Be Excellent To Each Other

Us celts were doing fine until you Normans came along. Bloody immigrants

It is fine to look at all sides, but we have incredible biases. We are taught in schools to be proud of colonialism and the Empire, that being white is the default - it is difficult to unpick all of that. If anything I shout louder in here than anyone else because I respect you all on a lot of subjects. Nothing gets me more grief than discussing race in here though. And I've seen it with a lot with fellow white people who are much less switched on and intelligent than you lot - defensiveness and denial that they are somehow complicit. We are all complicit. Don't listen to me. Listen to black voices. Seek them out - there are loads out there.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

I'm off out now - peace out honkies

FEWER!

FFS, man!

I don't agree with everything Myp says, but there is more unconscious and systemic bias out there than most would think. I think that whilst nobody here is racist, and we'd all love an egalitarian country/world where race/sex/sexuality etc don't matter, the truth is that there is a LOT of discrimination embedded within it.

Whilst we can all probably say that we aren't directly contributing to this on an intentional level, that's only taking us so far. What we need to do more is listen to the voices of those who are discriminated against, and a good part of that issue is that we can't hear them anything like as easily as we can that of sympathetic white people. And a lot of these voices are trying to help, but doing so from their own perspective and appraisal of what the problems are.

It's a fucker to unpick and I know I cause harm in a lot of what I do. I hate myself more than enough that I sure as hell won't place myself above anyone in this.

I'm rambling now. Yay wine!

It's almost like I do it on purpose.

Myp was meant to be the one to notice it, though.

I did notice. But I'm not a grammar pedant anymore.

Yay! That lunatic right wing Trump didn't win the first primary!

Boo! That lunatic right wing Cruz did!

I call Rubio to win the nomination.

Interesting tie between Clinton and Bernie Sanders (aka Angry Jeremy Corbyn).

Apropos of nothing, Bernie Sanders' brother used to be a local councillor here in the Shire.

You can't realistically compare Bernie Sanders with Jeremy Corbyn, Curio. Bernie comes across as competent and credible, and doesn't have lots of weird views.

To mid-spectrum Brits, yes. Mid-spectrum America thinks of him exactly like most Brits think of Corbyn, even within his own party, exactly like Corbyn.

I'm talking objectively, not subjectively.

Well, yes, but the American left is much further to the right than the British left. Within their respective political systems they are playing the same kind of game, and have the same kind of appeal.

There's no such thing as objectivity in politics

No.

University students have the right to decide who they want and don't want speaking at their events. This is not an assault on free speech at all. These speakers often have large followings, newspaper columns, etc. To say they are being silenced is risible, in all honesty.

This is comparable to being blocked on social media. You are free to spout whatever bullshit you want, but it doesn't mean people have to listen.

We don't have a right to free speech in this country, anyway.

@Myp

Ah, but what if a sizeable portion want to hear the person but they get shouted down? Or if the person being shown the door is simply repping Black History Month and the white supremacists cause enough of a fuss to cause it to be cancelled?

There is a big difference between a speaker being cancelled due to safety concerns (eg when Anita Sarkeesian had her Utah State speech cancelled due to a massacre threat) and the university student members listening to their marginalised students and cancelling a speaker with known bigoted views (eg Germaine Greer's transphobia or Richard Dawkins' white supremacy/Islamophobia).

That's not really an answer to Curio's question though.

Why should a group of people be prevented from hearing someone because another group disagrees with them?

When I was a student, I just stayed away from events I didn't like the look of.

Events you don't like the look of =/= events where the speaker has a history of oppressing you.

Universities are not obliged to provide platforms for people they do not want speaking there. The unions as a whole are deciding this, it's not one group against another.

Most students =/= their student unions.

Nope, but they're elected aren't they? I thought you had a huge respect for the democratic process.

Agree... There's the chance to have views challenged and arguments put forward to counter them. It isn't like the Nuremburg Rallies. It is partly a rehash of the whole "Should Nick Griffin go on Question Time" and the world didn't end then.if anything, it got a tiny bit better, because he wasn't such a terrible bogeyman after all, just a fat sweaty cunt in an ill fitting suit struggling to articulate his position as the knowledge that his position was batshit mental crystallised in his thoughts.

And on another level, the uni should be a place for independent thinking and growing up. A place to challenge and stretch oneself. Not put up barriers because something does not fit a current worldview that you don't share. Now, the student politics seem to revolve around getting exposure to get on the Party List to get on as a selected candidate for MP. Banning people from speaking because you don't like them and what they have said/will say says more about the strength of the counter arguments of those seeking a ban, too.



Well, yes, quite. They should act like adults over it and man up with an argument or go back to playing Jack Johnson songs on a guitar in between talking about how Cuba has it right

Has anyone actually been prevented from talking at a university because of an organised protest by a minority of students?

And again we have people here with the most amount of privilege and telling marginalised folk just to 'toughen up'. It's really depressing. And you're the well meaning ones.

But like Curio said, what if it's the marginalised folk who are told they can't do their speech?

Why should the other group be prevented from objecting to a choice of speaker because the first group disagrees with them?

If the university decides that's what they want to do, they are well within their right to do this. That isn't happening though. Because universities are doing the right thing and supporting their minority students.

This is not a free speech issue. Dawkins, Greer et al have huge platforms already. They are not being 'silenced'.

The *government* stopped Abu Hamza giving his speeches, despite the fact there was a sizeable group of people wanting to listen to him. Now that's a genuine free speech issue - why didn't you protest against that?

I think they can object/protest/write a spiffing blog about it but I think removing them from speaking is too far.

Maryam Namazie didn't fare so well though, eh?

Yeah, she was espousing some very lovely open-minded views.


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... are_btn_tw

Free speech is a qualified right, not an absolute one.

Article 10 of the Human Rights Act for starters.

I guess I'm not right wing enough for this thread.

Right. Now we're getting somewhere.

And also realise that this isn't a free speech issue anyway.

You're pretty right wing in that you are agreeing with the government of Saudi Arabia and ISIS against that of a feminist who has campaigned her entire life for equal rights for women.

Right. Has anyone actually been removed from speaking, though? All I've seen happening is

1) University announces controversial speaker
2) Some students protest
3) University considers opinion
4) Students are overruled and speaker goes ahead

All of that looks to be working perfectly to me. Decrying the mere existence of step (2) sounds like slippery slope nonsense.

If there are any instances of (4) where the other outcome happened, then how concerned I'm going to feel about that depends on who the speaker was. There are shades of grey here and it's not always going to be wrong to tell someone they can't give a guest lecture at a university after all, but you can only judge that on specific cases. Generalities are useless.

B. Sanders has at least tried to engage with mainstream politics, during his stints as representative and senator. He may have been an independent for most of his incumbency, but he is/was essentially a Democrat on steroids, not even significantly further to the left than left-wing Democrats - I mean, Dennis Kucinich's platform in 2008 was very similar to that of B. Sanders in 2016. Main difference being that B. Sanders is much better at campaigning and communicating and 'playing the game' of politics than Kucinich, or someone like Jeremy Corbyn on this side of the Atlantic.


Agreed.

The work of Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams

Feex

The referenced article links to a petition to prevent Germaine Greer from speaking after she made comments that were transphobic. The speech did in fact go ahead, though it appears that Myp's position is that she shouldn't have been permitted to. It's an interesting one, because GG is obviously a renowned feminist, and strong supporter of a known opressed 'minority' group - women. Transgender folks are of course way behind women in the establishment of support, rights, and their own agenda, which then I guess leads to the question of whether you play 'opression top trumps' - what takes priority, Germaine Greer's support for feminism or her dismissal of the transgender community?

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

'Oppression top trumps', or as it's better known, intersectionality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

True, but to defend radical Islam ahead of a feminist who has done a tremendous amount of work to improve the lives of women in the Middle East and across the world... that's a massive cognitive dissonance with you being a feminist.

Wow, what a straw man argument! I was not defending *radical* Islam at all. Did you even read the bit I quoted? She believes anyone who follows the Islam faith are 'kidding themselves' if they believe they can abide peacefully in a liberal society. I applaud her efforts from a feminist standpoint but that doesn't cancel out the Islamophobic bigotry she spouts. Just as I respect Dawkins as an evolutional biologist, but it doesn't mean he can get away with being misogynist or racist himself.

I prefer my name. Interesting read though.

So what's the answer - should Greer have been allowed to speak or not?

Without giving an opinion on the subject (I don't know enough about it), you've not quoted her there. You've quoted someone writing an article about her - that's not what she believes, that's what the author interprets what she believes. And reading that piece, the author isn't terribly impartial.