Amerikaner der Generation Z sind eher bereit, Blockaden und Gewalt anzuwenden, um öffentliche Redner zu stoppen. Junge Liberale unterstützten diese Methoden tendenziell stärker als Konservative, doch diese ideologische Kluft verschwand, als es in den Fragen um die Unterdrückung spezifischer, höchst anstößiger Ideen ging.
Gen Z Americans are more willing to use blockades and violence to stop public speakers
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**Gen Z Americans are more willing to use blockades and violence to stop public speakers**
A survey of over 4,000 individuals found that Gen Z Americans tend to be more accepting of shoutdowns, blockades, and violence as methods to suppress speech than their older compatriots, regardless of whether they are asked about these tactics in the abstract or against speech they find personally offensive. Young liberals tended to be more supportive of these methods compared to conservatives when asked abstractly worded questions, but this ideological gap disappeared when the questions referred to suppressing specific, highly offensive ideas. The paper was published in [*PS: Political Science & Politics*](https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096526102157).
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/generational-and-ideological-divides-in-support-for-speechsuppressing-protest/408A62CACEC1F1780EF99897CE034D4D
I think this proves that Gen Z Americans are more willing to admit to being willing to use violence and blockades to stop speech.
This idea that America has a long history of allowing people to speak and hearing each other out is disproven time and time again throughout our history. Speech and protests have ALWAYS had a measure of violence and threats, and I firmly believe the „uptick“ we’re seeing is just that it’s more in our faces now with social media and 24 hour news coverage
Deprive people of prosperity and dignity for their whole lives, actively degrade standards of living. Deny them a house, a job, food and amenities. Give them nothing or just scraps when they protest, protect the elite from severe crime. Finally, wonder why the youth is now radicalized.
As I understand it, liberals were more okay with the concept of using these methods, but once specific examples were brought up, conservatives and moderates were just as accepting of the tactics.
I wonder if this has to do with relative youth, or whether this is a generational value that won’t fade with age. I know I was a lot more hot-headed when I was young.
A lot of people like to quote Popper’s Paradox of Intolerance, but the problem is, if that principle is just allowed to be claimed by anyone, then eventually only the powerful and heavily-armed will have free speech.
*Anyone* can claim, „I’m being intolerant of intolerance!“ while stamping a boot on an opponent’s neck.
Genuine question – but who gets to decide what is „specific, highly offensive ideas“?
The individual? The collective?
EDIT: The reason I ask the question is that the answer becomes very relevant when you (the royal you) are asking others to suppress and/ban it. Violently, in some cases.
The sign that girl is holding doesn’t make sense to me. Hate speech is free speech, I’d say it’s a bad use of it and it’s our duty to combat it every way possible with good arguments against their stupid hateful positions. Am I missing something here?
There’s nothing liberal about anyone that ascribes to those values.
They’ve grown up with Charlottesville and hate rallies in the open. People chanting for the deaths of minorities, packed with armed white supremacist militias, with the support of law enforcement and the government.
It’s very significant that these questions ask about disrupting speakers, and not government action against protestors. There is a history of right wing support for using violence against speech, when law enforcement is the one doing it.
>For many Millennials and Zoomers who are not on the political left, disruptive actions interfering with speech are justifiable only when they target specifically offensive speech. In stark contrast, many young liberals appear to view speech-suppressing protest actions as broadly justifiable, regardless of whether the actions target speakers that they personally find objectionable.
In other words the liberals support the right to oppositional speech and protest. While for conservatives it is more often that the right to protest depends on the content of the speech.
It just shows how k-12 education has lost its way. Education use to be about producing productive members of society, now it’s about test scores and funding.
Maybe some day it’ll be socially acceptable to shun American nazis instead of electing them again
These are progressives. By definition, a liberal allows free speech
Violence and blockades got us unions and workers rights. Ain’t no war but the class war.
People are getting fed up with how things are going
Sounds like Gen Z has taken up gardening a they’re looking to water the tree of liberty…
Gen Z Americans probably haven’t seen peaceful methods produce any meaningful results.
Okay so it sounds like this study says conservatives and old people are bad at hypotheticals. Which, yeah. Makes sense.
This is due to, at least in part, the radicalising effect of social media. Including (perhaps especially) Reddit.
Violence seems like a great answer when you’re sure you’re gunna win.
All the people advocating for it are completely clueless though. When things regress to violence ideology only matters in the sense that it works as a marketing campaign.
The brutal and merciless tend to rise to the top. I know things aren’t great right now, but to think violence would help make things better in an already democratic society is foolish. It’s democracies death knell.
The cops do it on your behalf if you’re conservative
So violence is only okay when the govt does it, right? ICE, military, etc.
i’d be really curious to see this repeated with the same people 10 or 20 years from now. part of me wonders how much of this is actually “gen z” and how much is just being young and more willing to take risks
Woah, you’re telling me that peaceful protests falling on deaf ears has led to demonstrations being more disruptive and/or violent?? Quick! Let’s blame young folks instead of the cause of all this
We have entered the phase of „if you want something good to happen, you’re going to have to do it yourself“ as institutions have proven to be entirely useless to the needs of young people.
Without functioning civilized tools and processes, people will revert back to uncivilized tools.
I was told Gen-Z were people with a poor education and learned no history. I think this confirms it.
Those aren’t young liberals. Using violence to ensure views you disagree with aren’t expressed is the opposite of liberalism.
Honestly… I think the overall willingness to use blockades/violence to suppress highly offensive ideas explains exactly why this support is found more on the left side of politics than the right. The left is open to more drastic ways of suppression because they’re fighting back against those “highly offensive ideas” much more often. Fighting against stripping away others’ human rights, racism, misogyny, injustice, poverty — the stakes are much higher. This sort of rhetoric is seen less on the right because the right isn’t fighting against “highly offensive ideas”, such as suppression of human rights, nearly as often as the left is. That’s just my theory anyway
This is an extremely difficult thing to measure and control for.
It’s easy to say „numbers say younger people are more willing to use violence to stop public speakers“, but there are a lot of complicating factors.
The rise of fascism in the last decade and the shifting of the overton window to the right means people under 25 have grown up in a world where people are comfortable standing at a podium and saying „demographic groups X, Y, and Z need to be exterminated for the greater good“. These are sentiments which their predecessors did not experience at the same point in their lives, but which the young adults have never really known a world *without*.
The fact that their predecessors experienced a time when ethnofascism was almost universally rejected means they are aware such a scenario IS possible, and are less likely to conclude „this is the only possible outcome of public speaking“.
Reading the article, they controlled for a lot of factors, but that one doesn’t seem to be represented.
This just being a age, rather than generational issue could be possible. That wouldn’t explain the political difference though.
Young „Liberals“ were more likely to support suppression of speech? That’s not what liberalism means. Young progressives maybe, young socialists certainly, but if you’re liberal, you believe in freedom of speech, even offensive, hateful speech.
Survey? Disregarded.
Kevin Jay Wallsten, Senior Fellow of the Manhattan Institute
Absolutely disregarded.
This is conservative propaganda. And should be removed. Nothing about this „survey“ was scientific. It’s extreme bias.
They’ll support these ideas, but they won’t act on them
Young liberals? What about the young conservatives who literally stormed the capital?