The anti-woke warriors used to defend free speech.
No, they didn't.
FFS, how is TheGuardian nostalgic for fucking 2018-era racist TikTok dancers all of a sudden?
this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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Free speech as in allowing hate speech, which is a free speech absolutionist position, whether we agree with it or not. Complaints about offensive jokes not being allowed reflect this sentiment.
The framing of the article is focused on people who might have agreed with the free speech absolutionist position before to show them how they've drifted away from it. If they've taken this position out of principle, the cognitive dissonance could reach them and force them to reconsider their views.
Who knows how many people this may resonate with, but this type of challenging thought still seems important for bridging the political divide. This may also give readers new angles for challenging people they know that this particular article never reaches.
The framing of the article is focused on people who might have agreed with the free speech absolutionist position before
That is the thing, none of them were ever free speech absolutionists even back then. That is a disguise they used when it came to certain issues around free speech, mostly hate speech, but never for anything else.
Words mean absolutely nothing to these fascists, they will exploit tolerance to promote their non-tolerance, but they will happily cast tolerance aside when it comes to the defence of vulnerable minorities of all kinds. Even back then.
Free speech as in allowing hate speech, which is a free speech absolutionist position
There's a significant difference between "being a free speech absolutist" and simply defending hate-speech on the grounds of "race realism" and similar eugenicist beliefs.
The framing of the article is focused on people who might have agreed with the free speech absolutionist position before
They did not. They campaigned on college campuses to encourage students to espouse and adopt racist language by claiming any negative social consequences the students experienced were infringements on their "freedoms".
But you don't need to dig too far into the history to note that Steven Crowder was posting up on college campuses fully uninhibited, while Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk were kidnapped and trucked off to ICE blacksites. Nobody was having Ben Shapiro or Kaitlin Bennett snatched off the street and shoved into an oubliette. Charlie Kirk isn't in hiding right now, because of his stated opinions on the Biden Presidency or his fringe views on South African apartheid.
Who knows how many people this may resonate with, but this type of challenging thought still seems important for bridging the political divide.
Yeah, they were doing the same thing back then also. Whining about cancel culture WAS at its peak, but also walk out of that football game Mike pence! Don't go to target because you might see rainbow clothes
racist speech is still technically speech, and opposing the banning of said speech can be interpreted as being in favour of free speech as it is opposing censorship.
They like McCarthyism. They think McCarthy was on to something. They think they're really were communists everywhere and still are.
15 years ago I was talking to my aunt, a staunch proud Republican, Union teacher at her local university, and sole inheritor of her father's fortune. When I compared America's response to the war on terror while using McCarthyism as an unfavorable comparison she said, "not everybody thinks that's a bad thing."
I had to ask her to clarify, "McCarthyism? Isn't it fundamentally unamerican to prosecute people for their thoughts, words, and association with other people? Doesn't the first amendment mean anything?"
What she said chilled me to my bones... "The first amendment isn't meant for those people."
That's who they are. Conservatives are people who think you don't deserve rights if you disagree with them.
The antiwork are not the worst in thia case. The other day a person was mad at her for mentionning religion in her video and insulted her