If you read one long form piece today then please make it the one linked to below by Brendan O’Neill. In this piece he takes aim at those who deny that there is a free speech crisis in Britain today and hits the target full on.
He quite rightly expresses frustration at those, mostly those on the Left it needs to be said, who refuse to acknowledge that there are problems with freedom of speech in Britain today. He said that with these censorship deniers there is an unwillingness to listen to evidence that silencing is going on. Mr O’Neill said that when these censorship deniers are confronted with solid evidence of censorship they refuse to accept that this evidence is either real or valid.
Mr O’Neill said:
….the censorship deniers, those nominally leftish people who claim there is no free-speech crisis on campus or anywhere else, just cannot be taken seriously. Such is their ideological blindness to the problem of contemporary censorship that they have become impervious even to facts and information. I know from personal experience that you can provide these people with loads of examples of ‘controversial’ individuals being No Platformed, arrested and even physically assaulted for their political or moral points of view, and it makes no difference. ‘Nope, there’s no free-speech crisis’, they’ll say.
You can read the whole article via the link below:
It’s Time To Get Real About Freedom Of Speech
Freedom of speech in my view is essential for society not just because, as I’ve said in the past, because it allows the sane to drag the mad into the open in order to debate them and ultimately discredit them. It is also essential as sometimes good answers can be found in heresies and unorthodoxies. For example it was once heretical and extremely unorthodox to state that gay people are equal to straight people and those who proposed such ideas in the distant past were called mad or sick or wrong. Some who believed in this were silenced or self censored, just as those who state biological facts such as ‘there are only two genders’ are silenced to day. But today after much time has elapsed and as societies have changed, it is no longer a heresy to say that gay people are equal, gay people are equal and quite rightly the law treats them as equal.
Good article and good link
Left are the personification of Three Monkeys
Yes, very good article. I also think that we need to highlight the small mindedness of those who think that anyone who disagrees with them is wrong by definition and therefore needs to be silenced. Anyone who has not examined both sides of an argument doesn’t even know their own side very well. Being so sure that you are right that you don’t need to listen to alternate views is a sure sign of profound ignorance.
(it’s gone sunset here so I’m back) Thank you for the compliment. You make a good point there about the arrogance of those who want to silence others. Although it’s most prominent on the woke left it can also be found on the right as well. There are those on some soc media platforms for example who believe that they are ‘fighting Lucifer’ via their keyboards and they will not accept any argument that challenges them. I’m not perfect (who is) but I’m more than willing to cite the Guardian and the Spectator in stories and am increasingly willing to see nuance. For example I might vehmently dislike Islam but would prefer to see people leave this cult and choose another faith or no faith than come to harm because of their membership of it. Also, I might disagree with the wilder shores of the Trans movement but I’m prepared to accept that there are a very tiny minority of people for whom transition works.
It is this attitude of absolute surety that they are correct which comes from the woke Left that really bothers me. They don’t seem to look to see if there is another point of view or even ask themselves ‘am I sure that there is enough evidence to show that I’m right?’
Edited to add: About the only things that I’m wildly intolerant about is ‘woo’, quackery and ‘alternative medicine’ but this is primarily because I had an abusive ex who was really into all sorts of woo shit like reiki, primal scream therapy and hypnotic regression to find ‘recovered memories’. I saw the crap that she was into do an incredible amount of damage to her family.
The subject of woo and quackery is dealt with in a very humorous way by Tim Minchin in a poem about a girl called Storm.
https://app-lyrics-az.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/app.lyrics.az/tim-minchin/-/storm.html?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQHKAFQArABIA%3D%3D#aoh=16138482437288&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s
That’s excellent. First class. Talking about finding a balanced view. I’m currently doing some research into a cancer cure quack and trying to work out whether he was merely deluded or a conman. I was trying to find stuff that balanced the overwhelmingly negative stuff in order to get a different viewpoint and all that I could find was found on that wicked nest of scum and quackery that is ‘Natural News’ and a really odd site that defended the guy but which also had pro-Hitler videos on the sidebar. I can’t find anybody of any scientific or legal credibility who has anything good to say about the particular quack in question.