You make an excellent point. Let's wait until people are actually beaten to death and imprisoned (and not just one, like a good few thousands of them!), and only then start complaining.
That's right! Because there are just 1 or maybe 2 steps from Scientific American publishing a godawful article about Wilson & refusing to print a rebuttal (+), to peole being actually beaten to death. We need to take action, right now.
(+) and let's not overlook that UPenn is actively considering changing tenure rules just because a poor law professor made some actually racist remarks. Labor camps could be here by 2023!
I don’t think anyone’s gonna die soon. What we are a couple steps away from, I think, is an environment where this rebuttal would be considered hate speech and the signatories would be fired for endorsing it. (We might be only half a step away, honestly; I give it a 50% chance that one of the signatories
faces a Title IX complaint about it by next week, although I understand that such an unconfident prediction doesn’t really mean much.)
You know, I started out thinking that very bad language should indeed be censored. But considering what I see -- how eagerly language is used to eliminate one's political opponents from the public sphere, and how expansive definitions become over time (e.g. what happened to "literally violence") -- I now believe in complete freedom of speech, even down to fully genocidal rhetoric (and yes, that includes freedom from civilian consequences, not just government-imposed consequences). As a free speech absolutist, I now believe that the government should perform a proactive role in ensuring that the 1st amendment is obeyed -- not just a passive one.
It seems to me that the unique characteristic of the technological society is that, through mass surveillance, tactical applications of violence, propaganda and “social death,” traditional fixtures of totalitarianism like prison camps and beatings are unnecessary to enforce unprecedented political control.
> It seems to me that the unique characteristic of the technological society is that, through mass surveillance, tactical applications of violence, propaganda and “social death,” traditional fixtures of totalitarianism like prison camps and beatings are unnecessary to enforce unprecedented political control.
This is definitely true, for a less-charged example:
> BELGRADE, Serbia — When Covid-19 reached Eastern Europe in the spring of 2020, a Serbian journalist reported a severe shortage of masks and other protective equipment. She was swiftly arrested, thrown in a windowless cell and charged with inciting panic.
> The journalist, Ana Lalic, was quickly released and even got a public apology from the government in what seemed like a small victory against old-style repression by Serbia’s authoritarian president, Aleksandar Vucic.
> But Ms. Lalic was then vilified for weeks as a traitor by much of the country’s news media, which has come increasingly under the control of Mr. Vucic and his allies as Serbia adopts tactics favored by Hungary and other states now in retreat from democracy across Europe’s formerly communist eastern fringe.
> “For the whole nation, I became a public enemy,” she recalled.
> Serbia no longer jails or kills critical journalists, as happened under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s. It now seeks to destroy their credibility and ensure few people see their reports.
(+) and let's not overlook that UPenn is actively considering changing tenure rules just because a poor law professor made some actually racist remarks. Labor camps could be here by 2023!