Trump wants America to be like England, "where you can actually sue if someone says something wrong"
The thing is, Irving had main stream recognition right up until someone took a close look at his work and his methods. (I am reading a couple books about this at the moment.) He was published by major publishers, and regarded as a legit historian with a fringe view who was respected for defending an unpopular position.
But then Lipstadt really looked at Irving’s work, pointed out how he was distorting the evidence, and that’s when everything fell apart.
And then Irving sued, and exposed himself as a fraud.
So yeah, you were right in the ten steps.
“Many people are saying that we need to make some changes here, folks. Because those people who are speaking out, they’re not the best people. Liars, cheats, and some, I suppose are good people. And that’s why we’re going to change the First Amendment. We need to take a look at the way they do things in England. In England, if someone says something you don’t like, you can sue them. And win. And that’s the way it should be. We’ve got too much free speech in the US, people. If something’s free, then people don’t value it. I’ve read that, I think it’s true. So we need to make speech very expensive. So expensive that only a millionaire can afford it. Or maybe a billionaire. Anyway, the costs of speaking are going to be huge. And that’s the only way that people will learn to speak wisely. Now, no one is a bigger fan of free speech than I am. In fact, I’m such a fan of free speech that I want it all. I should be able to speak freely without people criticizing what I said on some eleven-year-old tape. Take a look at England, take a look at Russia. You don’t have free speech in Russia, because Vladimir Putin is a strong leader. Now, I’m not saying everything he does is right, but people respect him. They look up to him. And you won’t hear people say bad things about him. I think there’s a reason for that. Now, people in other countries they can’t believe the things we let people say. They laugh at us because they hear some people in America just saying whatever they want, just because they can, just because it happens to be true. They say, oh, the government’s terrible. And that’s true, the government is terrible. But my government won’t be. And I can’t have these liars saying it is. And America won’t be great again until we put a stop to that. So that’s what we’re going to do.”
well you can’t yell “movie!” in a crowded firehouse.
That sniff must be a tell. It’s like he does it when even he isn’t buying his own shit.
Or maybe it’s a smug sniff.
first, no one has benefited from being able to spew whatever vile things come into their tiny brain more then trump has.
second, he has a right to say whatever idiotic idea he comes up with, including gutting the first amendment, that is one of the protections the first amendment allows him.
Hillary Clinton also doesn’t like the First Amendment, which is why she’s proposing an amendment to overturn Citizens United. You can make libertarian arguments in favor of restricting corporate speech (because a corporation is a favor the state’s doing for its owners, so the state could put strings on the favor), but there’s no way for the courts to draw a bright line between Michael Moore’s movie about the Evil Bush Family and CU’s movie about Evil Hillary Clinton, or between both of those moviemakers and other media corporations, including Fox and MSNBC, which have editorial content as well as (ahem) “fair and balanced” reporting.
When somebody’s trying to censor porn on the Internet, they’ll tell you that the First Amendment is about protecting political speech. But when they’re trying to censor political speech, they’ll tell you that elections are way too important to let just anybody say things about them.
Corporations shouldn’t be treated the same as people.
That’s what the mainstream does: in making use of fringe characters, the mainstream sands down their unacceptable aspects, to make them palatable to a broad audience. But it keeps the receipts, for later.
Which is to say that everyone in publishing and journalism knew Irving was full of shit almost from the beginning. But that’s not how you sell provocative stories about Hitler, or write profiles about The New Face Of Jazz.
[quote]
But then Lipstadt really looked at Irving’s work, pointed out how he was distorting the evidence, and that’s when everything fell apart.[/quote]
Right. There’s a long process that leads to this, though. To maintain his position, he had to work the True Believers harder. This makes the mainstream suspicious. So he had to work the True Believers even harder–attending rallies and such–all the while insisting to the mainstream that he was not himself a True Believer. This created a mainstream interest in the receipts, but also a dissonance between Irving’s brand and his reputation. The proverbial lawsuit is the final explosive attempt to reconcile all this after the proverbial Lipstadt comes along and collapses your context.
The more you think about it, the more it IS like these alt right characters on twitter. But it happened over 20 years instead of what, 20 months.
I too, hate the Daily Mail.
Who doesn’t?
We prefer ‘Mud Island’, or at least I do.
This whole “Bill of Rights” thing is redundant anyway.
Go full-out on your 2nd Amendment, and you won’t even need a 1st Amendment.
Oh c’mon! Why do you have to coddle the Trumpster like that? Believe me, he wouldn’t coddle you. No. He wouldn’t coddle you.
Unless we get to incarcerate (Suspend corporate operations for a given amount of time. No production, no trade, no earnings.) them when they act badly, or even subject them to capital punishment (Dissolve the corporation, disband the board, sell off assets, terminate all employees) when warranted.
As Robert Reich put it:
I’ll Believe Corporations Are People When Texas Executes One
“If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play, so be it. I am ready for the fight. The fight against falsehood and those who peddle it. My fight begins today. Thank you and good afternoon.”
Jonathan Aitken, disgraced former MP
Sometimes the system works.
Corporations shouldn’t be treated the same as people.
In many cases that’s true. But here we’re talking just one specific way. One of the court’s justifications for it’s ruling was that political speech is just speech by a group of people.
No, no, silly, they only get to be treated as people when it’s in their favor…
