As terrible as the flyers are, personal political and religious beliefs should not be enforced in any way at a workplace.
Functionally this is similar to that county clerk that refused to issue marriage certificates to same sex couples. Can’t be supportive of one and not the other without being hypocritical.
Personally, I think refraining from distributing genocidal propaganda is pretty functionally dissimilar to being a bigot.
I don’t want to come off as abrasive and I don’t want to assume any ill-intent on your part, but it’s fucking frustrating hearing takes like this as a trans person. Equating the refusal to participate in a hateful disinformation campaign to refusing to marry a gay couple is deifying the liberal concepts of law & order at the expense of human decency. It is not hypocrisy to support anti-fascist actions whilst denouncing fascist actions, even if they express those actions in a similar fashion. For example, I largely support Just Stop Oil’s disruptive protests, whereas I would be disgusted if fascists defaced artworks by spray-painting swastikas all over. Is that hypocritical?
Again, sorry if I come on strongly in this comment, my frustrations are definitely from society at large rather than your comment, but having your right to exist being framed as a “political belief” is frankly exhausting.
I feel like there’s a “law as it currently exists” thing versus the ideal. The law as it currently exists makes it illegal to discriminate based on content. This has historically been an important vector for, say, allowing civil rights activists to send essays to be published in newspapers. But much as it was illegal to deny a gay couple their marriage license, it ought be somehow made illegal to spread damaging lies about trans people in order to stir up a hate campaign.
In this case I’d say that 5 days fully paid suspension is probably an appropriate consequence for this rule-breaking, and could only be made more appropriate if it actually included tickets to spend those days someplace warmer and friendlier than that part of Canada and a knowing wink from the postmaster general.
I think what you’re getting at is the heart of dysfunction with the Western world’s conception of free speech. We perceive free speech as the government getting out of the way and letting people say what they want, but if that’s the only thing you do then your free speech is very, very shallow. How do you stop bigots from shouting over minorities by clogging the mail? How do you stop the wealthy from owning all of the TV channels and controlling the public conversation? How do you stop corporations or foreign governments from astroturfing every online forum with misinformation?
Free speech, counterintuitively, actually requires a democratically accountable government to take responsibility for maintaining it. It does not simply come into existence by their absence.
That’s like saying if you support gay rights protestors, you have to also support nazi protestors, or you’re being hypocritical. You’re looking at things on the wrong axis.
Yeah that’s exactly correct. Protestors and counter protestors both have a right to express their views, regardless of what I think of those views. As long as they don’t violate any laws in the process. That is literally one of the pillars the US is built on for instance. I don’t have to agree with you to defend your right to say those things I disagree with. The right to that freedom of expression is literally the 1st Amendment in the US.
I don’t know what the limits are on speech in Canada, but they’re likely similar, just not as extremely biased towards protection. The US defends too much honestly.
That doesn’t mean that your opinions and expressions are immune from controversy or disagreement. And speech is limited in certain circumstances, like direct threats. That’s not what’s happening here though.
Banning gender affirming care is a direct threat to trans people. Gender affirming care is a collection of lifesaving medical treatments and banning it denies trans people the fundamental right to exist. Refusing to spread a life-threatening disinformation campaign in Canada or hypothetically in the US is a strategic decision to defend life and liberty.
We do not need to tolerate intolerance. Nor should we. Tolerance is a social contract or peace treaty. When one group, such as fascists, break that contract, they are no longer protected by that social contract.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
A person’s freedoms do not end when they break laws, rather there are no laws against our freedoms. A person’s freedom to swing their arm ends at another person’s nose. The freedom of speech ends where a person’s right to exist begins. Allowing fascists to trick people into banning lifesaving medical treatments isn’t speech we should protect. As it infringes on the right of those people to exist who depend on those lifesaving medical treatments.
In the US, we are a nation of freedoms. We write laws to protect those freedoms. When the laws infringe upon our freedoms we change the laws.
Which is why both sides have the right to protest, criticize, and argue over their respective viewpoints.
If we attempt to ban certain forms of speech that don’t, say, immediately incite violence, then what we end up doing is allowing the intolerant people to force society to become intolerant by censoring opposing viewpoints, as long as they’re given any degree of control over the legislative process around what speech is allowed.
We have freedom of speech, but not mandated respect for the beliefs you say with that speech. While they’re free to say it, everyone is free to say anything they wish against it, to not listen to it, and to drown it out.
Society can already be intolerant of the intolerance without opening the door to legislation that could mandate intolerance of tolerant speech. We don’t have to legislate intolerant speech away to counter its usage.
It’s why I would argue that it’s a duty of care not to distribute as it spreads hate and hurt in the community and workplace. Probably wouldn’t fly in the US though.
If it is the person delivering the leaflets then a Nazi postal worker can decide not to deliver postal votes as they see democracy as hurtful to their cause.
This is the paradox of tolerance. We resolve the paradox your argument is describing by reframing our concept of tolerance. When viewed as a social contract or peace treaty, we are able to tolerate each other and can refuse to tolerate intolerance. Under tolerance as a social contract, everyone in society agrees to be tolerant. If one group, say fascists, choose to be intolerant to any other group, the fascists are no longer protected by the agreement.
Thus we can reject fascist intolerance and bigotry while still tolerating each other. We can reject hate speech and targeted life-threatening information campaigns against lifesaving medical treatments while still enjoying free speech.
Also, fascists are bad-faith actors. Bad-faith actors will attempt to undermine our institutions for their gain no matter what we do. So our efforts should instead go to preventing bad-faith actors like fascists from taking power.
Hypothetically (because I’m interested and not trying to start an argument) would you ban the delivery of leaflets for a pro Trans party that was authoritarian?
P.S. I agree with you points :)
A different analogy would be a right wing person refusing to deliver left wing mail. Example might be something for a ‘Woke’ support group.
Another could be, Atheists refusing to deliver religious letters of Christmas cards.
My point is , we can’t leave it to individuals to decide these things in isolation.
We should ban any disinformation campaign that we as a society, through research and study, know to be a disinformation campaign.
We should ban any hypothetical authoritarian pro-trans party and their leaflets because they’re an authoritarian party.
We shouldn’t ban something for being woke because woke is now a fascist taking point to demonize the left and something being woke is not a real basis for something to be harmful.
There is a difference between personal mail and disinformation campaign leaflets. No one should be banning Christmas cards unless they are part of a targeted disinformation campaign to deny people the fundamental right to exist.
We as a society have chosen to leave this to individuals. This November 5th, the MAGA movement, a christo-fascist movement, is attempting to takeover our democracy. People in positions of leadership and power saying no to fascists attempting to subvert the results of the election may be all that stands between us and that christo-fascist takeover.
It would be better if there were systems in place to stop disinformation campaigns, but in this Canadian woman’s case, her civil disobedience was the only system in place. We might soon find ourselves in her position. Where civil disobedience is the only recourse to prevent the worst outcomes of fascist policies. So we should not discount civil disobedience out of hand.
Also, fascists are bad-faith actors. Bad-faith actors will attempt to undermine our institutions for their gain no matter what we do. So our efforts should instead go to preventing bad-faith actors like fascists from taking power.
I am copying this here, because it’s what refutes your argument’s central point. We should not factor in what fascists will do into our decision making process. Fascists will try to destroy our way of life no matter what we do. So instead of worrying about trying to appease fascists, which has never worked, we should focus on keeping fascists out of power. If the fascists takeover our democracy, we aren’t getting it back for free. So we should want individuals to engage in civil disobedience to prevent fascists from taking power and enacting their policies. To do otherwise would make us complicit in our own destruction.
Freedom of speech rests on the foundation of the truth. If we elevate lies to the level of the truth we will lose our freedom of speech. There is no utility in tolerating intolerance. In humoring a known disinformation campaign we do not dissuade the fascists, who are always looking to see what they can get away with. Nor do we safeguard our liberties, but instead lay the groundwork for them to be taken away. If we let the fascist decide what is true then it is the fascists who decide what we speak.
Good points. I agree with the paradox of tolerance and your other points.
Thank you for taking the time to reply. This type of discussion is why in use social.media but it is rare to get past the partisan brigading.
Civil disobedience is an interesting point in this case. Personally, I probably would have acted as this Canadian woman did.
What I am struggling with is understanding what counts as a disinformation campaign. I read in your post that you’d answer this as a society and with research however, if you were put in charge of this research tomorrow, do you have a draft definition of a disinformation campaign?
I ask as I try to see the world in black and white and steer clear of the grey however, this is rarely possible.
Free speech being a good example. It’s either a 1 or 0.
We learn what is true through observation and math. We establish things that we know to be true with scientific studies. When we see a campaign spreading information we know to be false, that would be a disinformation campaign.
Here is argument from that comment supported by that source:
Gender affirming care involves helping trans people, both youths and adults, to transition to their gender identity through the use of therapy, puberty blockers, and hormone therapy. It is lifesaving care. Unsubstantiated attacks to gender affirming care are a threat to the lives of all trans people. Threatening the lives of people with a disinformation campaign is a breach of the social contract of tolerance. When fascists attempt to spread life-threatening disinformation campaigns, people at all levels of society should stand up to them.
We aren’t going to be able to come up with a definition for all possible disinformation campaigns. We do not know everything. However such a definition is not needed to prevent specific disinformation campaigns. And it is possible to know things. Things we know to be true should be held up as the truth. We wouldn’t want the mail service to spread a disinformation campaign advocating for putting exposed radioactive material in people’s homes. We know radiation is harmful to carbon based life.
Shouting fire in a crowded movie theater when there is no fire is not protected speech. Which is a specific rule about a specific kind of disinformation in a specific circumstance. But we have free speech. So free speech is not a 1 or a 0. Free speech rests on the foundation of the truth. If we know the truth about some topic that is critical to life, we should not allow spreading falsehoods about that topic. Gender affirming care should not be an exception to this principle.
As others have said it’s a government position and it’s delivering mail. I’m not sure if Canadian law, but in think that’s a pretty severe crime in the US.
What if the person didn’t want to deliver medicine because they believed that god will heal everything?
While the mail is hateful, it needs to be delivered.
Also consider that someone paid for the flyers and paid to have them mailed. So this guy is effectively robbing them of two different transactions.
To be clear, I don’t support the flyers in any way, but what the guy did was wrong.
As terrible as the flyers are, personal political and religious beliefs should not be enforced in any way at a workplace.
Functionally this is similar to that county clerk that refused to issue marriage certificates to same sex couples. Can’t be supportive of one and not the other without being hypocritical.
Personally, I think refraining from distributing genocidal propaganda is pretty functionally dissimilar to being a bigot.
I don’t want to come off as abrasive and I don’t want to assume any ill-intent on your part, but it’s fucking frustrating hearing takes like this as a trans person. Equating the refusal to participate in a hateful disinformation campaign to refusing to marry a gay couple is deifying the liberal concepts of law & order at the expense of human decency. It is not hypocrisy to support anti-fascist actions whilst denouncing fascist actions, even if they express those actions in a similar fashion. For example, I largely support Just Stop Oil’s disruptive protests, whereas I would be disgusted if fascists defaced artworks by spray-painting swastikas all over. Is that hypocritical?
Again, sorry if I come on strongly in this comment, my frustrations are definitely from society at large rather than your comment, but having your right to exist being framed as a “political belief” is frankly exhausting.
I feel like there’s a “law as it currently exists” thing versus the ideal. The law as it currently exists makes it illegal to discriminate based on content. This has historically been an important vector for, say, allowing civil rights activists to send essays to be published in newspapers. But much as it was illegal to deny a gay couple their marriage license, it ought be somehow made illegal to spread damaging lies about trans people in order to stir up a hate campaign.
In this case I’d say that 5 days fully paid suspension is probably an appropriate consequence for this rule-breaking, and could only be made more appropriate if it actually included tickets to spend those days someplace warmer and friendlier than that part of Canada and a knowing wink from the postmaster general.
I think what you’re getting at is the heart of dysfunction with the Western world’s conception of free speech. We perceive free speech as the government getting out of the way and letting people say what they want, but if that’s the only thing you do then your free speech is very, very shallow. How do you stop bigots from shouting over minorities by clogging the mail? How do you stop the wealthy from owning all of the TV channels and controlling the public conversation? How do you stop corporations or foreign governments from astroturfing every online forum with misinformation?
Free speech, counterintuitively, actually requires a democratically accountable government to take responsibility for maintaining it. It does not simply come into existence by their absence.
That’s like saying if you support gay rights protestors, you have to also support nazi protestors, or you’re being hypocritical. You’re looking at things on the wrong axis.
Yeah that’s exactly correct. Protestors and counter protestors both have a right to express their views, regardless of what I think of those views. As long as they don’t violate any laws in the process. That is literally one of the pillars the US is built on for instance. I don’t have to agree with you to defend your right to say those things I disagree with. The right to that freedom of expression is literally the 1st Amendment in the US.
I don’t know what the limits are on speech in Canada, but they’re likely similar, just not as extremely biased towards protection. The US defends too much honestly.
That doesn’t mean that your opinions and expressions are immune from controversy or disagreement. And speech is limited in certain circumstances, like direct threats. That’s not what’s happening here though.
Banning gender affirming care is a direct threat to trans people. Gender affirming care is a collection of lifesaving medical treatments and banning it denies trans people the fundamental right to exist. Refusing to spread a life-threatening disinformation campaign in Canada or hypothetically in the US is a strategic decision to defend life and liberty.
We do not need to tolerate intolerance. Nor should we. Tolerance is a social contract or peace treaty. When one group, such as fascists, break that contract, they are no longer protected by that social contract.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment
A person’s freedoms do not end when they break laws, rather there are no laws against our freedoms. A person’s freedom to swing their arm ends at another person’s nose. The freedom of speech ends where a person’s right to exist begins. Allowing fascists to trick people into banning lifesaving medical treatments isn’t speech we should protect. As it infringes on the right of those people to exist who depend on those lifesaving medical treatments.
In the US, we are a nation of freedoms. We write laws to protect those freedoms. When the laws infringe upon our freedoms we change the laws.
No. For a just, tolerant, and civilised society to exist, intolerance can’t be tolerated..
Which is why both sides have the right to protest, criticize, and argue over their respective viewpoints.
If we attempt to ban certain forms of speech that don’t, say, immediately incite violence, then what we end up doing is allowing the intolerant people to force society to become intolerant by censoring opposing viewpoints, as long as they’re given any degree of control over the legislative process around what speech is allowed.
We have freedom of speech, but not mandated respect for the beliefs you say with that speech. While they’re free to say it, everyone is free to say anything they wish against it, to not listen to it, and to drown it out.
Society can already be intolerant of the intolerance without opening the door to legislation that could mandate intolerance of tolerant speech. We don’t have to legislate intolerant speech away to counter its usage.
It’s why I would argue that it’s a duty of care not to distribute as it spreads hate and hurt in the community and workplace. Probably wouldn’t fly in the US though.
Who decides what is hurtful though?
If it is the person delivering the leaflets then a Nazi postal worker can decide not to deliver postal votes as they see democracy as hurtful to their cause.
This is the paradox of tolerance. We resolve the paradox your argument is describing by reframing our concept of tolerance. When viewed as a social contract or peace treaty, we are able to tolerate each other and can refuse to tolerate intolerance. Under tolerance as a social contract, everyone in society agrees to be tolerant. If one group, say fascists, choose to be intolerant to any other group, the fascists are no longer protected by the agreement.
Thus we can reject fascist intolerance and bigotry while still tolerating each other. We can reject hate speech and targeted life-threatening information campaigns against lifesaving medical treatments while still enjoying free speech.
Also, fascists are bad-faith actors. Bad-faith actors will attempt to undermine our institutions for their gain no matter what we do. So our efforts should instead go to preventing bad-faith actors like fascists from taking power.
Hypothetically (because I’m interested and not trying to start an argument) would you ban the delivery of leaflets for a pro Trans party that was authoritarian?
P.S. I agree with you points :)
A different analogy would be a right wing person refusing to deliver left wing mail. Example might be something for a ‘Woke’ support group.
Another could be, Atheists refusing to deliver religious letters of Christmas cards.
My point is , we can’t leave it to individuals to decide these things in isolation.
We should ban any disinformation campaign that we as a society, through research and study, know to be a disinformation campaign.
We should ban any hypothetical authoritarian pro-trans party and their leaflets because they’re an authoritarian party.
We shouldn’t ban something for being woke because woke is now a fascist taking point to demonize the left and something being woke is not a real basis for something to be harmful.
There is a difference between personal mail and disinformation campaign leaflets. No one should be banning Christmas cards unless they are part of a targeted disinformation campaign to deny people the fundamental right to exist.
We as a society have chosen to leave this to individuals. This November 5th, the MAGA movement, a christo-fascist movement, is attempting to takeover our democracy. People in positions of leadership and power saying no to fascists attempting to subvert the results of the election may be all that stands between us and that christo-fascist takeover.
It would be better if there were systems in place to stop disinformation campaigns, but in this Canadian woman’s case, her civil disobedience was the only system in place. We might soon find ourselves in her position. Where civil disobedience is the only recourse to prevent the worst outcomes of fascist policies. So we should not discount civil disobedience out of hand.
I am copying this here, because it’s what refutes your argument’s central point. We should not factor in what fascists will do into our decision making process. Fascists will try to destroy our way of life no matter what we do. So instead of worrying about trying to appease fascists, which has never worked, we should focus on keeping fascists out of power. If the fascists takeover our democracy, we aren’t getting it back for free. So we should want individuals to engage in civil disobedience to prevent fascists from taking power and enacting their policies. To do otherwise would make us complicit in our own destruction.
Freedom of speech rests on the foundation of the truth. If we elevate lies to the level of the truth we will lose our freedom of speech. There is no utility in tolerating intolerance. In humoring a known disinformation campaign we do not dissuade the fascists, who are always looking to see what they can get away with. Nor do we safeguard our liberties, but instead lay the groundwork for them to be taken away. If we let the fascist decide what is true then it is the fascists who decide what we speak.
Good points. I agree with the paradox of tolerance and your other points.
Thank you for taking the time to reply. This type of discussion is why in use social.media but it is rare to get past the partisan brigading.
Civil disobedience is an interesting point in this case. Personally, I probably would have acted as this Canadian woman did.
What I am struggling with is understanding what counts as a disinformation campaign. I read in your post that you’d answer this as a society and with research however, if you were put in charge of this research tomorrow, do you have a draft definition of a disinformation campaign?
I ask as I try to see the world in black and white and steer clear of the grey however, this is rarely possible.
Free speech being a good example. It’s either a 1 or 0.
We learn what is true through observation and math. We establish things that we know to be true with scientific studies. When we see a campaign spreading information we know to be false, that would be a disinformation campaign.
Here is a comment where I cite sources:
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/16679003/10778009
Here is a source from that comment that has a comprehensive overview of gender affirming care:
Here is argument from that comment supported by that source:
We aren’t going to be able to come up with a definition for all possible disinformation campaigns. We do not know everything. However such a definition is not needed to prevent specific disinformation campaigns. And it is possible to know things. Things we know to be true should be held up as the truth. We wouldn’t want the mail service to spread a disinformation campaign advocating for putting exposed radioactive material in people’s homes. We know radiation is harmful to carbon based life.
Shouting fire in a crowded movie theater when there is no fire is not protected speech. Which is a specific rule about a specific kind of disinformation in a specific circumstance. But we have free speech. So free speech is not a 1 or a 0. Free speech rests on the foundation of the truth. If we know the truth about some topic that is critical to life, we should not allow spreading falsehoods about that topic. Gender affirming care should not be an exception to this principle.
deleted by creator
I was thinking more about the “can’t force me to make a cake for a gay wedding” thing
As others have said it’s a government position and it’s delivering mail. I’m not sure if Canadian law, but in think that’s a pretty severe crime in the US.
What if the person didn’t want to deliver medicine because they believed that god will heal everything?
While the mail is hateful, it needs to be delivered.
Also consider that someone paid for the flyers and paid to have them mailed. So this guy is effectively robbing them of two different transactions.
To be clear, I don’t support the flyers in any way, but what the guy did was wrong.
Canada isn’t under the jurisdiction of American law.
That one too. Although that was a private business, not a governmental organization.
The postal worker in question doesn’t own Canada Post.