Morrissey’s Defense Of Free Speech Underlines What Both Right And Left Get Wrong - The Federalist

Morrissey’s Defense Of Free Speech Underlines What Both Right And Left Get Wrong - The Federalist

Morrissey has penned an eloquent attack on those who oppose free speech, but it has lessons for the defenders, too.

Excerpt:

"Former Smiths front man and international superstar solo artist Morrissey has found himself in progressives’ crosshairs again. This time, the controversial crooner has hit back in a new form. After being savaged as a racist xenophobe by the United Kingdom newspaper The Independent in what was supposed to be a concert review, Morrissey launched a new website with a brutal screed attacking both the outlet and British society in general.

This is not the first time Morrissey has been attacked by the politically correct brigade. Last year he came under fire for suggesting that acts of Islamic terror are often committed by Muslims and that the U.K. government has been far too lax in confronting the problem. This year the issue seems to be that he has said nice things about Brexit and had the temerity to waive a Union Jack flag that a fan brought to his concert in London."

The Federalist.com - by David Marcus.

A long examination of the topic.
Regards,
FWD.


Related item:
 
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Also in The Federalist: Why conservative women are so pretty!

“The women of the Right are allowed to believe things that the women of the Left are not. It sets them free to be themselves. And that’s beautiful.”

http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/22/why-conservative-women-are-so-pretty/

Of course, The Federalist is also rabidly anti-gay:

Screen Shot 2018-04-08 at 09.29.01.png


http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/24/why-same-sex-marriage-will-never-measure-up-to-the-real-thing/

Plus a lovely article yesterday about how it is a scientific fact that same-sex attraction is not fixed and how the evil LGBT community lied about that fact in order to promote gay marriage.

Sad to see that these are the people “defending” Morrissey, that these are the people on Morrissey's side.
 
Really?? You could either look at Infowars on the right or The Young Turks on the left and both formats are kicking the shit ratings-wise over many traditional forms of MSM.
No, they're not. They are still fringe news sites inhabited by conspiracy theorists.

They're not beating any of the mainstream cable news sites. That's an insane statement.

Rachael Maddow just beat Hannity for March, and Jones is dwarfed by both.

People say they hate mainstream anything, but continue to follow the mainstream. People also hate Congress in record numbers, but keep electing incumbents. Popularity is overrated, but it endures.

Simply put, people are full of shit. They have a public face, and a private face. In public, they say things that they feel embody intelligent thought, but in private, they default to petty grievances, and base assumptions.

Never believe anything anyone says. People are political by nature whether they realize it or not. All politics is identity politics.

There's no such thing as politics without identity.
 
Also in The Federalist: Why conservative women are so pretty!

“The women of the Right are allowed to believe things that the women of the Left are not. It sets them free to be themselves. And that’s beautiful.”

http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/22/why-conservative-women-are-so-pretty/

Of course, The Federalist is also rabidly anti-gay:

View attachment 44262

http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/24/why-same-sex-marriage-will-never-measure-up-to-the-real-thing/

Plus a lovely article yesterday about how it is a scientific fact that same-sex attraction is not fixed and how the evil LGBT community lied about that fact in order to promote gay marriage.

Sad to see that these are the people “defending” Morrissey, that these are the people on Morrissey's side.
People, usually young people who aren't hardened by political experience, tend to idealize these political discussions and equivocate regarding partisan effects on these issues.

They don't know how to do battle because they tend to hold an idealized view of bipartisanship and its possibilities. They don't understand the darkness in people's hearts; especially the darkness that surfaces as people grow older, and more detached.

They dismiss the extremism as some kind of anomaly until it goes mainstream because they have no grasp of history, and belief in its power. Humans are always "different" now than a hundred years ago, when that is not the case. They're exactly the same. They're exactly the same as they were hundreds of thousands of years ago. What matters most is how long its been since their last meal.

The further removed a generation becomes form a major social catastrophes, the less likely they feel that trend can happen again, but it can, and it always does.

For all of Hillary Clinton's faults, the one thing she definitely got right was her response to an activists questions: "I don't believe we change hearts. We change laws."

That's all it comes down to , and until certain idealists accept that strategic truth, they will continue to be disappointed by their overall effectiveness.

Principles are a guide, but they don't commonly equal effectiveness in getting what you want. Machiavelli knew this, but the naive youth still think they know what moves adult voters.
 
This is very true. I think you have said some very good things on here. I think Morrissey found the intelligent crowd to0 challenging "You're older now and you're a clever swine" . Like Trump he saw the thick are easy money and played to that crowd.
Morrissey stands for nothing . it wasn't always like that but post 2005, maybe even post 2000 its as true as true can be.
The people on here who say "Don't read his comments then" are just little sheep , unaware Morrissey is now not just a con job , he always was a bit, but a nasty piece of shit who is empty as can be. Do people really think he cares about Mexicans? what a laugh . Its money baby .
It used to be true that the bad press would be forgotten and the music would live on, thats not true anymore he has completely ruined his own legacy , f***ed it beyond all hope. The only way to deal with it is to say "yes i like morrissey, well I like the 80s and 90s morrissey . The other one is a c***"

To be fair, I think that unless you're Jesus Christ (who was never really in a band, just played Abba covers on the flute to keep the disciples entertained), if you are used to play arenas and stadiums, after a while it must be hard to remember crowds are made of individuals with thoughts and feelings, not just ticket buyers who pay your pool-cleaning bill and stuff.

In Morrissey's case, his autism mustn't help him to see audience members as human beings. He thinks of Mexican crowds as thousands of sets of good teeth, but when seeing the Ally Pally crowd he may just think of the thousands of cavities. He doesn't care either way as long as they paid to see him, (when really they should see a dentist.)

People don't seem to mind either, which may in turn prove that in the end he's just a product to be consumed and people know that and don't expect him to care about them.

It is a bit more problematic I find when his entourage doesn't even bother to hide they see people as pesetas. When Boorer refers to " crazed hispanics" it's becoming a bit too obvious. Then again, he must be aware that when he says that, some people get this mental image of him sweaty and red-faced looking for an English pub in Benidorm, and have a good laugh.

Well, respect is less easy to earn than foreigner money...Not that's what this lot is after anyway...
 
i think the politically correct are on a hair-trigger to defend the 'weak', to protect poor 'black' people, and i find that attitude more racist than anything.

i don't think morrissey has ever said anything overtly racist. "chinese are a subspecies" comes closest, but it's in relation to the issue he's most passionate about: cruelty to animals. i dare anyone to sit through a few chinese fur farm videos as morrissey probably has and come away with any other conclusion. but even then i don't believe he's attacking the race: he's condemning the culture that allows cuelty.

as a vegetarian i find walking around the uk seeing halal everywhere extremely offensive and would consider islamic culture inferiority cruel purely on this issue. causing excess animal suffering in a 'civilized' society is offensive to my beliefs. am i therefore racist because i object to halal and simply don't understand how torturing animals for religious reasons is acceptable?

and i think that's what the politically correct don't get. cultures aren't equal. western society has better ideals (animal cruelty laws if we're sticking with this one issue for example). some cultures are better than others.

and condemning aspects of a culture isn't the same as racism.

it's saying 'this is better, we should do this, we shouldn't allow something else'.

the english should be protecting their culture, rather than letting another swamp it (and yes, morrissey's right... walk around parts of the north and it could be islambad, full of burkas (also offensive) and no one speaks english).

most of what morrissey has said isn't racist. it's just the glaring obvious elephant in the room no one wants to say for fear of being called 'racist' and that word is being used to shut down debate to the detriment of better cultures everywhere.

You should probably continue editing. You still seem to be the only one on a rant. The article doesn't say that people should be able to speak without consequence. It is calling for specific rules on what speech should be suppressed and why. They point out that Morrissey was called racist for displaying the British flag. That is an interpretation which was actually used against him unfairly, despite the fact that he did appear to be asking for it given the context of where and when he decided to do it.
It's totally different than the comment about the Chinese being a subspecies which it is a completely different thing. One is an action which can be interpreted different ways but the British flag is not a de facto symbol of racism or nationalism. But it's difficult to imagine that he did not choose that word "subspecies" with the knowledge and intention that it would be controversial because it is so emphatically tied to the concept of race. Notice they do not mention that and neither did Morrissey in his rant.
You can't argue against what they're saying. If anything you would have to argue against what they're avoiding saying. But it's actually a well written and intelligent article. You threaten "repercussions" but all you're really capable of is mischaracterizing something you seem to have misunderstood and hoping for the best. This type of thing really isn't your area. You should probably go take some selfies and mark a bunch of my posts as "troll" because that's really your intellectual level. It's laughable to imagine anyone considering your response to this article, or anything at all really, seriously.
 
Social media has given people a platform on which to shout about how offensive they find other people´s opinions. And yet listening to other people´s opinions is the essence of a free society - and being a rational and mature human being. Moz has opinions. He is willing to express those opinions. Get over it.
 
Freedom of speech is having the ability to speak your mind, not having the ability to silence people who oppose you.

I agree, Charlie, but there are plenty of examples on Twitter, Google and Facebook of opposing opinion being silenced by those companies, and almost exclusively on the right. Amber Rudd has recently banned Lauren Southern from the UK for life. This is the same Amber Rudd who continues to allow in those who literally call for the murder of homosexuals. I think that’s a little strange to say the least.

The left aren’t so much worried that the right have a voice. They are worried they themselves do not. They are not concerned about evenhandedness, but that their opinions dominate.
 
I agree, Charlie, but there are plenty of examples on Twitter, Google and Facebook of opposing opinion being silenced by those companies, and almost exclusively on the right. Amber Rudd has recently banned Lauren Southern from the UK for life. This is the same Amber Rudd who continues to allow in those who literally call for the murder of homosexuals. I think that’s a little strange to say the least.

The left aren’t so much worried that the right have a voice. They are worried they themselves do not. They are not concerned about even handedness, but that their opinions dominate.
The Right has a voice that projects to a degree that belies their actual numbers.

Same shit, different day. In the end, socially speaking, the left always wins, which is the cause of of the ongoing bickering.

The right is defensive by nature, and intentionally playing defense is often a loser's game.

The world is about change. Nothing is sacred, and the era you grew up is always just a snapshot of human existence.

How many posters here think that the time they grew up in was a golden age of something, something?

Enough said.
 
I agree, Charlie, but there are plenty of examples on Twitter, Google and Facebook of opposing opinion being silenced by those companies, and almost exclusively on the right. Amber Rudd has recently banned Lauren Southern from the UK for life. This is the same Amber Rudd who continues to allow in those who literally call for the murder of homosexuals. I think that’s a little strange to say the least.

The left aren’t so much worried that the right have a voice. They are worried they themselves do not. They are not concerned about evenhandedness, but that their opinions dominate.

Think of it like this, if you want to unsettle the status quo and you took your fight to the streets you'd get a multi copper battering, it doesn't matter what your political persuasion is. This'll happen in any country in the World including our own despite protestations that we're free. The online stuff is just the equivalent of that. Most money people don't want the boat rocking and there are a lot on the right intent on doing that all day every day and so they're muted. At least it's preferable to a trunceon over the head.
 
Social media has given people a platform on which to shout about how offensive they find other people´s opinions. And yet listening to other people´s opinions is the essence of a free society - and being a rational and mature human being. Moz has opinions. He is willing to express those opinions. Get over it.
Yet he's unwilling to accept the appraisal of his opinions, and pretends to be oppressed because of it.

People have opinions about Morrissey's opinions. Get over it.

Morrissey needs to stop trying to stifle free speech. He's had a habit of trying to shut down his critics, and people need to start pushing back against that.
 
Also in The Federalist: Why conservative women are so pretty!

“The women of the Right are allowed to believe things that the women of the Left are not. It sets them free to be themselves. And that’s beautiful.”

http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/22/why-conservative-women-are-so-pretty/

Of course, The Federalist is also rabidly anti-gay:

View attachment 44262

http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/24/why-same-sex-marriage-will-never-measure-up-to-the-real-thing/

Plus a lovely article yesterday about how it is a scientific fact that same-sex attraction is not fixed and how the evil LGBT community lied about that fact in order to promote gay marriage.

Sad to see that these are the people “defending” Morrissey, that these are the people on Morrissey's side.
Been known for ages lefties are ugly as hell and that conservative people look great. Lefties are the losers who grew bitter and twisted for never getting laid with anything other than a snus field mouth in a workers body being out of a job for ages.

The right to question homosexuality is one of the rights of free speech and there are a lot of studies that suggest that homosexuality is just a mental issue. The ones I dealt with sure back up that theory with how they behave and the issues they have.

You're just one of them.
 
Because, depending on the subject, they often do. You don't learn about the world from existing in your own bubble, and not having your ideas challenged. Knowledge isn't received through osmosis. You can't say screw books, screw the news, and expect to be a part of the discussion. You will have little to say, and you won't be able to effectively defend yourself.

Your type of thinking sounds more like an inferior complex born out of laziness, and the realization that you are competing with a handicap. You don't have the knowledgeable, and without that, you tend to have less influence over the discussion.

Many people want their ideas to be accepted without doing the hard work.

It's not how it works.
Whenever I meet people like you I always find it fascinating how little you know despite reading so much. We all have the freedom of believing in things or not based on our own experiences in life.

I refuse to read books cause every book is published or written or both by some heeb using is as a platform to force views down my throat. I have never met any intellectual in life or online that's impressed me in any way.

People like you are just afraid of the truth and the coming years will make life hell for you. I'll never become as weak as you are and I live my life with open eyes and mind not looking away from the reality I find myself living in.

I urge you to do the same for the first time in your sheltered life. Books are not even the truth or the view of the author but an edited version so those invisible people working for the publisher is screwing your mind big time and you pay for the pleasure.
 
i think the politically correct are on a hair-trigger to defend the 'weak', to protect poor 'black' people, and i find that attitude more racist than anything.

i don't think morrissey has ever said anything overtly racist. "chinese are a subspecies" comes closest, but it's in relation to the issue he's most passionate about: cruelty to animals. i dare anyone to sit through a few chinese fur farm videos as morrissey probably has and come away with any other conclusion. but even then i don't believe he's attacking the race: he's condemning the culture that allows cuelty.

as a vegetarian i find walking around the uk seeing halal everywhere extremely offensive and would consider islamic culture inferiority cruel purely on this issue. causing excess animal suffering in a 'civilized' society is offensive to my beliefs. am i therefore racist because i object to halal and simply don't understand how torturing animals for religious reasons is acceptable?

and i think that's what the politically correct don't get. cultures aren't equal. western society has better ideals (animal cruelty laws if we're sticking with this one issue for example). some cultures are better than others.

and condemning aspects of a culture isn't the same as racism.

it's saying 'this is better, we should do this, we shouldn't allow something else'.

the english should be protecting their culture, rather than letting another swamp it (and yes, morrissey's right... walk around parts of the north and it could be islambad, full of burkas (also offensive) and no one speaks english).

most of what morrissey has said isn't racist. it's just the glaring obvious elephant in the room no one wants to say for fear of being called 'racist' and that word is being used to shut down debate to the detriment of better cultures everywhere.

In some ways I agree with you. I'll be completely honest and I hope you will also. I think Islam is complete bullshit. I don't respect it and if it didn't exist the world would be a better place. I think the same thing about Christianity, though. Christianity has set the world back centuries and brainwashed hundreds of millions of innocent children. It's ridiculous that churches are tax exempt when they are obviously businesses.
I also agree with you about animal rights and I know that watching videos of the conditions animals endure legally, let alone when they are abused, does create anger. I do think that "meat is murder" for anyone who is not in a situation where they have to eat it to survive.
So I've said all that in an attempt to be honest and now I will ask you if you really believe that a statement about how he can't help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies can be excused or explained. It doesn't matter that he was angry. That might have caused him to lower his guard a little and lose control. That isn't what I think happened, anyway. I think he knew exactly what he was saying. He was deliberately insulting "the Chinese" on the one hand, and he was also deliberately making the sort of statement that he knows gets a lot of attention.
Otherwise he's really incredibly unbelievably stupid. How long has he been scrutinized by the press? How many times have his words gotten him a lot of negative attention?
There are our choices.
1. He believes the Chinese are a subspecies but he will only say it if he's really angry.
2. He knows that saying something like that will get a lot of attention.
3. He's really stupid.

Now, the word "subspecies" is a deliberately genetic term. There is no way to think it's not racist unless you believe that he doesn't really have a very good grasp on English and wrote all those songs by accident. Looking at the ones he's written since he quit being so blatant about his plagiarism, as someone noted, might lead you to believe this is actually true, though.

Anyway, the short version is sure, I'll agree, murdering animals in the cruelest ways imaginable is bad and I wouldn't have a problem with people who do it being sent to labor camps or something useful. But that doesn't mean that calling the Chinese a subspecies meant something other than what he intentionally said and deliberately meant to convey. It's not about Chinese "culture." If it was he has had numerous opportunities to clear it up. He either meant what he said or he didn't and what he said could only be seen as racist. You're saying it's cultural, but he's talking about a nation, not a culture or a race. We don't know how he defines "Chinese" but Chinese is not a culture. China doesn't have one uniform group of people who share the same culture.
Anyone with any intelligence could have expressed their anger about what he saw on television in countless ways and never made a statement that referred explicitly to a term that both recalls Nazi propaganda and is associated with genetics.
I hate Mike Vick the guy that tortured his pit bulls when they lost fights. I wouldn't mind if he was executed and I am sure that he didn't deserve to play football again. PETA supported his rehabilitation and reentry into the public eye, by the way, probably because his case was very famous and they are thirsty attention whores above all else. Anyway, if I said I hate Mike Vick and think the world would be a better place if he were given a lethal injection people might think that's crazy. But if I said that when you see that pit bull fighting in the US seems to be largely a sport of African Americans and when I think of that "one can't help but feel that black people are a subspecies" that is racist. Is it not?
 
Been known for ages lefties are ugly as hell and that conservative people look great. Lefties are the losers who grew bitter and twisted for never getting laid with anything other than a snus field mouth in a workers body being out of a job for ages.

The right to question homosexuality is one of the rights of free speech and there are a lot of studies that suggest that homosexuality is just a mental issue. The ones I dealt with sure back up that theory with how they behave and the issues they have.

You're just one of them.
This was unnecessary and doesn't reflect who I am in any way, the end of the post. Many of them were dear friends of mine.

I'm sorry!

I am not gonna discuss homosexuality on this forum anymore in any way, shape or form. There are way more pressing matters at hand for us all to deal with. Being gay shouldn't even be a topic in 2018, surprised it still is in so many bad ways.
 
Yet he's unwilling to accept the appraisal of his opinions, and pretends to be oppressed because of it.

People have opinions about Morrissey's opinions. Get over it.

Morrissey needs to stop trying to stifle free speech. He's had a habit of trying to shut down his critics, and people need to start pushing back against that.
He chooses sides and in this day and age few like that. This include everyone we're all kids from the kindergarten is getting boring.

NO, we can't all get along. We hate more than we love because of life and people forcing is to be what we don't want to be.
 
Then people most concerned with immigrants, and nationalism are the people who don't live around them.

You don't need nationalism for people to defend their homelands, and you don't need empty immigrant bashing, and fake promises of doing something about it to have borders.

You accept that you need immigration, and that telling kids that were brought to America as children, and raised in this culture that they should be deported.

Immigrants are not the problem, legal, or otherwise.

It's playing to people's worst primitive instincts, and using it to deflect from the other inequalities that have a greater effect on their lives. It's age-old, and it tends to effect the most paranoid, and fearful types of personalities. They did the same thing to minorities after the economic meltdown of 2008. They blamed them for crashing the global markets because of mortgage defaults when that was absolutely impossible.

Anti-immigrant crusaders are not calling for a middle ground. They're demanding extremes.

The mealy mouthed ones like Morrissey can't even say exactly what they want accomplished because they know how ugly it will sound. A brave person would say exactly what they mean, and not play these pity games about responses to their opinions on the topic.

For all Morrissey's talk about speaking the truth, for some reason he has trouble saying exactly how he feels.

Progress has always had to face the ignorant masses who threaten to blow everything up unless you stop changing things. It's not going to happen. Get used to it.

You invented things I never said and then you reply to your own invented statements. That's the most fraudulent way of argumentation. That's the same way some haters here and some media treat Morrissey or whoever dares to question your prepacked ready to consume pseudo liberal opinions. Just because someone says A that person is not saying or implying B. That's the way some people think because they are intellectually programmed for linking two opinions that are not necssarily linked. They don't think by themselves in the best scenario. In the worst scenario they are manipulating public opinion using falacies. Your arguments, for example, are a set of falacies. I'm a true liberal person, not a fraude working for obscure interests.
 
In some ways I agree with you. I'll be completely honest and I hope you will also. I think Islam is complete bullshit. I don't respect it and if it didn't exist the world would be a better place. I think the same thing about Christianity, though. Christianity has set the world back centuries and brainwashed hundreds of millions of innocent children. It's ridiculous that churches are tax exempt when they are obviously businesses.
I also agree with you about animal rights and I know that watching videos of the conditions animals endure legally, let alone when they are abused, does create anger. I do think that "meat is murder" for anyone who is not in a situation where they have to eat it to survive.
So I've said all that in an attempt to be honest and now I will ask you if you really believe that a statement about how he can't help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies can be excused or explained. It doesn't matter that he was angry. That might have caused him to lower his guard a little and lose control. That isn't what I think happened, anyway. I think he knew exactly what he was saying. He was deliberately insulting "the Chinese" on the one hand, and he was also deliberately making the sort of statement that he knows gets a lot of attention.
Otherwise he's really incredibly unbelievably stupid. How long has he been scrutinized by the press? How many times have his words gotten him a lot of negative attention?
There are our choices.
1. He believes the Chinese are a subspecies but he will only say it if he's really angry.
2. He knows that saying something like that will get a lot of attention.
3. He's really stupid.

Now, the word "subspecies" is a deliberately genetic term. There is no way to think it's not racist unless you believe that he doesn't really have a very good grasp on English and wrote all those songs by accident. Looking at the ones he's written since he quit being so blatant about his plagiarism, as someone noted, might lead you to believe this is actually true, though.

Anyway, the short version is sure, I'll agree, murdering animals in the cruelest ways imaginable is bad and I wouldn't have a problem with people who do it being sent to labor camps or something useful. But that doesn't mean that calling the Chinese a subspecies meant something other than what he intentionally said and deliberately meant to convey. It's not about Chinese "culture." If it was he has had numerous opportunities to clear it up. He either meant what he said or he didn't and what he said could only be seen as racist. You're saying it's cultural, but he's talking about a nation, not a culture or a race. We don't know how he defines "Chinese" but Chinese is not a culture. China doesn't have one uniform group of people who share the same culture.
Anyone with any intelligence could have expressed their anger about what he saw on television in countless ways and never made a statement that referred explicitly to a term that both recalls Nazi propaganda and is associated with genetics.
I hate Mike Vick the guy that tortured his pit bulls when they lost fights. I wouldn't mind if he was executed and I am sure that he didn't deserve to play football again. PETA supported his rehabilitation and reentry into the public eye, by the way, probably because his case was very famous and they are thirsty attention whores above all else. Anyway, if I said I hate Mike Vick and think the world would be a better place if he were given a lethal injection people might think that's crazy. But if I said that when you see that pit bull fighting in the US seems to be largely a sport of African Americans and when I think of that "one can't help but feel that black people are a subspecies" that is racist. Is it not?
That is some post, but I agree with the Islam issue. Being not racist, Islam is not a race, but it doesn't belong in England, halal slaughter is sent to us directly from hell, these people need to shove off, they think they own England, but they don't, ban Islam, ban cruel Halal slaughter in OUR country, if they don't like it, well f*** off to somewhere they do, and that's logic, whole thing needs to be stopped, these people are taking the piss out of English life & culture, am I wrong?
 
That is some post, but I agree with the Islam issue. Being not racist, Islam is not a race, but it doesn't belong in England, halal slaughter is sent to us directly from hell, these people need to shove off, they think they own England, but they don't, ban Islam, ban cruel Halal slaughter in OUR country, if they don't like it, well f*** off to somewhere they do, and that's logic, whole thing needs to be stopped, these people are taking the piss out of English life & culture, am I wrong?

No you are totally right. One hundred percent. Whatever you may say about Christianity its one of the pillars of Western civilization, and its superior to Islam in every way. Besides you need religion to fight religion.
Islam is the lowest dreck and should be banned in the UK.
PS send off the Muslim apologists as well. Put a pup tent on them and send off to the desert.:rock:

Moz 100
Islam 0
 

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