Is Free Speech Just a Fantasy?
At 34 free speech really came to the forefront in my experience starting in the couple of years before DJT was first elected pushed initially by controversial figure Milo Yiannopoulos with other prominent political influencers participating in the movement soon thereafter. It really seemed like an era where free speech absolutism was being argued for. Freedom in speech not just legally but in principle with cancel culture and deplatforming specifically being seen as the enemy of this goal. Yet it seems like Milo after his fall from grace has soured on absolute free speech. Conservatives have defended censorship at various points since then. The government is tracking political speech online. I guess my question really is was free speech absolution just a fairytale idea to begin with? Think of the darkest topic we could talk about and how many platforms could we talk about it before the post would be removed? The view was supposed to be that even literal nazis that advocate for violence against Jews shouldn't be censored and that bad ideas should be countered with good ones. Yet it seems views about political violence in general now are considered not to be apart of free speech. Doesn't it just seem that socially there will just always be some topics where a mob of people will rise up to stop you? Think about ideas such as incest, or husbands having free access to their wives, or views about what is permissible with children, views about violent political action, or views about violence or manipulation that are psychopathic. The darkest recesses of human behavior will always have a taboo that makes free speech absolution a fairytale and perhaps that's a good thing. How can someone argue for this absolution without accepting this hard to swallow pill that talking about these topics should be allowed on platforms and that you shouldn't be cancelled for them? If anything goes accept literally a statement saying kill x person rather than simply I think x people should be killed than it seems there is no avoiding the dark conclusions of this.