Censoring of Conservative Voices by Social Media et al.

[Davin]

If the co-owner had kept his mouth shut then nothing would have happened. I can understand that if your business gets destroyed by thugs, you'd probably not a supporter of these George Floyd "protesters". Anyway, he apologised for what he had said about Floyd.
 
The reaction of GoFundMe however wasn't justified, because they blamed Owens for spreading hate, discrimination, intolerance and falsehoods. Which she didn't do. Now, if they'd blamed MSNBC or CNN they'd probably made a very good point.

Ignore everything else and keep repeating the lie. I suppose that works for some people.

In reality though, she did spread hate, discrimination, intolerance and/or falsehoods.

[Davin]

If the co-owner had kept his mouth shut then nothing would have happened. I can understand that if your business gets destroyed by thugs, you'd probably not a supporter of these George Floyd "protesters". Anyway, he apologised for what he had said about Floyd.
 
The reaction of GoFundMe however wasn't justified, because they blamed Owens for spreading hate, discrimination, intolerance and falsehoods. Which she didn't do. Now, if they'd blamed MSNBC or CNN they'd probably made a very good point.

What this means then, is the co-owner should have censored himself before the fact, and Owens should have censored herself before the fact as not to hurt an-other's feelings , or comply to the speech requirements demanded by someone with a specific political point of view or persuasion. Where does that put freedom of speech if we all have to sensor ourselves. And, I find at this point I have an opportunity to voluntarily censor myself in this presentation so not to offend others.

Wow, some people need to take a civics class.

On one hand, Candice Owens gets banned from a private companies platform.

On the other hand, protestors are being bullied, intimidated, tortured, and arrested by the government.

One of these is an actual attack on free speech the other is not.



I'll give you a hint: Owens can spread all the lies and hurt all the feelings she wants and no one is going to take away her freedom of speech. Every company in the United States can ban her from their platforms and she will still be able to say what she wants. The government is not going to intimidate her, torture her, or arrest her for what she is saying.

[Recusant]

I listened to the first five minutes of Candace Owens's George Floyd video. I'll probably listen to the rest, but will give my comments on what I've spent the time listening to and checking. First a couple of direct quotes from the video:

. . . "the family of George Floyd deserves justice for the way that he died. But I also am not going to accept the narrative that this is the best the black community has to offer. For whatever reason it has become fashionable over the last five or six years for us to turn criminals into heroes overnight. It is something that I find to be despicable and it is something that I refuse to stand by any longer and I am not going to play a part in it no matter how much pressure comes from black liberals and black conservatives as some token of people wanting you to believe that this is the only way you can be black is you have to say 'this was wrong' and that this person was amazing. I won't do that."

"George Floyd is being uplifted as an amazing human being."

I have seen at least one mural using George Floyd's face, and his image has been fairly widely used on protest signs. However I have not heard anybody claiming that he was "the best the black community has to offer." In fact I'd say that is a lie. He's being held up as a symbol of a long-running problem. Black people, black men in particular, receive harsher treatment at the hands of the police, up to and including being killed unjustifiably. Hispanic and Latino people also get the same sort of disproportionate treatment from the police. If anybody doubts that, we can look at statistics that show it.

George Floyd, to the extent that he's become an icon, is not an icon of "the best the black community has to offer." He's an icon of all those in the black community (and other communities) who've been victims of excessive use of force by police. Candace Owens is misrepresenting the situation, claiming that the "black community" is making him into a hero. I don't think she's that out of touch. It appears to me that she's being dishonest.

She claims that the autopsy reports showed Floyd was "high on fentanyl and he was high on methamphetamine." This is inaccurate. The press release from the medical examiner mentions "intoxication" only in relation to fentanyl, while describing "recent methamphetamine use." In other words, the level of fentanyl in his system indicated intoxication, but regarding methamphetamines what they found would have been metabolites of the drug. Otherwise they would have said "methamphetamine intoxication." He wasn't "high on methamphetamine."

Her description of the transcript of the call to the police is sensationalized but fairly accurate, up to a point. She claims that the caller said that Floyd was "acting weird" outside the store. That is false. The caller said that Floyd was sitting on a car outside the store, and appeared to be drunk--"not acting right".  She claims that Floyd's behavior made the caller fearful. I don't know where she got that, but it wasn't from the transcript. She creates a false quote from the call:

"They, in their police call, said that this person was obviously distorted on drugs."

Again, that isn't what the caller said. They had previously said "he's awfully drunk," and when asked whether Floyd was "under the influence of something" they replied "Something like that, yes. He is not acting right."

She talks about a "baggie of what looks to be like, cocaine, it's a white baggie" that she claims Floyd dropped when he was being arrested, and was already in handcuffs. I've looked at the footage in question, and it does show something falling to the ground, but it's not clear that it came from Floyd. If he had been holding something in his hand when the police put the handcuffs on him you'd think they'd have noticed. Regardless, there has been no claim by the police that they found any drugs during the arrest of Floyd, so this seems to be a detail that she's latched onto to promote her narrative that Floyd wasn't "the best the black community has to offer."

As if that's relevant.

I don't know why Owens does this, but it's a regular feature with her. She doesn't give an honest depiction of events, and it's easy enough to show that, as I did above with a recent tweet from her and am doing here.

[Tom62]

We know that politicians and the media are "flexible" with truth, both on the left as on the right. No surprises here. So in essence Owens' story is correct, but she gave it a populist spin to it. My main objection to Owens' story is that it wasn't the right time, nor the right thing to do. The sensitivities were/are far too high and some people might have seen it as inflammatory. But, that is freedom of speech and she has the right to exercise that freedom. The same freedom that protects other people when they say all kind of nasty things about Owens, Shapiro and other conservatives.

[Recusant]

I think there is a clear distinction between the black community "uplifting" Floyd "as an amazing human being" and the black community using his image as an icon meant give a human face to victims of police abuse of power.

It also seems pretty clear that the latter is what is going on rather than the former. To the extent that Floyd has been "uplifted" it's been as a victim of gross injustice, not as an outstandingly moral or righteous person.

The mural I mentioned earlier has Floyd's face along with the names of other victims of police abuse of power. Not the names of people like Martin Luther King Jr or Booker Washington: people who might rightfully be called "amazing".



Other murals with his image have words like "I can't breathe" or "Rest in Peace" or "Black Lives Matter / Fight Racism." None that I've seen are glorifying Floyd as an "amazing" person.

It's clear enough that I think the charge of "spreading falsehoods against the black community" has some basis. I would not be surprised to encounter more of the same in the parts of the video I haven't listened to.

[Davin]

We know that politicians and the media are "flexible" with truth, both on the left as on the right. No surprises here. So in essence Owens' story is correct, but she gave it a populist spin to it. My main objection to Owens' story is that it wasn't the right time, nor the right thing to do. The sensitivities were/are far too high and some people might have seen it as inflammatory. But, that is freedom of speech and she has the right to exercise that freedom. The same freedom that protects other people when they say all kind of nasty things about Owens, Shapiro and other conservatives.

Like the most liars, she pulled in bits and pieces that were true, and added in a lot of things that were not. In essence, she is lying.

Eventually you might want to wonder about why you're defending dishonest people doing dishonest things. Maybe there is a better standard to hold.

[Tom62]

We know that politicians and the media are "flexible" with truth, both on the left as on the right. No surprises here. So in essence Owens' story is correct, but she gave it a populist spin to it. My main objection to Owens' story is that it wasn't the right time, nor the right thing to do. The sensitivities were/are far too high and some people might have seen it as inflammatory. But, that is freedom of speech and she has the right to exercise that freedom. The same freedom that protects other people when they say all kind of nasty things about Owens, Shapiro and other conservatives.

Like the most liars, she pulled in bits and pieces that were true, and added in a lot of things that were not. In essence, she is lying.

Eventually you might want to wonder about why you're defending dishonest people doing dishonest things. Maybe there is a better standard to hold.

Well, I think you have made a very good point there. I think I fell for her good looks. But you have to admit that it is hard to find honest people in politics. I think that Bernie Sanders comes very close, but I'm not a great fan of him and he isn't so good looking as Owens.

[Randy]

But you have to admit that it is hard to find honest people in politics.

An honest politician is an oxymoron.

[No one]

Now, now, now, not all politicians are bad. Some are dead.

[Davin]

We know that politicians and the media are "flexible" with truth, both on the left as on the right. No surprises here. So in essence Owens' story is correct, but she gave it a populist spin to it. My main objection to Owens' story is that it wasn't the right time, nor the right thing to do. The sensitivities were/are far too high and some people might have seen it as inflammatory. But, that is freedom of speech and she has the right to exercise that freedom. The same freedom that protects other people when they say all kind of nasty things about Owens, Shapiro and other conservatives.

Like the most liars, she pulled in bits and pieces that were true, and added in a lot of things that were not. In essence, she is lying.

Eventually you might want to wonder about why you're defending dishonest people doing dishonest things. Maybe there is a better standard to hold.

Well, I think you have made a very good point there. I think I fell for her good looks. But you have to admit that it is hard to find honest people in politics. I think that Bernie Sanders comes very close, but I'm not a great fan of him and he isn't so good looking as Owens.

And when the best and/or the ones we support do something bad, we don't have to and we should not defend their bad behavior.

[Recusant]

Following through on the logic of the first section of Candace Owens's video: Say we accept everything she says as gospel. George Floyd was a criminal who was high on drugs when he was arrested. The black community is glorifying this criminal as an exemplar of what's best about their community.

What reaction is that narrative intended to elicit? If the listener is already inclined to think ill of the black community, I think it would tend to deepen their antipathy toward that community. For some hypothetical neutral person, I think it would tend to arouse suspicion of and distrust toward the black community.

[Tom62]

Assuming that she didn't do it with malicious intends (I'm sure that Davin disagrees) then a hypothetical neutral person perhaps thinks that
- George Floyd was murdered, but
- people should not hold persons with a criminal history like in him high regards; and
- it is a bad idea to believe in a victimization ideology, which tells black people that they are not to blame for any crimes committed, because the system (and especially white men) are responsible for all bad things in life.

[Recusant]

She outright claims that the black community is making Floyd a hero. That is a lie. She knows that people in the black community aren't going to accept a lie she's told about them, so who is she speaking to? Her primary audience is the Trumpists who already have a low opinion of the black community. She's not doing anything to change that opinion. On the contrary, she's reinforcing their prejudice with her lies.

As for "victimization ideology," yes that's one of her go-to talking points. There is validity to the idea of opposing that line of thinking. Are the George Floyd protests an expression of victimization ideology though?

There is a legitimate grievance on the part of the black community and other minority communities in the US that are disproportionally subject to police abuse of power. Drawing attention to that,  denouncing it and bringing pressure to bear to try to effect change is not victimization ideology in my opinion.

[Davin]

Assuming that she didn't do it with malicious intends (I'm sure that Davin disagrees)

There isn't much room for anything else. There are parts in her statements that came from somewhere other than the facts, either she heard them from somewhere else and didn't honestly seek the truth of them or she made them up knowing they were false. In the least, she is being intellectually dishonest, we can never determine if she knew she was spreading falsehoods, only that she was spreading falsehoods.

then a hypothetical neutral person perhaps thinks that
- George Floyd was murdered, but
- people should not hold persons with a criminal history like in him high regards; and
- it is a bad idea to believe in a victimization ideology, which tells black people that they are not to blame for any crimes committed, because the system (and especially white men) are responsible for all bad things in life.

So the intended message (if honest), is pretty stupid and pointless then.

However, if the message is dishonest then she (or the people manipulating her), know what they're doing using these manipulation tactics.

[Tom62]

The whole George Floyd thing has now become so politicized that I've lost my appetite.