There a significant difference between a paid PR campaign and a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal. Parent didn't said silence the rich, he says ban PR stories.
Personally I would ban unattributed PR. If Larry Ellison want to buy a thousand billboard and write: "Don't taxe me or I will leave. I am Larry and endorse this message" that's ok.
But if he use a PR firm to shift the public opinion with unattributed advertisement and paid-for journal articles that should not be acceptable.
Alas the US Supreme Court decied otherwise in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission...
Pretty much. USSR, Maoist China, Castro's Cuba, Putin's Russia, Nazi Germany, Starter's Britain. Everywhere you can find socialism, you find that opposing views is the first thing socialists suppress.
Yeah right, socialist party of workers was against socialism. /s
Socialism is ecinomic system where state ("workers") control the means of production. Nazi Germany fully controlled all production in Germany, in full accordance with this definition.
Yes, we've been reading a lot in the media lately about the LEFT attacking free speech with unprecedented zeal and cancelling all manner of right wing opinions, shows and pundits that don't support their dogma 100%.
Wait, no. The exact opposite is happening. My bad, it's easy to get confused.
Are we ignoring the vast censorship schemes on social media that all lean left? You can’t discuss certain topics or viewpoints in these public squares at all. Both sides are capable of acting against a free speech. But I think in the last 10 years in America, it has been the left acting against it.
Last year, YouTube removed a video I posted in 2017, supposedly for "medical misinformation." When I watched my copy to see what the heck they were talking about, I had to laugh, because I wasn't sharing a medical opinion at all. I was pointing to vaccines as an example of an issue on which Google might someday censor one side if things continued as they were going.
You must have been asleep for the last 10+ years when leftist cancel culture was all the rage. Should I remind you how LEFT reacted to deplatforming Trump, Parler, Gab, firing of Carlsen? Everyone of note cheered for it and celebrated.
Now, when they are getting some slight taste of their own medicine and act very very upset: they can't to that to us!!!
Shooting someone through the throat with a high-powered rifle during a university debate certainly seems like an attack on free speech, but maybe I don't have your nuanced understanding of the issue.
> I don't have your nuanced understanding of the issue.
Let me help unconfuse you, then:
- government swiftly, immediately and directly cancelling a show from a private company because someone said something that's not good for "the party": attack on free speech.
- murder of Charlie Kirk: politically motivated murder by a deranged psycho, which is immediately exploited to AMPLIFY right wing views and cancel left wing ones.
So tell me again, based on what one is currently allowed to say about this very topic: what ideas is the right no longer able to express openly and loudly as a result of this murder?
Don't say "Charlie Kirk": I've heard more of his ideas in recent weeks than I would have if he hadn't been shot.
> government swiftly, immediately and directly cancelling a show from a private company
That appears to be a false statement. Private company made that decision on their own after public pressured it to.
A fitting quote by no other but Mr Kimmel himself, who said this in a very similar situation:
I want to say kudos to my bosses at ABC for doing the right thing and canceling Roseanne’s show today. It’s not an easy thing to do when a show is successful, but it’s the right thing.
"Left ones" being, celebrating murder? Assuming you weren't living under a rock for the past decade, do you think celebrating murder is less severe than right-wing views (critical of BLM, critical of feminism, critical of pro-choice) that were routinely cancelled by left-wing institutions (social media, university) over this time frame?
Please tell us how Matthew Dowd celebrated Kirk's murder? Or Kimmel?
Furthermore, celebrating murder is still free speech. For example, we've had to endure years of jokes about the murders of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin, the flame continuously stoked by Charlie Kirk and his colleagues.
Kirk was ultimately "cancelled" by the same society that he fomented. He was against empathy, used his platform to disparage and attack vulnerable groups, against gun control, and literally said that gun deaths are a worthy price for the 2nd amendment. He was a victim of a violent society he actively encouraged and campaigned for. Pointing this out is not celebrating murder.
> and literally said that gun deaths are a worthy price for the 2nd amendment
This is, of course, a lie. By omitting important context you present it as a political point for what you perceive to be your side.
In fact, strict gun control does not prevent political assassinations. It didn't prevent it in Russia, in Japan, nowhere. So all arguments that "he wouldn't get assassinated if we didn't have 2nd amendment" are simply not valid and proven wrong.
Since I think you didn't really read into the full text of a quote in question, I'll provide you a link [0].
Your link doesn't prove me wrong? It's what he said:
"You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It’s drivel. But I am, I, I — I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."
That's his point of view. He became a victim of gun violence which he said is worth the cost.
> This is, of course, a lie. By omitting important context you present it as a political point for what you perceive to be your side.
Thanks for projecting! Try to focus on what we're discussing instead of descending into ad hominem.
> strict gun control does not prevent political assassinations. It didn't prevent it in Russia, in Japan, nowhere
I'm not discussing political assassinations, and neither was Kirk. I'm discussing Kirk's own views on gun violence in the United States and the "cost" of unrestricted access to firearms, of which he himself was a victim. Political assassinations are a small subset of this "cost." Would you like to compare the number of mass shooting events in these countries, or is it too inconvenient that the US is #1 in mass/school shootings?
> That's his point of view. He became a victim of gun violence which he said is worth the cost.
You are lying again. He became a victim of a targeted political assassination. Such assassinations happen in every society, whether they have the 2nd amendment or not.
His opponents argued that restricting access to guns would reduce gun violence — as in school shootings, etc — and that might be true, at the cost of having no protection from the tyranny of the government. But such restrictions would not help prevent Kirk's own assassination, as evidenced by thousands of political assassinations everywhere around the world where access to guns is restricted, and this makes your statement a lie. This is nothing more than a rather distasteful attempt to score some political points.
Nope, once again you are misconstruing my words. I don't take kindly to being called a liar by a fool. I originally said the following:
> Kirk was ultimately "cancelled" by the same society that he fomented. He was against empathy, used his platform to disparage and attack vulnerable groups, against gun control, and literally said that gun deaths are a worthy price for the 2nd amendment. He was a victim of a violent society he actively encouraged and campaigned for.
I am talking about the kind of society that Charlie Kirk wanted. One without empathy, where vulnerable people are attacked, and there are no guardrails on access to firearms, which he encouraged. Yes, political assassinations exist, but that doesn't change the fact that Charlie Kirk died because he encouraged a violent society; one that ultimately made him a victim.
You've decided to focus on one aspect of what I said, creating a strawman claiming that it's my entire argument, and continue to engage in ad hominem. Please use more critical thinking skills, as I'm tiring of you projecting your own insecurities and motivations onto me. I suggest reading more books from experts in their fields, instead of right-wing blogs like the one you linked (focus on sociology and anthropology may help with this specific topic). A course on formal logic may also help, along with introductory philosophy.
You seem to think I'm trying to "score points" in some kind of game here. I don't consider this a game at all and it says a lot that you do.
Btw, the latest news just dropped:. somehow private company defied the 'fascist' government and reinstated the cancelled show in question. Uh oh how do you even explain it to yourself?!
