T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancists

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HowieRis
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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by HowieRis »

Fairly surprised to see opinions like "yeah Free Speech is great in theory n'all but...."

The people organising the event are allowed to disinvite Funk D'Void if they don't think he's a good fit for the party. I'll also say that Gavin McInnes for me is mostly an arsehole, not particularly clever, sometimes quite funny and makes good points like 8% of the time but this story has more than a hint of the "no-platforming" trend in college/uni campuses - even though this guy was just going to stand behind some equipment and play tunes for a few hours. His crime? He knows a Canadian conservative loudmouth with a podcast, made a T-shirt for him, and maybe has opinions of his own about political correctness or something, maybe not.

I get the "I won't be tolerant of intolerance/bigotry" thing, but when the definition becomes so broad that anyone with anything other than the prescribed leftwing bag of ideals is a "bigot", you're just voluntarily losing the argument.

Not taking part in the argument is losing the argument. Shutting people up because you're worried "it'll catch on" is losing the argument.

Making better arguments and calling out bullshiters is probably better than trying to legally ban opinions.

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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by jordanneke »

I agree, the whole no-platforming thing is ridiculous.
jordanneke wrote:
On the other side, people should be encouraged to converse and air their view without being scared to be called 'scum'. If not then all this hate seethes underground in pubs, mosques, Trump rallies etc.... and we all get fucked.
All I'm saying is that there is a grey area. Where the line has to be drawn, I don't know. But it's not as simple as 'I can say whatever the fuck I want'

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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by [wesellboxes] »

When left wing means "butt hurt SJW's" and not affordable health care/preservation of the NHS, eliminating the need for food banks, employment regulations, free education and an acceptable standard of housing for all, then the centre right, conservative right, alt-right and far right are winning through this ridiculous pantomime that is somehow deemed politics.

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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by Lost to the Void »

jordanneke wrote: e cracks and being exploited.

Ie, drugs couldn't be legalised tomorrow without some huge spending on education and social services.
Oh yes they could.
Portugal did it and they aren't filled with smack heads nodding out in droves.
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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by jordanneke »

Lost to the Void wrote:
jordanneke wrote: e cracks and being exploited.

Ie, drugs couldn't be legalised tomorrow without some huge spending on education and social services.
Oh yes they could.
Portugal did it and they aren't filled with smack heads nodding out in droves.
No, Portugal decriminalised drugs, not legalised. There is a gigantic difference.

I lived there when they did it....I don't remember much about that year.

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Post by Lost to the Void »

Legalisation is a step away. It doesn't mean no controls.
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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by jacksonick »

Worst thing about all this is that none of the jokes on his t shirts were actually funny. Wunderground level shit.

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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by terryfalafel »

jacksonick wrote:Worst thing about all this is that none of the jokes on his t shirts were actually funny. Wunderground level shit.
Yeah, the t-shirts are shit. I couldn't resist having a look, and it seems like a very small thing which has blown up courtesy of the internet.

Funk D'Void should probably have known better given the strength of feeling on this kind of thing in most parts of the dance music scene, but if he doesn't care then fair enough.

I had not come across Proud Boys before reading this. Christ - I managed a couple of articles before giving up but I really wonder whether the authors of most of those articles are genuinely as annoyed / entitled as they come across, or they are on a very long-winded and elaborate wind up. They obviously aren't stupid, and I really, genuinely can't get clear in my own mind what's motivating them...

I read this before and thought it fitted in this thread : https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... e-identity
It was not clear if fear or anger was the dominant emotion of the conference. Speaker after speaker addressed the supposed genetic and demographic decline of the west; the supposed low IQ of migrants flooding western countries; supposed links between IQ and “social pathology”; supposed “anti-white propaganda that suffuses our society”; supposed academic conspiracies that have worked to cover all this up. A common theme was the supposed propensity of non-whites to crimes like rape.

Using color-coded maps, graphs and pictures of human brains, some speakers strove to give racism the kind of scientific respectability it has not claimed since the second world war.
Oh dear.

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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by [wesellboxes] »

terryfalafel wrote:They obviously aren't stupid, and I really, genuinely can't get clear in my own mind what's motivating them...
Money.

There seems to be a lot of similarities between these people (not just The Proud Boys) and your more traditional vloggers and "influencers". Something starts semi-organically, some people are serious, some are not. One or two do very well by monetizing their take on it and along come floods of "me too's" looking for a slice of pie that's long since been devoured.

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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by HowieRis »

jordanneke wrote: All I'm saying is that there is a grey area. Where the line has to be drawn, I don't know. But it's not as simple as 'I can say whatever the fuck I want'
I think it's an undrawable line. Who decides to draw it? Who decides where it's drawn? Once the precedent is set, if we regret the first seemingly common sense restrictions on total freedom of speech, would it be possible to go back to normal?
wayfinder wrote:i'll just point out that nobody has an obligation to give anyone a platform. i don't get what's so bad about no-platforming, it's a great way to minimize the effects of things you consider harmful.
If part of the job of higher eduction is to expose intelligent adults to different points of view, but a group of people take it upon themselves to forcibly decide which are the correct points of view and which are the incorrect ones without a mandate to do so... I think it's pretty fair play to call bullshit.

I largely disagree with the people who tend to get no-platformed, but like I said; if you attempt to silence people you disagree with, you automatically lose the argument. Make good arguments to win arguments.

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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by jordanneke »

Those lines already exist.

If someone calls me a 'fucking asshole' that maybe sort of within the law, perhaps with police discretion.

If someone calls me 'a fucking nigger', then immediately, that's a lot more serious.

Or should free speech mean that those both are equal and lawful?

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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by HowieRis »

jordanneke wrote:Those lines already exist.

If someone calls me a 'fucking asshole' that maybe sort of within the law, perhaps with police discretion,

If someone calls me 'a fucking nigger', then immediately, that's a lot more serious.
Or should free speech mean that those both are equal and lawful?
It's an understandable impulse to want to protect people's feelings against words, but I don't like the idea of language being policed by the actual police.

If it's in the context of a threat or harassment then the police should probably be involved. If mere utterances become illegal, then we're in trouble.

Interesting topic!
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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by Lost to the Void »

I think they should both be lawful. Despicable but lawful.
Hate is hate.
Legislating against it makes no real sense.

When I worked as a bouncer I would quite often have to deal with hate speech directed at me. People would say the worst hateful nasty shit to goad you in to reacting (women were the worst). Like unbelievable shit really.
Some of it genuinely hurt. But I couldn't react, because then they would win, and any engagement was on my terms. I won't go in to my full story in the doors, but I worked for Boss security in London, I was the only white guy in the firm (part of the long story), which handled all the well known "black" events in London (north of the water), house and garage, r&b, early grime... It was a tough tough job.
I only ever kicked off once from a verbal assault in my days on the door, ....bad timing on their part.

Whatever the insult I think people should have the right to say it. And as much as I wanted to mash their fucking faces into the ground until their teeth were replaced by tarmac, I would still defend the cunts who came at me for their right to say the shit they said.

If someone breaks your arm, then there is a broken arm.
But one person's offense might be water off a ducks back to someone else. You can't logically legislate against something so grey.
And of course, you can't fake a broken arm, but you can take a broken heart. Crocodile tears etc.

I can stick my fingers in my ears, and a verbal assault goes away, but you swing a scaff bar at my head and my skull is going to crack.
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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by The_G »

Saying "I won't give you any business because the goods you carry in your store promote hate" is not an attack on speech, it is an expression of speech. Just like being an Islamophobic, woman-hating piece of shit in public, like McInnes, is an expression of speech, and stocking his t-shirts is also an expression of speech.

Now, if the government forced the store to shut down over expressions of speech, that would be another story. But it always strikes me how so-called "defenders of free speech" feel like everyone should just shut up and take it, rather than...well...say something about it.

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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by The_G »

jordanneke wrote:Those lines already exist.

If someone calls me a 'fucking asshole' that maybe sort of within the law, perhaps with police discretion.

If someone calls me 'a fucking nigger', then immediately, that's a lot more serious.

Or should free speech mean that those both are equal and lawful?
There are differences of opinion from country to country on where to draw the line. In the US, you can't be punished for saying something racially or religiously offensive, but if someone retaliates, that's likely to be seen as a mitigating factor in any court proceeding. And if a racial (or other) epithet is tied to a crime, like an assault, then that will be classified as a hate crime and carry stiffer penalties. In Britain it's pretty similar, but you also have the crime of "incitement," which is if your speech incites other people to commit hate crimes, you can be prosecuted. Other countries, like Singapore, criminalize hate speech in general.

In this case, we are not talking about the law, though. This is individuals and private companies deciding whether or not to do business with people who are promoting hate speech. As I said in the comment above, boycotts are an expression of free speech--not a violation of the principle of free speech.

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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

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HowieRis wrote:Fairly surprised to see opinions like "yeah Free Speech is great in theory n'all but...."
You're surprised that there are limits to expressing yourself when it comes to subjects that are best left untouched in a dusty corner of the mind of devolved hatemongers? The danger lies in their reach, being able to get to the weak/narrow minded with 'feelings they can't put into words' to have them grab on to it and fill in the blanks by themselves to form a set of ideals that are rotten to the core.

It's not like anyone sane person thinks free speech is something that can be awarded to a select few by any kind of overseer based on the perceived merit, which coincidentally is judged by a set of ideals the opposing group happen to stand for, that would just impossible on many levels. Even though it is the wet dream of a few choice modern movements. The goal here is not to give the people who can do real damage, beyond hurting the feelings of snowflakes, enough space to get organised.

Not saying I have a solution though, it's hard to draw a line when any way you choose to go alienates another group and gives them another target to rage against.

I get the "I won't be tolerant of intolerance/bigotry" thing, but when the definition becomes so broad that anyone with anything other than the prescribed leftwing bag of ideals is a "bigot", you're just voluntarily losing the argument.

Not taking part in the argument is losing the argument. Shutting people up because you're worried "it'll catch on" is losing the argument.

Making better arguments and calling out bullshiters is probably better than trying to legally ban opinions.
It's neither about who is right and who is wrong, nor about choosing the 'morally superior argument' whether it be motivated by left or right wing ideals. In an ideal world we would all just talk out our problems, and the use of reason would rule supreme. And for example, wars wouldn't exist. Which are the prime example of things escalating beyond words in this thing we call 'civilisation'.

Funny thing about war, well I say funny....but how we've just accepted it as part of life is one of the biggest cases of cognitive dissonance in history. The majority of the population just shrugs it off, like it's a magic word where all reason automatically goes out the window, all while they fight in your name. I know, maybe we should do an excursion where we talk the members of parliament out of bombing thousands of innocent people every day, and when that doesn't work we'll invite the proud boys to have a good discussion about whether we want to give asylum to any survivors afterwards.

Maybe I'm too jaded, and going off on a bit of tangent here, but this is how my mind makes sense of this mess.

It would be great if words had as much power as you seem to think they do, though human nature isn't ruled by logic for the most part. At least not the kind of logic would be is useful in this situation.
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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by Lost to the Void »

The_G wrote:
jordanneke wrote:Those lines already exist.

If someone calls me a 'fucking asshole' that maybe sort of within the law, perhaps with police discretion.

If someone calls me 'a fucking nigger', then immediately, that's a lot more serious.

Or should free speech mean that those both are equal and lawful?
There are differences of opinion from country to country on where to draw the line. In the US, you can't be punished for saying something racially or religiously offensive, but if someone retaliates, that's likely to be seen as a mitigating factor in any court proceeding. And if a racial (or other) epithet is tied to a crime, like an assault, then that will be classified as a hate crime and carry stiffer penalties. In Britain it's pretty similar, but you also have the crime of "incitement," which is if your speech incites other people to commit hate crimes, you can be prosecuted. Other countries, like Singapore, criminalize hate speech in general.

In this case, we are not talking about the law, though. This is individuals and private companies deciding whether or not to do business with people who are promoting hate speech. As I said in the comment above, boycotts are an expression of free speech--not a violation of the principle of free speech.
Yes, incitement to violence.
That was how we, as bouncers, got cleared of violence charges when goaded (provided the response was reasonable).
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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

Post by Lost to the Void »

You can, of course, remain in defiance of the verbal assault, protest against it, present a rational argument, no one said you have to leave.
I believe if it is disturbing you enough to be a breach of the peace, you can have the person removed. Of course they can still continue to say what they are saying, and they can be arrested for further breach of the peace.
UK law covers this very well, and its an ancient law.
It does not result in conviction, it is generally an arrest that simply removes the person from the situation.
That's good enough. It's like a private property issue then, if you fuck me off in my house, I can kick you out, no need for a conviction, just get the fuck out of my house.
Breach of the peace is similar, you will be removed from the area.

Let's be clear I am not condoning racism, sexism, cuntism or whatever.
Go about your day and do no harm is how I try to live.
But the right to speak your mind is important to preserve and the extreme left essentially condoning censorship is not good.
The left are just as much cunts as the right when allowed to extrapolate their agenda.

In an ideal world there would be a place where racists or fascists or whatever could go and be with other racists, and whatever-ists, and be happy there being cunts forever.

I say we all just get together and give them some place no one will really miss.

I vote the Isle of White, it serves no purpose. Let them form a fascist utopia there.

And if the people of the Isle of White object, fuck em, they are all inbred lazy good for nothing layabouts who will never integrate and are basically subhumans anyway.

Imagine it, one day in our racist free utopia, a racist from the isle of White might turn up in your town, maybe in your local pub, just as a tourist visiting the non racist place you live, and then you and your mates can shout "Oi you fucking racist CUNT, why don't you fuck off back to where you came from, we don't like your sorts around here".

Ahhhh some dreams are so beautiful they make reality a chore......
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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

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wayfinder wrote: It's not that easy. The silenced party is not automatically correct, or "the winner". Their arguments gain no strength from others not wanting to be a conduit for their deliverance. Nor are good arguments a surefire way to "win arguments". You know how resilient people are to facts going against their beliefs already, it's even worse when the facts seem ambiguous and you throw lies in the mix that muddle up the situation even further. And then there's the persistently awful abuse and bullying and threatening, sometimes with death, that introduces still more variables. Some people even go through with these threats. I disagree that words can be tuned out or ignored and will not cause harm.
What I mean is, silencing the other party doesn't make their point of view go away. It doesn't make a person interested in what they have to say any less of a fan, in fact I'm sure it has the opposite effect.

Sticking with no-platforming; giving someone the space to air their argument isn't the same as condoning it. An opposing speaker respectfully crushing their points one by one at the same event is much more likely to make a few people think "hang on... have I got this a bit wrong?" than the other side shouting "RACISTS!" and shutting down the event all together.

Regarding death threats and bullying; making a sincere death threat is a serious crime and rightfully so. We're talking about how we should treat different points of view, not incitements of violence.
"Always on the side of free speech" is an easy position to argue, since it's such a basic yes/no question: Should people be allowed to say ... YES! Don't even finish, they should be! That makes it easy to ignore what's actually happening, to never look into the issues, to see it all in black and white and just go by principle. It's almost robotically convenient and very attractive like that. But then a weird thing happens: Free speech suddenly doesn't just mean that the government can't punish someone for what they say; it suddenly means that we all must listen to everything, and allow and aid in the propagation of it. And if we don't, it's suddenly WE who are the baddies, and for some reason not the people trying to drown refugees before they can reach Europe.
I actually think the exact opposite. Free speech is a heavy burden and a difficult road to travel. Looking at points of view in detail, deciding objectively who's talking shit and making the effort to understand and explain why.

Hearing about a speaker being a "right winger who doesn't like Islam", and that in itself being enough information to protest an event and shut it down without listening and forming a counter argument seems like the easy route to me.
I reject the notion that every opinion is worth the same, that every claim has the same amount of truth, that if there are two sides two an argument, the truth must lie in the middle. I reject the heartless, unkind "realism" that says we live in a shitty world and should embrace that. Fuck that. I'm happy when a nazi cunt doesn't get to legitimize the things I find awful, and when I'm in the position to deny, say, a holocaust denier, a platform, I'm happy to do that as well.
Ah c'mon, holocaust deniers are by far the easiest ones to make look like bellends in public. :lol:
vo0doo wrote: You're surprised that there are limits to expressing yourself when it comes to subjects that are best left untouched in a dusty corner of the mind of devolved hatemongers? The danger lies in their reach, being able to get to the weak/narrow minded with 'feelings they can't put into words' to have them grab on to it and fill in the blanks by themselves to form a set of ideals that are rotten to the core.
I think even stupid people deserve to witness a balanced public debate, it's the best way to address the feelings you mentioned in a way that is good for society. Attempting to engineer the diet of what people see and hear to make sure they have the correct opinions feels very authoritarian and breeds terrible resentment.
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Re: T-Shirt merchant barred from playing music by Tolerancis

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Lost to the Void wrote: In an ideal world there would be a place where racists or fascists or whatever could go and be with other racists, and whatever-ists, and be happy there being cunts forever.

I say we all just get together and give them some place no one will really miss.

I vote the Isle of White, it serves no purpose. Let them form a fascist utopia there.

And if the people of the Isle of White object, fuck em, they are all inbred lazy good for nothing layabouts who will never integrate and are basically subhumans anyway.

Imagine it, one day in our racist free utopia, a racist from the isle of White might turn up in your town, maybe in your local pub, just as a tourist visiting the non racist place you live, and then you and your mates can shout "Oi you fucking racist CUNT, why don't you fuck off back to where you came from, we don't like your sorts around here".

Ahhhh some dreams are so beautiful they make reality a chore......
Brilliant :lol:


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