Tag: free speech

Couple flaunt swastika face masks at southwestern Minnesota Walmart

Just before noon Saturday, police officers in Marshall, Minn., were called to the town’s Walmart on a report that two shoppers were wearing masks emblazoned with swastikas.

Another shopper, Raphaela Mueller, the vicar of a southwest Minnesota parish, filmed the swastika-wearing man and woman as they were confronted by others in the store. Then she posted the video on Facebook, where it went viral.

“If you vote for Biden, you’re going to be living in Nazi Germany,” the woman with the swastika mask told Mueller, as her companion bagged up toilet paper and an enormous canister of cheeseballs. The two were apparently using the masks to protest Minnesota’s mask mandate, which took effect Saturday.

PHOTO PROVIDED BY RAPHAELA MUELLERA couple wearing swastika masks (behind the front customer) made defiant gestures at other shoppers who reacted negatively to their masks on Saturday at the Wal-Mart in Marshall, Minn.TEXT SIZEEMAILPRINTMORE

Just before noon Saturday, police officers in Marshall, Minn., were called to the town’s Walmart on a report that two shoppers were wearing masks emblazoned with swastikas.

Another shopper, Raphaela Mueller, the vicar of a southwest Minnesota parish, filmed the swastika-wearing man and woman as they were confronted by others in the store. Then she posted the video on Facebook, where it went viral.

“If you vote for Biden, you’re going to be living in Nazi Germany,” the woman with the swastika mask told Mueller, as her companion bagged up toilet paper and an enormous canister of cheeseballs. The two were apparently using the masks to protest Minnesota’s mask mandate, which took effect Saturday.https://cdn.iframe.ly/H8N5yOO?v=1&app=1

Per the store’s request, law enforcement served trespass notices to the 59-year-old man and 64-year-old woman, warning them that if they will face arrest should they return. The two departed without incident and charges were not pursued.

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A Taxonomy of Fear

We live in a time of personal timorousness and collective mercilessness.

There might seem to be a contradiction between being fearful and fearless, between weighing every word you say and attacking others with abandon. But as more and more topics become too risky to discuss outside of the prevailing orthodoxies, it makes sense to constantly self-censor, feeling unbound only when part of a denunciatory pack.

Institutions that are supposed to be guardians of free expression—academia and journalism in particular—are becoming enforcers of conformity. Campuses have bureaucracies that routinely undermine free speech and due process. Now, these practices are breaching the ivy wall. They are coming to a high school or corporate HR office near you.

The cultural rules around hot button issues are ever-expanding. It’s as if a daily script went out describing what’s acceptable, and those who flub a line—or don’t even know a script exists—are rarely given the benefit of the doubt, no matter how benign their intent. Naturally, people are deciding the best course is to shut up. It makes sense to be part of the silenced majority when the price you pay for an errant tweet or remark can be the end of your livelihood.

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‘Cancel Culture’ Letter Really About Stifling Free Speech

An open letter published by Harper’s magazine, and signed by dozens of prominent writers and public figures, has focused attention on the apparent dangers of what has been termed a new “cancel culture.”

The letter brings together an unlikely alliance of genuine leftists, such as Noam Chomsky and Matt Karp, centrists such as J. K. Rowling and Ian Buruma, and neoconservatives such as David Frum and Bari Weiss, all speaking out in defense of free speech.

Although the letter doesn’t explicitly use the term “cancel culture,” it is clearly what is meant in the complaint about a “stifling” cultural climate that is imposing “ideological conformity” and weakening “norms of open debate and toleration of differences.”

It is easy to agree with the letter’s generalized argument for tolerance and free and fair debate. But the reality is that many of those who signed are utter hypocrites, who have shown precisely zero commitment to free speech, either in their words or in their deeds.

Further, the intent of many them in signing the letter is the very reverse of their professed goal: they want to stifle free speech, not protect it.

To understand what is really going on with this letter, we first need to scrutinize the motives, rather than the substance, of the letter.

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