Question Du Jour: Orwell on Fascism

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

In 1946, Orwell wrote:

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.

In the ensuing seventy years, do you think the meaning of “fascism” has become clearer or muddier?

Posted in Philosophy and Religion, Politics and Economics | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Architecture Linkage

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

And a collection of architecture-oriented memes that I’ve enjoyed recently. (“Public art” really is a scam, btw. For a taste of the academic absurdity of it, take a look at this page.)

Posted in Architecture, Linkathons | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Spirit of Marcuse

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Yesterday, in the comments to this post, I linked to a progressive’s call for censoring “intolerant” speech, something I’ve been hearing increasingly over the past year or so. Although the post quotes Karl Popper, it reminded me of OSS operative Herbert Marcuse’s essay “Repressive Tolerance”:

In his contribution, Marcuse argues that the ideal of tolerance belongs to a liberal, democratic tradition that has become exhausted. Liberal society is based on a form of domination so subtle that the majority accept and even will their servitude. Marcuse believes that under such conditions tolerance as traditionally understood serves the cause of domination and that a new kind of tolerance is therefore needed: tolerance of the Left, subversion, and revolutionary violence, combined with intolerance of the Right, of existing institutions of civil society, and of any opposition to socialism.[1]Marcuse claims that tolerance shown to minority views in industrial societies is a deceit because such expressions cannot be effective. Freedom of speech is not a good in itself because it allows for the propagation of error; Marcuse believes that “The telos of tolerance is truth”. Revolutionary minorities hold the truth and the majority has to be liberated from error by being re-educated in the truth by this minority. The revolutionary minority are entitled, Marcuse claims, to suppress rival and harmful opinions.[2]

That’s the Wikipedia summary, but you can read the complete essay here. Isn’t Marcuse’s idea pretty much the order of the day?

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Juxtaposin’: Iconoclasm

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

You, therefore, have not ordered the temples to be shut up, nor forbidden any to frequent them: nor have you driven from the temples or the altars, fire or frankincense, or other honours of incense. But those black-garbed people, who eat more than elephants, and demand a large quantity of liquor from the people who send them drink for their chantings, but who hide their luxury by their pale artificial countenances, — these men, O Emperor, even whilst your law is in force, run to the temples, bringing with them wood, and stones, and iron, and when they have not these, hands and feet. Then follows a Mysian prey, the roofs are uncovered, walls are pulled down, images are carried off, and altars are overturned: the priests all the while must be silent upon pain of death. When they have destroyed one temple they run to another, and a third, and trophies are erected upon trophies: which are all contrary to [your] law. This is the practice in cities, but especially in the countries. And there are many enemies every where. After innumerable mischiefs have been perpetrated, the scattered multitude unites and comes together, and they require of each other an account of what they have done; and he is ashamed who cannot tell of some great injury which he has been guilty of. They, therefore, spread themselves over the country like torrents, wasting the countries together with the temples: for wherever they demolish the temple of a country, at the same time the country itself is blinded, declines, and dies. For, O Emperor, the temples are the soul of the country; they have been the first original of the buildings in the country, and they have subsisted for many ages to this time; and in them are all the husbandman’s hopes, concerning men, and women, and children, and oxen, and the seeds and the plants of the ground. Wherever any country has lost its temples, that country is lost …

— Libanius

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Quote Du Jour: On Nazi Marches

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

It is useful to consider the three primary arguments set forth by Skokie in support of its effort to forbid the march. First, the village argued that the display of the swastika promoted “hatred against persons of Jewish faith or ancestry” and that speech that promotes racial or religious hatred is unprotected by the First Amendment. The courts rightly rejected this argument, not on the ground that the swastika doesn’t promote religious hatred, but on the ground that that is not a reason for suppressing speech. After all, it the Nazis could be prohibited from marching in Skokie because the swastika incites religious hatred, then presumably they couldn’t march anywhere for the same reason, and movies could not show the swastika, and even documentaries could not show the swastika. And if the swastika can be banned on this basis, then what other symbols or ideas can be suppressed for similar reasons. What about movies showing members of the Ku Klux Klan? News accounts showing Palestinians committing suicide bombings in Israel or showing Israelis attacking civilians?

Second, the village argued that the purpose of the marches was to inflict emotional harm on the Jewish residents of Skokie and, especially, on the survivors. Certainly, some residents would be deeply offended, shocked and terrified to see Nazis marching through the streets of Skokie. But they might also be offended, shocked and terrified to know that Schindler’s List was playing at a movie theatre in Skokie, or in Chicago, or in Illinois, and African-Americans might be offended, shocked and terrified to know that the movie Birth of a Nation was playing in a theatre in their town or nation. And so on. Moreover, it is doubtful that the actual intent of the Nazis was to inflict emotional harm on the residents of Skokie. Initially, the Nazis sought to march in a totally different community in Chicago, one with almost no Jewish population. But they were denied a permit. They then decided to march in Skokie in order to get publicity for their grievance. Indeed, the signs they planned to carry in Skokie did not say “Bring Back the Holocaust,” but “White Free Speech” and “Free Speech for the White Man.” Making First Amendment rights turn on judgments about a speaker’s subjective intent is a dangerous business, because intent is very elusive and police, prosecutors and jurors are very prone to attribute evil intentions to those whose views they despise.

Third, the village argued that if the Nazis were permitted to march there would be uncontrollable violence. But is this a reason to suppress speech? Isn’t the obligation of the government to protect the speaker and to control and punish the lawbreakers, rather than to invite those who would silence the speech to use threats of violence to achieve their ends? If the village of Skokie had won on this point, then southern communities who wanted to prosecute civil rights marchers in Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham could equally do so, on the plea that such demonstrations would trigger “uncontrollable violence.” Moreover, once government gives in to such threats of violence it effectively invites a “heckler’s veto,” empowering any group of people who want to silence others to do so simply by threatening to violate the law.

The outcome of the Skokie controversy was one of the truly great victories for the First Amendment in American history. It proved that the rule of law must and can prevail. Because of our profound commitment to the principle of free expression even in the excruciatingly painful circumstances of Skokie more than thirty years ago, we remain today the international symbol of free speech.

— “Remembering the Nazis in Skokie,” by Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, The University of Chicago

Posted in Politics and Economics | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments

Juxtaposin’: The Civil War

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

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More on the Decline of Free Speech

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

    • “KEVIN SYSTROM, THE CEO of Instagram, was at Disneyland last June when he decided the internet was a cesspool that he had to clean up.” Oh goodie. I’m sure he’ll only use his powers for good.
    • Telling Zuckerberg to fuck off is now hate speech.
    • Discord has decided to “take action” against “all forms of hate.” Thank you, Discord, for deciding what constitutes hate and doing your part to shield my precious little impressionable mind from it.
    • GoDaddy, who until yesterday was apparently unbothered by the Daily Stormer, decided that DS’s mean post about Heather Hayer’s death was too much.
    • Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook and visiting historian at Dartmouth College, in a WNYC interview a few months ago: “Well, unfortunately, terrible ideas have risen to the top throughout history. The liberal ideal is that the government is a referee in a game that all parties are invited to play but, in actual fact, whenever left groups have become threatening you get red scares, you get repression, you get COINTELPRO in the 1960s and ‘70s. And so, essentially anti-fascists are arguing that, we want a political content to how we look at speech in society, which is drastically different from a liberal take, and that this entails shutting down the extreme manifestations of fascism and neo-Nazism.

      And we need to recognize that this is not simply a question of whether a fascist government will come to power or not – I’m skeptical that such an explicitly fascist government would come to be – but that those who carry out hate crimes, they feel emboldened when their ideas become mainstream, and so, the idea with anti-fascist politics is to prevent those ideas from having that opportunity.”

Related

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Juxtaposin’: Diversity

Posted on August 14, 2017 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

— United Auto Workers, 1946

Groups of idle sailors lay about the decks, “overhauling a range of their memories;” how they had spent the last Christmas-day, in some “Wapping,” or “Wide Water street,” with the brimming goblet in hand, and the merry music of the dance sounding in their ears. Nor were the memories of the officers idle. They clasped in fancy their loved ones, now sad and lonely, to their bosoms once more, and listened to the prattle of the little ones they had left behind. Not the least curious of the changes that had taken place since the last Christmas day, was the change in their own official positions. They were, most of them, on that day, afloat under the “old flag.” That flag now looked to them strange and foreign. They had some of their own countrymen on board; not, as of yore, as welcome visitors, but as prisoners. These, too, wore a changed aspect–enemy, instead of friend, being written upon their faces. The two “rival nations,” spoken of by De Tocqueville, stood face to face. Nature is stronger than man. She will not permit her laws to be violated with impunity, and if this war does not separate these two nations, other wars will. If we succeed in preserving the principle of State sovereignty — the only principle which can save this whole country, North and South, from utter wreck and ruin — all will be well, whatever combinations of particular States may be made, from time to time. The States being free, liberty will be saved, and they will gravitate naturally, like unto like — the Puritan clinging to the Puritan, and the Cavalier to the Cavalier. But if this principle be overthrown, if the mad idea be carried out, that all the American people must be moulded into a common mass, and form one consolidated government, under the rule of a majority — for no constitution will then restrain them — Constitutional liberty will disappear, and no man can predict the future — except in so far, that it is impossible for the Puritan, and the Cavalier to live together in peace.

— Raphael Semmes, 1869

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Frank Sinatra Calls Children Nazis, Japanese Japs, and a Bomb a 500-Pound Tomato … And Then Sings a Song About America

Posted on August 9, 2017 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Posted in Movies, Politics and Economics | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Free Speech Under Attack

Posted on August 9, 2017 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Do people care about free speech? Did they ever really? A recent spate of stories has me wondering.

INB4 some lawyer or lawyer wannabe notes that three of these stories don’t involve state action, therefore the First Amendment isn’t implicated. True, but doesn’t the idea of free speech encompass more than a legal regime, isn’t it a cultural ideal too? Isn’t there something — dare I say? — un-American about firing someone for writing a memo, the point of which was to open up discussion about controversial ideas?

Maybe not, maybe my “cultural ideal” argument is woefully naive. It’s clear people are only too happy to abridge speech when the ideas being attacked are politically unpopular.

  • The SJW mob on Twitter enjoys smearing books before having read them: “In a tweet that would be retweeted nearly 500 times, Sinyard asked people to spread the word about The Black Witch by sharing her review — a clarion call for YA Twitter, which regularly identifies and denounces books for being problematic (an all-purpose umbrella term for describing texts that engage improperly with race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and other marginalizations). Led by a group of influential authors who pull no punches when it comes to calling out their colleagues’ work, and amplified by tens of thousands of teen and young-adult followers for whom online activism is second nature, the campaigns to keep offensive books off shelves are a regular feature in a community that’s as passionate about social justice as it is about reading. And while not every callout escalates into a full-scale dragging, in the case of The Black Witch — a book by a newcomer with a minimal presence online — the backlash was immediate and intense.”
  • Similarly, Ta-Nehisi Coates — one of the indisputably great intellectuals of our age, whose writing the critic A.O. Scott called “essential, like water or air” — musters his searing rhetorical power to denounce a TV show that doesn’t even exist yet. Yes, sure, I realize that Coates is free to criticize a TV show and he’s not asking that anything be banned, but his argument essentially seems to be, “This show shouldn’t exist because it is made by white people and the premise offends me.” There seems to be a swelling chorus of black writers who object to the mere idea of white people creating works about black people.
  • The fact that Ernst Zundel was hounded and harassed by three major governments for decades, including basically two years of torture by one of them, is pretty much all you need to know about the state free speech in the West.
  • Finally, here’s the complete Google memo that’s been in the news, along with a response from four scientists who say he got the science right. I wonder how many of the people attacking James Damore consider themselves members of the “reality-based community” who also fucking love science.
Posted in Politics and Economics | Tagged | 5 Comments