(np) The Neurodiversity Case for Free Speech

[John Bailey]

Our Australian right-wing ruling party has been pushing for a repeal
of a law that prohibits (basically) racist public speech, though it's
fine in private, and the usual caveats of satire etc are in place.
The finest moment was when our Prime Minister was asked by a reporter
to say the kind of thing that cannot currently be said. He was asked,
like, ten times. He couldn't answer.
That's maybe my new litmus test when it comes to discussions of free
speech. What do *you* feel you can't say?

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 7:38 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> Quillette in general is a bunch of reactionary hyperventilating
> alt-right crap spackled with a thin veneer of academic camouflage that
> would only fool those who've never actually been to university, or who
> did go, and yet somehow managed to learn not a blip about philosophy
> or the history of ideas.
>
> I've never seen so many people who haven't got a clue what they're
> talking about talk about it with such obvious self-assured authority
> (Cultural Marxism! Postmodernism! The Frankfurt School!). Most of them
> think Jordan Peterson is an intellectual titan of this age, even
> though he tells his readers "all you need to know about postmodernism
> is found in Stephen Hicks' book Explaining Postmodernism!"
>
> A quick perusal of Hicks' book (easily done, as PDFs are freely
> available online, seeing as it, like Peterson's whole shtick, is part
> of a massive public brainwashing campaign that's going on right now,
> in case you've missed it) reveals that he knows next to nothing of
> substance about the subject. A deeper look into Hicks' other published
> work reveals a possible answer for that - he's a devoted Ayn Randroid.
>
> So, yeah, college students behave badly sometimes. Sometimes they get
> tangled up in bad ideas and start believing silly things. Sometimes
> they do it just for the hell of it. And do you know why? Because
> THAT'S WHAT COLLEGE HAS ALWAYS BEEN FOR, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!!
> Twas ever thus!
>
> And all the hand-wringing crocodile tears about how "the left is
> ruining" this and "the left is perverting" that... it's all fucking
> bullshit distraction from the REAL problem facing the world right now.
> That being the potentially planet-destroying ascendancy of a rogue
> Deep State faction bringing together the postwar remnant "Underground
> Reich" (as relentlessly documented by Dave Emory), the nascent
> technofetishist Utopian billionaire class (with its access to
> bottomless financial resources, increasingly powerful mass mind
> control technologies, and deeply anti-democratic post-human "Dark
> Enlightenment" worldview), as well as a handful of other, equally
> poisonous partners of convenience, of which Trump is an unknowing
> puppet.
>
> I have taken to calling them the New Fascist International. I'd be
> honored if some of y'all started doing so as well.
>
> MOST Sincerely,
> yer old pal Jerky
> www.dailydirtdiaspora.blogspot.com
>
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 2:45 AM, L E Bryan <lebryan at sonic.net> wrote:
>> Republicans in academia are “oppressed” like creationists are “oppressed” in
>> biology departments. At least the bulk of the current crop of religious
>> neo-facists.
>>
>>
>> On Jul 25, 2017, at 9:23 AM, Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think the writer creates a fallacy that men on the Autism/Aspergers scale
>> (however loosely that's defined) are likely to be right-wing and/or
>> Republican, leading to him to argue that right-wing men are an "oppressed"
>> group in academia, and deserve the protections of other marginalized groups.
>> Given the loose definition he uses (apparently any man who's a little crusty
>> or socially awkward), I'd have to argue that almost 100% of the men I know
>> who fall into that category are politically progressive and/or Democrats. So
>> basically, he's just whining about how badly Republicans are treated in
>> academia. The poor, oppressed, marginalized little dears.
>>
>> I agree with him that the current cultural obsession with micro-aggressions
>> and triggers, amplified by crowd-shaming and the taking of statements and
>> pictures out of context, is a serious threat to free expression. As a
>> feminist, I find the sniveling about the need to protect women from even
>> modest innuendo (I'm not talking about sexual assaults or serious threats or
>> hazing campaigns) a throwback to Victorian times, with the emphasis on women
>> as weaklings who need to be sheltered and protected, lest they ... faint.
>> And I can't imagine that any psychologist would instruct someone suffering
>> from PTSD to spend the rest of their life hiding from anything that triggers
>> distressing memories.
>>
>> LK
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 3:53 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Having a daughter who's not only studying history and English but also
>>> politically active in the fields of LGBT and migration, I'm often
>>> shocked how little Free Speech counts among the young.
>>>
>>> http://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-speech/
>>>
>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>>
>>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l