Moral censure is hardly "Orwellian". Most proponents of free speech believe that the more people are exposed to different opinions, the more they will reflect and decide. But if we somehow rule out any opinion which censures other views, have we not closed the door against that possibility? Of course people may think a thing even without hearing it as an opinion from others, but a good part of current leftist analysis is critiquing unconscious bias, and asking people to reflect about it. That would be precisely the type of views that are much less likely to spontaneously arise without hearing someone else say it.Robert Tulip wrote:Australia has just had a change of Prime Minister from Malcolm Turnbull to Scott Morrison, with conservatives hoping that Morrison will be more active in support of agendas such as freedom of speech, in view of this Orwellian syndrome of political correctness becoming a method of thought control.
There was a movement, for awhile, to morally censure Masters and Johnson for asking people about their sex lives. If people didn't know that others engaged in behavior that violates norms, then they would be less likely to engage in it themselves. That isn't Orwellian. In fact it has been the default for millennia. It does oppose free speech, of a certain kind. Most of us can recognize it as advocating censorship. Yet where were the advocates of "religious liberty" when that proposal came down the line.
By STEPHEN CHAVURA can we expect the protections of freedom of speech that were promised during the same-sex marriage debate?
The Prime Minister would do well to honour the deeply conservative instincts of many voters and the historic party membership base by opposing the increasingly authoritarian political correctness characterising so much of the Left.
Well, sometimes the right to free speech is just used as a pretext for privilege. The real test is whether a "side" is just as open to permitting ideas they disagree with as they are to permitting their views to be heard. I am certainly not up on the state of free speech in Australia, but I would argue for "de-platforming" segregationists and white supremacists in the U.S., but not for preventing them from publishing their hate speech. We are not obligated to support stupidity or oppression, but that doesn't mean we prevent their advocates from expressing their views.The right to free speech, to the cultural Marxist, is like property rights to the classical Marxist — a mere pretext for those in power to maintain their privilege.
I had a friend once who argued that we should give Creationists their voice in science textbooks. Despite the fact that he understood Creationism has no place in science, doesn't do science, and stands in opposition to fundamental principles of science. "It's someone's perspective" was his argument. Well, sorry, we do not have to publish and teach everyone's perspective. That doesn't mean we make it a Thought Crime. We just point out the problems with it and de-platform it.
Of course this is a hot mess of false dichotomies. Many of us believe in traditional marriage and LGBTQ marriage, both. Marriage is a good thing - why would it have to be "traditional" to be good? Are there no questions about feminism that don't support patriarchy? Last I heard feminists were criticizing each other. Isn't that "questioning feminism"? Does this person really believe that people don't do their own thinking on racism and multiculturalism, independent of claims by a few academics that you have to be for one or the other?The identity-politics Left dreams of a cultural revolution in which people no longer think in LGBTQ-phobic, racist and patriarchal ways. Of course, by LGBTQ-phobic they mean belief in traditional marriage or criticism of transgender ideology. By racist they mean being critical of multiculturalism. And by patriarchal they mean anything that questions feminism.
So there are no people in these categories who have faith in persuasion? Last I heard that was the whole point of "correctness" - you are going to do things right. Comme il faut, as the French say (correctness is the German version). A certain amount of cultural policing goes along with that - just not compulsion.Political correctness, cultural Marxism, identity politics — call it what you like — can never embrace freedom of speech, because it ultimately seeks to shape and control culture, which cannot be shaped and controlled so long as one of the greatest shapers of culture — speech — is beyond its control.
Wait, this is implying there are no medical issue involved. If a person speaks out against vaccinations, claiming there are studies linking them to pernicious effects, a medical board would be doing its job to ask the person to back it up. I don't know what van Gend said or whether there were medical issues involved, but the complaining opinion piece doesn't bother to say. This is just an illustration, in the author's mind, of "honouring the deeply-held conservative instincts of many voters." In the author's view, it doesn't matter if there was a medical issue involved, what matters is that the medical board is taking a view that many people disagree with. Call me elitist, but my default is to trust the experts.Take the case of David van Gend, a Queensland GP who has come under scrutiny by the Medical Board of Australia for tweeting against transgender ideology.
The board received a complaint against van Gend’s views and is demanding he explain how his views promote the health of members of the LGBTQ community.
The board has gone from a committee that scrutinises the credentials of doctors to one that scrutinises their thought and speech on public issues. In other words, criticism of transgender ideology falls foul of the diversity revolution and therefore must be stamped out by destroying the livelihoods of outspoken opponents.
Again, I don't know any of the specifics, but this sounds much more dangerous. The threat of violence by some leads to de-platforming someone else for having controversial views. If we are going to have rights, the state has some obligation to keep violent people from taking them away.The University of Western Australia refused to allow a talk by a prominent critic of transgender ideology on the grounds that the event could result in violence perpetrated by leftist protesters.
Perhaps the issue was pre-judged, as this argument for "robust debate" implies. I have not seen medical evidence that there is something artificial or merely cultural about transgender claims, but maybe there is some out there. What I have not yet heard is the damage they do anyone else. Yet clearly there has been violence against trans people, and I hope we agree that the state should not be validating that to support "deeply held conservative instincts" of many voters.the diversity revolution seeks to silence its critics despite the fact that gender-confused children can only benefit from robust debate regarding treatment within the medical community.
I tend to agree with this analysis, though it might depend on the extent to which Southern and Molyneux are pursuing provocation for its own sake, Alex Jones style, or have something valuable and underrepresented to say. A quick check of the internet suggests they are engaging in heavy distortion and drastic stereotyping to oppose unpopular ideas like the honouring of treaties with aboriginal people. I dunno - would it be so wrong to charge the security costs to a group sponsoring David Duke or Raul Castro as a speaker?The same sort of thugs’ veto that was allowed at UWA has been imposed by Victoria Police on the organisers of the recent Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux speaking tour. The organisers were presented with a bill for $67,842.50 for the police personnel required to subdue Antifa. That’s right, the organisers, not the violent mob, were pursued for the costs imposed on the police budget. Victim blaming, anyone?
These cases are not, strictly speaking, examples of speech rights being abrogated, but they are examples of speech rights being heavily taxed to the point of being nearly impossible to enjoy without significant cost to career and livelihood. Conservatives have the right to free speech just as long as they are prepared to be bankrupt or unemployed.
Well, is there oppression or not? The author is unwilling to take a position. Coming from a country where white people wanted to deny access to public accommodations to black people, and defended it as "freedom", this sounds like another false dichotomy to me. Southern and Molyneux, for example, are transparently engaged in supporting white oppression. How much support is the country supposed to provide for that? I tend to think the bill for controlling antifa violence should be on the public, or charged to the antifa if that is the customary procedure against violence, but it hardly looks to me like someone is trying to enforce thought-policing.As long as the identity-left sees the great problem of modern society in terms of oppressive thoughts and speech directed at a class of victims, then the Left will see freedom of speech as nothing more than mere pretext for continued white heterosexual male oppression.
That's more than a little bit crazy. Thought conformity is the rule, not the exception. We always focus on the controversy, being little NPD's inside, but mostly people don't bother to challenge general views, including many that are set up specifically to enforce systems of power and privilege based on identity.And yet just as communism needed to eradicate property rights to bring about its economic uniformity, so the new Left needs to eradicate freedom of speech to bring about the thought uniformity that, ironically, constitutes its diversity utopia. Freedom of speech and thought conformity coexist no more easily than property rights and economic equality.
It is a standard Narcissistic Personality Disorder approach to claim that any restriction on them is unfair, even while advocating the same kinds of restrictions on others. I am quite happy to believe this writer is more fair-minded than that, but the supporters of Southern and Molyneux, not so much. Picking and choosing your support of free speech, like the current effort to define criticism of Israeli settlements as "Anti-Semitism" is a way to undermine credibility fast.