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Do you believe boycotting is protected speech? Do you believe American citizens should be allowed to choose who they boycott?
by ForgotMyPwOops 5y ago
Do you believe boycotting is protected speech?
Do you believe American citizens should be allowed to choose who they boycott?
- yonixw 5y agoI do. But I don't if it's anti-Semitic. And that's the whole question. Seems like many agree it's the latter.
- ornel 5y agoConsidering an apartheid state synonymous with Judaism is incredibly anti Semitic and promotes antisemitism
- ForgotMyPwOops 5y agoWho decides what is antisemitic? It seems to me that based on your logic all speech can be prevented assuming some arbiter declares it antisemitic Boycotting can hardly be considered protected speech if that's all it takes to silence it
- yonixw 5y ago> Who decides what is antisemetic? The Majority. > Some arbiter Nope. The Majority. > if that's all it takes to silence it Nope. anti-semetic is kinda big deal. We all should treat it as such and run from it like fire.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoMore like the plurality of vocal subset.
- worik 5y agoAt one point, in my home land (Aotearoa) it was considered perfectly reasonable by the majority to bring teams of white South Africans into the country to play games. They were whit South Africans because they would not allow black South Africans in their teams. The minority here fought long and hard to stop it, lost the battle (the team came and played their games against our local teams) but now are recognised as heros. No. It is not the majority who decides what is right and wrong.
- buzzwords 5y agoNope, if majority believe A, doesn't make A true. It just means majority believe A. Public opinion is very malleable. Hence the existence of marketing.
- ForgotMyPwOops 5y agoShould all speech be up for vote? Should all opinions that the majority disagree with be banned? I believe weakening protections such as free speech, which are used by the vulnerable to call attention to their plights, is much more likely to hurt Jewish people than allowing ostensibly antisemitic expression to exist
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- emptyfile 5y agoShocking comment!
- slg 5y agoIt depends on the motives and not the actions. "Boycott Israel because of their treatment of Palestinians." A perfectly acceptable political statement. "Boycott Israel because they are a bunch of greedy Jews." An obviously anti-Semitic statement. The problem is that people who believe the latter will often say the former. This causes opponents of the latter to doubt the authenticity of people who say the former. Some people who oppose the former might also accuse people of the latter to discredit them. It becomes can quickly become confusing, but it should be clear that a boycott can clearly have both appropriate and inappropriate motivations.
- ForgotMyPwOops 5y agoShould all opinions based on bad reasons be banned? Should people be compelled to explain their beliefs? Who decides if these opinions are good or illegal? I don't believe fairly arbitrating expression based on beliefs is feasible, and I do believe it is actively harmful
- slg 5y agoEveryone is free to their own opinions. Actions can and should be banned depending on their motivations. We already apply this to other forms of restriction on speech like defamation. Often defamation will require negligence to harm or intent to harm. Someone who is factually incorrect through an honest mistake generally isn't considered to have committed defamation. I don't know why we are okay trying to ascertain the motive behind speech in one instance and not another.
- ForgotMyPwOops 5y ago
- slg 5y agoDefamation has a singular victim. Hate speech has a class of victim. Why should we allow one and not the other? Why can't we just scale up our defamation laws to also apply to groups of people?
- denton-scratch 5y ago> Who decides what is antisemitic? There's a trend towards allowing complainants to define what actions are discriminatory, and therefore criminal. It's weird.
- random314 5y agoThere is a difference between 1. Anti Israel 2. Anti Semitic 3. Anti Apartheid And it cant be decided by the majority.
- azth 5y agoIt's not anti-Semitic, let's be honest with ourselves.
- jonnydubowsky 5y agoanti-BDS regulations, implemented through either legislation or a governor’s order, require businesses contracting with the state to affirm that they are not participating in a boycott of Israel. I don't know of any laws that have attempted to silence individual citizens or direct their ability to protest as individuals (not businesses who also want government contracts).
- eli_gottlieb 5y agoAnti-BDS "laws" are the most idiotic culture-war bullshit the American political system has come up with in the past five years. Secondary boycotts imposed by contract terms were illegal decades ago, and so all these new "laws" are entirely symbolic. It's the worst kind of political red meat, too, because both sides take the bait as if something was actually happening.
- jonnydubowsky 5y agoI agree. I think the argument that there is some infringement on constitutionally protected speech is unfounded. The issues to argue over (and context) is complicated enough as it is.
- denton-scratch 5y agoBoycotting doesn't seem to me to be a form of speech. It's just people choosing where to spend their money. Divestment is similar - people choose what to invest in and what not to invest in. Campaigning for BDS does seem to be speech, and regrettably institutions seem to have gathered around the view that it's antisemitic speech.