Free Speech Campaign Launched. ‘To combat the rise in identity politics’

[MrsSnippyPants]

Sorry, no share token, but more pressure being put on organisations that no-platform and shut down debate.
www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/voters-seek-return-to-common-sense-in-revolt-against-political-correctness-8x8kzcnd8

I've signed up for the newsletter. I'll see how this group develops and what their strategy is for enabling open debate, how they expect to engage with controversial topics etc.

There is an existing organisation called Battle of Ideas and they have been quite good at hosting some very interesting discussions and debates on all sorts of topics.
www.battleofideas.org.uk/

It's a real shame that most of these sort of events tend to happen way down South, usually in London. Ideally it would be nice to have a way of engaging people from all sorts of regions around the UK.

I've always felt it's really important to cultivate 'active citizenship' whereby people are encouraged to come together and discuss all sorts of local, regional and national issues. It does take effort and skill to ensure people have access to expert material that they can reference, and to facilitate the discussions so you don't have a specific political slant or a specific individual dominating the conversations (there's always some ranting, shouty person, usually a bloke who goes on and on about capitalism or some such thing 🙄).

On first glance, the concept sounds great but a couple of questions started making feel a bit worried.

Along the lines of worrying it will be dominated by blokes who secretly want to be able to start touching women's arses in the office again and not lose their jobs over it.

I'll keep an open mind though.

Interesting case! Well I think definitely the protesters have some legitimate points and again If people want to build, get rid of or preserve a monument in their city they will need to work through the local democratic process. I just fail to see what is not working here or where the free speech issue is. If a decision made by local officials, mayors, etc is not supported by the people they’ll get voted out presumably.

I also think it’s weird that this document calls for protests being too disruptive implying protests by some groups are bad while at the same time presumably wanting to preserve the ability to protest their own issues of interest (like the statue thing). Seems like a contradiction re: free speech.

I've never understood the phenomenon of taking down statutes. Seems to tie in with the whole purity spiral thing... Whereby people are expected to be ultra pure or ultra evil and the same dichotomy is thrown onto historical figures - they were either a shining light of pure goodness or an incarnation of the devil. And we must banish all these idols to erected to demons... Or something along those lines.

Surely it's more useful to keep statues up and have a well written plaque that describes their achievements (and why some people might look up to them) as well as their flaws and criticisms (and why some people might look down on them). And that way future generations learn that all human beings are flawed, even the really famous or well liked ones. A person can achieve a lot of great things (which we can acknowledge and respect), but also hold some objectionable views and behaviours (which we should also acknowledge and not whitewash or ignore).

It gives people a more nuanced and well-rounded view of history and historical figures. It stops people from romanticising and glorifying the achievements of flawed humans when we understand that they might have played a pivotal role in something good, but could have also played a part in enabling something quite bad. Societal progress is not linear or some fairytale triumph of good over evil - it is a meandering path with flawed human beings playing a role in shaping history, for better or worse.

worrying it will be dominated by blokes who secretly want to be able to start touching women's arses in the office again and not lose their jobs over it.

Hopefully if a debate is sufficiently open, then that is a viewpoint that can also be expressed.

I've heard of people wanting to take down Churchill statues, and also various ones relating to Nelson, in the UK.

It's undoubtably imported from the US but so are a lot of stupid ideas. We of course have a lot of people wanting to take down statues here in Canada these days, also imported from the Americans.

I've never understood the phenomenon of taking down statutes. Seems to tie in with the whole purity spiral thing... Whereby people are expected to be ultra pure or ultra evil and the same dichotomy is thrown onto historical figures - they were either a shining light of pure goodness or an incarnation of the devil. And we must banish all these idols to erected to demons... Or something along those lines.

I think it ties into free speech because this kind of historical awareness helps us remain open-minded, and also is a warning against hubris. The monuments of the past are a reminder that ideas and people that are powerful now are not more likely to be correct and good. Our statues and our gods are no more likely to be pure than those of the people of the past.

I think part of the reason it caught on in the US is that their history is shorter. No one in their right mind would expect to look back at someone like Albert the Great and see that his opinions on political or social issues were in line with current thought. And in general in the UK and Europe you see all kinds of statues and monuments and plaques commemorating diametrically opposed persons and principles, sometimes right next to each other. Somehow Americans expect their founding fathers and the principles of the nation to have been equally good and right all along.

The American approach reminds me of nothing so much as seeing a spoof on tv as a child of Russians tearing down and replacing statues as the political winds change. Talk about mirror images. Neither societies being entirely comfortable with free thought.

"Common sense" always raises huge red flags for me.
Those questions are already loaded in the way they are written. I don't know anything about that org or the people in it but I'd be treating all of this with a huge fistful of salt.

Me too. Being "anti identity politics, PC gone mad" in this context nearly always translates as e.g. no, racism isn't a thing, anti feminist, "don't want homosexuality pushed down my throat" etc etc. Feel free to say what you like but that doesn't make it "common sense", just right wing.

Surely it's more useful to keep statues up and have a well written plaque that describes their achievements (and why some people might look up to them) as well as their flaws and criticisms (and why some people might look down on them).

Yes. Chaucer was a fabulous storyteller but was accused of rape, Armstrong was a hydro-electric pioneer who had the first house with electric lights in it and supported the abolition of slavery but also made and sold weapons, Nightingale was the first to use medical statistics to inform hospital care but excluded Mary Seacole from her team (probably because Seacole was Black). People need to understand that nobody is flawless.

And add more statues for the people who in hindsight should have been recognised sooner. Perhaps we can replace a few of the statues of Queen Victoria with statues of people who actually did something rather than being born into power.

To me it reeks of "you can't do/say anything these days". I hope I'm wrong.

I wouldn't touch this with a bargepole and I definitely wouldn't give them my name and contact details.