#sloanerangerharry

[dictacontrion]

On the one hand, perhaps this will prevent any messages to the effect of “but Dicta, you’re overreacting, sympathy towards these two things don’t go together.”

On the other hand, this is the most appalling pile of garbage I’ve read in a good long while and needs to be taken apart with a fucking scalpel.

Milo is not evil any more than Draco in the books - Maybe, maybe not, but Milo is a real person whose actions affect real people, and his actions are therefore in an entirely different ethical category.

not everyone in the world is altruistic... - No, but the existence of bad behavior neither justifies nor excuses bad behavior.

...They are still seen as “good people” because they were on the side that won, the side that thinks itself morally superior.  - No. They are seen as good people because they seek to decrease harm, rather than increasing harm.

Other peoples opinions do not hurt you, other peoples actions do. - Expressing an opinion is an action. Expressing an opinion that is intended to incite others to exclusion and violence is an action. Expressing the opinion, as Milo did, that people should “catcall at least five women” in celebration of “World Patriarchy Day,” is both an action and a call to action. Even in the United States, which takes one of the (if not the) world’s most hard-line positions on free speech, speech that is meant to incite people to harmful action (a la yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre, which will cause a stampede) can be restricted, precisely because the expression of ideas can cause harm.

You have nothing to fear from a calm discussion with someone you disagree with. - You do if that “calm discussion” is not, was never intended to be, an exchange. You do when it’s one-sided and broadcast to an audience who the speaker knows will act against you, as was the case in Milo’s criticism of Leslie Jones.

You do from anyone who gets angry when their point of view is challenged, because they are intolerant, they want to shut down discussion of a topic - Not all ideas ought to be tolerated. Free speech principles and laws mean that almost any idea can make its way into the world, but people are not obligated to, and should not, give them all equal consideration. As a society, we should not tolerate the idea that “Women are...screwing up the internet for men by invading every space we have online and ruining it with attention-seeking and a needy, demanding, touchy-feely form of modern feminism that quickly comes into conflict with men’s natural tendency to be boisterous, confrontational, and delightfully autistic” or that “all heads of diversity and indeed every employee of any diversity or equality department should be white men—the more privileged the better. After all only rich, well-educated, well-connected heterosexual white males have the required detachment and lack of emotional connection to the issues at hand to make the right calls.” Milo has the legal right to say these things. We might have something to fear from people who want to remove that legal right, but that is not and has never been part of this equation. He has, and there has been no attempt to abridge, his legal right to say just about whatever he wants. Those who disagree with him have a legal right to respond, as well as an ethical obligation to refute ideas that seek to impugn the worth, intelligence, politics, rationality, and agency of women, people of color, and non-neurotypical people. Of our fellow humans.

that is fascism, restriction of the free movement of ideas.  - no. Fascism refers to a set of governing ideals that include legally sanctioned violence, legally sanctioned restrictions to freedom of movement and expression, total or near-total control of economic systems by the government, nationalistic ideals that rely on othering minorities in order to form a sense of national cohesion, and anti-liberal rejection of disagreement. Everything about this circumstance is the very opposite of fascism. Milo is legally allowed to say what he likes, where he likes, and to earn money from it however he likes. Other people are allowed to respond however they like, including by refuting his ideas, not listening to his ideas, working to restrict the available private venues in which he seeks to spread his ideas, and making it harder for him to earn money off of them. That interplay between speaker and audience, and the freedom of both sides to express what they believe constitutes acceptable public discourse, is completely consistent with democratic liberalism.

Someone like Milo, who is throwing opinions out there with jokes is not a bad person. - Neither opining nor joking makes someone a bad person.  If your jokes consist, as Milo’s do, of calling someone “a typical example of a sort of thick-as-pig shit media Jew” or attending an anti-rape march with a sign that reads “Rape Culure and Harry Potter: Both Fantasy,” then you’re into bad person territory - the problem is not that someone tried to make a joke, but that that “joke” depends on devaluing, belittling, and hurting people.

To take that freedom away would be Fascism. If he and other people who think like him are prevented from sharing their ideas that is censorship. - No. You misunderstand the difference between public laws and private individuals or companies. If the government takes away freedoms of speech, expression, and movement, then it’s censorship and perhaps, depending on circumstance, one component of authoritarianism. If private companies, like twitter, refuse to give him a platform they are well within their rights to do so, because they are not bound by the same mandates as the government. If private individuals, individually or collectively, refute, protest, or refuse to listen to a set of ideas, that is itself a form of free expression. The ability of audiences to object to what Milo says is evidence of the absence of fascism or censorship.

if they want to hear him speak at a conference/buy his book/read his twitter they should be able to. At the moment they can’t. That to my mind is evil, it’s like living in China where people are censored because of their beliefs. - They can’t because a preponderance of people, including people on the political right, have agreed that his ideas are harmful, stupid, and intolerable, and have made it economically and reputationally non-viable for private venues to offer him a platform. That is the result of free expression and a free market responding to feedback from a bipartisan majority. That is how free market democracies work. Note, too, that people who want to hear his ideas can still seek them out easily and at low or no cost with a simple google search, and that he can continue to speak through whatever venues will have him. This, again, is exactly how free market democracies work.

Those principles [free speech and expression, minimal government interference, and democracy] are what have allowed gay rights, rights for women etc, because it was government restrictions that prevented these from occurring before. Government restrictions to women voting, government restrictions to marriage etc. It was the removal of these laws that allowed these freedoms of individual expression to occur. - This is so profoundly historically wrong that I am cringing on behalf of every teacher you’ve ever had. Unpacking this knot of wrongness would require explaining the difference between positive and negative liberty, the different between principles and the people who work to make them meaningful, different types of social movements, federalist government, international conventions and different country’s relationships to them, the interrelationship between representative and judicial branches of government, and the philosophical and legal history of both political and human rights, and frankly, I can’t fit those several semesters worth of lectures into a tumblr post. I can say, though, that you owe it to yourself, and to your fellow citizens, to do some reading or take some classes and learn how governments work.