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Thread: Racism

  1. #61
    Director dahamsta's Avatar
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    Fair enough. Mods, please chuck them in the bin the next time.

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    International Prospect tricky_colour's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DannyInvincible View Post
    So you're saying individuals can't suffer racism?

    Madness.
    Yes I am. Empathetically.

    A comment directed at an individual cannot be racist as and individual is not a race, pretty much by definition.

    The "hate" or whatever is directed at the individual not a race.

    It is not mad it is just logically and linguist correct..

    For example a person was described as

    a) An Irish hero.

    b) An Irish b*stard.

    Are these comments racist?


    Not in my opinion. The hate or love is not of a race but of a person. So it is not racist, it is merely descriptive.

  3. #63
    International Prospect tricky_colour's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DannyInvincible View Post
    I dunno about that, tricky. Whilst I'm not advocating a clamp-down on free speech or anything of the sort, speech can obviously be very dangerous. See here for historical examples of where it cost lives: http://freespeechdebate.com/discuss/...gerous-speech/

    I'm not making a value statement on censorship with this question - I'm just intrigued by your assertion - but how exactly did censorship kill millions of people?

    As P_Stu says, absolute free speech doesn't exist, nor can it in any civil democratic society where the vulnerable and disempowered require protection. In my view, if public regulation of expression is ever deemed required for whatever reason, then that regulatory process ought to be as democratic, transparent and thorough a process as is possible with the proposer subjected to a high-threshold burden of proof as to the necessity of the regulation proposed.

    I do admit that there is an interesting paradox at the heart of the free speech debate though: free speech absolutists have no answer to how power is monopolised in the marketplace of ideas, whilst, at the same time, I don't think it's possible for non-absolutists (and I include myself in this bracket) to satisfactorily define who polices what cannot be said in a pure incorruptible way.

    Essentially, whilst gross inequality and disparities can exist at both individual and institutional levels in terms of held power – which can be monopolised in the arena of communication – and in the degree of access to channels for expression or in a party's capability to voice themselves or be heard, thus materially diminishing free expression in practice where it is supposedly unstifled in theory, there is no incorruptible way of assigning power to police expression to some sort of benevolent, protective or omniscient overseer – be that a democratically-elected authority or some sort of mechanism to ascertain and effect the will of popular consensus – so as to protect the vulnerable and disempowered, against whom expression by the powerful can be used as a weapon to further suppress and silence.

    In fact, assigning power to such an observing body to police expression would effectively be akin to explicitly sanctioning monopolisation. Even if that power is assigned to or by a democratic majority, unless there is absolute unanimity in any "consensus" at all times (which is highly unlikely, if not practically impossible), those who assented hold the monopoly of power, whilst the views of dissenters are dismissed.

    Although representative democracy might assist in ensuring a greater number of people are served, in accordance with their declared preference, the inherent problem is still unsolved; a Tocquevillian tyranny by a majority remains possible.

    Interestingly, the "free speech" policy of Twitter has evolved quite radically over time. Twitter’s policy evolution also serves to demonstrate the paradox inherent to the concept of untrammelled free expression. When Twitter was initially established, it was an unregulated forum for communication and exchange, but the company felt that this "libertarian" approach was actually having an inadvertent and unwanted chilling effect on expression. Consequently, to enhance diversity of expression, they introduced rules limiting certain undesired types of expression. Of course, democratic societies do the very same.
    Censorship kills millions because mass murder does not survive the scrutiny of free speech hence it tends to be carried in secret, like the Holocaust for example.

    In general censorship us used by the powerful to cover up their crimes and wrong doings, that is all it is ever used for.
    That is why Hillary censored her emails for example.

    That story about Japan makes zero sense to me.

    What we do know and war is this "the first victim of war is the truth", ie censorship rule.


    The free speech that would have put and end to the slaughter is suppressed.

    Millions die.


    Absolute free speech can and should exist, it is not censorship which protects the vulnerable and disempowered, it is free speech.

    Hitler was very big on censorship and you will find the same applies to the most evil regimes on the planet.

    Nobody flees in the direction of censorship.

    Free speech is the most important freedom of all, with out it there can be no justice.


    Censorship allows people to get away with murder, free speech make that very difficult.


    Just to pluck and example out of thin air there was the Grenfell Tower deaths, now a company who made much safer cladding was not allowed to say so in it's advertised because the companies who made the cladding that was basically made of rocket fuel kept suing them!!


    No you would not doubt side with the companies suing to protect their reputation to stop people saying nasty things about them which might affect their profits, well I woudl not, I would allow them to say what the hell they liked.

    The the resident could make their own mind up as to whether rockwool was less likely to burn than plastic.

    https://news.sky.com/story/long-read...risis-11146108

    We have identified several other similar cases. Among them Rockwool, the main producer of the non-combustible mineral-based alternative to plastic insulation. Rockwool sent out videos in 2007 showing how their product doesn't burn and how plastic insulation does. They were sued for trademark violation and malicious falsehood. Despite the falsehood claim being thrown out the legal action tied up Rockwool for years and cost them millions of pounds.
    In 2013 an insurance firm set fire to plastic insulation panels to demonstrate that they burned more fiercely in real life than they did in official tests and posted the video on YouTube. It might explain, they suggested, why hundreds of millions of pounds of fire damage had been caused in a spate of factory fires. They were immediately threatened with legal action and had to remove all references that could have identified the manufacturer.

    What is happening at places such as twitter is seriously disturbing. Free speech is being suppressed and it will lead to deaths ultimately.

    Twitters idea that free speech was " inadvertent and unwanted chilling effect on expression." is a load of balls and an obvious contradiction in term, Twitter is an evil organisation.

    The way it is going is that we will end up being censored by a bunch of dangerous loonies, and that is quite frightening.


    What is comes down to is that you have some superclass of citizens who control the media and free expression and what history tell us is that they will use it to enrich themselves and harm others.

    That is inevitable as sure as night follows day.

  4. #64
    International Prospect tricky_colour's Avatar
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    Regards some of the article about, Japan, this was what the American public were being fed about the Japanese. They were portrayed as monsters.


    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...A_-_513557.jpg

  5. #65
    International Prospect tricky_colour's Avatar
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    In a trail is it better to censor:-

    a) the prosecution
    b) the defence
    c) neither

    Sums up my thoughts on free speech.

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    Reserves Fizzer's Avatar
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    Yeah sums up that you haven’t a rashers tricky.you have no idea how a ‘trail’ works.
    Both the prosecution and defence are censored,by the rules of evidence.

  7. #67
    International Prospect tricky_colour's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fizzer View Post
    Yeah sums up that you haven’t a rashers tricky.you have no idea how a ‘trail’ works.
    Both the prosecution and defence are censored,by the rules of evidence.
    To protect the corrupt.

    Neither should be censored.


    Look at this nonsense.


    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-u...b_9417646.html



    "Thus, hate speech is really anti-speech because it aims to shut down the speech of others." Jeremy Waldron, a law professor.

    Right so it is implicit in his words that shutting down the speech of others is bad thing, yet that is exactly what he aims to do!!


    Prior to this he says this incomprehensible b*llocks



    “Its aim is to compromise the dignity of those at whom it is targeted, both in their own eyes and in the eyes of other members of society. And it sets out to make the establishment and upholding of their dignity... much more difficult. It aims to besmirch the basics of their reputation, by associating ascriptive characteristics like ethnicity, or race, or religion with conduct or attributes that should disqualify someone from being treated as a member of society in good standing.”

    "And in the United States, hate speech has shut down the speech of minorities and women for hundreds of years."???

    How? How has it done that? He fails to explain, now you can say what you like about my character however it will not shut down my speech, the only thing that will shut it down is censorship.

    The whole article is nonsensical bull.
    We don’t have absolutely free speech because we live within the confines of powerful and interlocking institutions: family, education, entertainment, commerce, career, the law, the military, religion and others.
    What on earth does that mean?

    How does the family prevent free speech for example?

    These institutions offer benefits to their members but also constraints and a narrow range of choices of expression. If these institutions were to offer too much freedom, they would be unable to perpetuate the social relations that keep them functioning.
    Of course he can give no examples just flowery word soup.


    The author is a complete idiot much like everyone associated with the Huffington Propaganda Machine.

  8. #68
    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tricky_colour View Post
    Yes I am. Empathetically.

    A comment directed at an individual cannot be racist as and individual is not a race, pretty much by definition.
    But the term "race" has multiple meanings; not just the meaning you're referring to. In the collective sense (the definition you're talking about), it refers to a race of people; in other words, a group of people who are perceived to share some common ethnicity, traits/characteristics and/or genetic heritage. It also can refer in a singular sense to an individual person's race, however, which is a form of social classification of that person's genetic heritage; it's how their genetic heritage may be defined or perceived by society or it may be how they personally identify on the basis of their genetic heritage.

    For example, you might say that the white Irish people are a race (collective group) of people. I would be one of those people, so my race (racial classification) would be white Irish.

    Here's the Google definition of racism: "Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior."

    Of course it can be singular/personal.

    The "hate" or whatever is directed at the individual not a race.
    And why do you think such hatred would be selectively directed towards that racially-distinct individual? If the basis of the hatred is that person's different race rather than them having been selected for hatred on a purely random basis, that is racism.

    Just to be clear, you're saying that discrimination against a single person (who might, say, apply for a job) on the basis of their race wouldn't be racist? I mean, that form of discrimination is so self-evidently racist, I don't think it's even possible to explain it any further.

    If, in your view, that wouldn't amount to racism, when would discrimination based on someone's race constitute racism? Only when it involves a group of individuals being mistreated on the basis of their race? Would that be two or three individuals or how many?

    As far as your logic goes, calling a black individual a "n*****" wouldn't be racist... Honestly, what planet are you on?

    For example a person was described as

    a) An Irish hero.

    b) An Irish b*stard.

    Are these comments racist?


    Not in my opinion. The hate or love is not of a race but of a person. So it is not racist, it is merely descriptive.
    As ever, it depends on the context, but if the insinuation is that the person's perceived status as a b*stard has some connection to their Irishness or that their Irishness complements their perceived status as a b*stard or that an Irish b*stard is a particularly bad strain of b*stard, that would be racist in my book. Why bring the so-called b*stard's Irishness into it? What's the relevance, if not to disparage that person's Irishness too?

  9. #69
    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tricky_colour View Post
    Censorship kills millions because mass murder does not survive the scrutiny of free speech hence it tends to be carried in secret, like the Holocaust for example.
    Censorship inhibits scrutiny - no doubt about that - but mass murder can of course survive scrutiny. The US, for example, routinely engages in the mass killing of innocent civilians and yet it has very liberal free speech laws. Whilst the mainstream or corporate US media often fails to pursue a probing role, the US government's actions still come under scrutiny from journalists both within and outside the US. The atrocities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't carried out in secret. The Allied bombing of Dresden wasn't carried out in secret either. So your theory is in need of some nuanced enhancement; reality isn't as black and white as you portray. Reality is grey.

    In general censorship us used by the powerful to cover up their crimes and wrong doings, that is all it is ever used for.
    That is why Hillary censored her emails for example.
    Covering up crimes, abuses and wrongdoing or suppressing criticism and dissent are certainly two contemptible functions of censorship, but that isn't all it is used for.

    Isn't, say, putting an age-restriction on a violent or pornographic film also a form of censorship? Most people would argue that protecting minors from such content (until they're mature enough to responsibly digest the content and properly comprehend it along with the possible consequences that might arise from repeating such behaviour in real life) would be in the interests of the greater social good, but not you apparently. The logic of your position is that a five-year-old ought to be able to go into a DVD shop and buy the most violent or pornographic DVD the shop has on offer. In fact, the logical conclusion of your position is that DVD shops ought to be permitted to sell (and thus help fund) child pornography.

    Theoretically, you might also have a completely honest and otherwise transparent government seeking to censor certain sensitive information on the basis of protecting its citizens. (That's not to say that I take the claims of, say, the British government at face value when they say they are holding back information on state killings and collusion during the "Troubles" in the interests of "national security". In this case, I suspect that's an excuse for covering up uncomfortable truths that would otherwise damage their reputation and credibility.)

    That story about Japan makes zero sense to me.
    Racist and malicious speech was used to whip up a frenzied hatred and dehumanisation of the Japanese people. As you said yourself above in the post with the racist poster, they were portrayed as monstrous. That malign influencing of the American people by nasty and misleading propaganda paved the way and fed into the "justification" for the intentional dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese civilian populations by the US. In other words, the racist and malicious speech, expression or propaganda undeniably contributed to the atrocity and the loss of thousands of lives. So, free speech can evidently both save lives and cost lives. Once again, it's not black and white.

    Just to pluck and example out of thin air there was the Grenfell Tower deaths, now a company who made much safer cladding was not allowed to say so in it's advertised because the companies who made the cladding that was basically made of rocket fuel kept suing them!!


    No you would not doubt side with the companies suing to protect their reputation to stop people saying nasty things about them which might affect their profits, well I woudl not, I would allow them to say what the hell they liked.

    The the resident could make their own mind up as to whether rockwool was less likely to burn than plastic.

    https://news.sky.com/story/long-read...risis-11146108
    Just to apply that principle generally; if anyone can spread malicious and damaging lies about anyone or anything, how are people supposed to make informed decisions on matters of importance when the information they've been given is factually incorrect? Essentially, you're justifying the potential misleading of people. Being misled compromises one's ability to make one's mind up in an informed manner. How are people to automatically know they've been lied to? They won't know, so that's why some form of societal or legal check may be socially beneficial to all, bar the liar, but why should demonstrable lies be protected? A society in which one's reputation has no protection from malicious and defamatory lies or in which falsehood can be spread unregulated as truth would terrify me.

    You never dealt with this point that I made above:

    "If I'm interpreting you correctly, you would have no problem with Irish and British newspapers publishing "tricky is a paedophile" as their headlines tomorrow with completely fabricated stories about you abusing children underneath? Because that's what absolute free speech could mean; they'd have an absolute right to say whatever they liked about you whenever they liked. What if hostile and hysterical mobs burned you out of your home, or, worse, tried to kill you, on the basis of that malicious and outrageous fabrication? That would be a real life-threatening consequence. You'd be OK with all of that and would continue championing absolute free speech?"

    What is happening at places such as twitter is seriously disturbing. Free speech is being suppressed and it will lead to deaths ultimately.
    I'm not necessarily endorsing Twitter's position one way or the other - it's a complex debate that certainly isn't as black and white as you make out - but how exactly might Twitter's policies lead to deaths? That's a bit dramatic surely. It's also worth noting that Twitter are a private company who are free (within the confines of the law) to set their own policies and terms of service or use.

    Twitters idea that free speech was " inadvertent and unwanted chilling effect on expression." is a load of balls and an obvious contradiction in term, Twitter is an evil organisation.
    The contradiction was the paradox I referred to in my earlier post. If you don't like their policies, you can always decide not to use Twitter, I guess.

    The way it is going is that we will end up being censored by a bunch of dangerous loonies, and that is quite frightening.
    "A bunch of dangerous loonies"? Who are your referring to exactly?

    What is comes down to is that you have some superclass of citizens who control the media and free expression and what history tell us is that they will use it to enrich themselves and harm others.
    But that's also exactly what happens when you permit absolute free speech without regulations or protections for the vulnerable. That's the paradox; free speech absolutists have no answer to how power is monopolised in the marketplace of ideas, whilst, at the same time, it's not possible for non-absolutists to satisfactorily define who polices what cannot be said in a pure, perfect or incorruptible way. We thus have to strive to strike as ideal a balance as is practically possible and this should be transparent and subject to heavy scrutiny.

  10. #70
    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tricky_colour View Post
    What on earth does that mean?
    Noam Chomsky discusses this idea in terms of corporate constraints on expression (particularly from 5m20s) here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgxLvwKhvmY

  11. #71
    Biased against YOUR club pineapple stu's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by OwlsFan View Post
    I was out with a friend of mine yesterday who lives in England and he brought over two English friends for the rugby match at the weekend. One of them while describing her experience at the hotel reception described the receptionist "as a little leprechaun" and said she "couldn't understand a word she was saying". The leprechaun comment irritated me. Am I being too sensitive?
    It can certainly needle alright. Though you could argue comments like this are to be pitied, not worried over or over-analysed.

  12. #72
    International Prospect tricky_colour's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DannyInvincible View Post
    Censorship inhibits scrutiny - no doubt about that - but mass murder can of course survive scrutiny. The US, for example, routinely engages in the mass killing of innocent civilians and yet it has very liberal free speech laws. Whilst the mainstream or corporate US media often fails to pursue a probing role, the US government's actions still come under scrutiny from journalists both within and outside the US. The atrocities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't carried out in secret. The Allied bombing of Dresden wasn't carried out in secret either. So your theory is in need of some nuanced enhancement; reality isn't as black and white as you portray. Reality is grey.
    Not sure what you point is there, I am not saying freedom of speech will make a perfect world just a better on.

    As for Hiroshima you are wrong on that 100% it was a product of censorship. A prime example of
    how censorship leads to mass murder pretty must all the time.


    This paper examines how the U.S. censorship of the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was reflected in the U.S. media from 1945 to 1952, when censorship was officially lifted with the ratification of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Specifically, this paper observes and analyzes photographs and their captions from Life magazine and various other publications. Many photographs and captions trivialized the destruction and the suffering at the bombed sites, glorified the power of the atomic bomb, and portrayed the U.S. government as a heroic figure rather than an aggressor. Moreover, the U.S. media published articles that deliberately distorted account of the bombings and used derogatory language to refer to Japan and its people. As a result of censorship, American public highly approved of the use of the bomb and believed that the U.S. decision to drop the bombs in Japan was justified.
    Had the US public seen picture like this there would have been a different reaction.

    https://sociable.co/wp-content/uploa...rl-375x307.jpg

    And indeed such pictures brought and end to the Vietnam war.

    The USA learned their lesson in the Iraq war of course, you didn't see pictures like that, instead you got a free "shock and awe" firework display as opposed to the reality of blood and gore.

    and indeed this article you linked to earlier, I found it hard to make sense of it, is your reading of it that censorship is need because the American people are monsters at heart?

    The reality is they are, not but the elite who control the country and the censors are.

    The presence of such extreme and dangerous attitudes amongst so many members of a prototypical “liberal” society is shocking, and raises profound and understudied questions for ethical and political theory.
    The article is implying that free speech is dangerous which of course is not.

    I mean I struggle to read the article because I am reading the words of an idiot and I lack the idiotic assumptions and beliefs required to make it seem logical and thus easy to read, my brain hurts reading it as it makes not sense.
    It is flowery word soup that make no clear points other then he author hates Donald trump and by mentioning that he is thus "one of the gang" and must be correct and reward irregardless of what he said it indeed he said anything coherent at all.

    A man with nothing to say but a a salary to draw, an over paid idiot and a waste of space and children educations and futures.

    To sum his article up he say "
    When is speech dangerous?"

    And several long flowery torturous paragraphs of mindless waffle he seems to say "I have no idea what I think".

    The reality is free speech is never dangerous.

    He does make one readable paragraph though which I found

    The answer to such questions involves a paradox. It is extremely difficult, and frequently impossible, to assess the discrete impact of any individual speech act in causing people’s behaviour to change. This is true even when individuals appear to engage in the clearest cases of “incitement”. When an audience responds to a far right call to attack Muslims in “retaliation” for a terrorist incident, for example, how can we be sure they were really moved by that call? Might they not have already desired to engage in such violence? Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, responded to Donald Trump’s words by arguing that: “These are not just words… Trump and [Ben] Carson’s mainstreaming of Islamophobia in the election is inciting discrimination, hate crimes, [and] violent attacks against Muslims and mosques.” This is highly plausible. But we cannot look inside the heads of those who engage in such discrimination and hate crimes – and it is extremely hard to establish the precise difference Trumps’ words make. We can trace the levels of violence and discrimination over time and note how this seems to correlate with statements by leading public figures. But this is a process fraught with unreliability. There are lots of such statements, as well as exogenous events (like the 2015 Paris attacks) which might be a more powerful trigger of changed attitudes and behaviour. Confidently unravelling and isolating the impact of individual statements from the overall morass of speech and action is close to impossible.
    Well the answer is as I always maintain free speech is never dangerous. any speech comes from and idea and if the idea is one man's mind it will be in the mind of many others anyway.

    What is dangerous of course is the censorship of atrocities and violence, which is what the left wants * if* it committed by a Muslim.

    OF course if it was committed by a "white supremacist" ie a white person, it must be on the news 24/7 alongside discussion of how whites can be rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
    Last edited by tricky_colour; 02/12/2017 at 5:19 PM.

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    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tricky_colour View Post
    Not sure what you point is there, I am not saying freedom of speech will make a perfect world just a better on.

    As for Hiroshima you are wrong on that 100% it was a product of censorship. A prime example of
    how censorship leads to mass murder pretty must all the time.
    I disagree. I think absolute free speech would make a worse world. The point I'm making is that speech can be harmful and destructive as well as empowering, liberating and protective. It depends on context. It's not as simple as "all free speech is good" and "all regulation of speech is bad". Reality is much more complex and nuanced. I'm prepared to tolerate regulation for the greater good so long as such regulation is democratic, transparent and subject to a high burden of proof.

    Had the US public seen picture like this there would have been a different reaction.

    https://sociable.co/wp-content/uploa...rl-375x307.jpg

    And indeed such pictures brought and end to the Vietnam war.
    I agree and reporters and investigative journalists perform a vital role in society.

    The USA learned their lesson in the Iraq war of course, you didn't see pictures like that, instead you got a free "shock and awe" firework display as opposed to the reality of blood and gore.
    Indeed, which was propaganda and distortion or misrepresentation of the truth. That's an example of materially harmful expression. You're undermining your own point.

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    International Prospect tricky_colour's Avatar
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    One of the problem is we have protected groups who are beyond criticism such as transgenders which has resulted with fully grown intact men who "identify"
    as women sharing the same changing room as 7 year old girls.

    But say anything and you are demonised as transphobic.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DannyInvincible View Post
    I disagree. I think absolute free speech would make a worse world. The point I'm making is that speech can be harmful and destructive as well as empowering, liberating and protective. It depends on context. It's not as simple as "all free speech is good" and "all regulation of speech is bad". Reality is much more complex and nuanced. I'm prepared to tolerate regulation for the greater good so long as such regulation is transparent and subject to a high burden of proof.



    I agree and reporters and investigative journalists perform a vital role in society.



    Indeed, which was propaganda and distortion or misrepresentation of the truth. That's an example of materially harmful expression. You're undermining your own point.
    Speech is just words, words do not harm anyone, no doctor ever wrote "free speech" on a death certificate.

    That is not an example of materially harmful expression is is an example of censorship in action.

    Are you saying it would have been better if the firework display had been suppressed? clearly not. as we would not
    even know it was happening, at least we knew and any reasonable person could see it was likely many were
    getting killed.

    Anything coming from the US military is censored.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogFZlRiTHuw

    The above people were murdered by censorship.

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    Foreign journalists who visited Japan were also subject to restriction of movement and censorship. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were strictly “off-limits” to the foreign press after the visits of journalists such as the Chicago Daily News’ George Weller and the London Daily Express’ William Burchett resulted in the publication of accurate first-hand reports of an utterly destroyed Nagasaki (“Nagasaki Bomb Accounts”). However, some journalists were granted permission to report on the atomic bomb, but only on the condition that they would report on it in a favorable light.
    That is censorship, which helped generate hate against the Japanese and support for the use of Nuclear bombs, an article you linked to
    suggested we needed censorship to prevent such support but the support arose due to censorship.

  18. #77
    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tricky_colour View Post
    One of the problem is we have protected groups who are beyond criticism such as transgenders which has resulted with fully grown intact men who "identify"
    as women sharing the same changing room as 7 year old girls.

    But say anything and you are demonised as transphobic.
    They're not "beyond criticism". Haven't you just criticised them there now? Also, transgender people presently must satisfy strict legal and medical criteria in order to officially transition.

    Anyhow, where is what you outline above being reported as a problem? Any examples of cases? Women's changing rooms tend to have individual cubicles, if you're concerned about possible "voyeurism" or something. And plenty of places (shops and nightclubs, for example) operate gender-neutral changing rooms and toilets these days without any issue for users, no matter what their gender. Privacy can still be protected and security isn't necessarily compromised.

    If you want to look at the bigger picture, we're all on a spectrum in terms of sexuality, sex and gender anyway. These concepts, which are social constructs, aren't binary.

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    Capped Player DannyInvincible's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tricky_colour View Post
    and indeed this article you linked to earlier, I found it hard to make sense of it, is your reading of it that censorship is need because the American people are monsters at heart?

    The reality is they are, not but the elite who control the country and the censors are.



    The article is implying that free speech is dangerous which of course is not.
    I linked you to the article simply to outline an example of where words had enabled or contributed to mass killing, which I regard as an example of something negative that can arise from expression. The article simply highlights that expression can be dangerous; not that is it always dangerous. It acknowledges the nuance that you don't appear to be willing to accept. I don't necessarily agree with every point made in the article, nor do I think the American people are monsters who need to be protected from their instincts by censorship. I'm not necessarily advocating censorship; just trying to emphasise that this is a much more complex debate than you seem prepared to acknowledge. Censorship can have benefits or drawbacks depending on the context.

    For what it's worth, I don't think anyone is a monster at heart; I just think people, due to our survivalist instinct or nature, tend to act in self-interest, which can be framed as "good" by some, usually those trying to justify their particular conduct, and as "bad" by others, usually those who may suffer in some way as a result of that conduct. What people might regard as "evil" is usually perpetrated by ordinary people responding to perceived harms or threats, including "provocations" by their victims (who may be framed as "evil" in turn by the perpetrator), in ways they feel are good, reasonable or just. Very few people will say they are committing "evil" for the sake of committing "evil". Rather, "evil" is a subjective term people use to condemn certain self-interested actions of others that they find to be objectionable and undesirable. You described Twitter as "evil", for example, but I'd imagine they'd argue they're providing a social good. Our impressions and opinions depend on our perspective.

    When I say we are self-interested beings, that's not to say we all are destined or doomed to be selfishly individualistic either, nor is it to say that rabid capitalism has to be the inevitable consequence of our nature. To see it in that way is short-sighted, I feel. For me, a fairer and more equal society would fulfil our self-interested tendencies because I think everyone, including myself, would be better off in such a society. When most people hear of wealth redistribution, they assume it would make them poorer, but they've been misinformed by a system that seeks to protect the interests of a tiny elite who own most of the world's wealth. The reality is that 90 per cent of the world's population would experience enrichment if wealth was spread more evenly. It just takes a bit more imagination, vision and work to ensure everyone's inherent self-interest, rather than just a disproportionately rich minority, is adequately catered for by social policy. Education and information is key.

    Quote Originally Posted by tricky_colour View Post
    Speech is just words, words do not harm anyone, no doctor ever wrote "free speech" on a death certificate.

    That is not an example of materially harmful expression is is an example of censorship in action.

    Are you saying it would have been better if the firework display had been suppressed? clearly not. as we would not
    even know it was happening, at least we knew and any reasonable person could see it was likely many were
    getting killed.

    Anything coming from the US military is censored.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogFZlRiTHuw

    The above people were murdered by censorship.
    Likewise, no doctor has ever written "censorship" on a death certificate. I'm not necessarily defending censorship; I'm just making the point that your perspective is way too simplistic. The effects of censorship or free speech obviously aren't as direct as actually physically killing people, but the reality is that both censorship and expression can cause or enable certain things to happen that can lead to deaths.

    Falsely shouting "fire!" in a crowded theatre when there was none has cost lives, for example. That's an example of where speech has led to material harm and indeed death.

    And you could also make the point that propaganda and misinformation helped enable the killing of those Iraqis in the leaked video by the US army. Propaganda involves both censorship of the truth and the spreading of distortions and misrepresentations. This example perfectly demonstrates that both free expression and censorship can be simultaneously abused or utilised to serve certain socially harmful interests. That's my point. To say that one is all good and the other is all bad is just too simplistic an analysis.

    I also note you evaded this point again:

    "If I'm interpreting you correctly, you would have no problem with Irish and British newspapers publishing "tricky is a paedophile" as their headlines tomorrow with completely fabricated stories about you abusing children underneath? Because that's what absolute free speech could mean; they'd have an absolute right to say whatever they liked about you whenever they liked. What if hostile and hysterical mobs burned you out of your home, or, worse, tried to kill you, on the basis of that malicious and outrageous fabrication? That would be a real life-threatening consequence. You'd be OK with all of that and would continue championing absolute free speech?"

    Any chance of an answer on it? In the hypothetical scenario outlined, not only will the media's words have led to a threat to your safety, your reputation and social standing will also be in ruins.

    Well the answer is as I always maintain free speech is never dangerous. any speech comes from and idea and if the idea is one man's mind it will be in the mind of many others anyway.
    That's a wild assumption to make based on what exactly? Our internal thoughts result from a combination of factors, including our genetic make-up obviously, but also are heavily influenced by our environments and the thoughts of others both around and before us. If all humans had the same thoughts in their heads at all times, then things like cars or the internet would have been invented thousands of years ago, but our thoughts and ideas obviously evolve with us over time due to external influence, which can obviously be both positive and negative.

    What is dangerous of course is the censorship of atrocities and violence, which is what the left wants * if* it committed by a Muslim.

    OF course if it was committed by a "white supremacist" ie a white person, it must be on the news 24/7 alongside discussion of how whites can be rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
    Have you an example of even one person from the left advocating the censorship of atrocities and violence?

    I think all people are simply outlining is an ideal situation where mainstream and corporate media double standards would be eliminated by fair, accurate, objective and truthful reporting of the facts in all situations.

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    International Prospect tricky_colour's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DannyInvincible View Post
    They're not "beyond criticism". Haven't you just criticised them there now? Also, transgender people presently must satisfy strict legal and medical criteria in order to officially transition.

    Anyhow, where is what you outline above being reported as a problem? Any examples of cases? Women's changing rooms tend to have individual cubicles, if you're concerned about possible "voyeurism" or something. And plenty of places (shops and nightclubs, for example) operate gender-neutral changing rooms and toilets these days without any issue for users, no matter what their gender. Privacy can still be protected and security isn't necessarily compromised.

    If you want to look at the bigger picture, we're all on a spectrum in terms of sexuality, sex and gender anyway. These concepts, which are social constructs, aren't binary.
    Yes but I am not working for a government establishment, were I a teacher for example I'd likely be out of a job, in which the employer has a big monopoly.

    In terms of sex we are essentially binary barring a tiny minority and those who are of one sex have no business in the changing room/toilets of the opposite sex.

    Night clubs do not have children in them.

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    International Prospect tricky_colour's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DannyInvincible View Post
    Indeed, which was propaganda and distortion or misrepresentation of the truth. That's an example of materially harmful expression. You're undermining your own point.
    It was censorship of the truth. It was not harmful expression but harmful censorship. The news was censored.

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