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Mallard's avatar

Richard Hanania wrote similarly here: https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1786080226344345765, noting that in practice, speech policies on campuses are more about their particular preferences than their nominal approach towards speech, in the abstract, with the corollary being that taking a harsher stance on anti-Israel speech would likely correlate with an environment more accommodating, rather than less accommodating of various types of speech more preferred by conservatives.

Unrelatedly, this article somewhat conflates the content of speech with the method of presentation.

The problem with lefties disrupting lectures or study in a library by yelling commie gobbledygook isn't just the content of their speech, but their actions that accompany that speech. And that distinction is even clearer when it comes to things like occupying campuses and attacking people.

Sure, if the goal is to ideologically purge universities of their most left-leaning elements, because they produce bad scholarship, then the distinction isn't as important. But if the goal is to allow normal conservative-minded people to be able to get through university unmolested, without having to deal with professors haranguing them about their internalized necrophobia, then that could partially be accomplished by cracking down on actions, not just speech. Who's more likely to harass normal students in or out of the classroom, some quiet leftist academic with radical views, or those who engage in or facilitate disruption? Clearly the latter. It's possible, even for lefties, to accommodate those with divergent views and to not impede them from earning their credentials and getting on with their lives.

Cracking down on disruption, rather than the content of speech doesn't even nominally run into the slippery slope problem.

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Roberto Artellini's avatar

Reading some comments I have the impression that many have missed the point. I don't think the author wrote it just do defend "Zionist privilege", but to put a reflection about the broad concept of "Free speech".

Based on this, I would like to post an article I read on a site I follow (it's not on substack) which talk about this issue.

Here in English :

"The freedom of individual opinion is one of the theoretical cornerstones of liberal democracy.

Everyone notices its fundamental inconsistency with practice, but few understand why this statement has gained such propagandistic importance. To understand this, we must first ask ourselves: why does a person wish to express their opinion on a certain matter? To convince others that what they are asserting is correct, or to bring about a change in society. No one who truly believes in what they are saying speaks into the void.

What does this imply? That the famous phrase, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," falsely attributed to Voltaire, is a complete nonsense. A person who truly believes in what they affirm is not, logically speaking, willing to fight for someone else's opinion—because what matters to them is the affirmation of their own.

The proof of this lies in the fact that all liberal regimes have mechanisms to censor or neutralize ideas and opinions deemed uncomfortable or dangerous to the system itself. We should also remember in no chapter of European history, neither in those societies where “democratic” forms were in place, has such freedom ever truly existed.

To give a textbook example—since it is often taken as a model of modern democracy—let’s look at the essence of the classical Athenian polis. The heart of democratic Athens was the ekklesia, the assembly, whose participation was considered a duty, not a right or privilege. All adult male citizens with political rights and the capacity to bear arms took part. In other words, every citizen participating in political life received a full education, especially military, which made them fit to decide on the fate of their city.

Between the modern concept of democracy—individual “freedom,” electoral representation, political parties—and the ancient model, there is a chasm.

As for the issue of free speech, often linked to the Greek term parrhesia, the reality was quite different. No Athenian citizen was free to publicly profane the city’s gods, its ancestors, or its values. He did, however, have the right to speak freely in order to convince the members of the ekklesia to support his proposal on decisions to be made in the city’s interest. But the fact that everyone made such proposals within the framework of the laws and customs of the polis was taken for granted.

Parrhesia was not the freedom to speak nonsensically, but the faculty to criticize those in high office if one believed they were acting against the interests and values of the city.

If you read Aristophanes’ comedies—a vivid example of ancient satire—you find a kind of irony that has nothing to do with the modern one. Aristophanes mocked vices to exalt virtue. Today, instead, the regime clowns mock virtue and exalt vice.

So, if the concept of freedom of speech as it is promoted today never truly existed, and doesn’t even exist now in the way it’s presented, why is it so important for modern subversion?

Quite simply, because at first, it is used to push forward theses that a healthy and normal society would consider abhorrent. Once those ideas are accepted in the name of freedom of opinion, the underlying paradigm shifts, and it is the healthy, normal ideas that get censored—rather than the abominable ones.

The so-called Popper Paradox, which antifa obsessively repeat, is merely the final stage of this complete reversal of values, where the model becomes everything that is contrary to the norms of social life and natural law—as can be seen from the ideas being spread about abortion, drugs, LGBT issues, immigration, and everything else that could be considered rotten.

Fundamentally, liberals and Marxists are evil and perverse".

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