> It's not a 'defence' but a simple refutation of your claim that companies coming under pressure from some quarters to fire employees for sentiments they have expressed is a uniquely Western thing

And it's not a refutation at all, because the examples you cite are themselves restricted to particular jurisdictions (and I'm sure of this because I spent the past ten years travelling the entire world and never saw anything of the magnitude I've seen coming from the west during that period), and the incidents are far more excessive breaches of the local cultural etiquette in incidents where they do end up causing outrage, whereas in the west you can be legally hounded by professional victims for not using their pretend pronouns, and people make art forms out of misinterpreting things to be as offended as possible for no reason at all obviously because it gives them power whilst those who would like to pretend it's not the fatal problem it clearly is choose to continuously ignore or minimise it, even while cadres of the discussed movements in question are out burning down cities, looting, and other typical obvious indicators that things have gone seriously wrong, this discussion itself being a perfect case in point.

> (Bit of a stretch to suggest India has been amongst the 'worst authoritarian and theocratic dictatorships' since its independence too...).

Pointing out that the worst authoritarian and theocratic dictatorships are the nearest analogs to the "me-too"-ism you cite doesn't imply that applies to India in particular, my reference to theocratic dictatorships was mostly regarding middle eastern jurisdictions at any rate.

> you're trying remarkably hard to find an angle sufficiently obtuse for you to drag my bland statement that companies think all sorts of different behaviour outside working hours gives them cause to fire people into your culture war...

Not at all, I'm not even disagreeing with that statement. I'm simply pointing out it's symptomatic of a disease rather than a positive or neutral thing that should just be accepted.

> And it's not a refutation at all, because the examples you cite are themselves restricted to particular jurisdictions (and I'm sure of this because I spent the past ten years travelling the entire world and never saw anything of the magnitude I've seen coming from the west during that period), and the incidents are far more excessive breaches of the local cultural etiquette in incidents where they do end up causing outrage

I've travelled the world too, but with my eyes open :) In that time I've visited countries where literal lynch mobs hunt people accused of participating in the beef trade or having sex before marriage, countries where the mildest of perceived criticisms of royalty will earn you a minimum three year jail term in addition to the lasting enmity of locals, and countries with excruciatingly forced politeness and elaborate systems of honorifics which are a lot harder to grasp than she/her. Those are the nominal democracies, not the ones with supreme leaders or religious absolutists. And there's still well over a quarter of the world where homosexuality isn't merely grounds for firing and shaming your family, but also a criminal offence. Perhaps you believe these cultural norms are more intrinsically worth defending than politeness towards transpeople, but it's safe to say that culture warriors who've been no-platformed by the side of the 'trans debate' they want to silence are raking in donations rather than languishing in jails.

So I'm afraid I find it laughable to hear that people who espouse illiberal views on minorities in the West are unique in the magnitude of their victimhood because they might attract so much attention their book becomes a bestseller or they become elected President of the United States.

One of the consequences of greater levels of free speech is greater exposure to criticism, justified and otherwise.

> I've travelled the world too, but with my eyes open :)

Clearly not, since exactly as I already said, the examples you cite are restricted to specific jurisdictions it's quite easy to avoid, although the one you go to with the example of "excruciatingly forced politeness" has me scratching my head about the problem, frankly.

> Perhaps you believe these cultural norms are more intrinsically worth defending than politeness towards transpeople

I don't really care about any of those cultural norms frankly, and the position of free speech absolutists has nothing whatsoever to do with "politeness towards transpeople". Being able to describe reality without censoring the truth is an essential function of analysis and thus improvement of that reality. Prohibiting or policing it inevitably results in the degradation of that reality because the problems you're not allowed to discuss can't be addressed, either. This is the fundamental reason for free speech absolutism, not concerns about "lol it's fun to trigger the transpeople / leftists / marxists / religious conservatives" or whatever other juvenile nonsense passes muster for the straw man you're trying to present it as.

> but it's safe to say that culture warriors who've been no-platformed by the side of the 'trans debate' they want to silence are raking in donations rather than languishing in jails.

And what exactly does that position have to do with saying it's not a big deal that free speech is being continuously eroded in the jurisdictions where it's traditionally been taken for granted and the idea of that erosion was seen as absurd not two decades ago? You cite another group of people who'd like to erode it in the other direction and you think you've actually made an argument as to why it should be eroded? Because almost everybody has gone mad, or has always in fact been mad and it has simply become more obvious as time progresses and social media displays their madness for all to directly observe?

> people who espouse illiberal views on minorities in the West are unique in the magnitude of their victimhood because they might attract so much attention their book becomes a bestseller or they become elected President of the United States.

I honestly can't even parse this sentence into something that has a relationship to material reality, do you think people defending free speech have a problem with minorities and that's baked into the position or something and you're just jumping to that conclusion immediately without actually examining it at all?

> One of the consequences of greater levels of free speech is greater exposure to criticism, justified and otherwise.

And that'd be just grand, because those trying to restrict that speech are in desperate need of greater criticism, and it is entirely justified.

> Clearly not, since exactly as I already said, the examples you cite are restricted to specific jurisdictions it's quite easy to avoid

Please, enlighten me. Name me a state which conforms to your ideals of 'free speech absolutism', where people are free to say whatever they like on any topic without any risk of public outcry or legal repercussions. I'll wait.

> do you think people defending free speech have a problem with minorities and that's baked into the position or something and you're just jumping to that conclusion immediately without actually examining it at all?

No, I believe that your display of visceral hostility towards the speech of 'professional offence takers' and insinuation that being asked to use particular pronouns is a burden to which all other requests/demands to comply with cultural norms pale in comparison is an indication of a type of speech you value over others, in this case the speech of the person offending the minority group over the speech of the offended party. People actually defending freedom of expression as a general principle don't tend to argue that the most uniquely horrible threat to freedom of speech worldwide comes from those using their own speech to argue that a particular person is a bigot their company or university shouldn't host. Partly because they care about securing people's right to advocate boycotts even if they don't agree with boycotts, and partly because much of the rest of the world is entirely comfortable with jailing people for wrongthink.

> Please, enlighten me. Name me a state which conforms to your ideals of 'free speech absolutism'

My point wasn't that there was, it was that the things you were pointing out were easily avoided by not going to the jurisdictions in which they were prevalent. Ironically, the answer to your question not that long ago would have been what is considered western countries.

> No, I believe that your display of visceral hostility towards the speech of 'professional offence takers' and insinuation that being asked to use particular pronouns is a burden to which all other requests/demands to comply with cultural norms pale in comparison is an indication of a type of speech you value over others

Well, you're wrong once again. I don't care if objections to free speech are rooted in leftist marxist arguments for subversion, snowflake tier nonsense about feelings protection, or brutalist fascist arguments for protecting the prestige of the state, they're all equally as bad as each other and I do not value any particular objection any higher than the other. The simple fact is though the ones that actually are eroding free speech in the western world today are very firmly on the emotional and leftist side of the political spectrum, which is why those are the ones I'm attacking directly in this discussion. All other forms of infringement on free speech pale in comparison to those.

> in this case the speech of the person offending the minority group over the speech of the offended party.

Once again, complete nonsense, if you're preferencing a right to free speech of special interest group A over group B, then you're by definition not a free speech absolutist. My view is that stupid people ought to be able to say stupid things without being silenced by other stupid people, and you analyse the trainwreck at the end to figure out where the actual truth lies, and without that process you never get to figure out the truth to begin with.

> People actually defending freedom of expression don't tend to argue that the most uniquely horrible threat to freedom of speech worldwide comes from those using their own speech to argue that a particular person is a bigot their company or university shouldn't host.

This is completely false, this is typically the exact kind of people that other free speech absolutists including myself are ringing alarm bells about precisely because they are the ones most effectively eroding free speech in the modern world, and having people like you come to their defense despite the magnitude of harm their idiocy entails.

> Partly because they care about securing people's right to advocate boycotts even if they don't agree with boycotts

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at all, but for what it's worth I'm completely comfortable with the idea that people ought to be able to boycott whoever they please for whatever reason they please and that has nothing to do with freedom of speech, unless of course you're mandating the global boycott of party x in order to impose a chilling effect on their freedom of speech as party y, which is abhorrent, yes.

> and partly because much of the rest of the world is entirely comfortable with jailing people for wrongthink.

Which is why it's such a great tragedy that the last vestiges of the place where this was not the case has now vigorously reversed course on that state now means by magnitude, the modern west is one of the least free places in terms of speech. That is utterly horrific.

So in a world in which the President of the United States openly expresses envy of how Kim Il Sung is treated by his compatriots, calls the free press 'the enemy of the people', sees reversing Section 230 as a pre-election priority and even feels the need to wade into stuff as trivial as NFL to insist they use firings to chill protest, you are trying to argue the only things free speech absolutists should be concerned about come from people with comparatively little power on the left of the political spectrum saying they are offended by things. Right.

The allegedly much worse examples you've cited of the left eroding free speech are the 'me too' movement involving women talking about their experiences of sexual harassment [an exercise of freedom of speech you found so abhorrent you compared it to Middle Eastern state and cultural oppression of women] and transpeople requesting people use pronouns you apparently disapprove of.

I think we both know that we are not going to reach agreement here, but one thing we both have in common is that clearly neither of us are free speech absolutists.

> So in a world in which the President of the United States openly expresses envy of how Kim Il Sung is treated

The fact that a politician is narcissistic is as unsurprising as it is irrelevant to the discussion topic at hand.

> calls the free press 'the enemy of the people'

To be fair, the attacks on the modern "free press" pulling them up for their transparent lying on a great deal of issues are frequently perfectly justified, and the fact that they are called out for lying isn't restricting their free speech, it's pointing out that they're full of shit. If they were restricted from speaking to begin with there would be no need to point out when they were lying and being manipulative after the fact.

As much as they are full of shit, lie through their teeth, and constantly push narratives that don't hold up to the slightest scrutiny, I still don't believe they should be silenced. That's what free speech absolutism actually means.

> you are trying to argue the only things free speech absolutists should be concerned about come from people with comparatively little power on the left of the political spectrum saying they are offended by things. Right.

I'm not arguing that at all, being a free speech absolutist is arguing that all infringement on free speech is abhorrent. It's simply a point of indisputable fact that the majority of modern infringement on free speech comes from the left and their associated cancel culture cancerous nonsense, the fact you can't even accept this is frankly baffling, but likely emblematic of your observation that it will be impossible for anybody who is aware of that blatant indisputable fact to come to agreement with you.

> The allegedly much worse examples you've cited of the left eroding free speech are the 'me too' movement

Completely incorrect once again, my previous reference to me-too'ism was regarding your defense of the erosion of free speech in the western world being ok because there are other complete shitholes in the world that erode it in a different way, it had nothing to do with the movement you misinterpreted it as.

> but one thing we both have in common is that clearly neither of us are free speech absolutists.

Your confusion is dizzying.

I will leave it to anyone uninvolved unfortunate enough to still be reading this to judge whether your rush to insist that it's perfectly normal for presidents to enthuse about how North Korea does political discourse and that the increase in rhetorical, legislative and physical attacks on the 'enemy' in the media by the right in recent years is 'frequently perfectly justified' is the argument of someone sincerely worried about chilling effects on all speech.

Once again, that simply has nothing to do with free speech, politicians being narcissistic amoral psychopaths is basically in the job description, some of them more obviously than others, but basically all of them. I don't like or approve of any politicians, so your attempts to paint me as some kind of political follower of what you perceive as "the enemy" is frankly just funny.

But whatever you have to do to get yourself past the fact that you're desperately defending some of the most reprehensible conduct in the world today overturning a long standing commitment to what used to be a highly functional and useful set of norms for social communication I guess. If I were in your shoes trying to demonize anybody that disagreed with me would probability be the card I'd be reaching for also.