And outside of Tumblr entirely, there's the example of Mariam Namazie giving a talk at Goldsmiths University in London and receiving heckling, harassment and disruptions from Muslims trying to prevent her from speaking. The response from the Islamic Society was to say that their members were never there. However, there is video footage of the event. The response from the feminist society and LGBT society to the harassment of an ex-Muslim woman delivering a talk on free speech was to support the Islamic society. This support continued from both societies after the video evidence came to light, even when the Islamic society leader was forced to resign shortly afterwards for his extremely homophobic tweets.
That's how polarising things have become now: That the left will support the right in opposing the moderate.
Perhaps we don't want speech to completely free, but we do want the truth to be accessible. You can't have missed the recent news about Cologne, where coordinated abuse against women (including two rapes) was covered up out of fear that announcing the attacks by mostly North African and Arab men would be perceived as racist. That is madness! So I can't entirely disagree with the claim that "you can't say anything without being called a racist or a sexist" since that's how the ridiculous decision to cover-up the events in Cologne came about.
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Date: 2016-01-23 04:39 pm (UTC)That's how polarising things have become now: That the left will support the right in opposing the moderate.
Perhaps we don't want speech to completely free, but we do want the truth to be accessible. You can't have missed the recent news about Cologne, where coordinated abuse against women (including two rapes) was covered up out of fear that announcing the attacks by mostly North African and Arab men would be perceived as racist. That is madness! So I can't entirely disagree with the claim that "you can't say anything without being called a racist or a sexist" since that's how the ridiculous decision to cover-up the events in Cologne came about.
Anyway, that's my two cents. What do you reckon?