Trump and freedom of speech
I have an article at American Thinker today, entitled “Donald Trump and freedom of speech: he’s no champion.”
It discusses the recent attempt by some members of the British Parliament to ban Trump for “hate speech,” and compares it with Trump’s reaction to the attempted terrorist attack on Pam Geller at her free speech event last May in Garland, Texas. Then I compare that with the reaction of Ted Cruz and Obama to the same event in Garland.
The results may surprise you, if you think of Trump as a champion of non-PC speech.
Excellent article, neo. You’re very convincing.
I don’t see Trumps comments about Geller as evidence hes no champion of free speech. Seems to me hes simply disagreeing with what she expressed and how she expressed it. But nowhere does he imply she should be prevented from her right to such expression.
I’m going to have to agree with the British Parliamentarian who called Trump a Buffoon who deserved ridicule. And I have to say I hope he is not at the top of the Republican ballot.
Good article. Thanks for linking to it.
“. . . and you don’t want to provoke people,” says Trump, the no-champion of free speech.
Uh, well, no, actually, you do want to provoke people. That’s precisely what you want. But provoke to what? To argument! More speech! ‘Tisn’t gunfire Geller is interested in provoking at all, nor is she responsible for any of that: it’s the idea that human beings might be coerced into silence, or coerced into blankness on canvas or drawing paper which she wishes to highlight. It’s the idea that cartoonists would be murdered in cold-blood by self-proclaimed pious worshipers of Allah which Geller seeks to illumine by her speech acts.
So Trump misses the boat altogether. Is he that dim? Ah yes, so he is.
“Alex Chalk, a Conservative MP, said: “This is about bufoonery. And buffoonery must not be met with the blunt instrument of a ban. It must be met with the classic British response of ridicule”.
Interesting how feckless politicians reserve their ridicule only for civilized people that wont chop their heads off. They must make those with the courage to critisize islam into societies fringe buffoons lest their own cowardice be found out.
I just realized that my original comment sounded a lot like the “spambot of the day”. Sigh…
Yes, I think Trump is a buffoon, but I think the real buffoons here are the members of the British Parliament. What business does any governmental body have deciding what an individual may or may not say? Didn’t we fight a war over that once?
@sdferr,
Trump is that dhim.
Where did Trump call for a ban on Geller? All I see is him saying you shouldn’t mock other people’s religious beliefs. Is having respect for other people, some of whom are your fellow citizens, now politically correct?
My first thought?
Banning Trump puts him in a league with Michael Savage.
I am not a fan of Savage’s either.
Trump is an avatar, an emojicon, for the anger of Americans.
That’s not to say HE is angry.
He’s a politician who has not been elected. Yet.
Let’s keep it that way.
Ed (from Ypsilanti) Bonderenka:
“Trump is an avatar, an emojicon, for the anger of Americans.
That’s not to say HE is angry.”
A mirror.
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My apologies to Neo. I neglected to compliment her on the post at American Thinker.
I have often wondered why people treat Islam so well and the Jews so horribly, almost as if it is a genetic predisposition or conditioning process beyond one’s culture or time.
Richard Aubrey brought up a similar subject on the Hitler thread.
This was my response.
https://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/where-hatred-of-the-jews-came-from/
There’s a lot of stuff going on in the 21st century.
Maybe more than had ever gone on in the 20th.
boxty and SteveH:
Where did I assert that Trump called for a ban on Geller or her free speech?
Nowhere. And yet that’s the straw man you’d like to refute, because my point is a good one and you can’t refute it on the merits.
If you actually read the article, it’s the Brits who wanted impingement on Trump in terms of freedom of speech (by officially banning him from the country), classic government style. When I wrote about Trump and Geller, I wrote “Trump himself has not always defended the rights of others to free speech on that very topic.” As in “the right of private persons to speak freely in a non-PC way.” Trump (unlike Cruz and even Obama) never even paid lip service to Geller’s right to speak freely; he suggested she should self-censor or risk death, and it was right to self-censor. He, the non-PC guy, so into respecting others! He questioned her motives, as well, and issued a challenge that she should use the n-word or go after Jesus, as though what she did somehow has a connection to that, and that she somehow was a coward for not doing those things.
As I wrote, “I find it surprising that this is the man who is thought of by many of his supporters as a warrior for non-PC speech and thought. But he has not demonstrated such a tendency — au contraire — except as it involves his own speech.” Again, it’s very clear (if you care to read) that I’m speaking, not of official government inroads on freedom of speech (except when I spoke about Parliament’s attempt), but of speaking freely in a non-PC way. Trump is no champion of these things, unless it’s Trump doing it.
In the last paragraph, I mention “Trump’s anti-free-speech comments.” You should recall that Pam Geller billed the draw-a-Muhammed cartoon event in Garland, Texas (the one that was attacked by jihadis) as a “free-speech event.” See the lede of this article, for example, which was a typical report at the time:
It was explicitly a “free speech” event, meaning that a person should be able to say what they wanted in the US without fear of being killed for it.
More:
How far have the Brits fallen to even take up such an idea?
From Churchill to those clowns.
They deserve what they get.
Trump has a point, but the right to free speech includes the right to taunt others. I agree that he was on the wrong side of free speech.
The two Muslims who were shot got what they deserved. The officers actually validated something Trump has been saying at every speech; if people are armed, they can stop terrorist attacks. Someone should point that out to him; that he’s on both sides of the issue and see how he responds.
PatD,
I must be rather dense…. what exactly was trump’s point? Personally, I support a national mu
oops, I meant to say I support a national muhammad cartoon holiday. (Old fingers on a small tablet.)
Cornhead:
When I was doing some research for the French defamation trial long ago, I learned that free speech is nowhere near as protected in Western Europe as it is here. Even in Britain, it has never been as protected as it is here. So they havent’ “fallen” as far as one might think, because they weren’t so very high to begin with.
Very good article at the American Thinker! Andrew McCarhty at National Review recently wrote a piece about the winner of Garland’s cartoon contest, who explains why he draws Mohammed:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429175/draw-mohammed-cartoonist-speaks-out-why-i-entered-garland-contest?target=author&tid=900151
The winner dispels the PC mantra that the cartoons are meant to antagonize and he happens to be an American who grew up in a Muslim family. The media covered up the fact that the two men who drove to TX to attack Geller’s private event were radical Islamists. One of those terrorists attended the mosque in Phoenix, which was already under FBI surveillance for terrorist activity. Two other attendees at that mosque are sitting in federal prison on terrorism related charges. So, Trump chose to go along with the PC media spin attacking Pam Geller, who is one brave woman. Instead of lambasting her, we should all be saying enough of this nonsense. Radical Islam is not a benign religion, it’s a virulent political ideology.
Patrick Poole at PJ Media exposed the Phoenix mosque connection of those 2 Garland supposed lone wolves:
https://pjmedia.com/blog/phoenix-mosque-attended-by-garland-draw-muhammad-jihadists-previously-spawned-two-other-terrorists#ixzz3ZrE8Ybpk
I’m sure a new (Trump) as president will overturn the First Amendment like Hitler incarnate….Shade’s of Glenn Beck.
(I don’t even have to use the “h” word.)
Or did someone just confuse the Judicial branch with the Executive?
Orson:
Or did you just fail to understand what the essay says about Trump and PC-speech? There was no mention of overturning anything.
Yamarsakar, your research didn’t go back far enough — there were Roman and Greek anti-Semites, too. Josephus wrote a counter-attack to an author by the name of Apion, who published a work calling the Jews lazy because they didn’t work one day a week and crazy because of their weird ideas about an inchoate god.
Richard Saunders Says:
January 24th, 2016 at 6:23 pm
Yamarsakar, your research didn’t go back far enough – there were Roman and Greek anti-Semites, too. Josephus wrote a counter-attack to an author by the name of Apion, who published a work calling the Jews lazy because they didn’t work one day a week and crazy because of their weird ideas about an inchoate god.
That’s not a strong case of being against the Jews, that’s the Roman and Greek cultural superiority. They think that about all the barbarians under their power, during their time. Alexander the Great spread Greek culture and colonies far and wide, because they believed Greek culture was superior. Similar for the Romans later on.
Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea, the province, into Palestine. You think he did that because he hated the Jews because of Christainity? The Jews kept attacking Roman legions and rebelling. They were hard to govern and even more difficult to deal with, given the Jewish zealots. Jesus Christ went around and started chasing out the money changers near Jewish cities too. Jewish city/clan leaders also chased our Jesus. They didn’t want the weirdo around preaching to the people.
A lot of humans are just bigoted, in the literal sense. They only think people like them are good and superior, everybody else is inferior. That’s not a case proving that they are particularly biased against one group over another. They’re biased against everyone, every barbarian that isn’t part of their culture.
Ymarsakar — the Romans knew the Jews weren’t barbarians; as much as 10% of the population of the Roman Empire was Jewish. They had been in Rome since Julius Caesar, living right next to the Forum – climb up the stairs behind Titus’s Arch and you’re in the Jewish Quarter. That didn’t stop anti-Semitism.
As to Jesus, first century Judea was swarming with wandering preachers; there wasn’t anything Jesus preached that was unusual, since it was all based on the prophets (particularly Isaiah and Amos) and the school of Hillel, where he studied.
Jewish leaders of the time were way too busy either encouraging or discouraging rebellion against the Romans and factionalizing themselves — Pharisees, Sadducees, Karaites, Samaritans, Zealots, Essenes, Sicarii. Hillel, Shammai, and more, to pay much attention to yet another preacher with a few followers.
The sign over Jesus’s crucifix tells you everything you need to know about his death. As for the puppet government, they did what collaborators always do; just read a book about Occupied France or watch the TV series Colony to get the picture.