We recently wrote about Pakistan's 48 hour ultimatum to Wikipedia–either remove certain ‘sacrilegious’, i.e. blasphemous content, or be blocked in Pakistan.
In fact, after the 48 hours were up, Wikipedia was blocked throughout the country. The ban was short-lived. Access was restored after a three day suspension.
Who won, blasphemy laws or free speech?
Last Wednesday the Pakistani government issued an ultimatum threatening to shut down the online crowd-sourced encyclopedia Wikipedia. The Pakistani authorities gave Wikipedia 48 hours to remove certain content they deemed to be ‘sacrilegious’ or blasphemous.
The forty eight hours had passed by Friday evening, and Saturday it was announced that Wikipedia had been banned in Pakistan.
If you want to fan the flames of fascism, keep doing things like this, Penn State students!
Several days ago Penn State, a top-ranked U.S. research university, known for its football team and its programs in engineering, business, and marketing, began trending on social media for something entirely different.
The event was to feature Gavin McInnes, cofounder of the right-wing organization Proudboys and comedian, provocateur Alex Stein. Student opinion was very strongly against allowing these individuals to speak, and violent protests developed.
Under postmodernism many ideas that were seen as objectively true came to be seen as mere constructions of language. Foucault refers to them as ‘discourses’ that construct knowledge. Consequently, since discourses are believed to create and maintain oppression, they have to be carefully monitored and deconstructed. This is not some obscure academic issue, it is the outlook that is behind calls for laws to outlaw speech which may cause offense.