Ballad of a shirtless man

From what I've been able to gather about the guy and his works, life is too short to spend much time listening to Alex Jones, so I haven't bothered with him. Based on what I see of him from social media, he seems to be an angry guy who likes (a) conspiracy theories, and (b) to be photographed without his shirt on, even though he appears to be pretty tubby. I will add that nearly every time I see something about him, it's because a lefty has called it to my attention.

But something is happening here, and you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?

All but one of the major content platforms have banned the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as the companies raced to act in the wake of Apple’s decision to remove five podcasts by Jones and his Infowars website.

Facebook unpublished four pages run by Jones for “repeated violations of community standards”, the company said on Monday. YouTube terminated Jones’s account over him repeatedly appearing in videos despite being subject to a 90-day ban from the website, and Spotify removed the entirety of one of Jones’s podcasts for “hate content”.

Facebook’s removal of the pages – the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page – comes after the social network imposed a 30-day ban on Jones personally “for his role in posting violating content to these pages”.

Is there evidence that Jones has become a more effective propagandist? Has his following increased? If his stuff was okay before, why isn't it now?

This is dumb. If the argument is this guy is too dangerous to have his stuff out there for public consumption, banning him is the best way possible to ensure he'll get even a larger audience. We've known this since the Garden of Eden, which was also well known for shirtless dudes -- forbidden fruit is always going to have an audience. What does Alex Jones know that "they" don't want you to know? This is Conspiracy Theory 101.

It's not a First Amendment issue, because the government isn't stopping Jones from speaking. If you want that sort of thing, you need to check with Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Still, I'm not crazy about the trendline. As long as I'm free to continue ignoring Alex Jones, I'm free. Once we are told his nonsense cannot be considered in any context, we have a much larger problem than whatever he's talking about. Based on what I know, Alex Jones is a bad dude. It's always a bad idea to make a bad dude a martyr.

Don't think we're not keeping score, brother

"Don't think we're not keeping score, brother." So the man said.

Mitch Berg noticed:

The other day, a “progressive” – a onetime prog-blogger, who seems to have gone to intellectual seed just a bit – snarked at me on social media; “I haven’t seen your resounding denunciation of the Nazis”.    (A lesser light who started his political life well in the “To Seed” camp asked me a parallel question – “Did you ever vote for David Duke?”).

You’d think you progs would be more aware of the history of rhetoric like “did you denounce them with satisfactory fervor? Hm? No? What does THAT tell us?” Orwell wrote a book about it. Stalin held show trials over it. Millions disappeared from this earth over it. (Did you ever denounce that? Send the cite, please).

I generally avoid the political threads on Facebook and other social media, especially since FB has a tendency to place any comment you make on someone else's timeline. But increasingly I'm getting the same sense Mitch expresses in his post -- it's not enough to oppose Nazis, or to find some of Le Grand Orange's ruminations irritating. You'd better be denouncing it entirely, or are you a Nazi sympathizer?

The only way I know to express myself on FB without having the Furies unleashed on me is to post songs in a gnomic fashion. For example, this one:

Don't ask me what I think of you/I might not give the answer that you want me to. Fortunately, you can momentarily distract a would-be commissar with some tasty Peter Green guitar work. Oh well.

I'm not sure we have the luxury of silence, of a social media Miranda right, at least at the moment. Free speech does not mean you are compelled to speak just because a pixel-driven commissar demands you do, but the trend lines are disturbing. Lately I've been reminded free speech has consequences. XKCD explains it well enough.



That's true enough. But it doesn't work the other way all that often, and increasingly, silence has consequences. As our pal Crankbait has noted elsewhere, the formulation is "I found your silence disturbing." Don't think they're not keeping score, brother.

The socially maladjusted dorks with the tiki torches and the J.C. Penney polo shirts who were in Charlottesville last weekend are not people I'd want to see running the country, because I think they are sincere in their hateful beliefs and, if they ever were in power, would run roughshod over people. It's difficult to imagine they'd be much worse than the thought police currently running amok.

Great, but. . . .

On the surface, this sounds like a positive development:

Carol T. Christ, UC Berkeley’s 11th chancellor and the first woman to lead the nation’s top public research university, unveiled plans Tuesday for a “Free Speech Year” as right-wing speakers prepare to come to campus.

Christ said the campus would hold “point-counterpoint” panels to demonstrate how to exchange opposing views in a respectful manner. Other events will explore constitutional questions, the history of Berkeley’s free speech movement and how that movement inspired acclaimed chef Alice Waters to create her Chez Panisse restaurant.

“Now what public speech is about is shouting, screaming your point of view in a public space rather than really thoughtfully engaging someone with a different point of view,” Christ said in an interview. “We have to build a deeper and richer shared public understanding.”

The article further details upcoming visits from Milo Yiannopolous, whose earlier foray into the cradle of the Free Speech Movement was met with violence, and Ben Shapiro, among others.

So it's Free Speech Year. Great. What happens next year?

Res ipsa loquitur

As seen on Facebook:

And he's sincere about it

Nat Hentoff, RIP

One of the most useful commentators in public life has now passed away. Nat Hentoff is perhaps best known for being one of the greatest jazz critics of all, writing primarily for the Village Voice, but he did some of his greatest work as a tireless advocate for free speech and the First Amendment. He was an increasingly rare bird, a pro-life liberal, and he was willing to put his beliefs on the line. A taste of Hentoff from 1992, when he helped to provide a forum for Bob Casey, then the governor of Pennsylvania, who had become unwelcome in his own Democratic Party because he, too, was pro-life:

In a full-page announcement, New York's Village Voice recently invited one and all to come to the Great Hall of Cooper Union -- where Abraham Lincoln made the speech that caused his bid for the presidency to catch fire. I have been at many debates and discussions there, some fiery, but always the clashing ideas could be heard.

This time Democratic Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania was to deliver the speech the Democratic Party would not allow him to make at its "unified" convention. Casey is a liberal Democrat. He has created and expanded, for example, a program providing crucial medical services to low-income pregnant women and young children, and he was responsible for the first increase in minimum teacher salaries in the state in a quarter of a century.

But Casey failed to pass the official Democratic loyalty test of chairman RonBrown. Casey is pro-life, and so he was gagged for the entire New York celebration of Democratic pluralism.

What happened next is depressingly familiar:

As moderator, I started what would have been the discussion by pointing out that this was an evening about free speech -- not only that of the governor of Pennsylvania but also that of anyone in the audience who wanted to challenge him.

The hooting, screaming, pounding and whistle blowing began. Strategically located at both sides of the hall -- disruption by stereo -- a preening array of hooligans made all speech except their own inaudible. They reminded me of the domestic brown shirts breaking up Jewish meetings in my youth, but these were howling soldiers of the left. (There is no difference, of course, between right and left when it comes to silencing the bearers of uncomfortable ideas.)

Among the opponents of any free exchange of ideas were ACT UP and various pro-choice (sic) cadres, among them: WHAM (Women's Health Action Mobilization); and NYU Students for Pro-Choice.

At least 80 percent of the audience wanted to hear Casey and said so, as best they could, by applauding his attempts to get started. But they were no match for the speech muggers.

After several tries, Gov. Casey yielded. "The Democratic Convention suspended the First Amendment," he tried to say, "and tonight you did the same thing." Casey walked off the stage as the shouters congratulated each other.

There's more at the link, including an anecdote about a long-time lefty cause célèbre, Mumia Abu-Jumal. Hentoff was able to support the pro-life movement and the cause of Mumia. You might think that wrongheaded, but Hentoff would have loved that reaction and would have mounted a spirited defense of both positions, just as he would have supported your ability to argue against him. I have a copy of his book "Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee -- How The American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other" in my library and I recommend it. RIP.