Opinion | Freedom is a Bad Defense For Ugly Behavior - The New York Times - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...crimination-racism-sexism.html
freedom right-wing interpretation culture politics history
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Each of these actions used the language of freedom to justify anti-democratic politics. These, then, are what I call “ugly freedoms”: used to block the teaching of certain ideas, diminish employees’ ability to have power in the workplace and undermine public health.
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They manifest, instead, a particular interpretation of freedom that is not expansive, but exclusionary and coercive.
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At the time of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, only 2 percent of the city’s population were qualified to vote.
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Slave codes allowed white property owners to possess Black humans — creating what the historian Tyler Stovall called “white freedom,” the “belief (and practice) that freedom is central to white racial identity, and that only white people can or should be free.” This freedom for the white master extended to torture, rape and lifelong control over the humans he (or she) owned.
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In the 20th century, racial segregation was justified as the freedom of white people to control public space and make their own business choices.
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It is true the language of freedom was central to emancipation, suffrage and democratic movements of all kinds, but it has also justified violence and discrimination.
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more and more laws, caucuses, rallies and hard-right movements use the language of freedom as a cudgel to erode democratic governance and civil rights; these laws expand the creep of authoritarianism.
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overtake freedom’s meaning entirely, harnessing freedom solely to projects of exclusion, privilege and harm.
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The ugly freedoms in American politics today increasingly justify minority rule, prejudice and anti-democratic governance. If we don’t push back against their growing popularity, we will have ceded what freedom means to those who support monopolistic rule and furthered the country’s downward slide toward authoritarianism.