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.
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.
It’s just an excuse. They want to get rid of him because they don’t like his politics and he’s an activist. Whether the state categorizes you as a citizen, resident, tourist, undocumented, etc. should have nothing to do with your right to speak out.
Everyone can criticize anything. You can’t stop people from it.
First Amendment supposedly applies to all who reside in the USA
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.
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.
If we’re talking about the USA specifically, then the answer is yes. The Bill of Rights applies to everyone.
Well, it was yes.
What we’re all seeing now is that the Constitution ultimately depends on our willingness to agree to collectively abide by it.
It was always just a story, but while we all agreed to believe in it, it was a true story.
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.
In the USA everyone is supposed to have 1A rights
I think that you should follow local norms. If you’re in the US, go for it. If you’re in Saudi Arabia, maybe keep that shit in your head.
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.
Criticism and rebellion are our right, duty, and delight.
A government that can’t stand up to simple criticism is a weak government.
Should doesn’t enter. They do have that right, it’s a human right, the right of free expression. Doesn’t depend on nationality or location, only humanity.
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
There’s a whole field of philosophy rooted on the idea that the world is never perfect, there is no end to history, and thus we must always be critical of the status quo.
It’s called Critical Theory.
