Is political correctness stifling debate?

[Scallop Industry Thug]

She campaigned for communism?

 

[JackOutback]

She campaigned for communism?

He must get all his life views from Murdoch.

 

[medusala]

Howard did it, with his attacks on the ABC and support of sedition laws.

What has sedition got to do with free speech? Free speech has never been absolute and its rarely argued for. Protection of property rights has always held sway.

And lol at the ABC being brought up. They are all for suppressing views that don't accord to those of the chattering class.

 

[medusala]

Hadnt realised this until I read the story. Interesting.

http://fusion.net/story/306927/peter-thiel-gawker-dangerous-blueprint/

This is the big story, which a lot of people are missing about the news that Peter Thiel secretly funded a series of lawsuits against Gawker: the Facebook board member and Silicon Valley demigod just gave the world a master class in how a billionaire can achieve enormous ends with a relatively modest investment. That’s a lesson many of his friends are eager to be taught—not least his protégé, Mark Zuckerberg, who is just beginning to try to reinvent philanthropy for the 21st Century.

Thiel’s tactics in going after Gawker are very, very frightening for anybody who believes in freedom of speech; they’re also extremely effective, in an evil-genius kind of way

Silicon Valley has always had its fair share of large egos. But until now, they haven’t generally had the stated aim of using their personal money to wage scorched-earth campaigns against private media organizations. If Thiel succeeds in having such wars accepted as worthy philanthropy, we should all be very afraid.

 

[Ratts of Tobruk]

Hadnt realised this until I read the story. Interesting.

http://fusion.net/story/306927/peter-thiel-gawker-dangerous-blueprint/

This is the big story, which a lot of people are missing about the news that Peter Thiel secretly funded a series of lawsuits against Gawker: the Facebook board member and Silicon Valley demigod just gave the world a master class in how a billionaire can achieve enormous ends with a relatively modest investment. That’s a lesson many of his friends are eager to be taught—not least his protégé, Mark Zuckerberg, who is just beginning to try to reinvent philanthropy for the 21st Century.

Thiel’s tactics in going after Gawker are very, very frightening for anybody who believes in freedom of speech; they’re also extremely effective, in an evil-genius kind of way

Silicon Valley has always had its fair share of large egos. But until now, they haven’t generally had the stated aim of using their personal money to wage scorched-earth campaigns against private media organizations. If Thiel succeeds in having such wars accepted as worthy philanthropy, we should all be very afraid.

Much like your complaints about Bolt's censorship, it's pretty silly to use people publishing incorrect information as your example of those being wronged. If Gawker wasn't defamatory they wouldn't have to worry about a suite of lawsuits coming at them. If there was a tactic, as this website claims, which meant you could bring frivolous lawsuits against media companies to try and bleed them of money, then why did Thiel wait "for years, as Gawker published thousands & thousands of articles about thousands & thousands of people"? He could've executed his tactic separate to waiting for "promising cases".

As for the article's claim that Gawker "can’t (and doesn’t) carefully lawyer every single thing it publishes. No one can" - that is rubbish. The majority of media companies are aware of defamation. It's not hard to publish in non-defamatory ways and if there's something you don't know you make that clear. This is where Gawker and Bolt went awry. In their rush to make click-bait they did too many things wrong and then they had little argument against the lawsuits. Unless you think that secretly filming someone having sex in a private house and publishing it is the sort of free speech that should be protected?

Right wingers harping on about PC gorn mad have always been comical frauds and hypocrites whilst campaigning their free speech causes.

I can't believe that immediately after you posted that, this alias posted such blatant hypocrisy as this:

There isn't any. Campaigning for communism is a disgrace and she rightly copped the punishment!!

 

[Adelaide Docker]

Much like your complaints about Bolt's censorship, it's pretty silly to use people publishing incorrect information as your example of those being wronged. If Gawker wasn't defamatory they wouldn't have to worry about a suite of lawsuits coming at them. If there was a tactic, as this website claims, which meant you could bring frivolous lawsuits against media companies to try and bleed them of money, then why did Thiel wait "for years, as Gawker published thousands & thousands of articles about thousands & thousands of people"? He could've executed his tactic separate to waiting for "promising cases".

As for the article's claim that Gawker "can’t (and doesn’t) carefully lawyer every single thing it publishes. No one can" - that is rubbish. The majority of media companies are aware of defamation. It's not hard to publish in non-defamatory ways and if there's something you don't know you make that clear. This is where Gawker and Bolt went awry. In their rush to make click-bait they did too many things wrong and then they had little argument against the lawsuits. Unless you think that secretly filming someone having sex in a private house and publishing it is the sort of free speech that should be protected?
I can't believe that immediately after you posted that, this alias posted such blatant hypocrisy as this:

If someone in a high profile public institution outed themself as a Neo Nazi do you really think they could have any complains about being sacked? It's not political correctness, it's maintaining the image of the brand.

 

[Ratts of Tobruk]

If someone in a high profile public institution outed themself as a Neo Nazi do you really think they could have any complains about being sacked? It's not political correctness, it's maintaining the image of the brand.

I completely agree. And I have been saying from early on in this thread that people are talking about PR, not PC.

But then you were saying at the same time:

The university didn't criticise anything, they just stood down a communist because it reflects badly on them. The AFL can't ban large portions of its supporter base, so they have to condition them with propaganda and try to censor opinions that go against the narrative.

The change in language is pretty clear. As if the AFL weren't just doing PR as well after they let the situation get out of hand by not acting for week after week after week. And you've repeatedly referred to words like 'racist' being used as "silencing tactics", with no evidence of the silencing. The take-away is presumably that you think people are self-censoring, which is simply people doing PR on their own communications. Why is it PR? Because they're unpopular opinion to the majority. Why are they unpopular opinions? Because they're unfair almost all of the time.

Political correctness doesn't stifle debate. It makes people think a few more seconds before saying what they were going to say, to make sure they are being fair. i.e. It should sharpen debate.

 

[medusala]

Political correctness doesn't stifle debate.

It's an unarguable case. See the pasting Keith Windschuttle got for pointing out the mistakes of so many. Even worse look at the criticism of those who have pointed out the absurdity of the Armageddon AGW case up to and including demands that "deniers" should be jailed.

It makes people think a few more seconds before saying what they were going to say, to make sure they are being fair.

What an absolute load of BS, "fairness" is just a pathetic notion to suppress freedom of speech.

Orwellian nonsense.

 

[medusala]

Much like your complaints about Bolt's censorship, it's pretty silly to use people publishing incorrect information as your example of those being wronged.

It allegedly goes back to them outing him. He is also on the board of facebook which has been accused of altering its trending news stories to suit its own purposes lately.

Silicon Valley and free speech is a hot topic lately. I am just linking to the articles I haven't really spent that much time reading about it to have an opinion one way or the other. Wired has covered it as have others.

 

[DemonTim]

It allegedly goes back to them outing him. He is also on the board of facebook which has been accused of altering its trending news stories to suit its own purposes lately.

Silicon Valley and free speech is a hot topic lately. I am just linking to the articles I haven't really spent that much time reading about it to have an opinion one way or the other. Wired has covered it as have others.

Do you consider them outing him "free speech"?

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

This article nails the point that anti-PC is just a cloak for pushing through their own rubbish. And points out that any point is debatable in the country, except for the anzac myth.

A huge proportion of the examples of what the right-wing culture warriors call political correctness fall into this category. It’s not censorship when readers disagree with a newspaper columnist, even if they call her a bigot while doing so. It’s not censorship when students mount a petition objecting to a visiting lecturer. It’s not censorship when activists rally against a far right group.

These are, on the contrary, textbook examples of free speech – and yet they’re routinely trotted out as evidence of left-wing PC censoriousness.

The Andrew Bolt case, routinely cited by conservatives as the greatest instance of oppression an Australian has ever endured, provides a useful illustration. But most commentary on the Bolt case obfuscates the actual outcome. Bolt wasn’t thrown into prison. He wasn’t fined. No-one prevented him writing. The court didn’t even order an apology. The only consequence was a requirement his newspaper publish an addendum correcting articles admitted to be factually wrong. The penalty was, in other words, far less draconian than in a standard defamation case. Whatever else 18C meant for Bolt, it didn’t entail the imposition of a Stalinist gag.

The conservative presentation of a huge left-wing apparatus enforcing a rigid orthodoxy through state coercion is a fantasy. Or, more exactly, it’s a projection – because insofar as such an apparatus exists, it’s deployed in the service of conservative values.

The most obvious example is Anzac.

The incessant Murdoch thinkpieces lambasting the censorious campus left masks the extent to which social conservatism has embraced a turbocharged version of the identity politics it ostensibly decries. Right-wing political correctness has emerged alongside an embrace of victimology, an obsession with quotas and representation (think of those articles totting up the precise number of conservatives appearing on each ABC show), and a tribal commitment to doctrine rather than evidence (the words ‘climate change’ come to mind). The offence-mongering over Ward’s Facebook is entirely typical: the people mocking university trigger warnings are themselves perpetually triggered, existing in a permanent lather of indignation over the scandals they whip up and reflexively demanding censorship of the ideas and the people with whom they disagree.

 

[medusala]

This article nails the point that anti-PC is just a cloak for pushing through their own rubbish. And points out that any point is debatable in the country, except for the anzac myth.

Bollocks, its just a third rate anti Murdoch whinge bereft of any logic. A first year Arts student could do better.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

Bollocks, its just a third rate anti Murdoch whinge bereft of any logic. A first year Arts student could do better.

Are you able to articulate any sentence without the phrase '1st year Arts student'?

 

[Gough]

I've sat in 1st year history tutes with kids who hadn't heard of Bobby Kennedy. If anything they're being over estimated.

 

[DemonTim]

Are you able to articulate any sentence without the phrase '1st year Arts student'?

It's an americanised insult anyway. Arts pretty much covers everything except for hard sciences and business at most unis
For *s sake, you could give an article on geography the same response and it would be valid
It's a vague misused insult

 

[Ratts of Tobruk]

It's an americanised insult anyway. Arts pretty much covers everything except for hard sciences and business at most unis
For ****s sake, you could give an article on geography the same response and it would be valid
It's a vague misused insult

It's all part of the divisiveness the right-wing specialise in. If you don't have the right job then somehow your opinion is less valid. Indeed, if you are an expert in a particular field, then you should be ignored for being an 'academic' or an 'elite' or part of the 'chattering classes' (because discussing things in detail is a bad thing?).

There is, of course, divisiveness from the far left too. References to Murdoch consumers, or the rich, or to angry whites, or say oil/tobacco lobbyists. A lot of it seems more justified but at the end of the day both are inspired by the inherent politics - it's in the eye of the beholder. If you think that there should be great income equality because some people are just lazy, then you will see all those on the left as just trying to get money 'for free'. If you think that there should be less income equality then you will see everyone arguing from the right as ignoring the detail and tricking people into ensuring the rich get richer.

If you look at the evidence then income equality has been growing. For a fair while in Australia there was also a rise in the standard of living (this hasn't happened anywhere near as much in more right-wing countries like the USA or within areas of tax competitiveness like the EU), however we are seemingly at a point where this has slowed and people are saying it is under threat, and ideas like a rise in the GST will of course make the cost of living higher.

On the plus side, young people appear to be more concerned about the environment and inequality, so may accept lower standard of living in order to pay for the older generations' society as well as the things they care about. However a key part of the complaining in this thread is about this generation flexing their capitalism-taught consumer muscles in order to stop some provocative people from speaking at their Unis.

 

[Chief]

Is orangeface the new racist?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/08/meryl-streep-donald-trump-impression-newyork

 

[fleabitten]

http://gothamist.com/2016/06/07/stanford_rapist_good_english.php

This all-girl band got dropped from all their scheduled shows after one of them wrote a letter to the judge in that Stanford rape case. She's known the rapist since they were little and claims there's no way he could have done it and that it's all a misunderstanding due to political correctness. While I think she sounds pretty daft in her comments, it's ironic that she's actually fallen victim to political correctness herself. All she did was write a character reference for an old friend that she believes to be innocent. She has a right to do that without it costing her a career in the public eye, doesn't she?

 

[Ratts of Tobruk]

http://gothamist.com/2016/06/07/stanford_rapist_good_english.php

This all-girl band got dropped from all their scheduled shows after one of them wrote a letter to the judge in that Stanford rape case. She's known the rapist since they were little and claims there's no way he could have done it and that it's all a misunderstanding due to political correctness. While I think she sounds pretty daft in her comments, it's ironic that she's actually fallen victim to political correctness herself. All she did was write a character reference for an old friend that she believes to be innocent. She has a right to do that without it costing her a career in the public eye, doesn't she?

So now it's "politically correct" to think that rape is bad?

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

http://gothamist.com/2016/06/07/stanford_rapist_good_english.php

This all-girl band got dropped from all their scheduled shows after one of them wrote a letter to the judge in that Stanford rape case. She's known the rapist since they were little and claims there's no way he could have done it and that it's all a misunderstanding due to political correctness. While I think she sounds pretty daft in her comments, it's ironic that she's actually fallen victim to political correctness herself. All she did was write a character reference for an old friend that she believes to be innocent. She has a right to do that without it costing her a career in the public eye, doesn't she?

You really need to provide a definition of political correctness.

At this point, it feels like 'anything you don't really like'.

 

[CLUBMEDhurst]

http://gothamist.com/2016/06/07/stanford_rapist_good_english.php

This all-girl band got dropped from all their scheduled shows after one of them wrote a letter to the judge in that Stanford rape case. She's known the rapist since they were little and claims there's no way he could have done it and that it's all a misunderstanding due to political correctness. While I think she sounds pretty daft in her comments, it's ironic that she's actually fallen victim to political correctness herself. All she did was write a character reference for an old friend that she believes to be innocent. She has a right to do that without it costing her a career in the public eye, doesn't she?

Love this li'l excerpt

But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/06/brock-turners-friend-pens-letter-of-support.html

Nowt to do with PC, she's a rape apologist

 

[DemonTim]

Love this li'l excerpt



http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/06/brock-turners-friend-pens-letter-of-support.html

Nowt to do with PC, she's a rape apologist

I don't agree with what she said, but I don't think people should be condemned for giving character references to judges. My mother has done it for a man who committed armed robbery, she's also been a victim of the same offence. I'd hardly say she is an armed robbery apologist.

 

[Chief]

I don't agree with what she said, but I don't think people should be condemned for giving character references to judges. My mother has done it for a man who committed armed robbery, she's also been a victim of the same offence. I'd hardly say she is an armed robbery apologist.

Yes but did she try to make out that the guy just went out to a party and all of a sudden he's accepting what he thought was a voluntary donation at gun point from a blind drunk person, but it turns out the victim is unfairly accusing him of armed robbery?

Had that girl just given the guy a character reference, fine. But she said to the world, on the back of a high profile case, that people who rape are not always rapists. Come on.

 

[DemonTim]

Yes but did she try to make out that the guy just went out to a party and all of a sudden he's accepting what he thought was a voluntary donation at gun point from a blind drunk person, but it turns out the victim is unfairly accusing him of armed robbery?

Had that girl just given the guy a character reference, fine. But she said to the world, on the back of a high profile case, that people who rape are not always rapists. Come on.

I prefaced with I don't agree with what she said? I also don't agree with people petitioning for her band to be removed from a tour because of it.

How well did she know him?

 

[fleabitten]

I don't agree with what she said, but I don't think people should be condemned for giving character references to judges. My mother has done it for a man who committed armed robbery, she's also been a victim of the same offence. I'd hardly say she is an armed robbery apologist.

Yep. That's my only point. She didn't start a social media campaign to blame the victim or anything like that. She just wrote a character reference for a childhood friend. She obviously doesn't think he could have done what it appears he did (and he does appear guilty, at least from the version of events that I've heard).