Moral Maze - Freedom of Speech (tonight, 24 Feb 2021)

[nauticant]

Tonight's Moral Maze is about freedom of speech and the trailer I heard earlier was built around the latest Kathleen Stock "outrage".

Could be worth a listen. However, MM usually disappoints on important issues by missing the point and tonight Ask Sarkar is on the panel:

twitter.com/AyoCaesar/status/1364534623448010752

Ask Sarkar is a delightfully appropriate typo

Not agreeing with Ash this evening, or Mona who's worse tonight I think...

They're both taking the tribal line of the Left wrt to the assault on freedom of speech which is that it's not happening and it's all being stirred up by the Right because reasons.

Mona especially was reminding me of those women who handwave away discussions around sexual harrassment/assault because they've never seen it or experienced i themselves...

It would have been really valuable to hear from a cancelled academic on tonight’s show. The discussion is too abstract and airy-fairy, which makes it easier for the handwavers to brush it off. This Tim guy is making sense.

I'm about 15 mins behind, but I'm itching for someone to ask how a biological truth is such a problem.

Mona Siddiqui was just awful in tonight's show. As an example she just said that free speech doesn't work in the context of reality and that this has affected none of her colleagues.

Mona Siddiqui: "this has nothing to do with authoritarianism".

Ash Sarkar: "this is a moral panic because the right have lost their grip on modern society".

Well that was a lot of disappointing waffle

@HighHeelBoots

Well that was a lot of disappointing waffle

Nailed it.

Ah, we're listening all wrong.

This Tim guy is making sense.

He is in this instance...he can see it because it's happened to him.

Ash excelling herself in the daftie stakes tonight with the final word...it's a Right wing Gramscian moral panic ....this week is not one of the weeks that I agree with her

God that was such a wasted opportunity.

Mona’s whole position seems to be:
It’s never happened to me
My colleagues haven’t told me it happens to them
Therefore, despite the anecdotality of my argument (which incidentally is the antithesis of evidence based research) it doesn’t happen to anyone, at all, ever

Ash just sounded like she had rehearsed a few lines to sound intellectual, yet had nothing of substance to say. Clearly neither of these two give a shit about no -platforming so long as it doesn’t affect them. Their voices are amplified by others being silenced. I would go so far as to say the status quo - and the no platforming - pleases them.

Ash Sarkar: "this is a moral panic because the right have lost their grip on modern society".

Oh, have they? Well I guess you can pack up and go home then, Ash.

It has happened to me and lots of women I know. If everyone you know is happy to chant the mantras and pretend black is white then it won't happen to you or anyone you know.

Ashbis the sort of person the BBC go for when theywant someone to sound radical but. not be too dangerous, abtracrlybwittering on about what 'the right' are doing is just self righteous twaddle. Who does she actually mean?

Can't believe they didn't ask Kathleen Stock .. think I'll give this one a miss.

On question time the other day it was brought up...but nearly everyone on the panel dismissed it as unimportant and not really worth worrying about. Astonishing ion a programme where the questions are edited beforehand and you are led to believe there will be one person willing and knowledgable to take it on.

In one way it is strange but on the other so obvious that even though women have been the main victims of no platforming this is just thought to be irrelevant, ie what does it matter what women say or do.

So all the media discussions I have heard on this have always been about this is just the right wing Tories trying to silence the voices of Black students and those with left wing views.

Even with MSM reporting women being silenced, they still dont take what is a women's issue as being something to be concerned about!

(I didn't listen to the programme. It is never more than dinner party chat and is the type of programme that makes people say Radio 4 is irrelevant. )

it was faff in a conversation. They really did not want to go there - none of them. They ticked a box.

@nauticant

The discussion on MM is at a superficial level and the questions asked are usually driven by the panellists' hobby horses rather than in getting to the fundamentals of the issue.

In a trailer for the programme just now Michael Buerk described Kathleen Stock's view about "the immutability of biological sex" as being "unfashionable". You do have to laugh.

Haha! That's like saying ' gravity is really boring and passé , let's ignore it '.

The use of the phrase “moral panic” by anyone, in any context, is generally a good guide that they are wrong. It exists, broadly speaking, to allow people of relative privilege to discard, and generally sneer at, the concerns of the less privileged. One of the notable features is the degree to which it is used to over-rule the feelings of those affected by or threatened by crime. Concerned about paedophilia? Just a moral panic. Street violence making it dangerous to go out of doors at night? Also a moral panic.

But you do not, of course, have to be a victim of these crimes to reasonably fear them. People often have near misses, or else change their behaviour to avoid threats and, even then, will still know people who have suffered the consequences. Oppressive environments can oppress, without ever needing to have a direct effect. Thus free speech; I have never been censored at work, but know that certain opinions might be career limiting. The unprivileged are robbed of their voices, whilst the privileged can pretend that their complaints are merely a moral panic.

Ash Sarkar: "this is a moral panic because the right have lost their grip on modern society".

This would be Ash Sarkar who has such a grip on modern society that she and Owen Jones sat there in utter shock looking (in Janice Turner's words) like two kids who had burnt the house down when the results of the 2019 election rolled in?

The use of the phrase “moral panic” by anyone, in any context, is generally a good guide that they are wrong. It exists, broadly speaking, to allow people of relative privilege to discard, and generally sneer at, the concerns of the less privileged.

Yes, absolutely. The term implies a toxic and peculiarly left-wing combination of privilege and arrogance.

Mona Siddiqui has a peculiar definition of free specch: words have consequences and can be weaponised

Hmmm... literal violence as opposed to actual violence? MS has form in this debate.

Strange isn't it how the left are flying high yet are unable to win elections 🤔
And I'm on the left 😩 with nobody to vote for

Words have consequences - so does silence..........

The Moral Maze is often disappointing but I found last night's episode to be fascinating listening. It always comes as a shock to hear people, in this case Siddiqui and Sarkar, putting forward their view that free speech is just a nice to have and the relevant test is "have I been adversely affected?" Can you imagine them applying that test to issues they have concerns over such as racism?