NY Mag: Academics Are Reconsidering the Meaning of Free Speech

November 28, 2022 Hunter Wallace Conservatism, Culture, Liberalism, Politics, Populists, Progressives 31

Occidental Dissent has been labeled a “hate site.”

Last night, I noticed that we have been blocked by Target.

I don’t know how anyone can read this website though and come away with the impression that I am driven by a pathological hatred of racial minorities. I clearly hate these people.

New York Magazine:

“The Big Lie took a beating in the midterms. Of the six 2020 election deniers vying to take control of a battleground state’s election systems, not a single one was victorious. But democracy isn’t exactly safe from being undermined by a campaign of falsehoods orchestrated by Donald Trump, who is trying to retake the White House. In response to Trump’s ascent and other challenges across the world to shared truths that stitch together societies, some scholars have begun to argue that it’s time to reconsider the meaning of freedom of speech. “The question is gaining traction among legal academics,” says Richard Hasen, a professor at UCLA Law School.

It’s a fraught undertaking, to be sure. In the United States, the First Amendment protects speech to a degree rare elsewhere in the world. But these are extraordinary times. It’s not just that lies have become more common in the age of MAGA, perverting the public’s ability to make informed decisions. It’s also that the societal norms hold ing lies in check have faded. “Trump has made it more fashionable to lie,” says David Schultz, a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, “and there seem to be few political or legal consequences for lying.” …

Such a law would not be much of a stretch. Indeed, one such case is already underway. In 2021, a Florida man named Douglass Mackey was arrested and charged with conspiring to deprive individuals of their right to vote after he sent out tweets in 2016 falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton supporters could vote by sending a text. Mackey’s lawyers are trying to get the charges tossed, claiming that they violate his First Amendment rights. Hasen’s proposed law would not punish Trump for lying about the election. “Trump’s lies about the last election being stolen, undermining people’s confidence in the legitimacy of the electoral process — these are contested questions about how the world works,” Hasen says. “Those are not empirically verifiable statements.” …”

I write about them all the time.

In this case, it is law professors brainstorming ways to erode the First Amendment in order to squash dissent and impose their own views on the public. These people are a menace. I spend a lot of my time trying to foment hatred against the people who most deserve it.

Note: I am a “semi-fascist authoritarian” for supporting the First Amendment. “Democracy Defenders” are defending democracy against the threat of ordinary people voting in elections.

31 Comments

  1. Is “election denier” supposed to evoke thoughts of another kind of “denier”?

    Anything TPTB require us to believe is probably false.
    Anything TPTB require us to disbelieve is probably true.

  2. The number of highly-educated useless eaters in America is absolutely enormous.

    It would be beyond cool if the same group who now defend democracy from fascists whom they see behind every tree soon start being honest and admitting they don’t really believe every pleb ought to have the vote — that seems to be the logically more consistent position for them to have.

    link — If speech must be controlled by “activists” and media companies because voters are too stupid or dangerous to debate serious ideas, stop the nonsense about democracy. … “Stop the count” forever, because evidently none of the democracy defenders really believe in any of it.

    • I wonder how much of the PMC’s hostility towards the working class is just them projecting their unshakable sense of their own utter uselessness onto them.

  3. What never fails inside the mind of an intellectual never works outside the confines of his head. The world’s stubborn refusal to vindicate the intellectual’s theories serves as proof of humanity’s irrationality, not his own. Thus, the true believer retrenches rather than rethinks; he launches a war on the world, denying reality because it fails to conform to his theories. If intellectuals are not prepared to reconcile theory and practice, then why do they bother to venture outside the ivory tower or the coffeehouse? Why not stay in the world of abstractions and fantasy? — Daniel J. Flynn

    I’ve always thought academics should get a little slurry on their boots from time to time. — Karen Lord

  4. This is not a news unfortunately, it has been for about 10 years now that people who we call “woke” or globalist or leftists are trying to shut up and censor their opponents. I saw and still see this in Europe too. I remember when Alain De Benoist was to give a book presentation at a bookstore in Milan and due to protests had to postpone the presentation until two months later. These people want to rule over all people: they claim to be democrats but they don’t understand and tolerate plurality of opinions, indeed censrship is one of their favourite games; they claim to be against “hate” but they’re the first that use violence in the language and in the streets with their “activists”/ “counter-protestor” / “antifa”….; they claim to be the science when they’re the first that deny science and blind their eyes on certain arguments; they claim to be the culture when they’re the first that cancel culture, they judge history (which is the least cultural and most ignorant thing one can do) and worst they destroy and erase people of the past.

  5. “I spend a lot of my time trying to foment hatred against the people who most deserve it.”

    Yep, and it’s why they hate you, for I know of none who has so relentlessly vivisected and excoriated today’s Left.

    To tell the truth, I’m surprised they have not firebombed your backyard shed…

  6. Actually this is a good news. Parasitic not working filth is panicked that they may get the Twitter communist garbage treatment.

    This also demonstrates that our enemy also thinks that we are winning. Their greatest weapon, Big Lie became ineffective and they are so uneducated that they can not figure out what to do.

  7. “Note: I am a “semi-fascist authoritarian” for supporting the First Amendment. “Democracy Defenders” are defending democracy against the threat of ordinary people voting in elections.”

    And where are they not? You just stomp your feet when a fair election doesn’t go your way. Ergo, you are against democracy.

  10. I’m glad that these totalitarian bigots are making their intentions plain to see. As they attack free speech, I think we should start referring to them as “freedom haters.”

  13. @Brad If you work for Target, then Target has blocked its employees from reading OD at work? That’s what you mean, right? What else could they do?

    • I stopped by Target to buy some pet food last night and logged into the internet with their WiFi. Found out that OD is blocked.

      • Several years ago when a Christian group called for a nationwide boycott against Target because of their bathroom policies I stopped shopping there and have never been back since. Maybe we need to start calling for boycotts against these Leftist companies again b/c the one several years ago did financially hurt Target.

  14. Let’s get something straight, first. What the left refers to as “democracy”, is not democracy at all. Democracy is supposed to be government by the people, but in America, it is not. Democracy as practiced in the West, is the despotic rule of billionaire oligarchs who use corrupt politicians and other public officials to implement their absolutely sinister neo-liberal agenda.

    The only “democracy” these leftists want to protect is only situations of which they are in charge, but we already know they’re a bunch of nation destroying weasels. They rig elections, but in a crooked system, it’s near impossible to come up with enough evidence to force crooked US courts to find in favor of the truth. Why? Because the JEWdicial system is a big part of the problem. So, they call Trump a liar, which has some measure of truth, and because Trump may lie, that means, according to these whackos, that everything on the right is a lie, and making any assertion about anything they don’t agree with should be censored or outlawed.

    Here’s a novel idea. How about they address each “lie”, and prove it’s a lie and allow those they accuse of lying to participate in the conversation. They can’t, and they won’t, of course so they want to just outlaw or silence anything they claim are lies. The truth of couse is they abhor the truth, and want it to go away. Why on earth should it be illegal to question the legitimacy of any election when the US Constitution guarentees free speech? These leftist loons, who promote nothing but lies — equality, feminism, homosexuality, transgenderism, censorship, open borders, globalism, global warming, etc., expect people to accept whatever they say just on their word. That’s not only ridiculous, it’s preposterous.

    • Didn’t Ezra Pound say that ‘democracy’ was correctly defined as any government controlled by Jews? Certainly fits everything referred to as such by gaslight media.

      • Democrazy is a trojan horse used to disenfranchise the White man from political power in his own homelands and hand it over to lesser races, who outnumber them and breed at comparatively multiple rates. Where the nonwhites are allowed to form a serious constituency, measures to defend against them are no longer possible. That castle has been taken by a fifth column led by the jews.

        • No argument whatsoever. Absolutely true. Look no further than the one-party state of minority-white California for a real-life example. The whites of California went along with it and many have already fled elsewhere. Their failure is that they refuse to see that their own belief in lies led to the conditions that they fled.

          • “Look no further than the one-party state of minority-white California for a real-life example.”

            Another example of wealth and prosperity leads to indolence and laxity.

        • “castle has been taken by a fifth column led by the jews.”

          That has been true for dozens of centuries.
          How did David take Jerusalem, by coming up through the sewers.

  15. I believe only members of the woke professional class have the right to decide what I can read, watch, hear or think. Our democracy is much too precious to allow it to fall into the hands of BIGOTS, RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS, DEMAGOGUES, ELECTION DENIERS, CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS AND OTHER BAD ACTORS™.

      • “Academics Are Reconsidering the Meaning of Free Speech”

        Translation:
        The internet s getting out of hand.
        The peasants are starting to grumble.

        (Who gives a damn what some rat faced academic thinks, aside from his sycophantic students.)

  16. There’s two different types of speech in this tyrannical govt ,one for the woke left which is called free speech and is protected and there’s one for us which is called “hate’ speech and that can cause you to lose a job or in your case blocked and censored. That is not how the 1sr is supposed to work but we already know that.

  17. Journos love to throw the term, “Big Lie,” around nowadays because, they tell you, Hitler wrote about Big Lies in Mein Kampf and how they’re used to propagandize the public. Therefore, when they accuse you of telling a Big Lie they’re effectively calling you a Nazi.

    What they don’t tell you is Hitler was writing about Jews.

    Put another way, their use of the term, Big Lie, is itself a Big Lie. How’s that for some chutzpah.

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