"If such a "hecklers veto" is allowed to the only speech that occurs will be that which no one cares enough about to shout down.

I often see many on this forum suggest far left cancel culture is not really a thing while pointing at Right cancel culture instead.

The problem note here is very much a monster of the left, imo.

This type of leftist extremism and cancel culture is, imo, what has spurred much of the Right deplorables cancel culture who take it to the next level when they willing use their majority, where they have the power to use government and the law to cancel.


This topic brought to you via my Twitter feed and the Letter 'H'.










And here is the video link to the students behaving badly.



Comedy heckling and protest is just another example of the intolerant left.

A heckler's veto isn't people being loud or drowning you in noise. A heckler's veto occurs when the government shuts down a speech or event, because of what they think will be the reaction if they don't. The typical reason for something like this would be to do it in the name of public safety.

I know that the term has been diluted and used to imply people using noise to drown out speakers, but this dilution is both bad and dangerous.

The notion that this is somehow not acceptable or dangerous for free speech is wrong. If we took that principle to heart, it would be a violation of free speech for an audience to boo politicians off stage. That is very dangerous principle we expect to find in tyrannies, not democracies.

Giving a person the stage, a soapbox or a microphone is handing them power. This is true regardless if they are a living saint, a neo-nazi, a comedian, a salesman or a lecturer. There are measures you can use to try and make sure the audience is compliant or peaceful, which generally means arranging it outside the public square (ticket sales, membership requirements, invitations, students only, community outreach etc). Depending on the event, this may or may not be good measures.

But once you decide to combine free speech and the public square, then yes, things will invariably get messy, noise and you'll be at the mercy of human nature, politics and opinion. There is nothing about free speech that requires proceedings to be polite, and trying to force it to be polite means giving enormous power to the person with the mic, stage or soapbox.

Can this be abused? Yes it can. Free speech is brilliant and necessary, but it is also very, very powerful and dangerous.

I thought the interview was very good. The professor made a good point that framing it as being about free speech is problematic, and that looking it as civil disobedience makes more sense. As he said, there are consequences for civil disobedience, which could mean removing those who try to shut it down.

In general, I think political and social discourse is headed down a very undesirable path. Many people are having an increasingly difficult time truly listening to others, and engaging in civil debate. This is just one symptom of that problem. Perhaps it is a symptom that we see more on the left, but the overall trend towards polarization concerns me much more than any one strain of it.

Yep. A point I've been making for a long time. Polorisation and division are a disaster for a democracy and it's potentially heading towards catstrophic levels where democracy breaks down.

It wasn't until the P forum at 2+2 that it even occured to me that some otherwise reasonable seeming people would support polorisation and division. I still dont get it. On the other hand it's very clear why it's exactly what extremists and authoritarians want it and why the likes of putin seek to stoke it.

No, they are not. They have in fact been a consequence of many of democracy's most important battles, such as the original fights for democracy, the fight for equal voting rights, the fight for civil rights and the list goes on.

Does anyone think the sides in those conflicts were on friendly terms? They were not, they despised and hated each-other.

Democracies have always been a mess and they will continue to be a mess. The day we stop being a mess, we're likely no longer democracies. "Don't rock the boat" is simply not the democratic way. It might be the way of those who prefer diplomatic compromise, and that's fine; the individual's preference is his / her own.

Sure, people roaming the streets and government buildings looking for a violent fight is antithetical to a well-functioning democracy, and things like Qanon is not a healthy substitute for political opinion. But that doesn't mean that division is bad.

And yes. Countries and other agents can exploit the democratic market of ideas. The answer isn't to attack the market, the answer is to strike back and strike hard.

The 'dont rock the boat' thing is a lie that i hope you wont repeat. I support rocking the boat - many of my heroes rocked the boat. Your point is generally a red herring and there's no disagreement on the importance of these battles. I'm generally more in favour of them than most. Pretty militant overall and I support brreaking the law as and when required. I dont support violence but that's the only area of real disagrement I have with some - even then i'm more sympathetic than many towards rioters for example. I also strongly support such things as hate speech laws.

It's just not the same as the problem of polorisation and division. That is a disaster.

I don't agree entirely with anyone who has posted in this thread.

t_d is correct that we need to distinguish between suppression or interruption of speech by the government and suppression or interruption of speech by random students, etc. The former of course has more potential for abuse than the latter. But it isn't clear to me that t_d would support time, place, and manner restrictions on speech. For example, imagine that someone invents a magic button that disables microphones for as long as the button is pressed. It's easy to imagine such a button being used to express a political viewpoint. Even so, I think it would be fine for the University of Virginia to prohibit use of such buttons at campus-sponsored events and to impose consequences on those who violate the rule. In other words, I think it would be fine to have a rule that treated use of the button as an act of civil disobedience that has mild potential consequences for the protester.

chez is our resident milksop on the question of polarization. I am unsurprised to hear him characterize polarization as an intrinsic evil. In fact, it is neither an intrinsic good nor an intrinsic evil. There have been many moments in history where dangerous people, people who lack ed humanity and decency, seized power or threatened to do so. Extreme polarization in those moments is more a sign of health than a sign of illness. On the flip side, a society where everyone invariably treats politics like SEC football -- that is, a society where you pick a team for whatever reason, willfully ignore the flaws on your own team, spend most of your time maligning the other team, and then die wearing your team's colors -- isn't functioning well either.

cuepee is naive if he believes that the American right is simply reacting to intolerance on the left. But he is correct that there seems to be a rising view among people on the American left, particularly students, that (i) they should not be unwillingly exposed to viewpoints with which they disagree, and (ii) organizations of which they are a part (e.g. universities) should not tolerate, much less sanction the appearance of, speakers who are right-of-center by U.S. standards. That perspective feels like emotional immaturity to me, although I concede that this is a line-drawing exercise on some level. I don't think universities should give a microphone to Richard Spencer so he can promote his views on race science. I don't think universities should give a microphone to Sidney Powell so she can promote conspiracy theories about the election. But few speakers are as noxious as Richard Spencer or as unhinged as Sidney Powell.

Its not an intrinsic evil. It's a disaster (and potential catastrophie) for democracy. I'm a fan of democracy. The rest of your point doesn't really make sense as I'm very much opposed to threats to democracy.

I'm sorry that you think it's cowardly to oppose dangerous people who lack humanity and decency. I think you're very mistaken. You do sound abit like the sort of idiots who think I wear a mask mostly to protect myself from covid.

From T_D's next post
I do agree with this

As usual in these matters, you make excellent points.

I'm a moderator on a forum who routinely deletes posts, infracts posters and sometimes bans accounts, so I'm really not opposed to the idea of restricting neither audiences nor participants.

My gripe is more the notion that these things getting a bit rowdy are an attack on the public square itself. It speaks to an idealization of the public square as some sort of polite political exchange of ideas and handshakes. I think in a democracy we fight each-other over ideas, and that we should do so. As long as we don't completely dehumanize each-other or turn violent (given that no matter how we twist and turn it, we're in this society together), that is fine.

There is also the point that certain formats rewards certain traits. For example, I'm a fairly well-spoken guy who knows how to string together a convincing argument or two. It's easy for me to weaponize calls to order in a setting that involve heated viewpoints. If I'm doing this to argue that 2+2=4, great... but it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that it could be a rotten tactic if used along more ideological lines.

The people in power want this division. They use labels to divide us based on ethnicity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, religion or political ideology. The more labels the better for them, as it puts everyone into their own special little box, and then they pit the boxes against one another.

It doesn't matter, right or left, they're both two sides of the same corrupt coin. They win by riling up the vocal minorities on both sides into a frenzy, getting people to demonize anyone who has an opposing viewpoint. Nobody wants to listen, to reason anymore. They want to be emotional and they want to be regarded as correct/right in their viewpoint, damn the other guy.

Those who are pulling the strings control the money, the power and the media. They are master manipulators and very good at controlling society to keep us divided, pointing fingers at one another, blaming each other for the ills, while they maintain their stranglehold on all the money and power.

The absolute last thing they want is for our society to be united, to view one another as human beings, as equals.

lol, chez when have you ever opposed a racist ******* on this forum?

I do stuff like suporting laws against neglect of children. And supporting hate crime/speech laws and so much more

I'm not a troll like you. Politics is a serious business not a childrens game

Unlike with T_D, i wont ask you not to repeat lies.

"Cancel Culture" is just a moral panic.

Its no worse now than at any point in my lifetime.

There has always been some excess somewhere where some tryhard over steps common sense on some issue, its a constant feature of human fallibility.

These things were always seized on by the right (in of course a deeply hypocritical way) but with the internet and with Russian agit prop seizing on the issue of Cancel Culture its become issue no1 for people who would be better off achieving some kind of consciousness actually based on their objective self interest and not obsessing at tilting at a windmill.

Its absolutely no accident that Putin made a massive authority call to cancel culture in his speech the other day, claiming the west was trying to Cancel Russia, it was a direct appeal to the derp group think collective it has put so much effort into establishing in the West.

That is exactly the balance captured in the video link debate and I largely agree.

That said, when certain groups (the rise of more progressives) can pretty much shut out any opportunity for opposing views to be presented in certain venues from political speech to comedy just by knowing they can show up en masse and scream and shout and shut down the ability of anyone to hear, that is a problem.

is it a problem akin to gov't doing it? No. Not even close. And that is tool the deplorable right likes to yield the most while talking about free speech and freedom.

But it is a problem, none-the-less and I think the university Dean captured it appropriately with this line "If such a "hecklers veto" is allowed to the only speech that occurs will be that which no one cares enough about to shout down.

The "such" being the operative word which is acknowledge this is not a real hecklers veto (as you say) but a lesser form of it, that does in fact pose some dangers.

chez,

Your reading comprehension is truly a mystery to me. My default would be to assume that I am the problem, but you are the only person who consistently misunderstands what I am saying.

I never said the bolded. I didn't say anything close to the bolded. I came very close to saying the opposite of the bolded. In situations where people in power lack humanity and decency, you have an obligation to oppose vehemently. And that vehement opposition often will result in polarized politics.

I am vermently opposed to people in power who lack humanity and decency. You called me cowardly because of some conclusion you think follows for holding that position. I think you are wrong. A bit like the people who think i'm cowardly for wearing a mask.

I am also opposed to polarisation. I do not remotely agree that being vermently opposed to people in power who lack humanity and decency means supporting polorisation eevn though some wil likely happen. Even in war we should be trying to avoid polorisation. You can disagree if you like - that's fine.

In a way I think this forum is illustrative of the changes chez is referring to. The split that pushed most of the right posters to the BFI and kept most of the centre/left in Politics.

That is a new phenomena for me, in a chat forum where engagement between 'sides' was what they were created for. And I think it causes a problem that was not foreseen as the attempt to quell unyielding battles may have been laudable but the trade off then is towards echo chamber bubbles that become increasingly intolerant to being penetrated. The very idea of raising certain things for discussion or defending certain things becomes the offense, and NOT the arguments being presented. There is an attempt to pile on, shut down, and drown out the other arguments so they cannot even be engaged and then lastly to call for Mods to sensor and remove them. And you see it equally in both forums.

I think that dynamic in this forum is exactly what we see more and more in society. It is not a willingness to engage, defend and debate ideas, or even to listen and call them deplorable. It is that we have different sides who believe the competing view has no place in discourse whatsoever and is to be shut down with malice.

One of the key things to realise about polorisation is that it's not an attack on the extreme elements at all. It's an attack on the middle with demands for purity if you want to be on our side while pushing into the weclome arms of the more extreme anyone who falls on the wrong side.

Do you think it’s racist to call Mexicans “cockroaches?”

.

"...Its no worse now than at any point in my lifetime. ..."

I won't engage the word 'worse' as it requires us delve into comparisons but would you acknowledge it is 'changing'?

That comedians, authors, etc for example are increasingly on the hit list at universities to drive away or shut down, if they have views that diverge from students (generally left) whereas in the past they, might face some resistance but ultimately did get to speak?

Or do you think the long line of comedians and authors who speak about this are just misguided?

Or, or, do you just don't think, even if true, it is of import?

In my view it is indicative of a much deeper trend and belief system. If you cannot tolerate a comedian showing up to do his schtick at a campus pub because he has in his repertoire some 'gay' and other such jokes, and so you show up as group to shut him down and drive him away, that is a problem. Just don't go. But there is a belief that 'others' should not be allowed. These are protected safe spaces for 'my thoughts only' and that is problematic.

I don't think the counter is to say 'that is part of their free speech or protest rights' as it is. That is not the question. The question is, is the flexing of these rights taken on a new bent. Much more focused on the micro level discussions or kernals of discussion to make sure they never happen. To me that is where the danger lies.

If you can stop the discussion before it happens at the high school level, or Uni level by making it so toxic, people never learn how to deal with dissent. How to debate other ideas as they are increasingly only subject to one side.

I think that changes how people perceive differences of opinion latter in life. 'We don't just disagree on that issue and can debate it' ...'that issue has no place being discussed and I will do everything to shut it down'.

That is what I see as changing. The foundations of discourse, dissent and even conflicts as being pushed as the wrong when those are all needed and healthy.

chez, I hope you ignore Trolly whose only goal in this thread will be troll and hope to provoke you into flame/troll exchanges, and not add a thing to the actual discussion.

its been an interesting chat so far.

Do you think it’s racist to call Mexicans “cockroaches?”

He has illustated that well once again. He is no interest in any political discussion. Just a troll

Cute troll so nice to play with him sometimes.

Hey chez, do you think it’s racist to call Mexicans “cockroaches?”