Chomsky and free speech
Jul. 8th, 2020 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootAnd here we go.
Noam Chomsky joins others in a letter regarding free debate, and much squeaking follows after.
Cancel culture means very little to me. It may be because I can separate art from artist, because if I couldn't, my childhood library would have been about three books long. I grew up reading all sorts of authors, including those who didn't like women, wrote in a time that didn't like women, published in an industry that didn't like women, through ages when all industries, even those focused on woman, didn't like women. If I didn't read anything by misogynists or those who benefitted/flourished within a misogynistic society, I'd have less literature, much less science fiction and fantasy, and almost no history.
The truth is that sometimes bad people have great talent. The way to show disapproval is not to buy their products, to my mind the best form of action. It won't stop their work having quality, but an adult should be able to accept that. Having talent and craft doesn't mean the author is good, admitting the presence of talent doesn't mean an endorsement of their values.
But silencing people? Co-ercing their language, their expression, to fit with one's own? This is no better than Mary Whitehouse, than the Movie Production Code, or the Comics Code Authority... It leads to new forms of McCarthyism, and builds a sturdy platform for totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.
Chomsky's getting a drubbing on twitter now. Apparently he is a holocaust denier, as opposed to someone saying that to deny the holocaust, however repugnant and disgusting a point of view, is an act of free speech. As he's Jewish, brought up with and surrounded by Jewish left wing intellectuals, and having faced considerable anti-semitism in his youth, the claim that he himself is a holocaust denier is at once hysterical and horrible. I have not found evidence that there is any truth in it.
"Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.” - Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky joins others in a letter regarding free debate, and much squeaking follows after.
Cancel culture means very little to me. It may be because I can separate art from artist, because if I couldn't, my childhood library would have been about three books long. I grew up reading all sorts of authors, including those who didn't like women, wrote in a time that didn't like women, published in an industry that didn't like women, through ages when all industries, even those focused on woman, didn't like women. If I didn't read anything by misogynists or those who benefitted/flourished within a misogynistic society, I'd have less literature, much less science fiction and fantasy, and almost no history.
The truth is that sometimes bad people have great talent. The way to show disapproval is not to buy their products, to my mind the best form of action. It won't stop their work having quality, but an adult should be able to accept that. Having talent and craft doesn't mean the author is good, admitting the presence of talent doesn't mean an endorsement of their values.
But silencing people? Co-ercing their language, their expression, to fit with one's own? This is no better than Mary Whitehouse, than the Movie Production Code, or the Comics Code Authority... It leads to new forms of McCarthyism, and builds a sturdy platform for totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.
Chomsky's getting a drubbing on twitter now. Apparently he is a holocaust denier, as opposed to someone saying that to deny the holocaust, however repugnant and disgusting a point of view, is an act of free speech. As he's Jewish, brought up with and surrounded by Jewish left wing intellectuals, and having faced considerable anti-semitism in his youth, the claim that he himself is a holocaust denier is at once hysterical and horrible. I have not found evidence that there is any truth in it.
"Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.” - Noam Chomsky
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Date: 2020-07-08 03:43 pm (UTC)But beards are very much an aspect of Goatishness. So once goats are cancelled, Abe had better sort out in his head just whose side he's on!