"Consequences" of free speech

[LargeChoonger]

This is the go to gotcha I normally see from liberals/leftists. It's usually followed up by the assertion that private entities can do whatever they want and you aren't entitled to services. But as recent events have demonstrably proven, they also include financial stability and basic government services in their definition of consequences. They use strawman arguments like harassing and intimidating wage workers or causing public disturbances (actual crimes and therefore not a representation of free speech) as evidence of these supposed private consequences. I think the mask is more or less off at this point. They want to abuse loopholes to silence their critics and play the high road victim in the process

 

[Breadbassket]

The "progressive" causes of the left have a long history of using perceived moral superiority as a shield to deflect criticism and as a weapon to say "we are right, you are wrong" despite their own latent hypocrisy in many cases. You get used to it.

 

[Angry Alt Right Nerd]

'muh private companies' is pretty much what everyone unironically supported on the internet (and many in real life) back in 1990s, they're simply bringing this idea to its logical conclusion, and they're far more ruthless, cunning, and willing to win than the 1990s lolbertarians will ever be. As Null said, you are prey animals. Not just physically - a herd of gazelle could physically fight off a lion, but that will never happen because mentally they are prey. Although I think it's more accurate to say you're domesticated animals.

 

[shameful existence]

For me, the strongest argument against free speech has been that it's almost unprecedented, historically. The means, methods and targets change, but every system protects itself.
We are right, you are wrong it's always been.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

They don't want "free speech", but to be free to say their own speech without the consequences. I think Null said it best when it comes to eventually getting to the point where freedom of expression will become nonexistent unless something gets done to change the course of how the Internet can be regulated into not being a pawn for controlled (or government controlled) opinions.

If anything, Christopher Hitchens summed it up:

 

[AgendaPoster]

The "left" is correct here. There is no such thing as political speech without consequences, and the "person is political" is a true statement.
Attempting to depoliticize society is not going to work for now. This idea of an apolitical, neutral-ish society comes from the End of History era that set in after the USSR collapse and the colorblind liberalism of the 90s, coupled with increased freedoms for such groups as gangsta rappers or death metal "satanist" types with controversial lyrics that intentionally crossed known borders. This peaked somewhere around the Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and Eminem era, where the consensus was deeply nihilistic and "everything legal goes", and where no speech had consequences.
This era will not return until one of the sides wins our culture wars and provides a new era of stability, consensus and boredom, that will be tested by future kids yet again.
Free speech is one of the weakest constructs on the planet, yet it's still worth defending strategically, but in your hearts, you should understand that you do that because of pragmatism to achieve some sort of goal, not for idealism.
The "left" has great critiques of many societal and systemic issues. The problem is that the "left" does not understand that this postmodern idealism and deconstructionism are simple tools, and can be used by the right. This maybe controversial to say, but IMO truths should be accepted as such even when inconvenient. The problem is not the truth itself, but what you should do about it.
Let's say that we acknowledge implicit bias exists (it does - we're all "racist", some just hide it). Now you have to do something. The left wants it out in the open and discussed, because they trust their capacity to promote their ideas and convince society to be "better" - striving for an ideal.
The right is so cowardly that instead of arguing that yes, sure, bias exists, but it's a natural consequence of tribal belonging and you should leave people alone to associate with who they want, they'd just try to say "no we're actually not biased, the left are the real racists for seeing color etc.".

 

[ロボ﹏§¤r﹏h¶rœ]

One 'consequence' of free speech, and perhaps the one your masters fear the most, is oversaturation of media landscapes with 'hate speech noise' - so much that people become immune to it, apathetic to attempts to arouse grievance and simply shrug at yet another 'gas the kikes'/'nigger monkeys go back to Africa'/'whypipo owe me'/'all illegals are criminals and rapists'/'kill all Muslim/Christian/Sikh scum'/'shoot the cops/schoolteachers/capitalists/whomever votes [X party]'. The demand for your product (hate/'WE ARE NOT LIKE THEM' message package) is 0 as everybody got bored and subconsciously filters out the spam by pattern-recognition.

Ulitilisation of militant identity politics to manipulate the masses becomes impossible in such a scenario. The cattle becomes unpredictable and difficult to control, we don't want that.

 

[Smunchy]

Progressives don't actually abide by their own terms. It's rules for thee but not for me.

I can be racist but you can't. It's only acceptable for a private business to enforce my beliefs. I can publicly call you out but you need to be silenced. You're evil but my hatred is justified. Your opinion doesn't matter but mine is the most important thing right now.

 

[DamnWolves!]

It's usually followed up by the assertion that private entities can do whatever they want and you aren't entitled to services. But as recent events have demonstrably proven, they also include financial stability and basic government services in their definition of consequences.

Nobody on that side of the aisle ever talks about why the Founders thought the first amendment to be necessary. In the 1700s, in what was still a largely feudal system, the distinction between English government and English elites was non-existent. One wonders what the Founders would have thought of those who owned the British East India Company if they had attempted to abrogate freedoms of Americans the same way Twitter or Meta or Google have been.

I suspect the answer would have been cannons across the bow and dumping tea into the harbour until they cut that shit out.

All that's to say freedom of speech is not just a government necessity, but also a moral good.

 

[David Brown]

Let's say that we acknowledge implicit bias exists (it does - we're all "racist", some just hide it). Now you have to do something. The left wants it out in the open and discussed

What did he mean by this? The last thing the Powers that B want is a free and open discourse on race.

 

[NoSpiceLife]

What did he mean by this? The last thing the Powers that B want is a free and open discourse on race.

Majority of leftists/progressives/society/damn it, everyone, don't understand the first thing about what implicit bias actually is, if any of them do, they have hidden it so well they have forgotten. They just use the result as a 'you are not worthy to be heard, therefore you will do as you are told, you bigot.'

 

[nym]

"Yeah but muh private entities can..." are the words of the unprincipled.
Before it was a law, free speech was a principle. That is, it's an ethic you hold in primary importance, and it's that principle that begets the law.
We all know what principle sounds like, "... but I would fight to the death for your right to say..."
... those unprincipled fucks. They won't ever fight for jack shit. Not for you, anyway... well, maybe for themselves. But it requires a lack of principles to look the other way.
The. Unprincipled. Fucks.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

If saying something has consequences then it's not free by definition. The idea that a company should not be affected by it is insane as, it's not only a massive loophole (as we see now with big tech censoring sites for the feds), but also can make modern life impossible (imagine Apple breaking every phone of Conservative voters).

 

[The Ugly One]

The argument isn't made in good faith. Libs don't believe private companies should be allowed to do business with whomever they want. All they're doing is taking libertarian rhetoric and throwing it back at you.

 

[jertzog]

Freedom of speech but no freedom from speech's consequences from the speech's freedom of consequence from that speech's consequences of that speech's freedom's consequence's consequence.
The whole point of the argument is to lower fundamental rights to jungle law. Yeah, I can murder people who say things I don't like and I'm free to dole out consequences until the police arrest me. That's law of the jungle. Nobody's going to say there are no freedom from the consequences of your religion, because there's no enormous effort to control religion (yet).

 

[Grand Wizard Wakka]

The left is only against free speech and pro "Corporations can do whatever they want" because the left are in power and corporations are pandering to them. If corporations started denying service to trans people, they'd totally flip.

Likewise, the right wing is only claiming to be for free speech because they're the ones who's speech is being silenced. If they were in power, just like in the past, they'd immediately just start censoring anything that offends THEM.

99% of "free speech advocates" will eventually go "Well, except THAT, THAT crosses the line!" What _I_ do doesn't change or encourage anyone to do bad things. You're just being hysterical. What YOU do though will absolutely turn people into monsters and that's why it needs to be banned.

 

[The Ugly One]

Likewise, the right wing is only claiming to be for free speech because they're the ones who's speech is being silenced. If they were in power, just like in the past, they'd immediately just start censoring anything that offends THEM.

The political right didn't deny liberals access to financial services or the ability to access critical infrastructure. Largely, the left, including outright Marxists, successfully appealed to freedom of speech to keep their jobs and their university positions, which is a traditional American value, and therefore something conservative believe in.

This is an especially false equivalence given that the left, right now, in 2022, wants to be able to punish you for questioning government policy and procedures. Outside of wartime, when was this ever the position of a mainstream political faction in America? Even in wartime, for the last century, the consensus was that Wilson vastly overstepped the constitutional powers of the President. So no, I don't think we've ever been here in America, and that includes when we were trying to ferret out Communist traitors.

 

[Runch]

The next time you see someone saying "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences," remind them that everyone living in North Korea has complete and total freedom of speech; they can say anything they want, they just have to be prepared to accept the consequences.

If they feel compelled to not say certain things, that's because they're afraid of the consequences, much like anyone choosing not to exercise their right to speech in America.

 

[Murenu]

For me, the strongest argument against free speech has been that it's almost unprecedented, historically. The means, methods and targets change, but every system protects itself.
We are right, you are wrong it's always been.

I've always felt that in spirit free speech meant the ability to not have a good faith viewpoint restricted, not the restriction of anything literally defined as "speech"—especially when taking intent into account. What I mean is, it's consistent to interpret criminalizing the yelling of fire in a movie theater when there's no fire as not a violation of free speech, because it's an intersection of speech and intent that is explicitly for the purpose of causing a commotion. There's no debate here.

Even so, this realistic and theoretically concise definition becomes problematic in practice because we tend to "mindread" our political opponents as not arguing in good faith when they say something we deem controversial. Using my own definition of free speech, criminalizing holocaust denial is indeed a violation, but if you look at the arguments of ANYONE who justifies those laws, in addition to other things, they're heavily predicated on the explicit belief that 100% of holocaust deniers/revisionists are bad faith actors and foaming at the mouth anti-semites who deep down KNOW they're wrong.

Personally, I know for a fact that the latter belief is mostly not true; in my experience, holocaust deniers genuinely believe what they're saying. The rest is true just sometimes. Yes tons of them are Neo-Nazi spergs who hate Jews, but functionally all of them are legitimately misinformed about the more nuanced details of the Holocaust that explain away those apparent "discrepancies" that tend to lead to revisionism when ruminated on too much. Confirmation bias is also not really the same as knowingly lying.

On a broader level concepts like "hate speech" are pretty fuzzy, and can fall into the "fire in a movie theater" category, but also can fall into "technically true, but has offensive connotations". Stating that Jews are overrepresented in various institutions is an objective fact—stating "jews control X" sometimes just MEANS that, not per say an organized conspiracy, let alone that most Jews are involved or accountable, but many people do not interpret that as a neutral statement.

Admittedly, it frequently isn't, so I'd imagine it's theoretically possible you can get arrested for hate speech for simply stating a fact. Pure utilitarianism is used to justify restrictions on free speech, and the issue is so many ideas can theoretically be used as a justification to commit violence independent of whether they're factual or logically consistent or not. Invariably you're just gonna restrict the truth if you believe people's lives are at stake, and unfortunately, from a utilitarian perspective, you wouldn't necessarily be "wrong".

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

It's a disingenuous assertion from them by default because they hold actual institutional power. The second they lose their grip at all their tune changes, look how they melt down over one actually somewhat conservative president getting a single term, or one social media app shifting slightly back towards neutrality (but still heavily favoring libtard lunatic sensibilities).

Permanent neutrality will never be achieved so a set of morals will be imposed, a society must have norms and boundaries, it's just a question of whose. Absolute free speech has never existed anyway, time to just rip the bandaid off.