Will Shetterly is correct; this is an excellent perspective on the tired old free speech debate:
The basis of the argument is that “the right to free speech means the government can’t arrest you for what you say.” In the context of capitalism, that’s an incredibly reductionist definition. If speech is supposed to be free, we must ask: who owns the means by which speech is expressed and transmitted in the modern world? Who owns the newspapers? Who owns the TV channels? Who owns Twitter? Who owns Facebook? Who owns the film production studios? Who owns the ISPs? And so on. The answer is always the same: not the government. Not the people, either. All of these things are owned by capital. All of these things are industries.
So, in a situation where public discourse takes place in privately-owned spaces, how are the handful of people who ultimately own most of the media any different from a government? Apart from the lack of any kind of system of democratic control or a pretense of accountability, that is.
…Ultimately, what this comic is selling is a strange libertarian capitalist fantasy of freedom, where freedom is defined solely as freedom from government interference, but freedom from the structures of authority produced by the accumulation of capital is never considered.
The value of the argument aside, it’s a fun bonus to imagine how many of XKCD’s readers would likely be mortally offended at the suggestion that they’ve internalized libertarian capitalist values.
April 28, 2014 @ 5:38 pm
You and Shetterley have made some good points about this issue, but the fact is, XKCD is technically correct. The constitution only protects us from government actions. I don't mean you can't make the case that it is hypocritical, but it means you need to look at specifics to make that case, and I'm not sure that's being done. I mean, I have seen many cases of conservatives completely abusing the meaning of the phrase by claiming they should be allowed to proselytize in publicly owned venues, or simply that anyone who fricking criticizes them is taking away their freedom of speech. I think these are the kinds of claims XKCD was speaking to, as well as the Eich incident, about which conservatives are themselves complete hypocrites since they constantly call for people to be fired for having differing views.
April 28, 2014 @ 10:14 pm
I've admitted before that, technically, it is true that the Constitution only protects against government censorship. But to quote Burke from the book I just finished reading yesterday, "It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reason and justice tell me I ought to do." I guess what I'm doing, odd as it may sound, is making a case for a spirit of free speech as a personal or even civic virtue, not a purely legal issue.
Like the gun issue, I think the free speech issue has morphed in a way that the Founders couldn't have anticipated. In their day, a tyrannical government could choke off the few mass media outlets and monopolize the exchange of information. Now, I think we have almost the opposite problem — the sheer glut of 24/7 information has paradoxically inspired an almost-xenophobic tribalism, where people keep to a cloistered media environment, highly customized to their exact taste, where they only encounter disagreement in cartoonish caricature form. The internet silo effect, basically. The danger to open, meaningful discourse isn't so much the state telling you you're not allowed to read this or hear that, it's the way in which anything from genuinely offensive, hateful speech to mild contrarianism can earn you the silent treatment, basically. The most superficial signals — a controversial word, a guilt-by-association connection — will be used to justify ignoring, if not actively silencing, anything you have to say.
What I'm trying to champion is an attitude of charitable fairness, in which you try your absolute best to hear and understand what someone is saying before dismissing and mocking them. Obviously, there's no objective metric to appeal to; each person has to decide for themselves if they're being fair or not. And equally obviously, there's a line in there somewhere — I wouldn't say, "Hey guys, this fellow wants to tell us how the bible forbids homosexuality. I think we should hear him out in case we missed something the last dozen times we heard this." Of course not. But then you look at something like the Pharyngula comments, and you see a bunch of people who have long since made up their minds and poured the concrete in, and you realize that somewhere along the way, they could have benefitted from listening to some contrary opinions. I couldn't clearly state where that line is, but I'm sure it's there somewhere.
April 29, 2014 @ 2:33 pm
But I agree with all of this – XKCD would too.
April 29, 2014 @ 1:02 pm
This bit, from Kenan Malik, also illustrates what I'm getting at:
"Censorship is not simply a matter of the state imposing restrictive laws or of the authorities silencing writers. It is also about the culture of discussion and debate, about the willingness to listen, engage and allow divergent views and beliefs to exist."
April 29, 2014 @ 11:14 pm
But I don't agree that we have a healthy "culture of discussion and debate". I think everything about the twitosphere is set up to create an atmosphere where groupthink and simplistic sloganeering dominate the way people communicate. That's what Freddie's talking about in the post I linked to this morning — the entire dynamic of social media encourages tribal thinking.