The Real Threat to Free Speech Is Coming From the Right

HLMenckenFan@lemmy.worldmod to politics @lemmy.world – 773 points –
The Real Threat to Free Speech Is Coming From the Right
newsweek.com
170

You are viewing a single comment

Right wing hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug. At the end of the day it's just a form of entitlement.

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

Jean-Paul Sartre

As a non native speaker, I do not get the meaning of this post? And a lot of others. The word entitlement seems to have changed it's meaning. What does it mean today?

according to wiktionary:

entitlement (countable and uncountable, plural entitlements)

  • The right to have something, whether actual or perceived.
  • Power, authority to do something.
  • Something that one is entitled to.
  • (politics) A legal obligation on a government to make payments to a person, business, or unit of government that meets the criteria set in law, such as social security in the US.

This is the definition I am using:

The belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.