On Punching Nazis and other hyperbole

[mneme]

I'm willing to sing about punching Nazis, but I'm not willing to seriously advocate that doing so (or censoring them) is ethically and morally right.

Ken White (Popehat) has an excellent post as to why not. (oddly enough, -do- read the comments here).

Comments

Re: On the no-platforming of Nazis

[avram]

"No platforming" is a real thing. Talk to some British college students. It's an actual formal policy held by several UK schools.

As far as speakers libeling students, well, how about harassment instead of libel? When Milo Yiannopoulos spoke at the University of Wisoncin-Milwaukee last year, he outed a trans student, projected a photo of her onto the wall, and mocked her appearance. Fortunately for her, the photo had been taken early in her transition, and her current appearance is different enough that the people around her -- she was in the audience -- didn't recognize her. She immediately regretted having come in. "I didn't know if I was going to get attacked or not. I was just like, 'Dear god, I hope nobody recognizes me.'"

Not long after the Milo event, the student group that had invited Yiannopoulos to UW-Milwaukee received a threatening message ("Do not walk alone at night. Do not think you are safe in your dorm/home. We are coming for you! We are going to beat the shit out of yo.") via Facebook that might have made some of them feel that same fear that the trans student felt that night. Or maybe not. The trans student wound up leaving the school; the head of the right-wing student organization, on the other hand, says she's "over the drama of it all."

So, consider the contrast between those two messages. On the one hand, there's the "beat the shit out of yo" Facebook message, which would almost certainly be considered a legal threat that could land the sender in legal trouble if they were identified. (It was sent under a pseudonym, and the account was then deleted.) The recipient doesn't seem to have been affected by it. On the other, there's the threat inherent in Yiannopoulos's speech, which was protected by the law; the target of that message wound up leaving her school. Do you see what I was getting at, earlier, about how different communities have different levels of trust in the law?

Re: On the no-platforming of Nazis

[mneme]

Fair enough on the local thing, but...except with government support (ie direct censorship), you can't "no platform" someone in the general case; just prevent them from using your platform, i.e. avoid associating with their message.

I had the Milo/UW case in mind, although you added some interesting details. The question, fundamentally, is what the right response to a jackass like Milo speaking at your school is -- and somewhat differently, what the right method to combat his likely (or possibly stated; I don't remamber that much of the details) intent to harass and/or foster harassment of a student. Harassment is a weird case -- since our legal policy of mostly treating it as a tort doesn't work super-well.

The (justified) erosion of trust in law and law enforcement in certain communities is a big deal, of course, and kicks in proper behavior in the absence of working law and working collective/democratic methods. But WRT principles like "freedom of speech," and the like, the individual responsibility is not entirely dissimilar to the government one -- fundamentally, the US government doesn't refrain from unnecessary breaks on speech because it's in the constitution; we have a constitutional ammendment preventing censorship because it's the right thing to do, and that applies on an individual level at all. You don't need to listen to someone, or engage in commerce with them, but you shouldn't force them to stop thinking or talking a certain way, even if it's wrong.

Re: On the no-platforming of Nazis

[avram]

you can't "no platform" someone in the general case; just prevent them from using your platform

Which is another way of saying that depriving a person of access to a particular platform isn't censorship, right?

Anyway, the US government restricts speech for all kinds of reasons. Did you know that obscenity is still unprotected speech, and legally censorable? The definition of what's considered obscene has narrowed over time, though. And "fighting words" are still unprotected, which might have relevance to the issue of what sorts of things one can say that might lead to a riot.

Anyway, the line separating protected from unprotected speech has shifted over the 200-odd years that the First Amendment has existed, and it would be irrational to assume that we happen to have arrived at the perfect balance right now.