Recently Ann Coulter mentioned that Indians don’t have the same concept of free speech that Americans do. That is totally true and evident on these message boards. Ann’s concern is that the Indian-enriched tech work-force won’t see any problems with censoring offensive speech since that’s the norm in their society.
That being said, my chest kind of puffed up with pride to hear Rho Khanna express old-fashioned American values in this clip. With all due respect to Ann, the only Democrat who seemed persistently concerned about the free speech implications of Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story is the son of Indian immigrants. Where are all those old-stock Americans now?
Indian lineage can hardly be blamed for the Left’s abandonment of free speech.
chris, the obvious counter to that is that some generations of Indians were raised in a Leftist culture, during the Nehru-Gandhi years. It will take some time for the socialist toxins to get through the system.
This morning’s Wall Street Journal:
“Twitter’s Duty to Protect Free Speech: Censorship of the Hunter Biden story might have helped my party, but it was bad for our democracy.” By Ro Khanna Dec. 5, 2022
Paywalled: https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitters-duty-to-protect-free-speech-elon-musk-social-media-democracy-new-york-post-ideas-freedom-11670281265
Indians always seem to be convenient scapegoats for the likes of Ann Coulter and Amy Wax.
If Indians in the US are really so powerful that they can (virtually) repeal the First Amendment or make wokeness the ruling ideology, how come they can’t do anything about the green card mess that’s left so many (probably a majority of desis in the US) in limbo?
i don’t blame indians. but, it is a fact that American speech norms have gotten much closer to india’s in the last 15 years.
Yeah, that’s quite apparent. So has the politics, by the way. Trump and his style of politicking and his abuse of norms are something that have been part and parcel of Indian politics since post-Nehru India. I grew up in Bihar in the 80s and 90s, and Lalu Yadav and his ilk made me forever cynical about politics and politicians.
But there are a lot of factors that led to this state of affairs in the US, and it’s really lazy thinking (or a more sinister reason) on the part of the aforementioned ladies to pin the blame on Indians. Personally, I find Hanania’s theory that the current way in which America operates is a predictable downstream result of civil rights laws to be quite convincing.
+1 to hanania analysis.
I would argue that at the end of WW2 , western elites looked around for a model where they were still at the apex of technology, culture, finance and military power aka Raj 2.0. They found India model very appealing but initially they had they reservations whether IN will even survive. The last 3 decades seem to have addressed their reservations and now we seem to be acceleration mode towards a global “Secular India model”. Hence the liberal angst against hindutva.
Not just in speech norms, America is converging to India in so many other fields.
Now even Americans are doing oppression-olympics (race/caste quotas is the logical end result), roadblocks, getting away with rioting, class stratification, permanent vote-banks, logic/debate replaced with pure in-group pandering, extra territorial loyalty (Ilhan Omar), urine on the streets and most dangerously cynicism, lack of vigor and will to speak-up/sacrifice for what is right.
No heads were lopped for the failure in Afghanistan. Did the geniuses from ‘prestigious’ places like Hoover institute or hawks from Washington think tanks lose their jobs when their ideas utterly failed? Where is their integrity? Did any o the IR people give up their tenure track jobs? Did generals or politicians take the fall?
For now America can keep printing dollars backed by oil to hide it’s myriad failures but sooner or later world will call out this BS and see the lack of any real value in the American ‘genius’ and ‘industrial capacity’ that can’t make cars that cost less than $50K. Ford and GM got their ass whooped by East Asians in India.
America has treated me very well. I wish her the best but don’t have high hopes.
france is the last bastion. they even stood to break the unholy alliance on this issue
Last bastion for what?
It might be prudent for Indian Americans to (re)establish a 2nd home in India. India seems to get more and more competent while the US seems to get more incompetent. Of course there’s long way to go for both countries to converge but that’s the trajectory. The recent news that it would cost more than $400 million to install a suicide net on the Golden Gate Bridge has hammered it home for me.
Can’t find her tweet, but she actually praised him for it. No comment on her larger point vis free speech norms tho.
Here: https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/1598893828387528704
we do have free speech problems in India beyond nehru/leftists now. Ancient India did not have problems wrt to blasphemy, our psychology is warped. I hope we find our confidence back. I do not know what it will take for us to get to have free speech in India. Initial moments of the founding of the country are important.
On america, and future in general. wokeism is 50 to 100 yrs early, we still need elons of the world for progress. but in 100 yrs after AGI, no one will need elons, toxic masculinity need not be valued either. why?. Because luxury beliefs are products of luxury and productivity. As there will be more luxury and productivity in future, how can there be less luxury beliefs ?. Right now, even those who hate elon realize he is useful and in some sense necessary for ushering in the future.