I am setting up this blog to address a number of technical and legal issues that, over the long run, can affect the freedom of media newbies like me to speak freely on the Internet and other low-cost media that have developed in the past ten years.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
Violent Leftist groups tend to re-energize the alt-Right; more on implicit content
German Lopezargues on Vox that violent groups on the Left (like “Antifa”) play into the
right-wing’s hands.
The more
extreme factions on the Left argue that some factions on the right must be
stopped cold, with violence if necessary, or else their ideas could gradually gain
mainstream legitimacy, as well as justify systematic attacks on various minorities
(especially of color). Trump was probably thinking about Antifa when
he “messed up” (Paul Ryan) with his “both sides” remark about Charlottesville.
This has led
to cancellation of some events (as with Milo Yiannopoulos, who is much less
extreme than the Left thinks, if you actually read what he writes, as well as
with Charles Murray, who is also much closer to the mainstream right). It also leads to suppression of certain
ideas, such as studying genetics and race (or even sexuality), for fear that it
could bring back right wing movements again (like eugenics). It’s easy to imagine how this speech
prohibitionism could lead into other areas, such as discussion of the history of conscription, for fear that
could encourage its return.
Giving in to
“heckling” could lead to future targeting of much more moderate (but
conservative) speakers, as well as an attempt to bring into the law the obscure
idea of “implicit content” (an idea that got mentioned at the COPA trial in 2007) This idea
means that the identity of the speaker is part of the message, and that if a
speaker knows that some particular consumers (of his speech) are likely to act
in a harmful way because of the speaker’s own identity as the messenger, the
speaker could incur legal liability.
This is a very dangerous idea indeed. But that’s what happened to me as a substitute
teacher in 2005 (see 2007/7/27 post).
Note the
clipping from the Berkeley event Aug. 27.
Update: Aug. 30 Note the Washington Post editorial "'Antifa' groups only help the groups they claim to oppose". The editorial says that the extremist leftist groups don't pose the same threat to democracy as the extreme alt-right, but the muzzling of speech by heckling would seem to create new legal problems (see tomorrow's post). Update: Aug. 31 Victor David Hanson: "When the mob attacks innocent words; Purging references to the past is a sign of totalitarianism". ESPN and Robert Lee; ESPN and "guerilla" v. "gorilla".
No comments:
Post a Comment