On the ethics of deplatforming : stupidpol

I've just watched this panel discussion and found it to be pretty interestingnot only on the basis of the topics covered, but the environment in which it took place and how the various parties responded to each other. We've all likely seen this a number of times by now: a college hosts a speaker who is persona non grata to the activist left, and the event is disrupted in various ways because of this. (I recommend watching the whole thing if you have the time, but the meatiest parts are the walkout at the 20-minute mark and the rageful questioner around 1:02:30.) The question I wanted to raise, though, is this:

We can all agree that this type of response to this type of event is out of line. Howeveras an extreme counterexampleI think we can also generally agree that disrupting, say, the meeting of an armed militia who are actively conspiring against our own community is morally right and even demanded of us. Somewhere in between these two near extremes (I only say near because the activists could very well have chosen to machine gun down everyone in the room, etc.) exists a boundary that separates just disruption from unjust disruption. The question is, where does that boundary lie, and can it be rendered clearly? Certainly acts of sabotage have their place in political conflict, and while the saboteurs in this video are clearly in the wrong, I can conceive of a similar instance in which it's not cutting off a productive discussion, but rather disrupting the stoking of dangerous attitudes and intentions.

As a related and more immediate example (because I'm arguing with a friend about it right now), I think it was morally wrong of Stephen Colbert to have Donald Rumsfeld on his pleasant late night talk show because it humanizes him. My friend argues that it gave him an opportunity to ask him uncomfortable questions on a national stage. And I'd even say that there's merit to that in principle, but that Colbert failed by not being sufficiently antagonistic (i.e. Rumsfeld didn't leave the interview a weaker man than when he came on).

So what do you think? I have no clear answers of my own, which is why I'm throwing it to the crowd in hope of insight. Where and how do we draw the line, and how do we communicate that line to others so that we might form some consensus?

e: I sent this to three of my friends and they all understood the question perfectly and had something interesting to say about it. C'est la vie, I guess.

Continued here:

On the ethics of deplatforming : stupidpol