Worth dying for

N

nomadologist

Guest
Mr. Tea said:
I can't help wondering if you'd be leaping so quickly to defend this woman if she'd been a white supremacist writing material about wiping out Muslims, for example. Of course we have freedom of speech, but if she's putting hate-inciting material into the public domain (which she seems to have been doing) then she's guilty of, well, inciting hatred.
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Yeah, this is coming from someone who consistently has tried to ridicule anyone on Dissensus who has the nerve to point out institutionalized racism, even when it's covert.

If this obvious "terrorist" womans can be prosecuted, then by all means should we not be going after all of those white soccer moms who tell their children not to talk to black men because they're bound to rob and rape you?
 
H

hundredmillionlifetimes

Banned
Gavin said:
Interesting take over here: http://lecolonelchabert.blogspot.com/2007/09/undershaftism.html
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Off-topic for sure, but I'm amazed that Le Currency Trader [ex Alphonso] didn't squeeze in a Zizek-ridiculing reference in all of this. After all, its hilarious reading both Le Opera Lover's and American Stranger's latest self-righteously-indignant and obsessively moralizing, chronic mis-readings of Z-man's recent London Review of Books combinatorial defence of Chavez: Resistence is Surrender. The gesticulating-at-the-Man moralizing Left still don't get passive-philosophizing Zizek!

"The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse."

Oooh, so neo-liberal!
 
matt b

matt b

Indexing all opinion
by your vague (and misunderstood) definition of 'inciting hatred' mr tea, anyone who owned a book by marx or a homophobic dancehall 7" would be locked up.

the terrorism act is disgracefully illiberal.


just remember when you're stopped under it (which will happen- i have been) don't give your name or address. you don't have to. bit of an oversight eh, mr blair?
 
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Gavin

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
hundredmillionlifetimes said:
Off-topic for sure, but I'm amazed that Le Currency Trader [ex Alphonso] didn't squeeze in a Zizek-ridiculing reference in all of this. After all, its hilarious reading both Le Opera Lover's and American Stranger's latest self-righteously-indignant and obsessively moralizing, chronic mis-readings of Z-man's recent London Review of Books combinatorial defence of Chavez: Resistence is Surrender. The gesticulating-at-the-Man moralizing Left still don't get passive-philosophizing Zizek!

"The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse."

Oooh, so neo-liberal!
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Yes, I noticed that weirdness with the LRB piece.... I don't get too much into the blogosphere drama, but I really like a lot of Le Colonel's posts... she does not play fair in the comments section though.
 
H

hundredmillionlifetimes

Banned
Gavin said:
Yes, I noticed that weirdness with the LRB piece.... I don't get too much into the blogosphere drama, but I really like a lot of Le Colonel's posts... she does not play fair in the comments section though.
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Yes, I agree. Perhaps you're not au fait with past blogo 'events', but when it comes to Zizek, LCC goes paranoid-ballistic, so much so that she's had very public falling-outs with such as Jodi Dean (via legal means, no less) and K-punk. Oh, I'm still very much in her 'good books', but lo-and-behold any favourable mention of anything whatsoever about Zizek/Lacan ... :cool: she's got a very efficient RPG launcher.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
nomadologist said:
If this obvious "terrorist" womans can be prosecuted, then by all means should we not be going after all of those white soccer moms who tell their children not to talk to black men because they're bound to rob and rape you?
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Well if our hypothetical soccer mom were running a website called www.allblackmenarerapists.net, that would be a rather different matter. Fortunately, it's not mandatory for govt. listening devices to be installed in people's homes; unfortunately this leaves parents free to fill their kids' heads with all manner of racial prejudices or religious nuttery, doesn't it? It's an inescapable facet of freedom of speech. Perhaps this should be extended to the wider public domain too, I don't know.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
So suddenly hate speech is NOT OK when it's directed at white people? Doesn't matter that we can't stop the KKK from demonstrating. Nope.

That's brilliant!
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
nomadologist said:
So suddenly hate speech is NOT OK when it's directed at white people?
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When did I say ANYTHING that could be interpreted as that? Are you even reading the same words I'm typing? OK, let's put it in simple terms: freedom of speech, on the whole, is a Good Thing. But speech or writing with the intention of inciting hatred that could lead to discrimination, violence, terrorism etc. is a Bad Thing. There is clearly a conflict here. Some people propose censorship to stop the more extreme kinds of inflammatory material being distributed; I'm not really sure where I stand on this, there are arguments for and against it. If I came across in this thread as pro-censorship it's only because I was discussing it with people who are clearly anti-censorship.

But if you want to take the censorial position, and pass laws to enforrce it, you can only do this when people put the material into the public or semi-public domain, eg. online. This applies just as much to neo-Nazi groups as it does to al-Queda. But clearly there's no way to stop people holding prejudices in the privacy of their own home, is there?
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I suppose when people say 'freedom of speech' they usually (or at least often) mean 'freedom of expression', which would include images and material culture in the wider sense, so art, pornography, (controversial architecture? :D) etc.

And the child-porn thing doesn't necessarily involve any real molestation, as it could mean photo-manipulated images or even just a drawing. Or a perfectly innocent photo of a child in the 'wrong' hands, for that matter.
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Ok but could there not be some element of proportionality involved-- ie: that the purported benefit must be proportionate to the level of offence caused. Eg: in the case of the Danish Mohammad cartoons, the actual pictures themselves were pathetic, unfunny, and not worth the anger they created by any means. It seemed like a deliberately provocative gesture without anything actually to say about political Islam at all. Those backing freedom of speech there seemed willing to defend totally inane output.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well yes, the cartoons were rubbish and the whole thing seemed like an exercise in causing trouble for the sake of it. I mean, did we learn anything? "Muslims offended by offensive-to-Muslims material", oh really, how revelatory.
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
However, I'm loath to give some kind of moral/legal primacy to the category of "offence"-- its absurd. Those cartoons were pathetic though.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I agree. I suppose the editors were in the moral position I think of as "They should have the right to it - I just wish they wouldn't", if that makes sense.
 
N

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
The offended parties should have come back with a devastating art critical aesthetic beat down.

Like "Your cartoons suck donkey cocks. LOL!!!1"
 
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N

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
gek-opel said:
Do you draw a line at child pornography though? Or would you not class that as a speech act as it is usually necessarily derivative of a serious crime in the first place...?
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This is the sort of thing Peter Sotos mucks about with isn't it? Fictionalised porn that attempts to find out where the lines are by ostensibly being produced for that very purpose. Ostensibly.

Here's a question for those that know - when people like D&G discuss schizophrenia as a resistance to being fully 'oedipalised', do they ever talk about the paedo thing as possibly being a similar response? I mean it clearly is, no? At least in some cases. Or is that unthinkable?

I think Sotos turned out to be too 'edgy' for Whitehouse in the end.
 
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N

nomadologist

Guest
Child pornography is usually made after the commission of a crime.

Where it's not, I don't think they guys should be censored, I think my uncle Vinny should mercilessly put them down.
 
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