Matt Yglesias seems to count violent antisemitic assaults on campus as speech, and defacing posters of children abducted by Hamas as speech. Neither are speech, but as an anti Zionist Matt can’t help himself but protect today’s generation of pro Hamas ghouls, which is what pro Palestinian activists have shown themselves to be.
You got your metaphor wrong. Ukraine was invaded by Russia and had its citizens massacred, tortured and abducted by Russia, same as Palestinians did to Israel on October 7. Russia claims Ukraine is historic Russian land as their excuse, same as Arabs claim Israel is historic ‘Arab Land’ as their excuse. Both Russia and Hamas are violent totalitarian regimes that idiotic far Left people support because they don’t align with western democracies.
oh I agree with you. I was criticizing Hasan's (the dumbass on TV who they claimed was censored) false equivalence here. Yes, Ukraine/Israel: both relatively new countries based on very old cultural ties to that land. Russia/Hamas: the aggressors who deny that legitimacy of those new countries and attacked. we're on the same page.
As you say, universities may like to burnish their leftist bonafides but when students and staff come out and cheer genocidal atrocities, the message needs to be sent that they're adults and they will lose their ability to participate in our economy. There is no evidence that Gazans are any less supportive of Hamas than Germans were of the Nazis. This applies to their supporters as well.
The Chicago principles state, in unvarnished practical terms, that administration should not intervene to shape the environment of Israeli students who know people who were killed by terrorists from people who believe that Hamas was morally right to kill them. If that doesn’t sit right with you, your commitment to free speech is more nuanced than that.
Another problem with the hypocrisy response is that it subtly supports a key anti-free speech argument -- i.e. that "everyone" is a hypocrite when it comes to free speech. Per the critic, no one really supports free speech on principle; it's always a strategic shield wielded by those who now lack the power to enforce their own POW. Or maybe the critic will admit that there are a few weirdos out there who contribute to FIRE and really do care free speech for its own sake, but they are so unusual, so out of touch with human nature, that they have no genuine political influence.
Thus, if our primary response to the cancel culture warrior who suddenly complains that he is being punished for supporting Hamas is to relish in his hypocrisy -- "So, now you like freedom of expression. Maybe you need a taste of your own medicine," we tend to support the deeper argument that everyone is just a free speech hypocrite b/c all anyone cares about is their own, or their tribe's, partisan interests.
The ironic thing about these accusations of hypocracy is that it pretty much always seems that the accuser is guilty of exactly the same thing, albeit on the flipped side. Moreover, they always seem to be calling attention, inadvertantly and without being aware of it, to their own hypocracy.
I think that MY misses something big here. He seems to suddenly be on the Free Speech bandwagon and literally says he isn't sure which side started the suppression of speech. That is ridiculous. The left started it on college campuses. When was a left wing speaker shouted down or disinvited from a college speech? Maybe a trivial number of times. Right wingers are now glad to do the same. It is a genie that the left let out of the bottle and I am not sure it can ever be put back.
I personally think all viewpoints should be able to be expressed on a campus, but conservative viewpoints have been literally shouted down for so long that it is easy to see why they are now eager to give some ignorant lefties a taste of their own medicine.
I think that most rational people agree that filming Grandma's execution on her own Facebook page is something to be condemned, but University administrators repeatedly couldn't bring themselves to do so. They are afraid of their own students now.
So much infantilizing and explaining the true mind and thoughts of pro Hamas activists, you’d think we’re dealing with people with Tourette syndrome who can’t help themselves, rather than professional academics, journalists and extremely bright college students.
Maybe before October 7th they didn’t know that ‘by any means’ glorified massacres and launching rockets at civilians (a war crime) from behind and beneath civilians (a war crime), or that ‘from the river to the sea’ supported genocide and ethnic cleansing of Jews from all of Israel. But they haven’t been living in a cave, all if has been explained to them, and they are aware of both and sticking to their belief that the most progressive action is to support genocidal acts of far Right Islamist terrorists who are as bad as ISIS at their worst.
Matt is trying his hardest to divert people’s normal revulsion and rage over what Palestinian death squads did, and what Palestinian liberation means to Hamas, the Palestinians who voted Hamas into power, and these kind-hearted anti Zionist ghouls who are happy to keep chanting support for genocide, bullying people posting the faces of kidnapped and murdered civilians (both crimes against humanity), threatening them and assaulting them verbally and physically.
Coming very late to the party but wanted to note that Matt is again on the same page as Michelle Goldberg and that her column making a similar point recommends the excellent Nathan Thrall book about living in the west bank A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. I borrowed it from the library just before the recent attacks and then made sure to read it to deepen my understanding of what life is like in Jerusalem and I would highly recommend it as a readable journalistic account that helped me to understand the quotidian frustrations of Palestinians under occupation.
Your theoretical discussion about Just War Theory and the doctrine of double effect is exactly that: a theoretical discussion. It's not people celebrating the rape and murder of your friends, family, and colleagues. For many Jewish students, what happened was literally the latter.
So, yes, an academic environment should allow an openness of ideas. But there are limits of what an institution (especially a private one) considers acceptable speech. There's a line somewhere--we can argue and should argue over where exactly this line is. But there is a line. And people celebrating the rape, murder, and kidnapping of Jews is obviously over that line.
A couple small points. First, the 92 St Y is basically a Jewish community center, and I think they are well within their rights to refuse speakers who are even mildly critical of Israel at this charged time. Nguyen obviously was invited to speak prior to 10/7, so it isn’t that they have a standing policy to that effect, and it actually speaks to their liberalism that such a thoroughly Jewish center wanted to host him at all.
Second, hopefully this ends the expectation that all organizations issue statements on absolutely everything. Planned Parenthood is focused reproductive health. They are pro-choice and should speak to those issues. They should never have issued a statement on BLM, simply because it has nothing to do with their mission. Universities should return to not issuing statements at all.
Third, I think the debates on cancelation are unintentionally disingenuous. Almost everyone has a line of what they consider unacceptable. Most of us would object to, say, people showing movies of torture porn in front of a nursery school. There’s an unconscious, and almost inescapable lean towards defining things that don’t bother you as free speech and things that do as legitimate boundaries. Generally, people who consider themselves pro-free speech absolutists simply aren’t bothered by many things. It’s not necessarily a principle so much as it is a reflection of their own comfort levels.
I’d also point out that almost all spaces limit “free speech” in terms of spam / relentless advertising. If I wrote nothing but long sequences of random letters here, I’d get banned. Similarly if I tried to sell fitness drinks.
All of which is to say, it’s tough to draw the line, though I think we’ll all be interested in relaxing it a little further now that people of all political stripes have been bitten by the cancelation bug.
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Yes yes all true BUT if people hadn’t been retaliated against last week, we wouldn’t be discussing this at all. Some “hey hypocrisy!” Tweets and thought pieces would not have registered. But now we move on.
My alma maters' campus Hillel, wanted the school to make their statement more pro-Israel (mention Hamas by name etc.), so they e-mailed the alums to e-mail the administration, and that worked. I thought they helped the school to make the statement better. The school could just have a policy of not making statements in these situations, but oh well.
Then the Hillel wanted to get the school to denounce other students that were putting up pro-Palestinian posters. I told them I didn't support them in that and they should put up their own poster.
Matt Yglesias seems to count violent antisemitic assaults on campus as speech, and defacing posters of children abducted by Hamas as speech. Neither are speech, but as an anti Zionist Matt can’t help himself but protect today’s generation of pro Hamas ghouls, which is what pro Palestinian activists have shown themselves to be.
What does today's generation mean as an important concept?
maybe Medhi Hasan should be booted off TV for proudly proclaiming Israel is like Russia because they occupy Gaza. Or maybe that's an emotional truth.
You got your metaphor wrong. Ukraine was invaded by Russia and had its citizens massacred, tortured and abducted by Russia, same as Palestinians did to Israel on October 7. Russia claims Ukraine is historic Russian land as their excuse, same as Arabs claim Israel is historic ‘Arab Land’ as their excuse. Both Russia and Hamas are violent totalitarian regimes that idiotic far Left people support because they don’t align with western democracies.
oh I agree with you. I was criticizing Hasan's (the dumbass on TV who they claimed was censored) false equivalence here. Yes, Ukraine/Israel: both relatively new countries based on very old cultural ties to that land. Russia/Hamas: the aggressors who deny that legitimacy of those new countries and attacked. we're on the same page.
As you say, universities may like to burnish their leftist bonafides but when students and staff come out and cheer genocidal atrocities, the message needs to be sent that they're adults and they will lose their ability to participate in our economy. There is no evidence that Gazans are any less supportive of Hamas than Germans were of the Nazis. This applies to their supporters as well.
Yeesh. The commenters here have gotten really conservative here. But this article is good.
Great piece…well said.
The Chicago principles state, in unvarnished practical terms, that administration should not intervene to shape the environment of Israeli students who know people who were killed by terrorists from people who believe that Hamas was morally right to kill them. If that doesn’t sit right with you, your commitment to free speech is more nuanced than that.
Maybe it should be.
Another problem with the hypocrisy response is that it subtly supports a key anti-free speech argument -- i.e. that "everyone" is a hypocrite when it comes to free speech. Per the critic, no one really supports free speech on principle; it's always a strategic shield wielded by those who now lack the power to enforce their own POW. Or maybe the critic will admit that there are a few weirdos out there who contribute to FIRE and really do care free speech for its own sake, but they are so unusual, so out of touch with human nature, that they have no genuine political influence.
Thus, if our primary response to the cancel culture warrior who suddenly complains that he is being punished for supporting Hamas is to relish in his hypocrisy -- "So, now you like freedom of expression. Maybe you need a taste of your own medicine," we tend to support the deeper argument that everyone is just a free speech hypocrite b/c all anyone cares about is their own, or their tribe's, partisan interests.
The ironic thing about these accusations of hypocracy is that it pretty much always seems that the accuser is guilty of exactly the same thing, albeit on the flipped side. Moreover, they always seem to be calling attention, inadvertantly and without being aware of it, to their own hypocracy.
This threads the needle about as well as any piece I have seen.
I think that MY misses something big here. He seems to suddenly be on the Free Speech bandwagon and literally says he isn't sure which side started the suppression of speech. That is ridiculous. The left started it on college campuses. When was a left wing speaker shouted down or disinvited from a college speech? Maybe a trivial number of times. Right wingers are now glad to do the same. It is a genie that the left let out of the bottle and I am not sure it can ever be put back.
I personally think all viewpoints should be able to be expressed on a campus, but conservative viewpoints have been literally shouted down for so long that it is easy to see why they are now eager to give some ignorant lefties a taste of their own medicine.
I think that most rational people agree that filming Grandma's execution on her own Facebook page is something to be condemned, but University administrators repeatedly couldn't bring themselves to do so. They are afraid of their own students now.
So much infantilizing and explaining the true mind and thoughts of pro Hamas activists, you’d think we’re dealing with people with Tourette syndrome who can’t help themselves, rather than professional academics, journalists and extremely bright college students.
Maybe before October 7th they didn’t know that ‘by any means’ glorified massacres and launching rockets at civilians (a war crime) from behind and beneath civilians (a war crime), or that ‘from the river to the sea’ supported genocide and ethnic cleansing of Jews from all of Israel. But they haven’t been living in a cave, all if has been explained to them, and they are aware of both and sticking to their belief that the most progressive action is to support genocidal acts of far Right Islamist terrorists who are as bad as ISIS at their worst.
Matt is trying his hardest to divert people’s normal revulsion and rage over what Palestinian death squads did, and what Palestinian liberation means to Hamas, the Palestinians who voted Hamas into power, and these kind-hearted anti Zionist ghouls who are happy to keep chanting support for genocide, bullying people posting the faces of kidnapped and murdered civilians (both crimes against humanity), threatening them and assaulting them verbally and physically.
Coming very late to the party but wanted to note that Matt is again on the same page as Michelle Goldberg and that her column making a similar point recommends the excellent Nathan Thrall book about living in the west bank A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. I borrowed it from the library just before the recent attacks and then made sure to read it to deepen my understanding of what life is like in Jerusalem and I would highly recommend it as a readable journalistic account that helped me to understand the quotidian frustrations of Palestinians under occupation.
MY failed in this piece, IMHO.
Your theoretical discussion about Just War Theory and the doctrine of double effect is exactly that: a theoretical discussion. It's not people celebrating the rape and murder of your friends, family, and colleagues. For many Jewish students, what happened was literally the latter.
So, yes, an academic environment should allow an openness of ideas. But there are limits of what an institution (especially a private one) considers acceptable speech. There's a line somewhere--we can argue and should argue over where exactly this line is. But there is a line. And people celebrating the rape, murder, and kidnapping of Jews is obviously over that line.
Thanks for expressing this so well.
A couple small points. First, the 92 St Y is basically a Jewish community center, and I think they are well within their rights to refuse speakers who are even mildly critical of Israel at this charged time. Nguyen obviously was invited to speak prior to 10/7, so it isn’t that they have a standing policy to that effect, and it actually speaks to their liberalism that such a thoroughly Jewish center wanted to host him at all.
Second, hopefully this ends the expectation that all organizations issue statements on absolutely everything. Planned Parenthood is focused reproductive health. They are pro-choice and should speak to those issues. They should never have issued a statement on BLM, simply because it has nothing to do with their mission. Universities should return to not issuing statements at all.
Third, I think the debates on cancelation are unintentionally disingenuous. Almost everyone has a line of what they consider unacceptable. Most of us would object to, say, people showing movies of torture porn in front of a nursery school. There’s an unconscious, and almost inescapable lean towards defining things that don’t bother you as free speech and things that do as legitimate boundaries. Generally, people who consider themselves pro-free speech absolutists simply aren’t bothered by many things. It’s not necessarily a principle so much as it is a reflection of their own comfort levels.
I’d also point out that almost all spaces limit “free speech” in terms of spam / relentless advertising. If I wrote nothing but long sequences of random letters here, I’d get banned. Similarly if I tried to sell fitness drinks.
All of which is to say, it’s tough to draw the line, though I think we’ll all be interested in relaxing it a little further now that people of all political stripes have been bitten by the cancelation bug.
In closing: fngifdjemdififf void efnforsknw3j my vitamins GUARANTEED to help you lose belly fat! Djffidosjsndifjfjfwnwj flfoeowoeiwiaixjcm would you hit this? 😍
Yes yes all true BUT if people hadn’t been retaliated against last week, we wouldn’t be discussing this at all. Some “hey hypocrisy!” Tweets and thought pieces would not have registered. But now we move on.
My alma maters' campus Hillel, wanted the school to make their statement more pro-Israel (mention Hamas by name etc.), so they e-mailed the alums to e-mail the administration, and that worked. I thought they helped the school to make the statement better. The school could just have a policy of not making statements in these situations, but oh well.
Then the Hillel wanted to get the school to denounce other students that were putting up pro-Palestinian posters. I told them I didn't support them in that and they should put up their own poster.