The common MO amongst right wingers is they claim that dissidents like Mahmoud Khalil is a “guest” and therefore they believe that he should not have the right to criticize the government.
What is your view on this?
Edit: Mr. Khalil has a Green Card btw, just to clarify.
Criticism and rebellion are our right, duty, and delight.
Everyone can criticize anything. You can’t stop people from it.
First Amendment supposedly applies to all who reside in the USA
Green card holders are permanent. They’re not any form of temporary and are absolutely not guests.
When you are a guest, yes, follow local customs.
Right wingers don’t stop with immigrants. “Love it or leave it” applies to everyone as far as they’re concerned.
Unless a Democrat is in office, in which case everything the government does is the most disastrous, evil, horrible thing to ever exist.
Since it’s clear we’re talking about the US here, the 1st Amendment clearly states (emphasis added):
Congress shall make no law respecting … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It says nothing about citizens, tourists, foreign nationals, etc. In fact, the amendment only limits what Congress can do (and the Supremacy clause extends this to the states). It doesn’t say “Citizens have the right to free speech.” It says “Congress shall pass no laws abridging the freedom of speech.”
It’s pretty clear that anyone and everyone has the right to free speech and assembly. The right wingers you’re talking about are trying to rewrite the first amendment to justify their fascism.
A government that can’t stand up to simple criticism is a weak government.
That depends on if we consider Thomas Paine a founding father or a criminal speaker.
Free speech means you can speak freely
Free free speech hasn’t existed in the US for a long, long time.
Sure you can quip jokes, sure you can call names, you can protest a little bit here and there.
But try being a student and protest, it may actually get you killed or deported or just disappeared.
You say that but I was a student protestor a decade ago and it wasn’t this bad. And regardless just because our government is violating the law and our nation’s fundamental ideology (liberty and democracy) and has been for some time doesn’t mean we shouldn’t call them out on it
Lots of people seem to think it’s either or, and it really shouldn’t be, in my view. (I’ll note I’m canadian, since it seems to matter to some these days).
The argument that foreigners shouldn’t be allowed to protest is to me somewhat valid, but with a bunch of reservations. Peaceful protests, publishing op eds, (obviously) University papers, online posts, and other ‘regular’ forms of expression I’m totally in agreement that they should be allowed to express themselves/participate.
But we’ve also seen cases in Canada where our immigration levels got so high, that we literally had CCP organized protests in favour of a detained Chinese CCP Billionaire, as well as the tearing down of “peaceful protests”/awareness things in regards to HongKong and the crack down the CCP did there. We’ve seen large, organized groups of Indian students – their messages of “go get free food” being amplified by foreign controlled social media – draining our food banks dry, the loss of that social support helping to fuel class conflicts and increased animosity towards Indian people as a demographic. We’ve seen ‘protests’ leveraged by foreign powers to sow discontent and animosity intentionally, and/or to control the narrative around news stories.
And that’s really no surprise: one of the stated methodologies of authoritarian regimes, for attacking democracies, is to basically sow civil unrest through the amplification of contested issues/topics. They’ll amplify/fund controversial right-wing and left-wing viewpoints in order to cause internal conflict. They’ll hype up race conflicts. Like how the majority of people are totally fine saying both “Hamas is bad” and “Israel’s genocidal actions in gaza are bad”, but somehow it’s always framed as just a 2 sided thing where you’re on one side or the other, is great for authoritarians: why fight a democracy, when you can make it fight itself. If we’re accepting Students/people from authoritarian regimes, we have to be realistic in acknowledging many of these people will share the regimes beliefs, and will be actively working against our governments / peoples. They aren’t the stereotypical refugee seeking a better/freer life, but rather people with malicious intentions and a desire to disrupt.
So I’m fine with such people having visas and non-permanent citizenship revoked if the person’s involved in criminal activity (violent protests), and/or if they’re a primary organizer/instigator/funder of such things, or (as was the case with some ‘student’ groups in Canada) they’re actively coordinating their protests with foreign embassies/agents. I’d also be in favour of increased scrutiny of people from such regions when it comes to long term stays / partial immigration (where they don’t renounce their former non-democratic country). Lots of countries also expect singular citizenship, I see no particular issue with western democracies at least requiring that their citizens not support/be registered citizens of authoritarian dictatorships. If you want to live in an egalitarian/democratic country, you shouldn’t be supportive of authoritarian autocracies/dictatorships.
And again, similar to the note about ‘one side or the other’, in terms of free speech, most folks generally recognise that there are some reasonable restrictions / repercussions involved with it. Hate speech, explicitly calling for the killing of some group of people or what have you, clearly not a ‘right’ for most sane people – at least, not one that wouldn’t come with consequences. In the same way that the left is fine boycotting Musk for his Nazi salutes (he’s free to express himself as a Nazi, and other people are free to take issue with that / not support him because of it), foreigners explicitly challenging the existing norms of society should be prepared for potential consequences if they do so in a manner deemed inappropriate.
Either you can speak freely or you cannot… right now in America you cannot. It is no longer considered a free democracy, plain and simple.
Anyone has the right to criticise any government. Tons of Lemmy thread on [email protected] are basically foreigner giving negative (and sometimes positive) critics about government with sometimes locals giving contexts
If you can criticise dictatorship like Russia, North Korea you can also criticise democracies like US or France. Even better, in these countries, you can legally do it from national soil, while in dictatorship you’d get into trouble
The USA is supposed to be a “free country.” Everyone within its borders should have the right to criticize the country, or anything at all, and not face repercussions from the government.
That doesn’t mean they won’t face repercussions from everyone else in the country, who also have the right to criticize them.
In the USA everyone is supposed to have 1A rights
Are you asking if humans have the right to free speech? Because yes.
Any “government” that doesn’t recognize that deserves the respect of no human being
I think at this point we’ve figured out there should be certain limits on free speech. Hate speech, etc should not be given a right to exist.
Everybody has a right to criticize anything they want.
I don’t have to visit the Sahara to know that it’s hot and dry there, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to say it’s too hot and dry for me to want to go there.
Someone else might criticize the Sahara for being too cold and wet. That doesn’t make any sense to me, and I can claim that they don’t know what they are talking about, but they have the right to believe that.
In a democratic country, you can think and say whatever you want from its government. At best, being there, you should expect some side eyeing: you’re there; if you don’t like it, go your own way.
In countries where you know such criticism can bring harm your way, just avoid going there altogether.
