[RD] Does free speech even exist as a concept?

[metalhead]

So, here's a "free speech" question, "ripped from the headlines," as they say.

At a high school football game with a predominantly white school from an affluent suburb hosting a predominantly not white school from a less affluent suburb the home team's cheerleaders routinely lead their crowd in the familiar USA USA USA chant. Of course school officials say they were 'just patriotic.' The interspersed chants of 'go home _______s' and 'build the wall' were, in their opinion, 'spontaneous outbursts by unknown individuals who may not even have been part of the student body or boosters.'

Now, since the predominantly Latino visiting team had only a handful of players who were not native born USians, and in fact a clear majority are at least second generation US citizens, one could say that the USA chant was 'cheering on both teams.' Of course, no one can remember their high school, or any other high school, with cheerleaders that cheered both teams...but the school administration when pressed did use that defense as well.

The visiting team contends that this was taking the traditional 'make the visiting team unwelcome' too far.

Opinions?

My strongest opinion is that high school kids probably shouldn't play football. So the adults' lame excuses pale in comparison to having kids smash their incomplete brains into each other for their own amusement.

But yeah it's also really lame that you make excuses for what are probably grown-ass people in the stands harassing the other team for having mostly Latino players. Set a better example for your kids.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Hitler's mistake was turning on Stalin and Japan hitting Pearl Harbor, the axis had to keep us out of the war and they bungled that

Yea, the invasion of Russia was definitely poorly planned and they didn't even plan for winter. However, it'd also give time for the Soviet Union to mobilize and become stronger. That in combination with Stalin being a paranoid son of a gun means that he wouldn't have much issue with striking first.

Once Germany ran low on resources, they had to look for it somewhere, and a war with Soviet Russia was always Hitler's ideological and practical goal. Taking out/neutralizing Western Europe was step one and I do believe he didn't really care if UK gave in as long as there was no 2 fronts.... but Japan did their own desperation move after the US cut them off.

But then again, the US involvement I think was also inevitable in one way or another since they were supporting the UK. No doubt it hastened the Axis defeat though. Both Russia and China just were too big to completely take down.

So, here's a "free speech" question, "ripped from the headlines," as they say.

At a high school football game with a predominantly white school from an affluent suburb hosting a predominantly not white school from a less affluent suburb the home team's cheerleaders routinely lead their crowd in the familiar USA USA USA chant. Of course school officials say they were 'just patriotic.' The interspersed chants of 'go home _______s' and 'build the wall' were, in their opinion, 'spontaneous outbursts by unknown individuals who may not even have been part of the student body or boosters.'

Now, since the predominantly Latino visiting team had only a handful of players who were not native born USians, and in fact a clear majority are at least second generation US citizens, one could say that the USA chant was 'cheering on both teams.' Of course, no one can remember their high school, or any other high school, with cheerleaders that cheered both teams...but the school administration when pressed did use that defense as well.

The visiting team contends that this was taking the traditional 'make the visiting team unwelcome' too far.

Opinions?

Schools have a duty to protect students from harassment when they run an event. I think they failed, and saying crap like "unknown individuals" well, I mean , you have no control over the premise of which is yours?

Of course, as usual, they don't care about the kids, and blame something.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Of course, as usual, they don't care about the kids, and blame something.

Worse, asserted without proof...they consider infusing this brand of 'patriotism' into their students to be a good thing.

 

[Archon_Wing]

.they consider infusing this brand of 'patriotism' into their students to be a good thing.

Seems like it's working too. Kids don't chant political slogans out of nowhere. It had to come from something.

It speaks to the quality of the community at hand and definitely needs people to speak out against it and shame this kind of crap. Unless they condone it of course. In that case, I want nothing to do with them, and nor should others I feel.

 

[Old Hippy]

You're using at least one of those words incorrectly.

Also!,

"Or alternatively, that the Holocaust was no worse than the Stalinist purges. We've previously discussed the Venn diagram of anti-Communist and soft Holocaust denial"

"Communist regimes have killed "approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million victims of the Nazis".
What do I win?



What do I win?

what do you win?
the bragging rights to soft Stalinist purges denial

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Seems like it's working too. Kids don't chant political slogans out of nowhere. It had to come from something.

It speaks to the quality of the community at hand and definitely needs people to speak out against it and shame this kind of crap. Unless they condone it of course. In that case, I want nothing to do with them, and nor should others I feel.

I agree. Unfortunately these "conservative enclaves" are perhaps even more rabid in their panic for self preservation in the diverse environment of southern California than they seem to be in their more "purified" holds across the middle and southern states.

 

[Traitorfish]

Yea at the end of the day they all had the same endgame, except the combination of victims was different. Some were smarter and stuck around longer; that has nothing to do with morality which long bottomed out before the counter went in the millions.

That seems pretty reductive. Two things can both be bad without being equally bad, or without bad in exactly the same way, and certainly without being secretly, on some essential level, the same thing.

what do you win?
the bragging rights to soft Stalinist purges denial

The Stalinist purges were pretty well-document, I'm not disputing their scale or violence. But, they weren't on the same scale as the Holocaust, not by an order of magnitude. There is exactly one group of people among who that is a controversial statement.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Worse, asserted without proof...they consider infusing this brand of 'patriotism' into their students to be a good thing.

They consider it their Patriotic duty to Patriotically infuse their students with Patriotism™!

 

[Archon_Wing]

That seems pretty reductive. Two things can both be bad without being equally bad, or without bad in exactly the same way, and certainly without being secretly, on some essential level, the same thing.

Never said they were equally bad, and I didn't feel like making this judgement. It's a simple point that Hitler would have killed more had he the chance, and many others would have done the same. Hitler is not less evil than Stalin because he killed less people. Efficiency and morality are not the same thing. A mass killer should not get off for being less bad at killing when the intent was clearly there.

If I sound like I'm oversimplifying things, it's because I'm dealing with a dumb premise to begin with.

Spoiler :

Nazis are worse

 

[Old Hippy]

That seems pretty reductive. Two things can both be bad without being equally bad, or without bad in exactly the same way, and certainly without being secretly, on some essential level, the same thing.


The Stalinist purges were pretty well-document, I'm not disputing their scale or violence. But, they weren't on the same scale as the Holocaust, not by an order of magnitude. There is exactly one group of people among who that is a controversial statement.

nice to see we are on the same page and that two things can be bad without being on some essential level, the same thing.
more or less sums up what I've been saying...
seems there is more than "one group that finds this a controversial statement"
never seen "ask a nazi'' thread in CFCOT discussing its glories and yet the left has claimed that 62.98 million US voters are are secretly suporters of Narzism. The deplorables that voted for Trump for no other reason,while in fact there are a myriad of reasons that people would choose to do so
Being secretly called a dumb Nazi being just one of them along with the establishment has this election in the bag. being another.

 

[cardgame]

@Narz will be happy to hear he is so popular.

 

[Traitorfish]

seems there is more than "one group that finds this a controversial statement"

No, the claim that Nazism is more destructive than Communism is controversial exclusively among Holocaust deniers. And the only group that finds that statement controversial is, again, Holocaust deniers. And the only group that finds that statement- well, you can see where this goes.

 

[Old Hippy]

No, the claim that Nazism is more destructive than Communism is controversial exclusively among Holocaust deniers. And the only group that finds that statement controversial is, again, Holocaust deniers. And the only group that finds that statement- well, you can see where this goes.

But that's not the only group or an exclusive one that's just a blinkered view
Holocaust deniers are usually Nazis
another group is the many people who don't deny the holocaust and find the Nazis evil and repugnant beyond the pale but do point out how marxism has been responsible for millions of deaths because they can see where it goes time and time again ....
we will have to agree to disagree on this ...as you yourself find this view controversial

 

[Berzerker]

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/03/10/hitler-vs-stalin-who-killed-more/

doesn't include Mao and other communists

"All in all, the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million. These figures are of course subject to revision, but it is very unlikely that the consensus will change again as radically as it has since the opening of Eastern European archives in the 1990s"

 

[cardgame]

All in all, the British capitalists deliberately killed about 10 million noncombatants in an equivalent time frame. Well, going by the definition that "doing nothing and letting it happen naturally even though you have the means to intervene" counts, which I am absolutely using, because people use it for the Holodomor, and because trolley exercises are mental in the literal and figurative sense.

Great Bengal famine of 1770

Plus another ten million here and there spread out over the 19th century, notably the million and a half or so in the Irish Potato Famine. From which their population has not recovered even into the 21st century.

 

[Traitorfish]

Holocaust deniers are usually Nazis

In the sense of people who deny the Nazi genocide outright, sure. But there is a much larger group of people who seek to diminish both the scale of and to narrow culpability for the Holocaust. The ideological through-thread is not enthusiasm for Nazism, but rather hostility towards Communism, and Holocaust denial is only one half of the program: on the one hand, they seek to diminish the crimes of right-wing nationalism and to obscure its destructive tendencies, on the other, they seek to exaggerate the crimes of Marxist-Leninist regimes and to construct a narrative in which those crimes are not simply the product of mismanagement, internal strife or even revolutionary excess, but proof of Marxism, of socialism generally, as a civilisational threat.

Claims like this are, in themselves, merely trite and silly:

marxism has been responsible for millions of deaths

But when they are framed in direct comparison to the crimes of the Third Reich, and that comparison frames the Third Reich in a favourable light- well, whether or not the speaker is consciously supportive of the project of these anti-Communist Holocaust deniers, he is surely doing their work.

 

[Berzerker]

All in all, the British capitalists deliberately killed about 10 million noncombatants in an equivalent time frame. Well, going by the definition that "doing nothing and letting it happen naturally even though you have the means to intervene" counts, which I am absolutely using, because people use it for the Holodomor, and because trolley exercises are mental in the literal sense.

Great Bengal famine of 1770

Plus another ten million here and there spread out over the 19th century, notably the million and a half or so in the Irish Potato Famine. From which their population has not recovered even into the 21st century.

I didn't know about Bengal, some of my ancestors came over from Ireland during the famine

 

[brennan]

Famines do not seem to have been terribly rare in India. I'm not sure you can just blame the East India company for ten million deaths as though it's a slam dunk.

7.4 million dead 1630-32
11 million dead 1782-84

 

[cardgame]

Their policy was pretty clearly (ir)responsible, or are you denying any British complicity in the Potato Famine as well?

You can make a decent argument against including every single number as directly comparable to death via weapons of war or direct execution, sure, I'll grant you that. But it's still a genocide (by Holodomor standards).

 

[brennan]

I don't think East India Company policy caused a drought and two crop failures in India, nor that the British government caused the Potato Blight in Ireland.

Simply blaming the British for all resultant deaths is a bit cheap.