Vivat Libertas

A common right-wing talking point is that leftists and liberals like to claim perpetual victimhood. As a young adult, I have rejected this claim a lot - nobody likes being abused, oppressed or discriminated against. These things are not remotely fun. Now that I am a slightly older young adult, I find myself coming back to this claim and thinking about it harder. I still don't believe that anyone truly enjoys victimhood - being abused, oppressed and discriminated against is still not fun - but if you're good at manipulating narratives, claiming the status of a victim while retaining most or all of your privileges will get you far. I also believe that this manifests in different ways. Among circles where privilege theory is used as a foundation for thinking about politics and social justice, we're (supposed to) pay attention to the intersections of these privileges; we're also (supposed to be) aware of our own privileges and how we might use these to talk over othe...

I was originally going to write a long post about how this quote is bad and wrong on all sorts of levels. Then I discovered that this quote was not actually by Voltaire, but a bastardised misquote of "To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?" Whew, that's a mouthful. I can see why it was shortened. It also originated not with the venerable Voltaire, but a man called Kevin Alfred Strom , who is undistinguished apart from being a neo-Nazi who was imprisoned for possession of child pornography. Nice piece of work, isn't he? Definitely the guy you want to be taking advice from. A number of you will be pointing out that - as detestable as Strom is - his repulsive actions don't necessarily make his statement logically wrong. I happen to agree with this. His statement is still bad and wrong anyway. If you consider yourself a brave freedom fighter, valiantly...

One of the most obvious things about me is that I really, really love free speech and expression - more than just "Oh, isn't it nice that we can say what we want?" but "I will defend the right to say what you want, when you want, where you want, even if I disagree with you". It is only fair that all have the right to expression, and I don't really think you can have the moral high ground if you allow some people to speak but not others. You can approve or disapprove of what people say, you can call them out on their stupidity, but that's different from claiming that they have a lesser right to speak. It therefore disturbs me when people, especially people claiming to defend freedom and human rights (and this has happened before), don't seem to recognise the right to freedom of speech and to disagreement, instead using threats and trying to silence their opponents, perhaps with claims like "you support paedophiles" or "you enable fas...