People in the United States often takes pride in the fact in extreme free speech laws.
For instance, JD Vance can say :
“In Ohio, black people are stealing pets. They are taking cats and dogs. They are eating them!!”
He is lying. He knows he is lying. But because of lies, people are receiving death threats and bomb threats.
That’s considered legal speech in the US.
Many people will tell you “I don’t agree with what JD Vance said, but he has the right to lie. It’s free speech”
You have members of Congress who say “We have a real muslim problem in this country”
Many people will tell you “They have a right to say that. Free speech"
The same way, Elon Musk is allowed to call journalists “utter scum” and “traitors to this country” in tweets sent to millions of people.
Again, people will tell you “I don’t agree with what he said, but it’s free speech. He has the right to insult people”
Well, I have noticed Americans only accept free speech when it comes to punching down. Not when it comes to punching up.
For instance, if you say something such as: “Many of the most powerful figures on Wall Street are Jewish” they freak out. Notice I didn’t even write “Most Jews are rich" or "Jews are bad people”. Nope. I just wrote a sentence about the Jewish figures on Wall Street. That’s enough for many americans to freak out.
Elon Musk lives in West Lake Hills, Texas.
If you publish Elon Musk’s personal home address, americans say “Wow dude!!! This is SO WRONG”. Isn’t that protected under american free speech? It’s public information.
What exactly gives Elon Musk the right to call USAID employee “thieves”? What gives him the right to call a man pedophile? He can smear innocents in the name of free speech, but I’m not allowed to disclose the street where he lives?
Basically, americans are fine with extreme free speech as long as you punch down: Reporters, Muslims, Black people, Vulnerable migrants.
Free speech isn’t about decency but about not being procecuted for something you said. How the public reacts to what is being said is completely irrelevant.
Some introspective rewording for the conscious:
Mobs react partially about free speech, that hindsights prosecution.The mobster class decides who gets free speech and who doesn’t.
If a member of Congress said "There are too many jews in this country" he would be kicked out of his caucus and censored.
Now, replace with “Jews” by “Muslims” or “Atheists”.
You must have been busy when Musk did his Hitler salute on live television? Also, it seems at least the GOP’s pro-semitism only goes skin deep.
Do you think that the former statement is “punching up”?
he would be kicked out of his caucus and censored.
But not legally prosecuted. That’s what free speech is about.
Worrying about “punching up” and “punching down” is a dumb concept. You arent highlighting examples that are bad because they’re punching down. Those examples are bad because they are completely false statements intended to misinform and enrage.
I don’t think your assessment of how people react to that statement is accurate at all.
By drawing a connection between a group that rightly deserves scorn (wall street elites) and a race which includes a whole lot of other people, you’re actually punching down on the marginalized members of that race.
Racism is bad, regardless of how you couch it. You don’t need to mention anything about race to make a point about wall street elites being bad. And many Americans do freely make points about how wall street elites are bad.
I don’t think that statement is really accurate either, but it doesn’t actually matter if it is, because being jewish isn’t the problem with them. The problem is them being rich assholes making themselves richer at the expense of others.
I think some people have a problem hating on the rich, for some godforsaken reason they think that they could be one of those moguls, so why hate on them? Its like all they see is them getting rich with the right investment, but its those evil cabal jews keeping them poor.
The US has “freedom of speech” but they’re quite low on the freedom of press index https://rsf.org/en/index exactly because of this
One of the best pieces of advice I got when I was starting comedy is: never ever punch down, not even once, because that’ll become all you’ll ever be known for. Always, always, always punch up.
I feel the same advice applies to a lot of speech tbh.
That’s exactly why they‘ll never leave their fascist praxis.
The metaphorical canary died a long time ago.
USAians and their lackeys in the comments defending racism, sexism, antisemitism, and homophobia in the name of a piece of paper. Teach a person to thump a book and they will apply that skill to whatever they can find. The USAian constitution was of course delivered to the founding fathers by god itself and the amendments are forgotten verses added posthoc.
