112 thoughts on “A Catastrophe of Ignorance: Why Free Speech Cannot Embrace Vandalism”

  1. I can see people being upset with Confederate monuments in front of government buildings. I can get not wanting that in your face when you are interacting with government.

    The Guidestones? They are out in the middle of nowhere. They weren’t erected by government on public land (initially, anyway). You had to want to see them.

    But ignorant extremist gotta lash out at something, I guess.Report

  2. I keep thinking of that quote about how those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

    We are living in a blizzard of absurdities ranging from anti-vax to religious nuttery to white paranoia about being replaced by other ethnic groups. We see conspiracies about teachers grooming children for sex, to Bill Gates putting trackers in vaccines.
    Its easy to shrug this off as harmless but history tells us it isn’t, that it leads to real terrible atrocities.

    The absurdities are not the product of benign ignorance or superstition. What all the conspiracy nuts have in common is a dark hateful view of the world, that Something Awful is happening, and some hated outgroup among us is responsible and must be made to suffer for it.Report

  3. You need to get past the cognitive dissonance you are experiencing about “conservatives” and the GOP. The party is not conservative and politicians who campaign under its banner will not do so from the conservative values you claim for yourself because the base that nominated them in the primaries is no longer traditionally conservative. They are power hungry reactionary radicals and are perfectly happy to have their word lead to this sort of thing because it means their words can lead to other violence they deem necessary.Report

    1. They are power hungry reactionary radicals

      Wait, I thought you said they weren’t traditionally conservative.

      More seriously, though, today’s GOP is perfectly in line with the Tea Party, the Moral Majority, the religious right of the 70s and 80s, and the Dixiecrats and their counterparts in the GOP at the time, etc. The same people who were awful conservatives who thought Obama was the worst thing that had ever happened to the country a decade ago, which is to say, the party of Dubya, Palin, etc. are driving the party today.Report

    2. The Republican Party has become the defacto party for white, heterosexual people, with varying degrees of Christianity an a lot of people just don’t want to accept that as the defining characteristic of the Republican Party. Instead they retreat to allegedly high-minded Burkeanism and Oakshootism on limited government and what not.Report

      1. Why yes. Yes we will.

        We are happy to have everyone witness the difference between liberal and conservative “consequences” for offensive speech.

        Liberals say mean things on Twitter while conservatives blow stuff up and kill people.

        We should talk about this more.Report

            1. But the rioters did some dumb stuff, and conservatives did some dumb stuff, and that make it all the same, I guess

              The people who pulled down statues were (part of protests) protesting systemic racist that lets the authorities get away with murdering Black people.

              Like, this is not even under dispute here anymore. We’re a bunch of internet political idiots, and yet we do _all_ agree, at this point, that the system allows the police to murder Black people for basically no reason, and we’re having a hard time to figure out how to stop it.

              So they trashed some monuments in a somewhat indiscriminate manner…or at least some people did that during those protests. But the complaint wasn’t the statues…those were incidental damage during a completely valid complaint about, literally, ‘People paid by the government keep murdering us’.

              Meanwhile, the people who blew up this monument were almost certainly protesting…Satanism, or whatever wackdoodle thing they had decided this monument promoted.

              At some point we have to start acting like there are true things and false things and people doing things (Even pointless destructive things) for true reasons are different than people doing things for hallucinatory reasons.

              Some things are actual injustice. We might disagree on what those are, we might disagree on motives, but we can at least look at something and say ‘I can understand why people think that is an injustice’. (1)

              And some thing are not even vaguely, in an imaginable way, injustice, like having a big block of stone have some words carved into it out in the middle of nowhere.

              1) And I’m waiting for someone to ask me when I’ve agreed with any conservative injustice, to which I reply: The Bundy ranch. Or, specifically, the general complaint that too much of the land in that area is Federal land….I think it’s hilarious silly they think the collorary is ‘And thus it should be our land’, and I disagree with their actions (And seriously disagree with how other people who do the same thing were subject to violent overreaction but they got kid gloves.) but their complaint has logical merit, at least. As I’ve said before.

              There are actual logical complaints that people can make about the world, and there is sheer nonsense conspiracy theories, and at some point we need to operate political discussions as if we understand that.Report

      3. What’s the argument here? That explosive destruction is a reasonable consequence for a piece of art work on private property that some folks don’t like?Report

        1. No, it’s not reasonable at all. It’s not only illegal, it’s, assuming morality, immoral.

          It’s vandalism and destruction of private property and, on top of that, censorious destruction of private property.

          But it *IS* a callback to recent arguments we’ve had about the toppling of statues over the past few years. Do you remember those arguments?Report

          1. I don’t remember the specifics of those arguments. You can correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think I participated in them as with regards to that specific aspect of the broader free speech debate.

            I will say that I am firmly in the “Speech has consequences” camp but I would not call this that. I guess we’ll see if anyone actually does.Report

            1. Don’t see it as an accusation against you personally.

              See it as more of an acknowledgment that the game is iterated and it is possible to remember a handful of iterations ago.Report

              2. Eh, here’s where some statues got toppled in the park. They got rid of Ulysses S. Grant’s statue as well as St. Junípero Serra and Francis Scott Key.

                Here’s a thread where we discussed the vandalism of various statues and a particularly strange protest over one of the Emancipation statues showing Lincoln helping a slave to stand.

                Below, Slade brings up the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas and those happened a *LONG* time ago but I remember arguing against people who explained that the statues were just statues and any *REAL* Buddhist would not be bothered by this (and would probably wonder why they stood as long as they did).

                Seriously, these arguments have been going on for a long time. Decades. If you’re willing to allow the introduction of the word “Iconoclasm”, it goes back millennia.Report

              3. So… it goes back millennia but is also an iterated game that was started by liberals?

                Rather than see it as a “game” featuring “sides” maybe we just recognize it all for what it is: some people are so intolerant of ideas they don’t like that they will seek to violently destroy expressions of those ideas; such people are wrong to do what they do.Report

              4. Would something like “it’s not reasonable at all. It’s not only illegal, it’s, assuming morality, immoral. It’s vandalism and destruction of private property and, on top of that, censorious destruction of private property.” be okay?Report

              6. Well, I’m a fan of being able to look at a situation and immediately model not only responses but responses to responses and responses to responses to responses.

                I think being able to successfully say “this will happen” is a real skill. Coming out and saying “X WILL NOT HAPPEN!” when X is going to happen (or worse, when X has already happened!) is an indicator that the skill needs to improve. Maybe improve dramatically.Report

              8. As I said to Slade below: Not assuming morality, there are differences between destroying public property and destroying private property.

                I don’t know whether I’m prepared to argue how one is okay and the other is not, though.Report

              9. The thing i can see the issue people had with tearing down statues of the slaver traitors w/o a public process. It would be better to do it formally. But public memorials are very diff then private thingsamabobs.

                But that is irrelevant to my point. The 1st Am peeps should be just as up in arms about this as a million other things but they very much arent’. Conor F or Sully are magically silent or very quiet on certain 1am issues and LOUD about others.Report

              10. Yeah, it’s weird how people pivot around depending on who the malefactors are.

                Have you read the statue threads from 2020? Can we reach conclusions about the people who were suspiciously silent on those threads?Report

              11. Yes i read them and took part and thought a lot about it. I am referring more to the big names like Conor F and Sully and bunch of IDW types. The loudest of the 1st Am defenders are terrible at it in many ways. Still not seeing any of them caring much about this.Report

              12. Sorry to interject this, but this big granite thing was not private or on private property. It was deeded to the county shortly after completiong.Report

            1. Eh, “I can destroy this because it’s a public statue!” is somewhat different but to the extent that a public statue is public, it also belongs to me (and you and that guy over there) and a handful of people deciding to be offended by a statue of Francis Scott Key and thus destroying it is just as immoral, assuming morality, as the censorious destruction of privately-owned art.

              But, yes. Not assuming morality, there are differences between destroying public property and destroying private property.

              I don’t know whether I’m prepared to argue how one is okay and the other is not, though.Report

              1. In 2020, the overwhelming majority of vandalism was just pulling the statues down. I can remember one where a Columbus statue was tossed in a lake (?), but nearly all of them remained intact.

                Maybe not my first choice of public protest, but then I’m not young and full of fire.Report

          3. But it *IS* a callback to recent arguments we’ve had about the toppling of statues over the past few years. Do you remember those arguments?

            You might have forgotten this, but a good deal of the discussion of the statues was state governments forcing statues to remain up despite local government, the actual owners, trying to remove them because that was the will of their people.Report

              1. I didn’t say there weren’t more.

                I said the discussions _here_ were, to a large extent, about that fact.

                …or, at least, the _defense_ of the actions were about that.

                You’ve instead decided to link to some discussion where no one defends BLM’s rather dumb actions.Report

              2. You know, OT didn’t have that many discussions of the statues toppling, as far as I can tell.

                We had one here and we had one that I linked to above but I can’t find more of them.

                Prior to 2020, we had one here, but I just made my “THE GAME IS ITERATED PEOPLE” point again there. (Huh. Linked to the same movie clip and everything.)

                But it seems like the general consensus here on vigorous iconoclasm wanders between “it’s bad” and “it’s bad but”.Report

              4. You’re not actually making any sort of argument here.

                All you’re doing is saying, “Well, both things are statues, both came down and…”

                Those ellipses?
                That’s where your argument is supposed to go. And right now its empty.Report

              5. Oh, okay.

                There seems to be an implied argument that goes something like this:

                X is a tactic that is good (or at least not bad) when good people use it
                X is a tactic that is bad (or at least not good) when bad people use it.
                This is a case of bad people using the tactic of X. Therefore this was a bad thing that happened.

                My take is something closer to “X is a tactic that we do not want used. Not even when good people use it.”

                Above, where I said: “it’s not reasonable at all. It’s not only illegal, it’s, assuming morality, immoral. It’s vandalism and destruction of private property and, on top of that, censorious destruction of private property”?

                I stand by that except for the part where I erroneously said that it was private property.

                You can change “private” to “public” without changing much of anything in the statement. Here, I’ll change it for you:

                “it’s not reasonable at all. It’s not only illegal, it’s, assuming morality, immoral. It’s vandalism and destruction of public property and, on top of that, censorious destruction of public property.”

                Now there is an implied “REMEMBER LAST TIME? I REMEMBER LAST TIME! LAST TIME WAS BAD TOO! AND I SAID THAT WE’RE GOING TO SEE THE OTHER SIDE DO THIS!” in there as well. If I had to guess, I’d say that the friction comes where people remember last time differently and how last time was good (or at least not bad) because good people were doing it.

                And that last part is the part that I’m disagreeing with because, let me say this again, destruction of property is a tactic that we do not want used. Not even when good people use it.

                Not even if they’re insured.
                Not even if nobody died.
                Not even if there are plenty of immigrants willing to show up and rebuild where the previous property was.Report

              6. OK so if your argument is that the illegal destruction of things is always wrong no matter who does it, I think just about everyone here would agree with it.

                It logically follows then:
                Throwing boxes of tea into Boston Harbor is always wrong, even when good people do it.
                Tearing down the Berlin wall is always wrong even when good people do it.

                This argument fails when it leaves something out, that when people are unjustly blocked from doing things legally, they inevitably resort to illegal means. And in these cases, illegally destroying property is actually a good thing.

                What is “unjustly? Shruggy face emoji

                What the argument is doing, is just shifting the debate to a different territory,:

                Is the status quo unjust? Are there other, less drastic alternatives available? Does the action itself create injustice?

                And so on.Report

              8. Of course we should compare them.
                That’s how we test the situations to see if they are good or bad.

                Were both the Berlin Wall and Georgia Guidestones part of an unjust regime?

                My opinion is yes to one, and no to the other.

                Were there other, less drastic alternatives to destroying them both?

                My opinion is no to one, and yes to another.

                Did the action itself create injustice?

                My opinion is no, and yes (by terrorizing people with lawless violence).Report

              10. (I think that he’s trying to build up to “it was okay to tear down the statue of Francis Scott Key because that statue was like the Berlin Wall and it was wrong to blow up the Guidestones because you cannot compare the Guidestones to the statue of Francis Scott Key”, if I had to guess.)Report

              12. Perhaps we could compare the explosion that brought the granite down to the explosion of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki.

                Were any innocents killed?

                Was any private property destroyed?

                Was the attack particularly racist?

                All that to say: No. I do not think that your comparison of the guidestones to the Berlin Wall is one that illuminates the issues particularly well.

                I would go so far as to say that your comparison is specious.Report

              13. I applied a series of logic tests and concluded that tearing down the Berlin Wall was acceptable illegality, while tearing down the Guidestones was not.

                Do you have a different set of tests to offer?Report

              14. I’m picturing you on a submarine concluding that there’s a difference between opening a can of soup and tearing a hole in the hull. Good for you, and glad you didn’t kill yourself and everyone else, but it’s odd that you’d think to go through the intellectual exercise.Report

              15. I submit: It wasn’t illegal to tear down the Berlin Wall. It was, instead, a series of bureaucratic mistakes that culminated in the authorities being completely frozen on the wall question. Seriously, if you aren’t familiar with the events, you should totally read about it.

                They could make a movie about that press conference. “As far as I know, it takes effect immediately, without delay.”

                The guards began by trying to patch the holes in the wall made by the Mauerspechte but, by June, they were involved in the official demolition.

                So… no. Your house is built on sand.Report

              16. Fair enough.
                I’ll just use the Boston Tea Party as another example of “Acceptable illegality” versus “Unacceptable Illegality”.

                I mean, theologians have this discussion every day so examples are easy to find.Report

              18. I was comparing the destruction of the Boston Tea Party to the destruction of the Georgia Guidestones and declaring that they are different with one being acceptable and the other not.

                Do you think otherwise?Report

              19. Acceptable to whom?

                Because if you want to argue that, hey, sometimes it’s *OKAY* to destroy stuff!, you’re going to find yourself saying “wait, why are they destroying stuff?” about people who are destroying stuff like the Georgia Guidestones.

                And my argument is destruction of property is a tactic that we do not want used. Not even when good people use it.

                Not even if they’re insured.
                Not even if nobody died.
                Not even if there are plenty of immigrants willing to show up and rebuild where the previous property was.

                And that’s true even if you’re a fan of the political movers and shakers of the 18th Century and feel that the Founding Fathers could do no wrong.Report

              21. I’d probably take the stance that statues commemorating the Boston Tea Party shouldn’t be torn down by mobs. (Though I admit: It would be ironic.)

                If someone wanted to argue that it wasn’t illegal but a principled protest, I’d snort. A protest it might be. But it was, indeed, an illegal one.

                I guess, in the cold light of morning, I’d agree with Ben Franklin: “You know. Maybe we should pay for the tea.”

                (I understand why the Brits didn’t accept the offer to pay when it was made, though.)

                I’d say that the Boston Tea Party is emotionally resonant, obviously illegal, and I probably wouldn’t want to use it to justify blowing up the Georgia Guidestones.Report

              22. Then we agree.
                Not sure why it took so long to get here, but we got here.

                I wouldn’t set “illegal” in opposition to “principled protest”, though.

                Very often those two things are identical. Not in this particular case, but sometimes.Report

              24. I assumed that “emotionally resonant” meant “Acceptably illegal”.

                If not, you have a much harder argument to make than you might realize.Report

              25. “Acceptably illegal”?

                I don’t know what “acceptable” would be. Make me pivot to “let’s move on!” after a period of explaining that, of course, it was illegal? Have me try to change the subject over and over again?

                Yeah, I suppose if our definition of “acceptably illegal” is “you agree that it’s illegal but you’d rather talk about something else”, it’s acceptably illegal.

                Unlike, say, the destruction of the Guidestones.Report

              26. Well, lets make it simple:

                “Acceptably Illegal”= Blowing up the train tracks leading to Auschwitz.
                ( I assume you agree with this- if not, we have a much bigger issue.)

                “Unacceptably Illegal” = Blowing up the Georgia Guidestones.

                So the question I have for you is, where do you draw a line between those two things, and what set of metrics do you use to arrive at your conclusion?Report

              27. Wait, so now we’re comparing the Guidestones to the Holocaust?

                Well, on a legal level, I think that I can get away with saying that “war was declared” in the case of WWII and, anyway, isn’t one of the criticisms of the US that we did *NOT* bomb the train tracks to the death camps?

                Good god, man. Are you deliberately trying to make Progressives look bad? If so, I commend you.Report

              30. I submit: It wasn’t illegal to tear down the Berlin Wall. It was, instead, a series of bureaucratic mistakes that culminated in the authorities being completely frozen on the wall question.

                I submit: The incorrect announcement was only about transit through the border checkpoints. Literally nothing in the announcement said anything should be torn down, and hence tearing it down was still illegal.

                Although, strictly speaking, destroying the wall would even be illegal if there _was_ an incorrect announcement allowing it. Public officials misstating things do not change the law, although they may make it harder to convict people of violating it. But, regardless, this didn’t happen.Report

              31. Man, it must have really sucked when the authorities not only did not really do much to prevent the act but, months later, engaged in the act themselves.

                “What is ‘legal'”?, one might ask.Report

              32. You do realize that ‘The authorities choosing to do nothing to stop a thing or in response makes that thing legal’ has some…weird implications, right?

                “These BLM protests are out of control, and the authorities do nothing to stop it!”

                “So what you’re saying is that everything they’re doing is legal! Because the authorities are allowing it!”

                I mean, that’s pretty funny conclusion, but I’m pretty sure that’s not logically where we want to go in how the law works. There is a distinction between ‘authorities unwilling to step in and stop something illegal’ and ‘legal’.

                Or, to put it another way: Pot is still illegal under Federal law, and that’s a very important thing to know, even if the Federal government is not particularly enforcing that law in certain states.Report

      1. I think you have Greg’s point backwards.

        When racists are told to not be racist, the 1st Am Defenders he refers to come out and insist that they should be allowed to be racist without challenge or opposition.

        When a monument is blown up — likely by a right-winger motivated by a crazy right wing pol — the 1st Am Defenders have nothing to say about the speech the monument conveyed.

        He’s not expecting the 1st Am Defenders to show up in defense of the explosion-as-speech; he’s expecting them to remain silent on the speech rights of the monuments creators.Report

    3. “I assume all the typical 1st Am defenders will be silent on this.”

      I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be defending, here. The stack of granite ashlars impressive only for their size and carved with a whacko philosophical treatise that cribbed from Pauline heresy? The psychopath who used homemade dynamite to knock it over?Report

  6. This is honestly a nitpick, so apologies, but I feel like there has to be another word than “vandalism” for blowing something up. I mean, sure, it’s a *sort* of vandalism. It just feels like something *more* than vandalism. I mean, the part of the Lower East Side I live in has tons of graffiti on vacant buildings and sidewalks, but I don’t think I’d put that in the same category.Report

    5. I find it extremely weird we’re just ignoring that people can apparently buy and explode things large enough to destroy granite without being tracked down.

      Maybe they can track them down, I don’t know, but, uh…

      Look, as someone who has, in the past, defended various forms of vandalism here, and still do, I really do think there is a line at fire and explosives. Fire because it is uncontrollable, and explosives because holy crap no you do not get to have explosives.Report

      1. Destroying granite blocks doesn’t take much. I doubt that was bathtub plastique or anything, probably just some black powder or smokeless powder packed together (something you could get from buying a lot of fireworks, or a can of powder for reloading).

        The video didn’t strike me as a high speed explosive. Maybe it was shaped or otherwise contained to direct the blast.

        And granite is very, very hard and brittle. A small explosive placed near the base could easily damage enough for the stone to topple. When I worked as a stone cutter, granite was a pain simply because it would crack so easily.Report

            2. No it doesn’t.

              From the wiki:

              Because it is sold as separate components which are not themselves explosive, it is not regulated by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and can be transported and sold in many places without the legal restrictions that apply to explosives. The term tannerite is often used to refer to the mixture itself, and other reactive targets and combination explosives are often generically referred to as tannerite.

              Report

      2. Look, as someone who has, in the past, defended various forms of vandalism here, and still do, I really do think there is a line at fire and explosives.

        This is the thing. I’ve known a few taggers and they get a fine and a slap on the wrist, if they get caught. But, someone blowing up concrete monuments… seems like it’s gotta be a more serious charge.Report

  7. There is apparently a climate change movement in the UK that is gluing itself to frames of popular paintings in museums in order to stake its no oil message. They also sometimes scrawl no oil or no more leases below the paintings on the walls. This is very confrontational.

    I generally think that social movements influence politics, voting, and policy more than the other way around. A lot of activist action and rhetoric involves forcing the issue and making people confront it directly. This has always been true. The Boston Tea Party was an act of vandalism. Political graffiti has been a thing since ancient Rome if not before. The article on the British climate change posters mentioned that British suffragettes had a similar tactic of vandalism against paintings in museums. Civil Rights protestors staging sit-ins in diners made a lot of people very uncomfortable because it made them choose between being soft segregationists or accepting that there is no such thing as soft segregation. You are either with the people pouring ketchup and other things and hurling on people sitting silently at lunch counters or you are not. Eventually people decided that they would rather not be with the abusers and the Civil Rights Act was passed.

    Is the British climate change protest going to backfire? Maybe but it is hard to determine, perhaps impossible to determine, when an uncomfortable activist tactic succeeds or not until it does.Report

  8. One thing that was not mentioned in the piece — and understandably so as it sort of exists adjacent to the points being made here — is civil disobedience. I’d be curious if the folk(s) behind this act would categorize what they did as CD. The thing is… an inherent component of CD is that one stands up and takes full accountability for their actions.

    I see CD as connected because actions have consequences and speech has consequences and sometimes the border between speech and actions gets a little blurry. I could see someone making an argument that the destruction of the monument was itself a form of speech (I’d disagree with that argument, mind you) that was offered in response to the speech the monument itself represented. But to even begin to make that argument, someone has to own the ‘message’ being delivered and accept the consequences.

    This wasn’t civil disobedience in any form but simply represents wanton destruction of private property. I hope the folks behind it are found and help fully accountable under the law.Report

  10. It should be a trivially easy matter for everyone to agree that vandalism and destruction of property, whether public or private, is not an acceptable form of private speech. But I want to drill down on something here:

    Two years ago, different groups of people were celebrating the destruction of statues and claiming to be progressive. Both are wrong.
    Freedom of speech requires tolerance for all speech. We cannot support the defacing of statues and monuments for reasons we agree with via vandalism of any kind and comfort ourselves with a belief that the ends justify the means.
    In the actual end, it means we condone vandalism. Vandalism is lawlessness, and any person—especially a politician–espousing it or excusing it should be resoundingly challenged.

    So I presume and hope that the OP distinguishes between an official entity deciding through lawful, peaceful means to take down a statue of a person deemed no longer worthy of public honors and self-appointed actors using criminal or violent means to remove something that they deem offensive.

    I wrote six years ago, expressed here in the context of a decision by a municipality to remove a publicly-maintained monument from a public park, that when a public entity maintains a monument, it is making an endorsement of the subject matter of that monument. Perhaps it’s only as weak an endorsement as “Whether we like this thing/person or not, we don’t dislike them enough to spend the money to remove it, so it’s cheaper to maintain it because, hey, public art.” But it’s still an endorsement.

    And maybe times change sufficiently that the thing or person thus commemorated does become offensive enough, to enough people, that they don’t want to honor it anymore. Removal (done lawfully and peacefully) is appropriate under such circumstances.

    And the public entities endorsed the Georgia Guidestones in this fashion as well. They agreed to accept the donation of the land and the monuments themselves. Public entities agreed to and did pay for security cameras to be on the site.

    I’m moved by the TV interview of the executive of the local trade group, particularly when he spoke of the technical difficulties involved in creating the monument, and how it showcased the talents of the local craftspeople who did it. That by itself is a real loss to the community. What happened here was a crime, both literally and artistically.

    With that said, the fact that someone in the past created a monument does not obligate those who have the lawful power to remove the monument to refrain from doing so. Successive generations get their ability to speak, too, and are not bound by the preferences and opinions of the dead.Report

    1. I was tied up in a long PI hearing and then went on vacation with spotty Wi-Fi or I’d have tried to make this seemingly obvious point. I’m glad you beat me to it.Report

    2. It should be a trivially easy matter for everyone to agree that vandalism and destruction of property, whether public or private, is not an acceptable form of private speech.

      I feel this is a statement that doesn’t say anything.

      Vandalism is not any ‘form’ of private speech, although it may include aspects of speech. It cannot be an ‘acceptable form’ of a thing it is not, any more than a 1978 Dodge Truck can be an acceptable form of a spaceship.

      The question is whether vandalism can be valid political action, not speech. We really need to stop wedging all political actions into ‘speech’.

      And when you phrase it that way, it’s obvious the answer is ‘Yes, it _can_ be acceptable.’, historically speaking. There are some forms of historic vandalism and destruction of property we all agree we acceptable, or we run into the absurd idea it is unacceptable to sabotage Nazi tanks. Clearly, there is not a hard line. (Hell, there are some circumstances where we agree that _murder_ for political reasons is acceptable.)

      Arguing if it is speech or not is extremely silly.

      So the only question is ‘In what circumstances is that level of vandalism acceptable?’. And also ‘What other things should we consider, like a risk to people?’Report

  11. From some brief interesting, there is speculation that R.C. was an Iowa white supremacist named Herbert Kirsten but the proof for this is spotty as far as I can tell.Report

  12. You know what’s exceptionally silly about this discussion of some wackjob blowing up a dumb tourist attraction due to far-right conspiracy theories, and how this supposedly relates to free speech?

    That no one has mentioned this: https://bookriot.com/barnes-noble-being-sued-in-virginia-beach-over-gender-queer-court-of-mist-and-fury/

    That seems a little bit more relevant to free speech.

    And while it’s easy to miss, this lawsuit, while technically a private lawsuit (Done under a VA law), is being done by a State Delegate plus someone running for Congress. These are actual Republican politicians, not some random person with Tannerite.

    It’s also worth pointing out that this lawsuit has absolutely no merit, and as the ACLU points out, parts of it seem to be made up. There is no such thing as ‘obscene to unrestricted viewing by minors’. Things are either obscene to VA community standards, or not.

    This book is, to be clear, a comic book. Without any nudity. The ‘obscene’ parts are presumably when it simply talks about LGBTQ+ stuff.Report

      1. Um, yes, but that’s not news.

        I’m all for the ‘FBI often imprisoned political activists on incredibly shaky grounds and were willing to frame them for crimes, and it honestly would be a good idea to reexamine a lot of what they have done in the past’ discussion, lets have that discussion!

        But this is the ‘current events that relate to free speech’ discussion.

        Both those things are ‘People trying to deny people access to information’…one was by some probably lunatic who blew up something that, honestly, was mostly gibberish commandments. Like, he (I say he, but let’s just admit now it will turn out to be a man.) shouldn’t have done that, but the information destroyed is basically nill. As I said, I was much more concerned about the ‘blowing things up due to conspiracy theories’ part of this than the actual thing destroyed.

        The other side is actively attempting to destroy queer resources for children.

        And that’s not the only one. Texas is trying to ban social media for kids, although they’re pretending it is due to the generalized harm it does to kids. But it’s pretty each to check who is behind it and notices that a) they have opposed bills about bullying children, and b) have also tried to block LGBTQ+ books for kids.Report

        1. Huh. I thought that this was an article about the Guidestones.

          In any case, if you ever feel like someone posts something and you wish that they were posting about something you cared about more? We’ve got an “Extra! Extra!” post in Ten Second News now for news stories that we here have overlooked. (And the intention is to post a brand spanking new one every time the old one rolls off.)

          Now you have a place to post about what you wish we were talking about instead!Report

    2. I see the two incidents as part of the overall climate of reactionary Christianists’ goal of establishing a theocracy and using whatever tools available to suppress dissenting views.

      When have legislative power they use it. When they have the courts they use them. And when they have neither they use violence.Report

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