The Federalist Society ideals involve "checking federal power, protecting individual liberty and interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning". If they truly cared about protecting individual liberty, they wouldn't have complained about one person's satire. They making a big fuss about it is quite antithetical to their organization's ideals.
Perhaps, but I'm looking at this with a Machiavellian/Realpolitik lens. If you go after people who criticize you, even if those people are perfectly allowed to do so, you create a chilling effect and you signal that your organization has power and needs to be treated with care.
Sure, it's perfectly legal to exercise your free speech rights, but dragging someone through the mud dissuades many people from making criticisms.
This seems like a good method if you actually had the power to fully follow through and incredibly naive If it fails: it’s like if a king were to go against the church without even having the people or nobles on their side.
What if I made a flyer that promoted a "Black lives matter mostly peaceful arson and riot" ? Somehow I don't think Stanford would be saying "chill out it's just satire."
I’m interested in a neutral explanation of why this post is widely downvoted.
What is the significant difference between a satirical flyer titled “Black Lives Matter — Mostly Peaceful Arson and Riot” and a satirical flyer titled “The Originalist Case for Inciting Insurrection”? I’ll grant the second is more original, and perhaps wittier in the context of a mostly progressive law school audience. But both of these are intended to mock one side and entertain the other. Both of these are crass, and both implicitly defame.
However only one of these would be met with a school-wide email from the university president apologizing for the offense and reaffirming commitments to support and promote diversity. I think this is what the original poster is asserting.
Respectfully, I believe you’ve missed the point of my post, which is not to assert the validity or invalidity of either perspective (I agree both should be protected by the first amendment), but to question why the audience of this website downvoted the original post so readily, and to boost the opinion that there is a political bias in university administrations.
Additionally, the flyer about Black Lives Matter could equally well be a talk.
>Additionally, the flyer about Black Lives Matter could equally well be a talk.
And if it were, it might hypothetically have been tolerated.
However, "Black lives matter mostly peaceful arson and riot" doesn't describe a talk, it describes an arson and riot. Claims that Stanford reacting differently to the two would merely be due to political bias is disingenuous projection.
Maybe GP intended to describe a satirical talk exactly like the one in the OP, but they didn't, and their language entirely undercut the premise of their attempted argument.
Ah there’s a simple explanation. When I read the original post I missed the word “a”, which changes the meaning. When I read the post it sounded like a talk criticizing previous protests as riots, not an advertisement for a future protest.
However I still assert that the talk titled as it is in my post would not be met well.
Power in what context? Both sides seem to have power.
I think it’s fair to assume that there is a political bias in university administrations.
Here’s an opinion piece where the author states that in their survey of political leanings in university administration the bias is significant.
I downvoted because the comment feigns victimhood and differential treatment where there is none. Stanford didn’t say “chill out it’s just satire” in this case. It wasn’t until a non-profit advocacy group and the media got involved that Stanford Law suddenly “decided” it was just satire and dropped the proceedings against the student. I have no reason to expect things would have played out any differently for the hypothetical flyer either.
You really have no reason to expect things would have played out differently for a flyer poking fun at BLM? The only reason BLM exists at all is because it is that even completely fact based critiques of its core premise, that black people are being victimized disproportionately by police, are shouted down with religious fervor--to say nothing about the entirely foreseeable, disastrous consequences of its proposals.
I doubt anyone will read these articles because they are afraid of being called racist but for example here:
They are a Republican political organization and have been for decades. They provide a bench of bodies for appointments to forward Republican political policies on the judicial side. Their ideals are a worthless slogan, they operate on realpolitik. They get wealth and power for delivering tax cuts for people like the Scaifes and Mercers.
I think this is one of those extreme cases. The student should be admonished, his actions were presented as absolutely legitimate, and that could have caused harm. What if someone saw the flyer and decided to react violently not realizing it was just satire? While I’m all for speech being protected, in this case the student’s actions were reckless. Keep him from graduating? No, not that serious, but certainly a stern admonishment that satire is fine but don’t try and pass it off as truth.
This happened at Stanford Law School... these are highly educated people who can recognize satire. None of them were going to engage in violent insurrection because of this. He was also very obviously not trying to pass it off as truth.
Given that I've never heard of the Stanford Federalist Society, I would be unable to identify this as satire. It's presented as any other official flyer from that organisation might be.
In a way, it's defamation - a false statement (in its accreditation) that harms the organisation's reputation. For some people, this will be their first experience of that organisation, and those people have no reason to take it as satire.
Please join the Stanford Federalist Society as we welcome Senator Joshua Hawley and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to discuss violent insurrection. Violent insurrection, also known as doing a coup, is a classical system of installing a government. Although widely believed to conflict in every way with the rule of law, violent insurrection can be an effective approach to upholding the principle of limited government. Senator Hawley will argue that the ends justify the means. Attorney General Paxton will explain that when the Supreme Court refuses to exercise its Article III authority to overturn the results of a free and fair election, calling on a violent mob to storm the Capitol represents an appropriate alternative remedy.
That's the thing about well crafted satire - the really effective hard hitting kind is obvious to outsiders but will strike a chord with true believers.
Given that I know nothing about the characters here, I have no reason to believe that such people don't exist. A lot worse does exist in fringe politics.
You don't need to know anything about the characters here to understand the satire.
"Although widely believed to conflict in every way with the rule of law, violent insurrection can be an effective approach to upholding the principle of limited government."
People who believe in limited government believe in the rule of law. Violent insurrection is pointed out to be in conflict with the rule of law, and at the same time held up to be a principle of limited government. Brilliant satire.
"when the Supreme Court refuses to exercise its Article III authority to overturn the results of a free and fair election, calling on a violent mob to storm the Capitol represents an appropriate alternative remedy."
When would a violent mob ever be an appropriate alternative remedy to a free and fair election? The people who actually believe a violent mob is an appropriate remedy would never call the election "free and fair". They believe it was "rigged and stolen". This is what makes this piece satirical; it's making the case from the opposition's point of view while simultaneously refuting itself. Poe's law does not apply. You don't need smiles and winkey faces or a /s to know this is satire.
This went over my head, I'm afraid. You're trying to explain why I should have understood this - which is fine, except that I genuinely didn't (having read the flyer in a level of depth that I normally wouldn't have given to a flyer).
"Limited government" appears to be an American phrase that I'm not familiar with.
According to my reading, the "free and fair election" quote could be sarcastic, from the point of view of someone who doesn't believe it was free or fair.
But people who are at Stanford Law School, which is where the Stanford Federalist Society exists, would have heard of it.
Whether you can identify it as satire is irrelevant because you are not the audience and you never would have seen it if not for the broader publicity.
You're clearly wrong on this, as Stanford Law School has agreed that it is protected speech in the form of satire, and they're obviously much more qualified than you to make that judgement on several levels.
The initial flier advertised a fake talk by US politicians on the subject of violent insurrection, so there was no invitation to actual violence. The listed date and time of the fake talk was 19 days prior to the flier's release, so there was no actual invitation to even attend a peaceful event.
Please explain how someone could react violently by not realizing the flier was satire.
Yes :) . "I measured the spectral characteristics of fresh snow and found that it reflects light in proportions making it appear to be white" - "This distinguished gentleman maintains that it was traditionally assumed since long time ago that snow doesn't reflect or emit light, which makes it black" - "I don't see why perspective of the first is any more valid than the second, just because the first took the time to conduct the experiments and have a grasp of the facts."
This seems to be the growing trend of anything happening online or within media outlets. "We hold these rights as sacrosanct for all people ...unless they use those rights against causes or people for which we support, including us!"
The ACLU is more of a partisan organization aligned with the democrats nowadays. Good or bad, it has been great for their fundraising. (Of course the same has happened to many other groups which have switched to being partisan aligned on one side or another)
EFF and FIRE seem more similar to the “old” ACLU although both have very limited missions.
> The ACLU is more of a partisan organization aligned with the democrats nowadays.
In that as the set of political realignments that started with the New Deal, got new direction from the Civil Rights movement and the response to it, and completed around the mid-1990s wound up, the Republicans, who were not consistently so before the realignment, ended up firmly opposed to both core principles of the ACLU and, as a tribal identity marker, the ACLU itseld (heck, even in the 1980s, Republicans used a Democratic candidate being a “card carrying member of the ACLU” as an attack.)
The ACLU didn't really go anywhere, the national partisan alignment shifted so that the positions it always held were partisan.
Actually just saw another reported piece from the NYT pop up on this, but I’ve seen others in the same vein previously which informed my comment.
“Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis: An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html
That's what we all thought, until the case at Smith College came up, where a kid got a couple of cafeteria workers fired. Personally, I will never support the ACLU again. They utterly disqualified themselves over that, and since they didn't even issue a statement over their conduct they disqualified themselves even further,
My chemistry teacher at school (that was in Europe) once lost it over someone who had vandalised an election poster. Elections were coming up, and someone had vandalized a poster from the Socialists. Dude himself was part of the right lunatic fringe himself, but (maybe because of that) the constitutional right of political expression was sacred to him.
And here in the US you need to engage in discussion with your betters about your right to political speech. It's disheartening, it really is.
Worth noting that the organization that came to the satirist’s defense, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, “FIRE” took a principled stand here. In other cases, it sides with the Federalist Society which comes under criticism from the left.
For example, the Rutgers law school student bar association had required all organizations under it to have sessions on CRT, but FIRE threatened to sue and they relented.
Whether one agrees with their principles or not, that was an absolute power move. If one is on the fence - would you rather associate with organization like this or a side that shuts down any opportunity for a discourse.
I would much rather stand with the principled institution.
That being said, the opposing institution that uses it's resources to shut down opportunities for discourse will probably end up being more powerful and successful in propagating it's ideology in the long-run.
I'm personally always for discourse, whether I'm dealing with a principled institution or not. I'm the type that will usually side against the issuer of an ultimatum. Although, I loathe hypocrisy, so will usually side with a principled institution over the alternative. I guess it really depends on the situation. The devil is in the details or some such something or other.
The best part of being a centrist is that everyone else naturally hates me, so it's easy to pick one side or the other in each individual situation, with no loyalties.
> The student alleged that Wallace’s satire “defamed” the Stanford Federalist Society, causing “harm” to the student group and to the “individual reputations” of the officers.
This reminds of me of the case of 'Hustler Magazine v. Falwell', detailed in the film 'The People vs. Larry Flynt'.
The court affirmed, unanimously, that with regard to public figures and organizations, people_do_ have the right to try to cause harm and damage to their reputations. And why shouldn't we? In the case of satire, that's exactly the point.
meanwhile if a conservative posted a flyer the whole school and media and rainbow-hairs would be dancing in ecstasy cheering that the hateful bigot was removed
This is one in a grand history of parody flyers and papers on campus.
The Chapparal used to love taking the mickey out of the Stanford Daily by printing up fake papers and dropping them in the Daily’s newspaper racks around campus on one of their off days. Stories were told of the Daily staffers running madly around campus trying to remove them.
The student LGBT organization responded to an infamous two-page spread published by the Stanford Review about the evils of homosexuality with a none-too-polite two-page spread of their own.
The only thing that might have been improved in this case: a disclaimer at the bottom. I’m amused a law student didn’t think to include that.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadSure, it's perfectly legal to exercise your free speech rights, but dragging someone through the mud dissuades many people from making criticisms.
What is the significant difference between a satirical flyer titled “Black Lives Matter — Mostly Peaceful Arson and Riot” and a satirical flyer titled “The Originalist Case for Inciting Insurrection”? I’ll grant the second is more original, and perhaps wittier in the context of a mostly progressive law school audience. But both of these are intended to mock one side and entertain the other. Both of these are crass, and both implicitly defame.
However only one of these would be met with a school-wide email from the university president apologizing for the offense and reaffirming commitments to support and promote diversity. I think this is what the original poster is asserting.
> But both of these are intended to mock one side and entertain the other. Both of these are crass, and both implicitly defame.
So what? That's not illegal. You're allowed to criticize others—that's a key purpose of the First Amendment.
Respectfully, I believe you’ve missed the point of my post, which is not to assert the validity or invalidity of either perspective (I agree both should be protected by the first amendment), but to question why the audience of this website downvoted the original post so readily, and to boost the opinion that there is a political bias in university administrations.
Additionally, the flyer about Black Lives Matter could equally well be a talk.
And if it were, it might hypothetically have been tolerated.
However, "Black lives matter mostly peaceful arson and riot" doesn't describe a talk, it describes an arson and riot. Claims that Stanford reacting differently to the two would merely be due to political bias is disingenuous projection.
Maybe GP intended to describe a satirical talk exactly like the one in the OP, but they didn't, and their language entirely undercut the premise of their attempted argument.
However I still assert that the talk titled as it is in my post would not be met well.
I think it’s fair to assume that there is a political bias in university administrations. Here’s an opinion piece where the author states that in their survey of political leanings in university administration the bias is significant.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/opinion/liberal-college-a...
I could not find any documentation or review of this survey. It does agree with my own observation however.
I doubt anyone will read these articles because they are afraid of being called racist but for example here:
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/32/15877
and then there was a very small "correction" which changes nothing:
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/16/9127
and then note the weasily "retraction" that don't really retract anything that happened right when BLM was taking off.
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/30/18130
If you dont think BLM receives special treatment please contact me because I have a bridge in new york to sell you.
>https://www.pnas.org/content/117/30/18130
Holy cow. One can almost see the gun pointed off-camera at the hostage assuring viewers that he is being well treated!
This entire episode is completely on-brand.
In a way, it's defamation - a false statement (in its accreditation) that harms the organisation's reputation. For some people, this will be their first experience of that organisation, and those people have no reason to take it as satire.
Given that I know nothing about the characters here, I have no reason to believe that such people don't exist. A lot worse does exist in fringe politics.
"Limited government" appears to be an American phrase that I'm not familiar with.
According to my reading, the "free and fair election" quote could be sarcastic, from the point of view of someone who doesn't believe it was free or fair.
That's more a statement about your reading comprehension skills than about the flyer.
Whether you can identify it as satire is irrelevant because you are not the audience and you never would have seen it if not for the broader publicity.
You're clearly wrong on this, as Stanford Law School has agreed that it is protected speech in the form of satire, and they're obviously much more qualified than you to make that judgement on several levels.
Please explain how someone could react violently by not realizing the flier was satire.
EFF and FIRE seem more similar to the “old” ACLU although both have very limited missions.
In that as the set of political realignments that started with the New Deal, got new direction from the Civil Rights movement and the response to it, and completed around the mid-1990s wound up, the Republicans, who were not consistently so before the realignment, ended up firmly opposed to both core principles of the ACLU and, as a tribal identity marker, the ACLU itseld (heck, even in the 1980s, Republicans used a Democratic candidate being a “card carrying member of the ACLU” as an attack.)
The ACLU didn't really go anywhere, the national partisan alignment shifted so that the positions it always held were partisan.
Actually just saw another reported piece from the NYT pop up on this, but I’ve seen others in the same vein previously which informed my comment.
“Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis: An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html
According to the article neither employee was fired: one was placed on paid leave for three months, another was transferred to a different dorm.
It's a typical HR tactic - instead of firing a troublesome employee you make life unbearable for them so they leave on their own accord.
And here in the US you need to engage in discussion with your betters about your right to political speech. It's disheartening, it really is.
For example, the Rutgers law school student bar association had required all organizations under it to have sessions on CRT, but FIRE threatened to sue and they relented.
https://www.thefire.org/victory-facing-public-pressure-rutge...
That being said, the opposing institution that uses it's resources to shut down opportunities for discourse will probably end up being more powerful and successful in propagating it's ideology in the long-run.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
The best part of being a centrist is that everyone else naturally hates me, so it's easy to pick one side or the other in each individual situation, with no loyalties.
This reminds of me of the case of 'Hustler Magazine v. Falwell', detailed in the film 'The People vs. Larry Flynt'.
The court affirmed, unanimously, that with regard to public figures and organizations, people_do_ have the right to try to cause harm and damage to their reputations. And why shouldn't we? In the case of satire, that's exactly the point.
The Chapparal used to love taking the mickey out of the Stanford Daily by printing up fake papers and dropping them in the Daily’s newspaper racks around campus on one of their off days. Stories were told of the Daily staffers running madly around campus trying to remove them.
The student LGBT organization responded to an infamous two-page spread published by the Stanford Review about the evils of homosexuality with a none-too-polite two-page spread of their own.
The only thing that might have been improved in this case: a disclaimer at the bottom. I’m amused a law student didn’t think to include that.