Tessa Lena a.k.a. Tessa Fights Robots  ❤️

I disagree with you. Both of us feel passionate about our respective viewpoints, and it's a good thing. I respect your feeling as much as I respect mine. I'm coming from a place of growing up where the ideology of controlling reality by controlling speech has temporarily won.

We're heading towards the same place because we blindly engage with bad-faith dialogue, and we give it huge platforms. The aim of bad-faith dialogue around free speech is to destroy free speech, and dictatorships around the world have shown time and again the approach works.

I am not sure what you mean by bad-faith dialogue. For instance, I would sign that letter in a second if someone asked me, and it's in good faith. For context, I've never had a large platform I would afraid to lose. But we have a lot of collective trauma and need to heal it.

It's not your faith. It's the originators of a letter. There is no good faith interest in freedom of speech. The goal was to stir a controversy, and cleave off some people who would be appalled by their hate speech if they knew, but who've now cosigned.

Again, I have to disagree with much feeling! I do stand for that thing that Americans call "free speech." Yes, it's politicized on both ends but in principle, without it, the society descends into darkness quickly. And it means "all speech."

It has never meant all speech. From the very first origins of it. The harm principle was *always* part of the considerations around free speech.

So in practice, whose speech do we ban in the light of the millions of people who died as a result of the U.S. foreign policy just over the past few decades? An honest question!

I haven't seen much speech banned. That's the misdirection of the letter. I wish I was ever so cancelled I could get published in Harper's - the signatories all continue to be able to say what they want, without any problem. They're just angry they're getting called out.