Corvos
1d ago
FWIW as a right-populist I'm sincerely impressed by what Labour and Mahmood have done, whilst also thinking much more needs to be done. Sadly I don't think Labour would do it, but if they did even half of it then I would vote for them.
Yes, but the US is the only country where they believe that "free speech" == "a negative right not to have the government specifically compel or forbid your speech". And that works, kind of, except when it doesn't. But from where I'm standing it seems super, super limited. My employers and my social groups have far more influence over my daily life.
If I define "liberty" as "a negative right to never have the government interfere with your person" then it's totally internally consistent to say that a man has his liberty while he's locked up in Josef Fritzl's basement. But most would consider that a pretty anaemic version of liberty.
If you had said that the US has "protection from speech-related legislation" and the UK has "protection from being fired for your speech" then I'd be with you. But to blithely say 'the US believes in free speech and Europe doesn't' is to my mind frankly ridiculous.
Ultimately my conception of free speech comes down to this: can somebody speak their sincere mind without fear?
Note:
In practical terms, it seems to me that both countries regularly fall short of their concept of free speech.
The US' conception of free speech does not permit the government to harass social networks to censor political opponents, but it does. It does not permit the government to make laws that require employees don't hear things that make them feel uncomfortable (a hostile environment) but it does. And so on.
The UK likewise falls short: arresting journalists for non-violent tweets does not in any way fit in the tradition of UK free speech, and I'm old enough to know. Personally, my experience of the UK's free speech problems is that they came in the wake of Twitter rows and race taboos imported from the US in the latter half of the 2010s, but I won't insist on the point.
Corvos
1d ago
I don't believe the university had the right to fire him, unless he was on some weird short-term contract. As I say, usually the defendants in these cases win and get significant damages. @MadMonzer's thread went into more detail.
Corvos
1d ago
Yes, but not for being arrested. IIRC the only people who were actually put in prison were arrested for directly calling for violence in the middle of riots. I don't approve of that, I think it reflects vast hypocrisy on the part of the government who would never treat non-English rioters this way, but I'm fine with that principle if it's applied evenly.
Corvos
1d ago
No, that's not what I meant to say. I think you are treating the subject in a mature way, albeit one I disagree with.
What I'm asking for is more recognition from others that free speech must ultimately involve trade-offs which different countries are handling in different ways, and less chimping out from certain people (not you @KMC) about how America is glorious land of Free Speech and England/Europe is a contemptible tyranny.
In America you (plural) have broadly decided that it's terrible if the government can punish you for speech, but ok if your employer does. In Europe it's the other way round - it's the governmnt's job to step in and tell your employer that they don't have the right to fire you if they dislike your politics.
Corvos
1d ago
That's a perfectly valid perspective. But we're now talking about the real tradeoffs and decisions that America makes: we can't protect your speech from retaliation by your employers because that infringes their rights.
America has a particular, limited right to free speech which says that no government can legally punish you for your speech. And that's fine, that's a perfectly valid conception of free speech. I personally happen to disagree with it: I think many people would rather spend a night in a police cell than be blacklisted from their career. That's just my opinion.
What irks me is silly "in America unlike Europe we have Free Speech" comments which ignore the complexity in both countries.
Corvos
2d ago
It's not a meme, it's just straightforward blasphemy. You are not supposed to suggest that you or your friends are basically like the Son of God for the purposes of self-aggrandisement, especially when you and your friends are neither holy nor christlike in their behaviour.
Comparing people to Jesus in order to learn from his example is obviously different.
Corvos
2d ago
If free speech is protected in America, why do people get fired and blacklisted for the things they say?
Come on, be serious. There are compromises made in every country on Earth
In practice, the UK has more legal protections against being fired or discriminated against for your views, even when those views are right-wing. That is why people who go to employment tribunals tend to win their cases. It doesn't usually give them their jobs back.
The UK has less protections for tweeting in a way that makes the government worried. This is not good.
Broadly, in the US you are more likely to be ruined, in the UK you are more likely to get arrested. Neither of these are good.
Jordan Peterson is Canadian and Cathy Newman is a resident of the planet Idiot - it's too pat to boil it down to New and Old Worlds.
Especially since free speech is defended by law in both England and apparently Brussels, as it says in the article. The defendant wins most of their cases if they actually get to court.
The issue is informal sanctions and discrimination producing a chilling effect, something which is at least as prevalent in the US as it is in the 'Old World'.
Corvos
2d ago
I had a guy at a party bring this up. I think he's a communist from what others said. Literally :
Me: Awful business.
Him: Is it? [Grins]
Me: yes? He was going to kill a hundred innocent people.
Him: but there are thousands dying in Gaza.
I have never actually cut somebody in mid-sentence before. It's surprisingly cathartic. But I feel tainted just having talked to this man.
Corvos
2d ago
That's kind of what I'm saying. Think of yourself as a professional investment banker for a very boutique firm.
Corvos
2d ago
Science-fiction uses it a lot: anyone who knows about 40k knows about Necron gauss weaponry, and that's a lot of men.
This is true for most signals. Guys prefer "looks effortlessly beautiful at 9am with her hair disarrayed" over "drops from an 8 to a 6 at night when the makeup comes off".
Most of these signals are about fundamental fitness, so faking them is both natural and something people select against.
Corvos
3d ago
One note: don't disdain social signals. Get some nice clothes, a good jacket (or whatever is culturally appropriate for well-to-do young men where you are), pay to have your shirts ironed by a service if you don't want to do it yourself. Wear your nice watch every day because that's what you do with a good watch - I've worn my nice watch every day since getting it on my 18th birthday. Get some good leather boots or expensive trainers or whatever.
It will send the true, correct message to your friends and family: I'm all right, my current lifestyle might be unconventional but it's working out, you don't need to be worried about me or pity me.
And by doing so, it will relax you a little as well.
Thank you, I appreciate the thought. I feel similarly - I have a backlog of replies from @FCfromSSC and others that deserve thoughtful responses but my emotions have cooled and I don't really want to get into more arguments this second.
I owe you an apology as well, my OP in this thread was not polite and was in the tone of somebody spoiling for a fight.
Certainly many Europeans are very ignorant, or mindkilled, just as much so as many Americans or more. And there are enough smug Europeans and Anglos (many of them my friends) that I have to bite my tongue on a regular basis just to get on.
I think there is also a surprisingly large cultural gap that get masked by the appearance of a common culture, which is what you seem to be saying also. Americans and Europeans think they understand each other and share the same moral intuitions, much more than they would if they were talking to somebody from Kazakhstan or Laos, and they're often wrong about that. A discussion for another time!
Corvos
5d ago
Slow Horses is British, as is most of the BBC. Non-British don't think about the Troubles at all, they weren't there.
The UK is still about 85% British, and would be about 93% if we refused to give Citizenship to people who don't have it yet. It's the demographics of the young, and in the major cities, that is concerning.
Corvos
6d ago
What I'm trying to say is that there's no semantic box in the British mind which contains both the IRA and the 'Sons of Albion'.
It would be like saying, "To understand the current reaction to Patriot Front, you need to understand America's history of white violence: the Italian Mafia ravaged America for nearly a decade".
No American (IMO) would write that. The Godfather portrays violence by whites, but it's not the same kind of violence and they're not the same whites.
Rightly or wrongly, there's a semantic cluster in the American mind which goes 'KKK -> Jim Crow lynchings -> Patriot Front'. There isn't one that goes 'Mafia -> Patriot Front'.
In the UK there is a semantic cluster containing 'Enoch Powell's rivers of blood speech -> Oswald Moseley -> the BNP and EDF -> Sons of Albion'. There is not IRA -> Sons of Albion.
But if you took a man off the street and gave him "recent severe organized terrorism performed by Whites" I doubt the IRA would leap to his tongue. He might get it eventually.
Corvos
6d ago
I think you are correct in your suspicion that an annoyance with FTP is biasing you. The reason that Europe has so many parties with only marginal differences is that the policy platform of parties is broadly the policy platform of the people who make up these parties. Broad cultural consensus causes these people to all think basically the same thing, and then they create new parties with some bullshit differentiator to try and get an easier climb to the top.
Corvos
6d ago
And on paper why couldn't she do it ? On paper Tesla, SpaceX, and Theranos do not look that different from each other : 'Autistic savant finds space with lazy legacy players, blindsides them with a technology leap and cleans house despite expert insistence that the technology simply wasn't there yet.'
Now, if you're from the valley, then you immediately see the folly in that reasoning.
This reminds me of the people who talk about 'growth' a lot in government. They're not necessarily stupid people, but they seem to see 'growth' as this thing that just turns up when you prepare the ground right and want it really really badly. It doesn't seem to occur to them that growth might correspond to something: to individual discoveries that compound into innovations, to solving problems that actually exist and actually matter, to synergies that grow up between quality home industries.
Which makes it very difficult for them to tell growth from financialisation.
Lastly, while the UK obviously has some stupid and exaggerated fear of right wing extremism, it's not as stupid as it seems because they actually have had white people committing acts of terror is recent memory (the troubles).
I don't think anyone thinks like that here in the UK. The Troubles were Irish separatists, and were not considered 'white' (or non-white), nor 'right-wing'. Irish violence (both terrorism and Mob-related) has been common enough in the last century to have its own category.
Just going by your message, what Slow Horses is doing is mixing the British fear of skinheads and working-class hooliganism with the fear of Islamist extremism. The IRA never used videoed beheadings as a method of stoking fear, they used shootings, bombings, torture and mutilation. Whereas al-Qaeda and ISIS were famed for it.
Whether reversing the races to present crimes committed by muslims against whites (to instead be crimes by whites against muslims) should be considered Culture War is something I leave to the reader's judgement. I suspect the primary reason for doing it is that it's politically easiest. Right-wing whites (especially working class ones) have no special interest groups worth a damn.
Corvos
7d ago
Firefly (the meeting transcription / note takes service) being the most recent and relevant example. The CEO literally used to join calls as "Firefly AI" and make the notes by hand, but now the product works and it's great.
Yes, but that's bad and not how it's supposed to be.
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