1. The interesting thing about free speech absolutism is that it's always been highly selective, defending elites against marginal groups.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
2. Milton's Areopagitica is considered a foundational text in free speech advocacy yet makes a huge exception: no free speech for Catholics
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Replying to @HeerJeet
3. Similarly John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (1859) is an argument only for free speech for "human beings in the maturity of their faculties"
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Replying to @HeerJeet
4. By "human beings in the maturity of their faculties" Mill meant white people. He didn't believe most of humanity could handle free speech
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Replying to @HeerJeet
5. Mill's opposition to free speech for non-whites was not merely theoretical. At East India company he worked to limit freedom in India.pic.twitter.com/ccXghEdMOm
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Replying to @HeerJeet
6. The ACLU of high modernist period often seen as advocate for absolute free speech. Yet it co-operated with FBI to inform on communists
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Replying to @HeerJeet
7. All of which is NOT an argument against free speech absolutism but rather a recognition that free speech absolutism needs self-critique
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Replying to @HeerJeet
8. I would like to see a free-speech absolutism that is reflexive, aware of its own privileged history & complicity with elitism.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
Also unclear that Milton was "elite" and Catholics were "marginal" in 1644 England. Fear was of a resurgent, reactionary Catholic monarchy.
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Milton went to Cambridge, worked for gov't and Catholics suffered many legal disabilities.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
True but also extremely powerful force geopolitically at the time. Drive to restrict their expression in part a recognition of their power.
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Replying to @daily_barbarian @HeerJeet
Still seems incompatible w/ 'Free speech' absolutism
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