is protected and not a punishable offense _by the government_ (people can and have been let go for political posts on social media written from their home, if the employer felt it was damaging to the company's reputation).
And no, literally billions of people in the world do not have that right.
That's not a definition, it just constrains the universe of possible definitions. Hence you can't come to this conclusion because you still haven't defined it well enough to say who in the world has it and who doesn't.
I don't believe Elon ever stated Twitter has no right/freedom to ban (he does say a lot of bizarre things, and I don't follow too closely), but correct me if I'm wrong. Disagreeing with the Twitter policies is not the same as believing Twitter is not free to establish such policies.
Twitter is free to ban Trump or others, regardless of whether Elon Musk owns Twitter. Whether to implement a ban is a decision their management can take, or not take.
