I very much agree with all the pro-free-speech comments here - but I’m also interested in another aspect: what do people think politics is?
Surely anything governments or other authorities might legislate on is ‘political’?
Women’s football, for example - given its history - is a very political subject, and women in the national team - and moreover the ground-breaking previous teams - are very aware of this history. I believe, indeed, the feeling that they had to carve out their own place in a world that had previously banned them probably played a roll in their victory.
But it seems I couldn’t say such a thing in that thread without the ‘cancel culture’ lobby jumping on it?
The women’s football thread should have been a simple ‘joyful event’ discussion about the Lionesses winning the Euro’s yet was destroyed by men who should know better and who claim to be ‘enlightened’, politics should not have come into it.
Many people were not happy that bringing politics into that discussion effectively closed the thread before it had barely got started and you were party to that, all this ‘free speech’ bollox is just that.
There will always be eloquent thinkers, highly motivated, highly politically minded and cool minded people around - everywhere, whatever the subject matter. Who won’t be laying down their swords, however irritating, ever….
The question ‘how can one bring politics into women’s football’ is probably being worked on right now…and I see may already have been answered above…
We should probably be careful when using things like this because they’re so subjective. I certainly didn’t see many people, I saw a couple of very noisy people making an unholy entirely unnecessary fuss, but that’s precisely because my many and your many is entirely subjective. I’m not for a second suggesting you’re in the wrong and I’m in the right, I tend to assume I’m in the wrong about pretty much everything all the time, but it does rather highlight the point.
@DrMarkH made a joke in passing about the way Boris Johnson might have celebrated the victory - quite a perceptive joke in fact because it satirised the jingoistic way in which some on the political right see these things. It was a one-liner that was not in any way disruptive, had in itself no impact on the thread - until of course the '‘cancel culture’ mob swooped (or rather, as Kirstea says, the cancel culture pair).
A similar thing just happened in the ‘Age is only a number’ thread - @Moray, @Cromdale and @Flocreen exchanged some entirely innocent remarks which happened to mention the NHS in passing - but it seems now any mention of anything - well, not even politcal really, just a bit thoughtful - is regarded as too contentious by some.
The reason I raised the question ‘what do people think politics is’ ? is that it has always seemed to me that the most central issue in censorship is the question of who judges ?
Some seem to deem practically any mention of anything a bit thoughtful - even if it’s a joke! - as beyond the pale. They want, I can only assume, a pre-perestroika-pravda forum - that only tells the good news…
Introducing a different subject matter into a thread often relies on context and in this instance it was just wrong. Had the thread been solely about what the victory means for equality and the empowerment of women then maybe you could judge that there was perhaps a political angle but even then I’m not sure.
I’m rather inclined to the view that what happened on the Women’s Football thread was more a case of “Call Out Culture” as opposed to cancel culture. The introduction of politics was called out and a polite request was made that perhaps, on this occasion, it could be left without any political slant. Unfortunately that was seen by you as an affront to your “Freedom of Speech” and you framed the request as some form of ‘Cancel Culture’. Those same tropes are being rehearsed again in this thread, which again was a very polite request by the OP for some form of personal restraint by other members. Not a demand but a request perhaps to consider others points of view.
But what gives you the right, Tim, not only to disagree with other’s comments, but to go that step further and say ‘that type of comment doesn’t belong here’?
Moreover, going that step further is always going to provoke a political discussion, isn’t it? - because you then not only have 2 opposing views of what the thread is actually about, you have the added extreme political position of trying to silence the opposed view. Even from the point of view of thread focus it makes no sense to try to censor posts you don’t like.
But then I think @Mat_Davies ’ earlier comment is apposite
What purports to be a complaint about ‘politics’ is really a complaint that other people don’t see the world in the same way, and have the temerity to mention it.
It’s difficult to police - easy enough if someone calls another user “an ignorant tosser”, rather harder if the accusation is that someone is “an old duffer” (though @Cat didn’t let that one pass either).
My own view is that any good referee knows that when an infraction occurred but neither side gained an advantage or when play has moved on, raising a card and stopping play is not always the best move.
