Free speech, the far right and dog-whistle politics

I'm feeling increasingly frustrated at the way "free speech" has increasingly been co-opted as a dog whistle for far-right politics. I see people who should know better following these debates as if free speech is really the issue at stake, instead of the actual substantive things that people are *saying*. 

The classic case of this is the question of "states' rights" in the US. The balance of power between the federal government and the individual states is, of course, an important question and something that should be debated. But the way the topic has actually been *used* is as a code word for institutionalised racism:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, "N**r, n**r, n**r." By 1968, you can't say "n**r" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N**r, n**r.""

— Lee Atwater, Republican Party strategist

Simply saying “We want more racism” - i.e. defending the substantive policies that Southern states would actually promulgate if given more power - is no longer politically feasible. You make it an abstract, procedural question about how much power they should have. *Then* they can use that power to promulgate those policies without ever having to defend them.

By the same token, free speech is of course an important issue, and there are substantive debates to be had about when (if at all) the State should be allowed to use force to prevent particular kinds of speech. But the “alt right” have basically figured out the same strategy to promote their regressive ideas without ever having to explicitly defend them. Someone like Milo Yiannopoulos essentially made his entire career (hopefully now permanently foundered) on the premise that he was defending free speech by “saying the things he wasn’t supposed to say”. Never mind that what he actually has to say is obviously garbage. Jordan Peterson doesn’t stand up and say “I believe in highly traditional gender roles, and making life difficult for anyone who doesn’t comply with them”, because that doesn’t really fly any more. Instead he says “You can’t *make me* use people’s preferred pronouns”. This avoids the substantive question of whether refusing to using preferred pronouns is a shitty thing to do (it is) in favour of a more abstract question of whether we should try to coerce people into doing it (probably not). 

I guess what I’m saying is: don’t be fooled by this. If someone is expending all their energy arguing that they have the *right* to do something, rather than whether doing that thing is actually morally OK, they’re probably avoiding the question. 

Links, Friday 19th January

I have no idea how sincere or successful this is in practice, but it's a pretty stark contrast with London boroughs who basically just want to make things as difficult for rough sleepers as possible (including by confiscating tents and other fuckery)

"Any rough sleeper in my city will get help. No exceptions. No bureaucracy. "

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LOL

“My reaction was ‘Jesus, a New York City restaurant that records all its revenue? How can they stay in business?’ ” NY Times

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Interested to hear thoughts on this, especially from POC (obviously). Predictably, there are a bunch of white people on various comment threads complaining about "SJWs gone wild", "reverse racism" and all the rest, and there's an undercurrent of that in the article itself, so please none of that.

One thing it raises, for me at least, is questions of internal democracy and how avowedly non-hierarchical organisations can come to be dominated by small groups with dominant personalities. Like, are ideology and tactics actually being *debated* or is a commitment to radicalism in goals and methods functioning more as a test of loyalty/purity?

[CN for some nasty language related to racial abuse]

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"... humans procure psychological equanimity by being valued in the eyes of higher powers: at first our parents, and, as we mature, the culture at large. But when protracted difficulties or acute crises arise, when the crops fail and the hunters return empty-handed, when wars are lost, when people are plagued with economic woes and civil unrest to the point where the cultural scheme of things no longer seems to provide a reliable basis for feeling significant and secure, they will look elsewhere to fulfill that need.

Under such conditions, people’s allegiance may shift to an individual who exhibits an “unconflicted” personality—in the sense of appearing supremely bold and self-confident—and offers a grand vision that affords a renewed prospect of being a valuable part of something noble and enduring."

Solomon, Greenberg and Pyszczynski, "The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life"

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Well, this is very bad...

"A local Indian newspaper was able to access the private data of nearly 1.2 billion Indians for just $8"

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Don't agree that it should be the overriding or only focus, but I think this is an important point:

"Moving to higher quality homes is an important part of economic progress. Because one year's worth of new construction is only about 1% of the existing stock of homes, it's difficult to rapidly upgrade the quality of our housing stock. But if we are to make any progress at all, it's essential for new homes to be of much higher quality (and hence more expensive) that the average of existing homes. New houses should be unaffordable to average people."

Here's the other side of the coin:

"Either dramatically upzone and pair the upzoning with [inclusive zoning] mandates, or else simply upzone and use the resulting tax windfall to finance the construction of social housing."

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Not sure if this is great, creepy, or both - an ad that's also a pregnancy test...

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Fascinating interview throughout

"I’ve done several interviews around the trans caricatures Janice Raymond created for the TERF community to go after. I talked to Robin Tyler and she told me about how TERFs physically attacked her for standing between them and a trans women they wanted to beat at the 1973 Lesbian Conference. These radical feminist institutions – the 73 Conference, Olivia Records – they were trans-inclusive. Each time TERFs turned to harassment and violence to insert themselves into feminist spaces. Thus far ,TERFs like Raymond have gotten away with creating this false narrative about how their Radical Feminist spaces were being invaded by violent trans women and it’s just not the case."

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"To combat racism, minorities in the United States have often attempted to portray themselves as upstanding citizens capable of assimilating into mainstream culture. Asian Americans were no different, Wu writes. Some, like the Chinese, sought respectability by promoting stories about their obedient children and their traditional family values. The Japanese pointed to their wartime service as proof of their shared Americanness. African Americans in the 1940s made very similar appeals. But in the postwar moment, Wu argues, it was only convenient for political leaders to hear the Asian voices." Washington Post

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Apparently the Queen likes Weetabix, and an occasional pie from Greggs...

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"We have a smiling pile of poop. What about one that is sad?" Japan Times

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President and COO of SpaceX is a woman named Gwynne Shotwell, yet there is more media coverage of Elon Musk's dating life than any of her amazing professional accomplishments...

"Basically, the coolest woman ever is a below-the-fold profile in Marie Claire.

What fundamental failure of humanity is this?"

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Was part of the rise in bitcoin prices due to outright currency manipulation?

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Dan Harmon's apology for sexually harassing a female employee. A lot of the time, people try to wriggle out of moral responsibility by saying basically "I believed what I was doing was fine at the time". What stands out for me about Harmon's apology is that he does say this, but *also* acknowledges that believing as he did was a result of profoundly distorted thinking, and he takes moral responsibility for allowing himself to think in that way.

He also acknowledges and takes responsibility for the harm he caused to the other person, rather than trying to deny it or pass over it as quickly as possible. Obvs not great that he actually *did* the terrible thing in the first place, but still valuable to see an example of sincere accountability.

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It's pretty clear that the current status quo of segregating sport by gender is harmful and ultimately unsustainable, though it remains an open question why sort of classification system will ultimately replace it. I think this is definitely an interesting suggestion - I'd like to see it worked out in more detail!

"We suggest that in able-bodied sport, it would similarly make sense to remove the label of male or female and replace it with categories based on the ability of bodies to move in that particular sport. This is a confronting notion, as we are not used to thinking about sex and gender as based on particular traits."

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Heroes <3

"public health workers and harm reductionists in an unnamed U.S. city are operating an illegal, unsanctioned supervised injection site: a space where injection drug users can safely inject their drugs under the watch of medical professionals. Even under its unsanctioned status, the site is showing public health benefits, according to a qualitative study published in late December in the International Journal of Drug Policy."

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“African-American doctors, lawyers, business executives, and they still have a higher infant-mortality rate than…white women who never went to high school in the first place,” qz

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Maybe this is very liberal feminism of me, but can't help being pleasantly startled that the PM of New Zealand will be giving birth while in office, with her (unmarried) male partner expecting to take on the majority of childcare duties.