This take is wrong.
Free speech is the expression of ideas, not the right to verbally and psychologically abuse entire classes of people in their homes.
I'm against forced exposure to speech that normalizes and perpetuates abuse - in classrooms, broadcasts, or in other forums
Free speech is the expression of ideas, not the right to verbally and psychologically abuse entire classes of people in their homes.
I'm against forced exposure to speech that normalizes and perpetuates abuse - in classrooms, broadcasts, or in other forums
Inviting Bannon, someone who promotes language that minimizes trauma experienced by those who have been sexually assaulted, who weaponizes race, who works to divide and tear society apart for profit - he has every right to speak his mind.
But amplifying his speech is a choice.
But amplifying his speech is a choice.
If you build an identity based on for-profit minimization of others' humanity for political aims (and/or sedition), you should anticipate that you lose the privilege to be amplified in civil forums.
Freedom of speech is a proxy for a freedom of ideas. It also means responsibility for those ideas, which can include a loss of platforms and forums, when civil society disagrees with those ideas.
And any entity providing amplification to speech that harms others makes a choice to become an active participant in whatever bad acts that individual's rhetoric promotes.
The reason the attending public was so against Bannon's speech - they didn't want to be complicit, whether through contributing to the speaker fees he undoubtedly receives, or by being part of an event where he had an opportunity to further foment division.
Go ahead. Try to go a single day without hearing one of the fruits of Bannon's labor repeated, be it in the checkout line, or on the radio, or in commercials.
Unless you withdraw from all forms of communication and interaction with society, you can't.
Unless you withdraw from all forms of communication and interaction with society, you can't.
We have inalienable rights, but those rights should never be assumed to be free from concomitant responsibilities...
"Free speech" should also never be assumed to trump the freedom to not listen to speech that reasonably causes harm.
"Free speech" should also never be assumed to trump the freedom to not listen to speech that reasonably causes harm.
So. Go ahead, @bariweiss.
please, tell me how unreasonable for assuming that every citizen should have a right to avoid listening to contrarian speech acts that, rather than being productive, serve only to resurrect trauma in vulnerable populations- especially in theirownhome
please, tell me how unreasonable for assuming that every citizen should have a right to avoid listening to contrarian speech acts that, rather than being productive, serve only to resurrect trauma in vulnerable populations- especially in theirownhome
Promoting, amplifying, or providing a forum for the most divisive unproductive speech when others know what will be said and explicitly do not want to hear it lies somewhere between ideological clickbait and ideological onanism.
Leave crackpots to hurl abuse on the streetcorner - where they'll be held accountable for threats - don't force us to be exposed to it in our homes and work environments where we have zero recourse to avoid cruel +unusual punishment.
Unless that's, like, the @NYTimes' thing.
Unless that's, like, the @NYTimes' thing.
