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felipec  unbelief  1mo ago (felipec.substack.com)   1819 thread views

Freedom of speech has been poisoned and we need to reframe it

felipec.substack.com

I've written about freedom of speech extensively in all manner of forums, but the one thing that has become clear to me lately, is that people are genuinely uninterested in the philosophical underpinnings of freedom of speech. Today they would rather quote an XKCD comic, than John Stuart Mill's seminar work On Liberty.

Because of this, I've decided to try to reframe the original notion of freedom of speech, into a term I coined: Open Ideas.

Open Ideas is nothing more than what freedom of speech has always been historically: a philosophical declaration that the open contestation of ideas is the engine of progress that keeps moving society forward.

Today the tyranny of the majority believes freedom of speech is anything but that. They believe that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", despite the fact that such term came from nowhere, has no author, and in addition all great free speech thinkers argued precisely the opposite. The great thinkers argued that if people are afraid of expressing unpopular opinions, that is functionally the same as government censorship: ideas are suppressed, society stagnates, and progress is halted.

So far I have not yet heard any sound refutation of any of these ideas. All people do is repeat the aforementioned dogmatic slogan with zero philosophical foundation, or mention First Amendment details, which obviously is not equal to freedom of speech.

How is anything I've stated in any way an inaccurate assessment of what is happening?

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I think you're confused here.

Right, I meant mistake theorists, not conflict theorists.

In my view what Scott Alexander calls "conflict theorists" is basically woke ideology. So, yes: people who subscribe to the woke ideology don't believe in freedom of speech.

But "mistake theorists" are not significantly different: they just pretend to believe in freedom of speech.

Alexander goes on to further deconflate the categories and argues there may be "easy mistake theorists" and "hard mistake theorists". So perhaps in this framing it's only the "easy mistake theorists" the ones that pretend to believe in freedom of speech.

All I know is there's many non-woke people who pretend to care about freedom of speech, but all they do is parrot what the First Amendment says. That's not freedom of speech as it was intended.

In my view what Scott Alexander calls "conflict theorists" is basically woke ideology.

It was written to refer to Marxists, actually.

SJ is almost definitionally conflict theorist, but white supremacists are generally conflict theorists as well. Your mistake is that you assumed "conflict theory vs. mistake theory" was isomorphic to the two sides of the culture war; it's not.

white supremacists are generally conflict theorists as well.

Let's look at some criteria and see how many apply to white supremacists:

  1. Conflict theorists treat politics as war. I don't see how that applies to white supremacists.
  2. Conflict theorists view debate as having a minor clarifying role at best. Doesn't apply.
  3. Conflict theorists treat the asymmetry of sides as their first and most important principle. Irrelevant.
  4. Conflict theorists think this is more often a convenient excuse than a real problem. Nothing to do with white supremacists.
  5. Conflict theorists think you can save the world by increasing passion. Nope.
  6. For a conflict theorist, intelligence is inadequate or even suspect. Definitely not.
  7. Conflict theorists think of free speech and open debate about the same way a 1950s Bircher would treat avowed Soviet agents coming into neighborhoods and trying to convince people of the merits of Communism. No.
  8. Conflict theorists think that stopping George Soros / the Koch brothers is the most important thing in the world. Nope.
  9. Conflict theorists think racism is a conflict between races. Ironically, no.
  10. When conflict theorists criticize democracy, it’s because it doesn’t give enough power to the average person – special interests can buy elections, or convince representatives to betray campaign promises in exchange for cash. No.

So the claim that "white supremacists are generally conflict theorists" doesn't seem to hold any water.

Your mistake is that you assumed "conflict theory vs. mistake theory" was isomorphic to the two sides of the culture war; it's not.

That's definitely a claim, but you have not substantiated it.

@Eupraxia's post hit most of the relevant points, but I do also want to clarify that I chose the narrow "white supremacists are generally conflict theorists" very deliberately. The group that's been called "classical liberal HBDers" are mistake theorists, but are not white supremacists despite SJ's histrionic claims otherwise.

...what.

  1. A white supremacist would consider politics in a multiracial polity as a proxy race war.
  2. A white supremacist is by definition committed to the idea of their race deserving to reign supreme, so your criterion absolutely applies.
  3. To a white supremacist, white vs non-white is the most important division in politics, of course they do!
  4. ???
  5. Have you ever been exposed to any white supremacist memes? They talk a lot about "racial awakening" and "the Saxon learning to hate"—invoking passion is their primary form of praxis!
  6. ??????
  7. Refer to #2.
  8. Insofar as George Soros is a stand-in for influential actors/groups who promote anti-white causes, absolutely. What do you think they mean when they blame everything on (((them)))?
  9. ????????!?!
  10. This one isn't particularly characteristic of "conflict theory" at all, it can be framed from either a mistake (we just need to restrict lobbying more) or conflict (the rich will always have disproportionate influence in a democracy) perspective.

I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Edit: I just realized that the above list of criteria is ripped directly from Scott's original article on conflict vs. mistake theory. While the structure of your argument makes more sense with that context, it also makes the attempt to claim white supremacists aren't conflict theorists even more farcical:

Conflict theorists think racism is a conflict between races. White racists aren’t suffering from a cognitive bias, and they’re not mistaken about anything: they’re correct that white supremacy puts them on top, and hoping to stay there. Conflict theorists find narratives about racism useful because they help explain otherwise inexplicable alliances, like why working-class white people have allied with rich white capitalists.

A white supremacist is by definition committed to the idea of their race deserving to reign supreme, so your criterion absolutely applies.

That is not true, and if even if it were, it has zero bearing on the importance of debate.

????????!?!

That is not an argument.

I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

That is not an argument either.

If you are going to make the claim that white supremacists are conflict theorists, you have the burden of proof.

Personally I do not care. The only comparison between "mistake theorists" and "confllcit theorists" that matters here is in regards to freedom of speech, and I don't see any white supremacist trying trying to silence my ideas, or anyone's ideas.

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