05.09.21
Gemini version available ♊︎Some Background on the Free Speech Society at the University of Buckingham, Where Richard Stallman is Being ‘Replatformed’
Summary: A private British university, the University of Buckingham, will ‘host’ (virtually) the most-defamed person in the Free software world; the Free Speech Society is only two years old and rationality for its existence is explained by its co-founder James Oliver
GNU/Linux founder Richard Stallman (RMS) will be back to public speaking. Yes, public (he spoke more privately, but that’s not the same thing). Co-founder of the society that invited RMS to give a speech tomorrow had spoken last year to some show, as presented above. James Oliver speaks about the whole “I’m in favour of free speech, but…” phenomenon and portrayal of free speech as a “political wing” thing (tribalism, divisive politicking). He says it’s “concerning the people are branding this right wing” although historically a lot of ‘anti-Establishment’ politics (suppressed by power) came from the so-called ‘left’ (wings are a binary over-simplification). Many left-leaning people are still being banned and deplatformed (or ‘cancelled’); Mr. Oliver gives some recent examples.
Associating empathy with suppression of free speech is understandable, but morever that can lead to problematic situations where people’s views cannot be expressed even if they’re perfectly legitimate and true. Watch the response to the Linux Foundation doing its corporate trolling over in Twitter (fronting for IBM, which wants to obscure its very dark past); it backfired spectacularly [1, 2, 3, 4] because nowadays they censor history itself [1, 2]. They like to pretend GNU does not exist and they call GNU “Linux”. The Linux Foundation is to the GNU/Linux operating system what Shiva Ayyadurai is to E-mail. █
Credit (video): The New Culture Forum Channel
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