pErvin wrote:Forty Two wrote:Also, free speech does allow people to hold and express "illegitimate" political ideologies. It's good for the left that it does, since Communism as "illegitimate" as fascism, so if it were not for free speech, those of us who loathe both fascism and communism could shut the fascists and the communists up equally. Replace the word fascism in that cartoon with "communism." What's your view on it then?
If it's authoritarian "communism" like we saw in the USSR etc, then my view is the same.
What's an example of non-authoritarian communism in practice? What if someone thinks that all communism is inherently authoritarian? Is it o.k. to punch communists then, or only if they are of the same opinion on which communism is authoritarian and which isn't as you? Or, is there some objective distinction that tells us which communists are to be punched and which not?
Authoritarian communism in the USSR arose with Marxist-Leninism, Engels, and Trotsky, the Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, So, which ideas in the 1890s and first decade or two of the 1900s would be verboten in your opinion? Would it be O.K. for Marx to speak? Lenin? Stalin? Engels? Trotsky? Punch all them motherfuckers!
It's funny, at the time of the Russian Revolution and in the years leading up to it, there was no freedom of speech, and as you should be aware, Peter Stolypin gave dissidents "Stolypin Neckties" for speaking out against the State. So, the non-authoritarians participating in the Russian Revolution already were prohibited from speaking. Do you suspect that such censorship increased their esteem among the public, or decreased it? Do you think the public drew any conclusions from the suppression of these ideas -- i.e. would the people in Australia, for example, draw any conclusions regarding the worth or value of an idea based on how hard one group or another, or the State, is seeking to suppress it? Would there be a significant number of people who might wonder what all the fuss was about, and why someone was trying to decide for them which ideas they could hear about?
Lenin's April Theses were already illegal in Russia, but should they have been?
what about the Bolsheviks? Free speech for them? Would anyone advocating for the dictatorship of the proletariat be censored? Maybe the Mensheviks would be punched, but not the Mensheviks.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar