Comment by chimprich
2 days ago
A lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for.
Notably, stories on HN about the very severe repression on civil liberties in the US (get shot in the face for protesting about ICE...) get flagged for closure, but putting the boot into the UK for much more wishy-washy issues like this seem to be fair game.
I'm not saying there aren't genuine issues with civil liberties (for example, things like the Online Safety Act are ridiculous) but they are magnified out of all proportion by the US media / social media disinformation megaphone.
This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
> A lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for.
> This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
British Anarchism isn't the American Right?
Concern for free speech traditionally cuts across the left-right divide, as it should. Sadly, there's been a greater erosion of it on the left than the right in recent years, despite the absolute centrality of free speech rights to key progressive causes: abolitionism, civil rights, gay rights, etc. At the same time that the left got softer on free speech, the right had a series of 'are we being shadow-banned?' scandals, which increased the importance of free speech to the right.
Twenty years ago the position was roughly reversed with the Iraq war, the PATRIOT Act, 'free speech zones', etc. Arguably, that same reversal might be happening now with Gaza, ICE etc.
In my ideal world, we all love free speech, but in the real world, it seems to zig zag across the spectrum to the people not currently in power. I suppose an understandable reflection of its value in standing up to power.
100%. Unfortunately, rather than rebut the substance of your argument, people are voting you down (and the same for my own similar comment). It is convenient for certain parts of the US right (Fox and also Musk come to mind) to present a narrative about the UK which distracts from the actual hard realities of recent events in the US itself.
It feels pretty awful to have such a one-sided bias in the media of the UK getting clowned on for civil liberties, I have noticed so much more astroturfing on reddit about these issues with made-up ragebait lies.
There are absolutely issues with the police focusing more on "crime online" such as people posting or saying offensive things, I do think that saying something outright offensive to the benefit of nobody is a net bad for society but instead of punishing say British people for "wrong think" I think the police force should be really investigating where this kind of stuff comes from, Foreign influence bot farms ect and enact legal removal of protection to ensure that people when they say such online in a public manner are actually people
Yup… there's a very strong right wing streak in parts of the HN audience
Those with opposing views also tend to find themselves rate limited - dropped two comments on this story and now being told I'm posting too fast (even after going away for 60 mins)