tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post2714778458411935412..comments2024-01-23T17:14:04.067-05:00Comments on Jaltcoh: "Hate speech"John Althouse Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11703450281424023177noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-29881214763986048002015-01-17T16:33:48.189-05:002015-01-17T16:33:48.189-05:00Anything can be labeled as violent if you're s...Anything can be labeled as violent if you're sensitive enough, as in Fran Lebowitz's great line from the 1970s, "Your right to wear a lime green leisure suit ends where it meets my eye."Richard Lawrence Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01951947957345891398noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-74896058693779964212015-01-17T12:37:13.634-05:002015-01-17T12:37:13.634-05:00... I mean, I'm just going to present a basic ...... I mean, I'm just going to present a basic roadmap for human rights legislation in the United States. By "human rights," I mean, Ban all of the following: <em>... 7. Speech that opposes any human rights. This would mean that anyone saying that hate speech shouldn’t be against the law would be prosecuted, since hate speech is universally recognized as an injustice and a human rights violation. ...</em><br /><br />Now, Thought Catalog's market niche is writers who are too young to know better, so I guess this is on-brand for them. But I don't really believe it. <br /><br />Have you found anyone defending the essay? All I've found are attacks on it. Although there are many leftish activists who I consider illiberal on speech, almost none would publicly go this far -- see especially item 7., which I reproduced above. <br /><br />So I suspect this is not what it initially seems. It doesn't really read like <em>satire</em>, though. For example, I don't think it's funny. <br /><br />My speculation is that it's intended to help discredit (less extreme) views in the same general neighborhood. Real examples of the anti-speech left will never use a term like "re-education facility" to describe their policies, no matter the substance. "Reeducation facility" is the kind of rhetoric <em>opponents</em> of speech regulation deploy (because of the negative association with Maoist tactics). Tanya Cohen uses this rhetoric over and over again. <br /><br />Conclusion: Tanya Cohen is the kind of anti-speech leftist that opponents of the left would like to debate, because she's an insane boogeyman who wears her fascism on her sleeve. Further conclusion: Tanya Cohen is a creation of her putative ideological opponents, just a foil, not a real person. <br /><br />I'm not sure but that's what I think. <br /><br />If I'm right, this is <em>not</em> a Sokal hoax situation -- revealing Cohen's origin would not benefit her creators, so they might not tell us what they've done. (If Cohen's essays were enthusiastically adopted by left media, then a hoaxer might gain by revealing her. But that doesn't seem to be happening.) Grobsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05964699430818239961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-66079721245424111942015-01-17T12:13:56.739-05:002015-01-17T12:13:56.739-05:00People certainly have terrible views, but this is ...People certainly have terrible views, but this is so cartoonish it's a little hard to believe. <br /><br />I'm sort of expecting someone to claim responsibility for the hoax, and I wonder what they'll say. Grobsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05964699430818239961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-40675278635987658222015-01-17T02:06:39.337-05:002015-01-17T02:06:39.337-05:00It might be a parody, I'm not sure. For exampl...It might be a parody, I'm not sure. For example, countries that put hate speech on par with murder? Cooome on! Other portions of the article seem serious, though.LemmusLemmushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00917054221547240969noreply@blogger.com