Tag: ????

snitchanon:

theunitofcaring:

I know I’ve discussed this to death, but someone asked for a single, comprehensive post. So:

No-platforming people gives them a much, much bigger platform. And violently preventing a talk from occurring means that the ideas will reach thousands of times as many ears. While their talk would be one among a hundred poorly-attended talks on one of a thousand college campuses, a backlash against the talk will make headlines everywhere and get people curious. If the backlash escalates to violence – and lately, it often has, the protestors successfully boost the opinion they’re protesting to overwhelming national attention and sympathy.

(Google searches for Milo Yiannopoulos; the first spike is the violence in Berkeley; the second spike the pederasty videos surfacing). The violence in Berkeley increased interest in Milo tenfold at least.

In addition, after the violence in Berkeley, Milo got invited to speak at CPAC and interviewed on major news networks.

Same pattern with Charles Murray:

The hundred-fold spike corresponds to the violence interrupting his talk at Middlebury. The violence was of course also followed up by a gazillion news articles about his views. And of course it did wonders for sales of his books.

The direct immediate effect of ‘no platforming’ someone is giving them a huge national platform and favorable press coverage. The single biggest favor you can do someone abhorrent and attention-seeking is to violently protest their talks. 

The most commonly offered justification of preventing people from delivering talks is that the ideas do not merit any discussion and should be prevented from getting any. When I present the above evidence to supporters of shutting down talks, by violence if necessary, they sometimes say that it’s really about the talks being prevented on campus, where students are vulnerable. It does not seem to me that moving talks from ‘on a campus in a lecture hall, advertised in advance so people can avoid them, surrounded by a skeptical audience’ to ‘on national television with a sympathetic audience’ is an improvement. Another explanation sometimes offered is that it’s about making other people aware that they should fear for their lives if they voice those opinions. Aside from being a morally abhorrent thing to strive for, I don’t think that works either; all the people who bought The Bell Curve clearly learned the wrong lesson, and people in general like feeling that they’re standing up to coercion and intimidation and violence.

It’s convenient when something you think is morally wrong turns out to also be spectacularly ineffective and a really terrible means to its intended end. I think that’s part of why lots of proponents of getting speeches cancelled don’t trust the arguments that they shouldn’t be doing it; they’re hearing those arguments from people who are like ‘your goals are bad and I want to thwart you in achieving them and also your methods won’t achieve your goals so you should stop for your own sake’. Of course they find that unconvincing! And yet. I don’t agree with suppressing speech as a goal and I also think the evidence is overwhelming that when you try it you fail spectacularly. I think it’d be very courageous of people who support or are open to suppressing speech to say “I think this would be justified if it worked, but it doesn’t work”. I really hope some of them do.

For the consideration of the audience.