A meme about cancel culture

@Uhohuhoh exactly freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence

@Uhohuhoh And that is my gripe with some people. They think freedom of speech means they are not responsible for the consequences of their words. That is not how it works.

@Uhohuhoh Its not simple though. What people are allowed to acceptably say is always a political choice.

'Free speech absolutista' are absolutely hypocritical. For example, Tucker Carlsson moans about cancel culture and also supports the Hungarian government, which is arguably the most censorious regime in Europe.

What stops me from agreeing with you is that censorship also happens against the left.

Yes, speech has consequences and that matters. We should allow a wide bebate whilst still having words. Political forces do decide what is acceptable though and to think otherwise is naive.

@Burnley123 I think something this meme illustrates well is the stakes too. For example Trump being banned from Twitter is hardly in the same realm as being a union leader under the fascist regimes in Latin America not that long ago. People folks like Trump supported too.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Of course. This meme is a deliberate exaggeration but its pretty literally accurate in Latin America even now.

Obviously historic examples include Sandinistas and Allende.

Lula got locked up and Bolsonaro was allowed to brag that he was going to murder the left. Being a union leader in Columbia is a truly dangerous profession. The US backed right wingers in Venezuela murder loads of people.

So it's not even in the past because this shit is literally happening now.

@Burnley123 Oh absolutely.


But it is also a warning against the "can't happen here" syndrome.


I mean the FBI pulled his protection and MLK was shot after he started talking about economic justice too. People close to him have said he started making those connections.

And the Panthers were crushed pretty ruthlessly too.

The first Marxist in North America to be elected was a Canadian Fred Rose and he was jailed so he could not take office.

@Uhohuhoh If the consequences are coercive in nature, then that's not really free speech.

@BlueVeins but coercive is not cancelling its threatening . We may be talking about different things

@BlueVeins I mean if I don't like what you have to say I won't hang around with you , or buy your books, tickets products etc . But it's not threatening or coercive ?

@Uhohuhoh The thing is there is a narrative going around in conservative circles that getting your account suspended on Facebook is the same as the government sending armed goons to your door for wrong think.

That has happened to one side in the in the US and other western states and it is not the right.

The last time the right wing had to deal with that in the US was 1776.

@Uhohuhoh Well where would you draw the line? Is it coercive, for example, to fire someone from a non-PR job for speaking their mind on their own time?