The Limits of Free Speech

Dan, I reckon the redneck posse are on Coors.

As far as I know Billie Holliday was never knowingly bigging up the lynch party. I agree with Hanle y.

Very few people seem to have agreed. Apparently my mistake was in seeing ILM as being a mini-nation, with first amendment-style protection of free speech, when everyone else sees it as a bar. My point about lynching (and apologies if the sarcasm wasn't clearly signalled) was that the model of the bar as ideal civic space is not a very tempting one. Bars are feisty places policed by private security (invariably fascists). Being told that if you don't like it you can drink elsewhere is not a great comfort.

Yes, I am contradicting the point I made in my Freaky Trigger interview about how it would be pompous for Hispanics to 'represent' Chinese in their local radio stations in New York. But actually, the racial pluralism in the US often comes at a price, which is racial separatism. The Chinese and the Hispanics ignore each other completely. In Britain we at least try (less and less successfully, it seems) to get everyone in the same pub. If only on TV.

I still prefer the model of the nation to the model of the pub, because pubs only codify things like 'how to play darts' whereas nations try to codify things like freedom of speech. And I believe that harmony which exists only because you silence unharmonious elements is not worth having. As Milton said in 'Areopagitica', the virtue which is never tested by exposure to corruption is no virtue at all.

What seems to be bothering you is the idea that one person in particular is in a position to decide what constitutes Unacceptable Behaviour, which is a reasonable concern. But this being a fairly democratic place -- as evidenced by one post removal striking up such a lengthy debate -- I get the feeling that as soon as any moderator seems to be overstepping his jurisdiction, he'll be taken to task for it rather quickly. So in that sense, well done for bringing up the issue -- whether or not the removal was justified, I suppose it's useful to have someone playing devil's advocate in such situations.

Maybe kids today take spam for granted and don't hear alarm bells ringing when they see one moderator (Tom) protecting commercial activity while, not three inches downthread, another (Mark) fails to protect free speech.

I mean, really, was there really no-one else who got even the teensiest little bit worried by that particular scissors manoeuvre?

For a start, I object to the assumption that I posted what I originally posted for the sole reason of "using ILM as a place to sell tour tickets". Clearly, Nick, you never actually *read* the original post, chosing instead to simply use it as a springboard for your own agenda.

We keep a press agency for promotion, and we have actually spend a great deal of the past 2 days talking to regional press. If you'd read the post more carefully, you'd have actually realised the intentions were something else:

I quote I thought this might be a good excuse to have regional meet-ups for those posters who don't live in London or Oxford. Here is a list of venues and dates that we will be playing. If anyone can think of pubs or cafes near said venues, please feel free to post suggestions on this thread. How is this more offensive than, say, Ned's request for meet-ups, or Ally's open invite NYC bar crawls, or even the ILE free jazz picnic?

Second, my trepidation at posting said post on ILM was not based on any notion that I should not post "self promotion" but because I realised that to post such a sort of thing was basically akin to painting a target on my back and declaring open season as flamebait for people such as d**mp*tr*l along the lines of whatever I imagine the deleted message to have been.

Imagine my surprise at the fact that two of the people who have most voiciferously expressed their disdain at my audacity at such open self promotion and "spamming" are the two people most commonly guilty of it! Hypocrisy in action!

I stand by my actions. The censorship was not mine, nor was it asked for by me. Although the bar analogy may have its faults, I still maintain the idea of ILM/E as a community, and not a nation at large.

Actions within communities IRL have consequences. Had Denis or whatever his name is actually said something offensive to me in person, I'd have either ignored him or punched him, depending on my blood alcohol content. How Momus gets from a community defending itself against disruptive and personally offensive behaviour to the sweeping statements on censorship that he's made is definitely an Olympic Gold Medal World Record in jumping to conclusions.

In this instance, it evicted (and reprimanded) someone who was merely being bitchy in a way that wouldn't be out of place on the NME Angst page. I've now read a paraphrase of the offending post and it is completely tame. Only a paranoid dread of trolls could make it seem even remotely sinister.

Momus: Since you're arguing principles here, I have a question for you: Is there any sort of speech you see as worthy of restriction? Start with yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, work your way up through in-person verbal abuse, and let me know where your line is.

Second: in terms of a moderated discussion -- as it's been explicit from the get-go that this is a moderated discussion -- do you see any value in restricting certain forms of speech for the specific purpose of making the discussion as a whole more valuable to those who are interested in it? For example, in a "town hall"-style political forum, would you advocate giving an incoherent drunk unlimited time to make comments that don't seem to have any bearing on the proceedings? And if not, what differentiates that situation from this one? In both cases, the purpose of the moderation is to make the discussion more concise and accessible and pleasant toward those who are actually invested in it.

Again: just questions.

I was not worried because I trust the moderstors' judgement. If I didn't, I wouldn't post here.

I didn't mean to 'play the race card' with the Strange Fruit analogy, [...]

This statement worries me.

Of course you didn't, Momus, and that's what makes it so uncharacteristically idiotic that you did. You groped for a dramatic example to shore up your point and settled on that one only through a willful disregard for the actual dynamics of the situation.

But so long as you've created the analogy, how about this: would you argue that the Cotton Club was morally obligated to interrupt a Billie Holiday performance to give equal time to a Klansman who had something he wanted to share with the audience?

And by the way, you might be stretching by equating the post in question with an individual's "point of view." I haven't seen the post, but the impression I get was that it contained no identifiable argument or point of view other than deliberate antagonism.

The misplaced furour that this "censorship" has brewed is probably about 100 times worse than any flamewar that could possibly have errupted over my so-called "spamming".

I actually totally agree with (moderator) DG's position above. Remove pointless, long cut and pastes, commercial spam, whatever clogs the board up with boring irrelevancies. On the Momus website I have a guest book, and twice this week I've removed posts which were obviously spam, people posting long lists of records for sale, or links to computer warehouses, placed by spider programs. I think vigilance against anonymous, time-wasting profiteers is valid. I don't think it's valid to, as DG said, 'edit intellectual content', and I think that to argue that the poster has a personal link to Kate is not a good justification for doing so. It's precisely the impersonal attention of callous marketeers which threatens netlife, not the daily rivalries and alliances of community.

Start with yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, work your way up through in-person verbal abuse, and let me know where your line is.

Do you see any value in restricting certain forms of speech for the specific purpose of making the discussion as a whole more valuable to those who are interested in it?

The censored comment was on topic, entertaining in a rather vitriolic (I hesitate to say Ortonesque ;-) way, and even, I thought, rather affectionate to Kate. And I think the subsequent conversation has been rather exciting, don't you? It went from the Lollies to Milton.

Actually, I also think the subsequent discussion has been pretty good. Amazing, crappiness of the original "offending" post, veiled threat or no veiled threat... Hurrah for semi-censorship!!

Kind of a let-down after everything else that has gone on on this thread...

Having seen some version of the post's content, well: pulling it was probably not necessary. But I don't see Mark's judgment on that issue as particularly egregious or worthy of too much criticism beyond, "Hey, Mark, you probably didn't need to pull that."

Note: Why wasn't Momus this incensed by pulling the Japanese fecal porn thread? :)

Also, I find it totally hypocritical that Momus comes down so strongly against people trying to sell you things, when so much of what he posts around here seems to be determined to big up Momus and the Momus image, which I can only think helps sustain his fan base and thus bank account (or perhaps ego). Kate and Ally (huh huh) have criticized each other for 'self-promotion' but I think really they just both have strong online personalities and talk about themselves a lot. Momus seems to push that further by trying to propogate the cult of Momus much as a corporation is always, always, always pushing its brand image.

And finally, I know this is something of a hot-button issue for many people here, but I find it very disenheartening and personally rude when people immediately start talking about fascism just because we're talking about moderating a small internet forum. I don't like fascism either, but it would be nice if people remembered that it is just other people doing the moderation, attempting to negotiate a very problem-filled area - not a bunch of jackbooted Nazis. For christ's sake, people.

"Blimey! I've not had this much fun since that time I ordered a pizza to be delivered to the house opposite"

I'm thinking of collecting a lot of the 'censorship is good' slogans that have come up in these threads and sending them to Falung Gong or someone, to show them the sad truth that 90% of people in the west really don't care about their own or anyone else's free speech and can't be depended upon the help them.

I can only assume educators have stopped explaining the first amendment in American schools and colleges. At some point in the 80s or 90s people who called themselves liberals seem to have decided that allowing free speech is the same as allowing hate speech, or that, as Mark puts it, a free speech position is somehow a free market position.

Kate's big sigh of relief on hearing the content of the post, and her express wish that moderators not try to protect her feelings through misguided chivalry, hasn't made many people change their minds about the original decision to suppress a harmless post either, which is odd. It seems to me a perfect vindication of my arguments throughout.

Only DG spoke sanely about respecting intellectual content. Most others were positively cheering meaningless, random censorship, in a kind of scary 'Let's bomb Bagdhad!' way. Why? Can anyone explain this to me?

Random censorship would, perhaps, be quite cool - seeing as how the fact the message was cut has got everyone excited and wondering just what was in it, where as most people would probably have just skimmed over it had it been left in [OK, that's enough. The rest of this silly and abusive post has been deleted. Grow up 'jamesmichaelward']

Mark has turned his Superman costume inside out. He's now claiming to be the brave protector of shy newbies and herbivores, rather than of Kate, who can stand up to her own flamers, thank you very much.

Does this mean ILM is going to be the Disney Channel from now on? Are we going to have to stop the play every five minutes for announcements, Midsummer Night's Dream-style, that 'this lion, ladies, is just a man in a skin, fear not'?

Scrabbling around for weak minorities, children, newbies or grandmothers to justify suppression of dissent sucks. Come on, Mark, just admit that you were a little trigger happy and tell us it won't happen again and we can all be charmingly rude to each other again.

Jesus, Momus, I expect better of you! Surely you're aware that (a) it's not a "cliche" but an example drawn U.S. Supreme Court opinion, and more importantly that (b) it's obviousness and uniquity are precisely why I said "Start from 'yelling fire in a crowded theater' and work your way up."

Secondly, you consistently avoid defending precisely the part of your argument that everyone is disagreeing with, which is your apparent belief that this forum should operate based on the same ideals as entire national entities. Based on your previous point, you'd apparently have no problem with Falun Gong "practitioners" doing their excercises in your bedroom. I don't believe that's true, and it's only through sheer dogmatism that you continue to cling to this point without recourse to ever justifying it. I agree with your arguments -- I even agree with you that Mark was a little trigger-happy, even though I don't particularly blame him for it -- but I think you're being particularly stubborn by refusing to even acknowledge that there might be a difference between "free speech" in a public context and "free speech" within an organized "owned" space.

I say this not out of any sort of antagonism toward you, as I've always enjoyed your posts, threads, and music, and still get an odd thrill about the fact that you've performed a song about my previous employer. But your smarmy provocation and deliberate intellectual dishonesty in this discussion are beginning to resemble that of my country's president.

I don't like either of these discussions because it reminds me of my high school newspaper class. One spiteful and needless comment would be edited and the writer would become enraged. Then the rest of the hour would be spent discussing censorship the Big Evil and (even though we'd been over it many times) it could have been a mind- stimulating discussion. But no-one wanted to keep their emotions in check. Just like on the two I Loves. There is nothing I hate more than such needless ball-cutting drama. And I hate censorship!

lol

On ACLU changing it's policy: https://www.wsj.com/articles/aclu-changes-policy-on-defending-hate-groups-protesting-with-firearms-1503010167

― Frederik B, Friday, August 18, 2017 2:05 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not clear what this means in practice, would the ACLU refuse to offer practical support in getting permission for events going ahead if attendees are likely to be armed? or would they support events taking place, but rhetorically condemn them if attendees are armed, in which case is that a significant change from their current practice?

There's an interesting paragraph in this vox-explainer on the ACLU: https://www.vox.com/2017/8/20/16167870/aclu-hate-speech-nazis-charlottesville

But the ACLU has built its reputation, for decades, on the idea that there is no ideology so dangerous it doesn’t deserve vigorous First Amendment protections. “Going back to the organization’s founding in 1920,” says Strossen, “it was defending freedom of speech for anti-civil-libertarians, everybody from fascists to communists.” (This is something of a whitewash of the ACLU’s institutional history — like a lot of other establishment liberal organizations in the 1950s, it was too afraid of McCarthyism to defend Communists and even required members to abjure Communism in an oath — but it’s a decent account of its impact on the current state of free-speech law.)

Worth remembering when people say we need to defend principle even when they're benefiting nazis, so that they'll defend us when the tables are turned. When the table was turned, they were too cowardly to defend leftists.

all those ppl are dead i think

who else wants to water down the USA's free speech to Europe's level, besides Frederik and JiC?

Free speech but with irl sban system

that they'll defend us when the tables are turned. When the table was turned, they were too cowardly to defend leftists.

who is "they" -- the ACLU?

'establishment liberal organizations'

Hey there ACLU

So Fred, you believe that the ACLU et al. can only be trusted to defend right-wing causes, because they were complicit during the Second Red Scare, so to hell with everything?

no

To address the thread's OP: as a principle, I am against prior restraint of political speech, unless there is a clear prior demonstration of an intent to commit or incite civil violence.

In the case of groups like the KKK or neo-Nazis, they have sufficiently demonstrated such intent through almost all their prior actions and statements. When the very core of your political views embraces violence against minorities, subjection of minorities, exclusion of minorities and social rejection of minorities, then there's no reason to believe such speech is protected by the First Amendment. These groups should never be granted permits to hold rallies in support of these violent and abusive political positions.

Fight for the ACLU to stay on your side, specifically to adjust to a post DC vs Heller reality. Don't sit back and think 'principles' without power will save anyone.

have you read the original ACLU statement? it brought up some very interesting points. their main point was that in supporting the freedom to march, it supports the bad and the good, that it is as much a nod of support towards the good guys as the bad guys, that it also protects the left's ability to counter protest by making these statements. another really good point they made was that a potential legal solution of giving the gov't the ability to declare what protests are violent in nature could really backfire when used in the wrong hands. look at who is currently in charge, do you really want to give Trump that power? anti-hate laws could be (and would be) abused to completely silence opposition.