• @ganymede@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    free speech ≠ hate speech

    Be warned. The erroneous belief that “free speech” is a right wing concept is exactly the lie right wing lunatics want you to believe. it suits them very nicely.

    right wing loonies have a long history of hijacking and destroying empathetic terms like this.

    if they believed in freedom or free speech, why is it always them who are burning and banning books? why are they always the ones trying to control other people’s bodies? when they talk about freedom, they mean their freedom to take yours away.

    should we let them kill yet another canary of a healthy society? that’s a different discussion. but it would be a substantial error to assume anyone who won’t let them hijack it are actually right wing.

    • Soviet Snake
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      210 months ago

      Yeah, free speech is something totally unrelated to politics, how could I’ve been so dumb to think that way.

      • Ephera
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        10 months ago

        They did not say that there’s no relation to politics at all. But we do not need to hold a particular political position to agree that the government should not censor people’s opinions.

        It only starts to become a right-wing talking point when liberally applied to everything else. When even government officials argue your opinion should be censored, because it is critical of their opinion. That has nothing to do with the actual free speech principle. Quite the contrary.

        • Soviet Snake
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          110 months ago

          Yeah, I do think the government should not allow certain opinions, if they promote hatred, and I say this in a political founded way.

          • Ephera
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            210 months ago

            Well, I don’t consider hate speech to be an opinion. In the USA, in my country and presumably most countries, hate speech is a crime in itself.

            • Marius
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              010 months ago

              @Ephera @sovietsnake What’s wrong with hate speech?

              It allows you to expose incompetence at the establishment level. This way the incompetents would see themselves forced to improve. All the crises we are currently going through would miraculously be solved overnight.

              • Ephera
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                310 months ago

                Expressing that a politician is bad at their job is not hate speech. That is an opinion and very much protected by free speech.

                Hate speech is a very specific term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
                I introduced the term into this discussion, because I assumed, the commenter above me meant that.

                • Marius
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                  210 months ago

                  @Ephera Unfortunately, they like to mark anything they don’t agree as hate speech, espionage act, etc. And there have been cases of detainment for shaming the establishment.

  • @knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
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    110 months ago

    They’re right wing in the sense that they’re liberals, and I don’t know if free speech absolutism is the way to go. But in terms of their pro-freedom-of-information lobbying and legal work I think their intentions are in the right place, even though they lack a theoretical framework in which to contexualize all of the IP issues they fight against.