What do we make of Margaret Atwood's free speech intervention?

[RoyalCorgi]

Robust article from Atwood on free speech, in the wake of the Rushdie attack:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/15/salman-rushdie-free-speech-tyranny-satanic-verses

But she's also been supportive of the trans madness in the past. Does she understand the extent to which trans activists want to silence dissenters?

If you're still reading - which you might not be! - I think that if you closely yourself with a group of people determined to close down free speech, then you can expect your views to be scrutinised. Has she ever said "I support trans people's rights, but I don't agree with the death threats made against JK Rowling, or the relentless attempts by trans activists to shut down women's meetings, have women sacked from their job and have women investigated by the police for thought crime"? I'm fairly sure she hasn't, which makes her latest defence of free speech seem hypocritical, to put it mildly.

You know its possible to support trans rights and also free speech, right?

They're not mutually exclusive.

In theory but show me a single trans activist that is prepared to debate the issues. They all rely on silencing the other side or flat out refuse to engage. If there are trans activists that disavow this approach I haven't heard a peep out of them. If anyone on the GC side used these tactics I would be having a word with them. If everyone on the GC side used these tactics I'd be thinking, 'who the hell are these people and why am I supporting them'.
So yeah, if you support transactivism and free speech you are, at best, a hypocrite.

Their slogan is literally No Debate.

That's my understanding of her position. She signed the Harper's "Letter on Justice and Open Debate" in 2020 (which Rowling and Rushdie also signed) so she's got history for standing up for the free speech of people who she disagrees. If I recall rightly a couple of signatories withdrew their names from the statement once they found out that Rowling had signed it but I don't think Atwood did. Trans Ideology has a tendency to be authoritarian but I guess she can be an exception that tests the rule.

Their slogan is literally No Debate.

You put it more succinctly than me. But I have yet to come across a trans activist who is willing to say it's wrong to report gender critical women to the police, wrong to try to have them sacked, wrong to cancel their speaking engagements, wrong to try to close down their meetings, wrong to intimidate and harass them when they attend those meetings. Being a trans activist, almost by definition, seems to mean adopting all means possible to shut women up.

"But whatever it is, the right to freedom of expression does not include the right to defame, to lie maliciously and damagingly about provable facts"

I would have thought the biological reality of two sexes and the impossibility of switching between them, in humans, was eminently provable.

I'd be amazed to see any examples of this happening. Gender ideology is fundamentally authoritarian. It requires you to believe (or pretend to believe) that TWAW and it seeks to punish those who won't go along with that idea. The main thing I've seen gender ideologues say in relation to free speech is that "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences".

They shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, but obviously when you get some people saying other people have to use certain words and descriptions to refer to them, you no longer have free speech. I have a name, for instance, but nobody can be forced (in their private life, not in providing essential services etc) to call me it rather than “Arsehole”. They’re allowed. We are (or should be) allowed to say whether we see a man or a woman, even if they self-define as one or the other.

But I would be very surprised if Atwood is really cognizant of the extent to which gender ideology is authoritarian. She hasn't aligned with them, she doesn't really even know that these people are a movement. If she sees them at all she thinks it's some weirdo on Twitter.

If you ever read her comments on this, she is where many progressive women in the UK were on this 10 years ago.

Hmm, I’m struggling to believe that the author of The Handmaid’s Tale can’t recognise an authoritarian movement when she sees one. If she chooses to see.

You need to understand that this doesn't get in the news in Canada - not in the news someone like MA would see. Nothing that would suggest authoritarianism is going to be covered on the CBC, for example. The two major national news providers are even behind where the Guardian is these days. They are going to present those opposing complete acceptance of gender ideology as being authoritarian.

MA is also older and doesn't seem to really have any kind of awareness of the kinds of content providers that people who post on MN might be aware of. I don't think, for example, that she would be aware of the existence of people like Benjamin Boyce or the Triggernometry interviews. There is a whole set of people doing work that she would simply have no access to or awareness of. You've likely seen the kinds of posts we occasionally get here where someone simply will not even consider that anyone might listen to a Joe Rogan interview - if she knows about any of those kinds of people that is probably how she sees them. She is on Twitter but doesn't seem to really be very good at parcing what is going on there.

But I would also say, that if you look at Atwood's depictions of authoritarianism in her books, they are quite one-sided. I am sure she doesn't feel that way about it, but she does not ever set up depictions of what might be considered left wing authoritarianism. And that is very typical of people of her age and class, at least here in Canada. Many of them have a strong sense that authoritarianism is right-wing, and the left wing is people like hippies and free-thinkers.

I have no trouble thinking she might not recognize other authoritarians when she sees them, not unless it is thrown in her face and maybe not then.

Many of them have a strong sense that authoritarianism is right-wing, and the left wing is people like hippies and free-thinkers

That’s a good point. You see this on the left all the time (speaking as a centrist Lefty myself). There is little awareness of oppressive regimes that have arisen out of left-wing ideologies, and a lot of ‘No True Scotsman’ excuses, if they are mentioned.

What on earth do such people make of Stalinism? Present day Venezuela?

I realise that political discourse is often confused in English speaking countries where right and left tend not to resemble the scene in the UK and this is leading to a lot of inappropriate conflation and borrowings. It's getting to the point where I could do with people announcing the country they're talking about before following along with their post/talk.

They deploy the No True Scotsman defence, @EmbarrassingHadrosaurus

Plus anything bad gets labelled right-wing, regardless of its origins.

This is a really helpful discussion.

It hadn't occurred to me in this context (of course it occurs to me in other contexts all the time, e.g. Corbynites' and the Labour left's blind spot for antisemitism), that there are well-meaning people on the left who are simply unaware of the horseshoe theory, and don't realise that just because someone opposes the far left, that doesn't mean they're far right; in fact it may just as well mean they oppose authoritarianism on both the left AND the right.

But that's quite a grown-up political viewpoint - being a moderate probably seems like a cop-out when you're young and ignorant. It takes maturity and a good knowledge of history to realise that Stalin isn't the opposite of Hitler, but just a slightly different flavour of murderous authoritarian dictator.

So to be give the young and ignorant the benefit of the doubt, maybe some of them genuinely do think that GC feminists must be aligned with the Christian right. Because they lack the knowledge of history or political philosophy to realise that they themselves are actually the ones with the regressive, authoritarian views.

I always forget how little history many young people are familiar with. I had assumed gender extremists saying this were just trying to attack feminists. But maybe they are just more ill-educated than I gave them credit for...

So to be give the young and ignorant the benefit of the doubt, maybe some of them genuinely do think that GC feminists must be aligned with the Christian right

What on earth do they make of the realities of Iran: How Iran Persecutes Some LGBTQ+ Members While Subsidizing Others
…
Despite such heavy dogmatist proclamations against LGBTQ+ people, in 1986, the theocracy’s very founder and the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a religious decree not only recognizing transgender people, but officially favouring state subsidies for gender-confirmation surgeries (GCS).

blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2021/04/12/how-iran-persecutes-some-lgbtq-members-while-subsidizing-others/

Do the young people who have such beliefs therefore recognise themselves as inevitably allied with the attitudes and perspectives of Ayatollah Khomeini? Do they think of Khomeini's policies as progressive within an authoritarian framework that blends modern Islamic theocracy with democracy? Aside from the focus of the theocracy, I'd wonder how that is distinguished from the Christian right for them.

I'm absolutely sure they know precisely nothing about Iran.

There's also unsurprisingly a large crossover between gender extremists and people saying 'LGBT folks for Palestine'. They never seem to make the connection that they are supporting a regime where being gay would get them thrown from the top of a tall building.

Just as they haven't twigged how reactionary their views on gender are, they also haven't twigged how homophobic their views are.

It's like the idiot I saw on Twitter praising Corbyn for posting a sad statement about the attack on Salman Rushdie. While totally forgetting that Corbyn was paid 20 grand by the same Iranian regime that put out a fatwah against Rushdie in the first place, to speak on their propaganda channel!

They are incapable of joing up their supposed beliefs logically. It's really tiresome.

I agree they use the "no true Scotsman" defense.

But they also use what is slightly more complex, the argument that while you may find an authoritarian on the left, that is an accidental, rather than intrinsic, connection. Whereas they believe authoritarianism is intrinsic to the right.

They do tend to believe that people like Stalin did not really believe in communism. And I can see why, they believe that a left wing ideology like communism is fundamentally about caring for other people. Therefore someone like Stalin could not believe that, or he would not do the things he did. The idea of a commitment to an impersonal ideology that is willing to sacrifice individuals is alien to them.

And a lot of them are the sort of people who believe that even the moderate right wing basically is built on screwing people over - they actually believe that is its moving ideology.

It takes maturity and a good knowledge of history to realise that Stalin isn't the opposite of Hitler, but just a slightly different flavour of murderous authoritarian dictator

Is that because history taught in UK schools makes out that Hitler was wicked but Stalin wasn’t?
Or because very little is taught about Soviet Russia therefore people aren’t aware of what a monster Stalin was?

She can fuck right off. Where was she when Jo Rowling was facing multiple rape and death threats? It shows where her priorities lie.

The idea of a commitment to an impersonal ideology that is willing to sacrifice individuals is alien to them.

Animal Farm, Darkness at Noon, Life and Fate, Wild Swans, the countless novels and biographies seem to have passed them by if reading history isn't attractive to them.

I'm absolutely sure they know precisely nothing about Iran.

Nor China or N. Korea, it would seem.

I suspect it's the latter. A lot of people know very little history.

You could read Animal Farm in such as way as to think the pigs don't have any real belief in the cause, though. In fact I would say that's the most obvious way to read it.

What I think might be more enlightening to some is something like the Triggernormetry interview where they talked about how the Labour Party in the UK responded when they began to see what kind of stuff was going on in Russia.

I very nearly added in Giles Udy because that Triggernometry interview has stayed with me.

Labour And The Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left written by Giles Udy. I've lined it up for the section where Udy talks about what Labour knew and when.