Far too often people forget that Right to Free Speech is not your first right, and it is superseded by other human rights above it.
Your right to Free Speech only applies as long as it doesn't interfere with other people's rights to safety and freedom from prejudice, hate, harm, etc...
It's not that complicated and yet countless people always fuck something so straightforward up.
It begins with free speech, then you skip a few years and suddenly trans kids are scared for their lives. Speech affects people and has consequence, it is not something to take lightly.
If everyone is tolerant of every idea, then intolerant ideas will emerge. Tolerant people will tolerate this intolerance, and the intolerant people will not tolerate the tolerant people.
Someone else being a twat won't make me violate my principles. I'm not good to others because they're good to me. I'm good to others because they're an end themselves, not a means to my ends.
It's not a paradox at all if you view society and government as a social contract entered by all parties. The conditions for being protected by the tolerance provided for in the Constitution is that you extend that tolerance to everyone else. The intolerant have breached that contract and are therefore no longer protected by it.
Those who dont abide by it, try to use it as a weapon against those who do, to enable their intolerance to grow and spread.
Those who don't abide by the social contract are a threat to society as a whole, and should not receive its protection.
Because you end up empowering them, and weakening society against them.
Intolerance must be put down, with force. It is not hypocritical. It is not paradoxical. For the garden of tolerance to thrive, the intolerant weeds must be ripped out of the soil and disposed of in such a way that they can not spread their seeds further, because if you don't.. nothing will thrive but the weeds.
That's a very heavy responsibility though. And the abuse of it is the exact reason our founders gave us such an extreme right. Alas we were also supposed to maintain a healthy public dialogue and rewrite the Constitution every 20 years. Doing half the job doesn't end well.
For the garden of tolerance to thrive, the intolerant weeds must be ripped out of the soil and disposed of in such a way that they can not spread their seeds further,
That's kinda the reason why I believe the solution to defeat intolerance is by talking directly to the intolerant and showing how they are wrong otherwise you're just showing them you are the intolerant fascist. By attacking their freedom of speech your proving that you attack free speech. In history it seems that fascism arizes when there is injustice like how when the Germans were oppressed after WW1 it was the fascists that had a solution to the injustice. Mind you a not very good solution but when you are dirt poor humiliated forced to live in a land desimated by war the Nazi party was a pretty effective way to get back at the world that destroyed your home. Had we caught onto the injustice the Germans were facing we could have prevented the rise of Nazi Germany. Granted at the time the Germans would have told anyone who listened that it was the Jews that made everything bad happen but if your smart enough one could see past the hate and see exactly why these people are hurt to the point of blaming a religion and feeling the need to puff themselves as superior any nation could have caught onto that and become the hero the Germans made the Nazis out to be. Just look at any other regime like Soviet Russia or North Korea they rose because they had a issue and only evil people were around to wear the cape of a hero.
Lotta talk in here about free speech that seems to be missing the point.
The right for someone to spew hateful rhetoric freely does not supercede my right not to tolerate it. The first amendment does not give the hate monger, nor the englightened centrist immunity from the social consequences of their public opinions.
Nor does it magically make their ideas into law. For a democracy to do this it has to actually accept the totalitarian ideas. Widespread ignorance is therefore a precondition for the "paradox" to hold true.
Ironically, ignoring that is a classic appeal to totalitarian principles - claiming that, without totalitarian controls on some aspect of human behavior, people must necessary produce some bad outcome, therefore, banning bad behavior is necessary. It ignores really the entire moral evolution and capability for reasoning of individuals in favor of a simplistic mechanical explanation of people. The simplistic language of "tolerance" in the paradox obfuscates key details - what we advocate with "free speech" is that the government may not criminally punish forms of speech, not that we must respect every idea equally on conceptual grounds, or especially not put every idea, flawed or not, into practice, or law. The entire idea behind a free democracy is that we diligently compare and evaluate concepts and put only the best ideas into practice.
The entire idea behind a free democracy is that we diligently compare and evaluate concepts and put only the best ideas into practice.
No, the idea of Democracy is surprisingly not to put the best idea into practice, but instead to create a societal framework that the majority of members can live under. It's not about creating good results but the legitimization of the government.
I highly suggest you look into the philosophical background of the democratic movement and liberalism before you continue to repeat the fruits of American Slavers arguing that "states rights".
There should never be legal consequences for it. I am absolutely for everyone and anyone to be able to say as much racist, sexist, homophobic or what-have-you crap as they want.
BUT
I agree that the social consequences should be allowed to thrive. Act like a jerk; people are jerks right back. Act like an absolute piece of shit; guess how people treat you? I think that all this sabre rattling about censoring hate speech is just driving the attention-whores into the public forum, not because they actually hate the people they say they do, but because they're attention whores.
When I was growing up it was never about tolerating intolerance. It was about dragging it out into the sunlight so you could kill it. They have a right to say anything they want so we can make an example of them and they don't go into hiding and do dumb shit.
Of course that depended on the mainstream leadership believing in democracy and not leaning into extremism. Because the GOP has switched sides on democracy it's a liability now instead of a strength. A swing too far from the laws of England our founders meant to forestall.
Dude, they literally took the Capitol building in an attempt to prevent the election results from being certified. If the GOP didn't want to back Trump after that I'd respect that. But they fell in line. They're okay with that. Which means they are not okay with democracy. There's no democracy without free elections.
Who said anything about a utopia? I'm talking about one aspect, a belief in an American Democracy/Republic (I know the D word triggers some people out there and that's not the conversation right now). If you read our founders writing they considered public debate to be the best way to maintain that project because the previous government would jail you for criticism. That's it. That's the reasoning and context. Nobody claimed it was perfect
No one ever gets the point until people start getting beaten, threatened, wounded, maimed or killed. They'll keep arguing the details until there is an authoritarian government telling you what you can or can't do or say.
Then everyone stands around wondering how it all happened.
Most regular people I know just want to live life and not really bother with anyone else in a negative way .. in fact most people I've ever known would do something good for the other person if it meant it would help. Most people are just good and have a very good nature.
It's the psychotic few billionaires and millionaires out there that want a world with authoritarian fascist government in power because it means those wealthy few get to keep all their money and if they do get their way, they can exponentially grow the wealth they already have. It's all about money and power.
It's all about a handful of morons who aren't aware of their finite life that believe they can become temporary rulers of the world.
The Mediterranean is full of dead bodies from asylum seekers, but people still bath there.
People will not bathe in a pool, if that pool has a single cadaver in it.
Some might say that it doesn't count because you can't see the bodies in the Mediterranean, but you can in the pool.
but even if the pool has an angle and the corpse obscured behind said angle, people won't swim in it if they are told this in advance.
so clearly there must be some ratio of dead people to water that society sees as acceptable.
so to answer your question, yes, and we haven't reached that point yet, and the right is doing it's best to keep that bar as high as possible.
Usually hunger .... if you look through history, change doesn't happen in societies because people are poor, abused, imprisoned, impoverished or have a lack of luxuries .... change often happens when people go hungry because at that point they all realize that if they have no food, they will die ... and when they can see death, especially their own death, they no longer have anything to lose and will fight for some kind of change ....
And even that want for change is dangerous because it can come in many forms ... good change, bad change, fascist change, socialist change, democratic change, authoritarian change.
in your post the thing I liked the most, the most significant in my opinion, it's
They'll keep arguing the details
this is the sum of all the thread. there's so much on this few words.
in my understanding,vsums up perfectly what I'd describe as the paranoia feeding the knitpicking and the extenuating effort to manage the malice.
thank you
Hate speech is not the same as free speech. Free speech was for reporters to keep them from being jailed so it’s not even applicable for what this guy thinks he’s defending with that phrase.
That's not entirely accurate. The first amendment mentions both freedom of speech and freedom of press. Freedom of speech is for individuals sharing ideas, not just reporters. That applies both conceptually and legally. Hate speech is seen as a necessary exemption by many, because of the potential ramifications (see comic). That isn't the same thing as saying free speech wouldn't apply even without said exemption; even though it may lead you to the same conclusion.
If you don’t like the reprocussions and losing your job for yelling sexist or racist comments at people out in the world, that’s not what freedom of speech protects.
It’s also worth noting that the government can’t limit free speech.
But it can and does! Go on Facebook and detail how you will storm and overthrow your state government next Monday at noon and see how long it takes for your speech to land you in jail. Or incite a stampede in a cinema by yelling "Fire!". And that's just two examples. Libel and slander are other examples where "just words" can get you in trouble with the government.
The idea of complete unlimited speech in the US is a fantasy. They clearly can and do draw lines at what you can and can't say in public. The only question is where this lines are.
Citizens have their own limitations when their response strays outside the realm of speech. Boycotts are fine—you have no obligation to buy what they're selling. However, harassment is not okay, and bullying is not okay. These things are wrong (and coincidentally illegal) on their own merits, and not a justified response to someone else's speech.
Germany has extremely harsh laws on language which promotes Nazis, but they clearly still have free speech. We can discourage hateful language and still maintain freedom of expression.
And what is hate speech? When we start telling people what is and is not allowable to say, we set a highly dangerous precedent and move the game from black and white lines into shades of gray. Another shade darker is far easier to slip into than black from white.
Hate speech:abusive or threatening speech or writing used to express prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds.
Pretty simple, you don’t get to threaten, scare or abuse people with your words. That infringes on their right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Shall we of course discuss the one grey area “or similar grounds” or was there another direction you’d like to take this?
The first panel shows a mustached person with short hair wearing a t-shirt and sitting at a laptop. A speech bubble rising from the laptop reads "I just don't think you people belong in our society!"
The second panel shows a different short-haired person wearing a t-shirt, long pants, and sneakers, sitting on a park bench and looking at a mobile phone. A speech bubble from the mobile phone reads "Well, I don't agree with what you're saying, but I'll fight for your right to say it."
The third panel shows both people standing on the side of a street. The first person is holding a Bible and pointing across the road at a group of shadowed people carrying signs with hearts and pride flags. He is speaking to a crowd of people and saying "Your kind is a betrayal to God! You're a drag on the whole country!" To which the second person is shrugging and responding "That's appalling, but we can't have free speech without the free marketplace of ideas!"
The fourth panel shows the first person standing at a lectern and wearing a suit with an American flag behind them and a shadowed crowd in front of them. They are saying "We will stop the woke ideology that's destroying America!". The second person is standing close to the foreground and shrugging, saying "Democracy needs this discourse, so let's agree to disagree."
The fifth panel shows the second person being dragged away by people in uniform while saying "Wait! Where are you taking me? You can't just get rid of me!". The first person is standing between the first person and an open paddy wagon, wearing a black uniform and looking smug as they reply "Let's just agree to disagree."
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
Consider... what went wrong is that no one pushed back on Panel Two using the very same free marketplace of ideas.
Panel One: Fighting for everyone's right to express themselves is fine. Good as it is.
Panel Two: Destroy the bigot's arguments and describe to the public what society will be like if the bigot gets their way. Is that tolerating intolerance?
Panel Two: Destroy the bigot's arguments and describe to the public what society will be like if the bigot gets their way. Is that tolerating intolerance?
I can't believe no one thought of this. And here planned parenthood and the grieving families at funerals of vets have just been sitting by listening to the noise.
Calling people out on their BS is the right line to draw for me personally, but I still want that person to have the right to express their opinion. We just need to teach people that it's ok to be wrong as long as you can admit it and learn from it. No idea gets processed until pushed from an opposing party.
Sitting back and doing nothing teaches nothing. Calling it appalling and informing the person why they're wrong is the right step toward change. But if you can't say it in a way that makes them hear you, then you're doomed to have the argument all over again.
I'd say that's tolerating intolerance and is the right thing to do. Once they switch to violence though, remember you have a robust right to defend yourself, your community and your loved ones.
In the Republic, book VIII, Socrates identifies as democracy's leading cause of corruption precisely that thing makes it seemingly so beautiful. In a democracy, citizens become inebriated with freedom (Euleteria). By making it the highest goal, people in a democracy end up leading democracy to its downfall.
Our boy Socrates was 2200 years too early, he might have learnt from ours boys Charles Fourier, Bakunin, Marx and others that democracy is never an accomplished regime, it needs to be defended at all time in a ceaseless battle against the worst parts of mankind, against our own turpitude and weakness, it's an everlasting revolution that dies as soon as it starts to be content with itself.
I wish that people made a better version of that picture, since it heavily distortswhat Popper said (PDF page 232), that is far more nuanced and situational. I'll quote it inside spoilers as it's long-ish:
the paradox
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right even to suppress them, for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to anything as deceptive as rational argument, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, exactly as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping; or as we should consider incitement to the revival of the slave trade.
A TL;DR of that would be "an open society needs to claim the right to suppress intolerant discourses and, under certain conditions, suppress them". In no moment the picture makes reference to those conditions.
That's important here because mechanisms used to curb down intolerant discourses can be also misused to curb down legitimate but otherwise inconvenient ones, so they need to be used with extreme caution, only as much as necessary; Popper was likely aware of that.
The problem tolerating intolerance is it only works if the intolerants, in turn, also let you express yourself after they gain power, which they won't, because they are intolerant. You need to be lucky every time and they only need to be lucky once. And the only thing preventing the disaster is that there isn't an infinite amount of time ahead of you
honest to fuck why can't we have the future where the last panel isn't someone being dragged away by nazi fascists OR some kinda tankie government
and im a fuckin commie saying this...
silence a bigot and he'll take to the streets. give a bigot an echo chamber and with any luck he'll do more online circlejerking than IRL marching, at least
Actually studies have found that deplatforming works really well at combating hate speech. Online it can radicalize people. IRL at least they learn very quickly that there is no silent majority at their back.
If people vote for their own chains in a free and democratic society, they deserve to get what they want. Now whether we still have such a society is debatable. But I still fundamentally believe that any and all forms of censorship are the wrong way to go and will only accelerate the decline into totalitarianism.
I weirdly agree as much as I hate racist wannabe genociders. I think freedom of speech is important even if it is hateful speech that I don't agree with. I don't think it should be up to the legal system to decide what's okay to say and what isn't. That's a slippery slope that can quickly go badly with the wrong people in power.
That being said, I am most definitely going to look the other way if I see a person getting stomped out for being racist. I would personally make them feel unwelcome in anyway I could. I think it should be left up to the people to make it known that intolerant assholes get intolerant treatment, I guess is what I am getting at.
If people vote for their own chains in a free and democratic society, they deserve to get what they want.
They aren't only voting for their own fate but for the fate of everyone else. So 51% can doom everyone. That hardly seems fair.
But I still fundamentally believe that any and all forms of censorship are the wrong way to go and will only accelerate the decline into totalitarianism.
This always ignores how very dangerous uncensored words can be. Hitler is famous for his speeches and not for his military brilliance! So is Mussolini. They both abused lenient and weak democratic systems to talk their way into power resulting in the literal Holocaust and one of the most devestating war the world has ever seen.
No, let's just murder anyone whose skin colour I personally hate.
The difference is, your scenario is made up, and the scenario I described happened a lot
Walking the fine line is hard. But here's a real life example: demomstrators armed with rifles and guarding outside Drag events have reduced the level of vitriol nearby and led fascists to whine about it on Twitter and question their pro 2A belief system.
Facilitating animal deaths for eating pleasure is intolerant toward animals and their lives. Yet meat eaters expect Vegans to be nice to meat eaters. In other words, meat eaters expect Vegans to be tolerant of intolerance. One day meat eaters will understand they should rightly be shamed and their behavior and discourse locked out of society, but not today - today they don't understand.
Where between "I wouldn't date a trans person because it is against my ideals" (personal preference in partners) and "I wouldn't socialise with a trans person because it is against my ideals" (personal preference in friends) would we draw our boundary? Would it be between these two forms of discomfort,, or would both these ideals be unacceptable, or would both be acceptable?
The issue isn't that such speech should be removed, there is broad agreement there, but where do we start trimming?
Next comes the question, in policing such discourse, what would the cost to privacy be? "Protect the children from the predators" (something everyone can agree with) is already a rallying cry leafing to the erosion of encryption and privacy, shall "stamp out the TERFs" become the next one? Who here remembers what "stopping terrorists" did to privacy?
Overall, I doubt there are many who don't feel open distaste at certain forms of speech, and would rather it not be tolerated. However, the difficulty in where to draw the line, and the fear of the cost such a line would have, is why there is likely more opposition.
This seems disingenuous. You don't have to date anyone you don't want, and you don't have to be friends with anyone you don't want. Why did you decide that was the place to draw the line? You do not have to date Bob from accounting for any reason. But you also don't deserve a job along side Bob if you go on talking about how he doesn't deserve a place in our society.
Ones rights doesn't supercede anothers. You can be a Nazi in your own home, but once you start sprewing hate publicly you are infrining the freedoms of others. This is already the law. But people want to change this law, and are using transphobia to do so, in much the same way they use fear of pedophiles to errode your rights.(trans people harm kids, we must ban trans people to protect kids, is the essential arguement.)In essence You claim that if we stop trans-hate speech, we are losing our rights, but in reality those who are sprewing trans-hate are actively trying to remove your rights and just using transphobia as a means to an end.
Hate speech is always about removing freedoms and rights. Either through violence or legislation. If you want to talk about lines drawn: should we stop Bob from screaming "gas the Jews" in his own home? What about outside a synagogue? What about on the Senate floor? Which of these seems more of an infringement of a Jewish person's rights?
Your own answer offers a far better example of disingenuity, at least so I feel.
It is socially acceptable not to date someone due to a biological trait (of which being trans is a prime example) you are not attracted to (i.e. personal preference), however (I certainly believe) it isn't really socially acceptable to say "I don't want to spend time with X because of " (your action is motivated by a personal preference). One is a clear matter where personal preference trumps, but the other is one where polite society forms an interesting grey area - where between those two is your line?
I'd disagree with the statement that you can be a nazi in your own home (a good strawman there), since that just means you'll be training a nice younger crop of nazis (which is the real root of the issue), but that isn't the question at stake here. It's "why isn't everyone up in arms against transphobia", and the answer is that no-one can agree on where the line should be drawn, and most people are worries that it'll turn out like every other attempt to stamp out particular ideals. However, in the spirit of charity, my line is drawn well before the person begins to shout "gas the Jews" in their own home, because prior to that the harm was already done.
Hate speech definitely removes freedoms and rights, but it is the ears that listen that determine whose rights and freedoms are removed. Will the crowd turn upon the person spewing hate (giving in to a morally acceptable hatered, thence rises the paradox), or will it follow the voice guiding them towards hatered.
You're starting out with intolerance as the baseline. It's one thing to not want to date a trans person because you're not sexually ATTRACTED to trans people. That's perfectly fine. To not want to because it's "against your ideals" implies that you disapprove of ANYONE dating a trans person, which can only be a result of bigotry.
Nobody's talking about legislating against TERFS existing or that anyone who has bigoted views on trans people being predatory, so that's not a valid comparison either.
You can ABSOLUTELY be intolerant towards intolerance without trying to legislate it away or otherwise unfairly persecuting the bigots like they persecute others. In fact, that's the default and correct reaction of tolerant people encountering bigotry.
I'm likely starting from a position of not being clear first thing in the morning, though the accusation was not welcome. As a side note, attraction is based on our ideals: I can see the most beautiful person in the world and have no attraction towards them because of the views the hold, or the actions they've undertaken - though here the ideals one holds for one's own partner and the partners of others are different matters entirely (I very much doubt a straight man would approve of his gay friend's choice of lover for his own!).
I am not arguing against such intolerance against intolerance, I am presenting the point that it's a tricky subject. Legislation often follows public outcry, and over in the UK being trans is a protected characteristic (i.e. such legislation already exists). My personal view is that we SHOULD be working against trans-phobic people existing, both via well considered legislation and education. Though, that will involve deciding where a line should be drawn, why it should be drawn there, and won't be accomplished via trying to stamp out the symptom rather than the disease.
Honestly most people have no idea what actually constitutes freedom of speech. Having social reprocussions for that speech has always been a thing. Being shunned for being terrible or having people use their property rights to remove you from their platforms is still freedom of speech in action. Freedom of Speech primarily exists to protect thw press and just means you can't be jailed for what you say or have works of artistic or authorial merit censored by government.
Meanwhile we have people fighting to ban books from federal and state institutions. Teachers being fired for daring to use student nicknames and identifiers...
People crow "freedom of speech!" but too often they are spoiled, self important narcissistic children who just want to use some kind of schoolyard cootie shot nonsense to avoid anyone calling them on their shit. They don't give a damn otherwise as long as they get to be comfortable and unchallenged and they are too often more than happy to attack the freedom of speech itself because they can't handle seeing anyone else given access to it.
Is the comic talking about "shunning" intolerance? Seems more like asking for government force behind intolerating intolerance
Having social reprocussions
Your job in an insanely corporate America can hardly be considered "social". Corporate America is akin to a second government that just profits from both sides
Freedom of speech the law only had to protect against the government when written, not corporations as government-proxies. Freedom of speech the idea extends beyond government (companies aren't people)
I know this is going to be super unpopular, but here I go. Hate speech is free speech. I know that doesn't sound great; but once you start censoring speech for the words alone, it can easily grow out of control and become full censorship.
It is important to remember that free speech doesn't protect you from the consequences of your words; nor should it. Also using speech in furtherance of a crime is illegal; as it should be.
So long as you can use your free speech to oppose hate speech, then I would say the system is working. I too wish it wasn't like this; I too wish for world to be free of hate speech; but sadly this is the best we can do to ensure the right people can be heard
But what about the freedom to be free from prejudice and oppression?
This is why there are no easy answers. People do have a right to be free from prejudice and oppression. But the easy answer of ban hate speech will cause censorship to rear its ugly head.
I said ripe for abuse, not that they will be abused. In any case, I haven't heard of country with hate speech laws that hasn't been abused in some form. Even in America, we don't have those laws, but that hasn't stopped the government from trying.
The US had similar hate-speech rules to that of the rest of Europe, until the US civil rights era presented the court the opportunity to decide whether Martin Luther King's anti-racism speech was, as charged, "hate speech".
Long story short, the court decided that it couldn't define what 'hate speech' was and so decided that it shouldn't be against the law (or that the First should protect it). That's why Nazis are allowed to march and have their rallies protected by the First Amendment, all because southern US states wanted to charge the speakers of anti-white-supremacy with 'hate speech' and that was a quick-and-dirty way to disarm them.
And by that I mean be socially intolerant of intolerance. Personal morals and actions don't need to and shouldn't be held to the same standard as the US Federal government.
Individuals do have more freedom to discriminate and show "social intolerance", but that obviously doesn't extend to punching people they disagree with. Or violent responses in general.
You're right. There's nothing that can be done. Racial slurs and regressive language should be taught in schools because you can't fathom a world that has a slight amount of respect based regulation.
you fight the Nazi, or you help the Nazi, the Nazi has no interest in concessions, or sharing "their" space. If the idea that you can't call for Holocaust 2 electricboogaloo LGBTQ edition scares you, maybe think why it does, and then stop watching Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, or any of the other alt-right media/talking heads.
Defending authoritarianism is not fighting authoritarianism. You can talk like this is about the most extreme possible examples, but it fundamentally is not; this is about people who are fixated on obtaining the power to tell others to shut up, and that doesn't have a line anyone is willing to respect and it isn't limited to one side or the other. You go to panel 4, you're at panel 4. The implication that I must be saying all speech must be permitted, or that I'm defending Nazis by saying this, is false rhetorical framing; valuing free expression and wanting to defend it from people who would see it done away with is not equivalent to that.
Edit: And just to add, it's a terrible assumption that the best/only solution to an environment of increasing violence and hate is to make people stop talking. This is again a product of a fixation on the desire to do that, social media makes you want it, but that doesn't mean it's the place to focus. There are underlying problems that are not words.
Funny how the "most disenfranchised" always ends up being Nazis and Nazi supporters.
Any time an actually disenfranchised person tries to use their legitimate free speech rights to advocate for their own liberty, it's not considered an action against free speech at all to lock them in a cage, set up free speech zones, or do any number of things to prevent them from voicing their concerns.
I say we give Nazis the same amount of free speech rights as say, communists had in the 50-60s, blacks had before the civil rights act, or Kaepernick had while simply not getting up during the national anthem.
So, let me get this straight. You think hate speech is okay, because the disenfranchised need to express themselves? Why would the disenfranchised need to utilize hate speech to address systemic problems in their society? Surely the recipient of the hate speech is more disenfranchised.
Being an ass is not against the law. Not every social interaction needs to have a law associated with it. "Free speech is for journalists" is a useless statement. Who defines when you become a journalist? The government?
The problem is, if you condemn them back to the shadows and basements, they fester and pass their hatreds down within their in-group. They'll just teach their children "the south with rise again" in private, with no pushback because others don't know it's happening.
At least letting them talk in the name of free speech lets you know who the Nazis/fascists/white supremacists are, instead of having them going back to using toxic, slowly indoctrinating dogwhistles and regrouping.
At the end of the day, secrecy just prolongs and exacerbates problems. We should rise or fall as a society on who we all are, not on the basis of who has the most appealing web of lies. Let the Nazis bury themselves by speaking their fucked up beliefs, because otherwise they'll temper their messaging, which will recruit more people than the horror of their actual endgame.
You wrote three paragraphs to demonstrate how thoroughly you missed the point of this extremely blunt comic. Don’t get mad at me for pointing this out, I’m just exposing my own opinion the to purifying effect of public discourse.
That knowledge literally ended the employment of a lot of white supremacists that were filmed in Charlottesville overtly chanting against Jewish people. You see? They were given enough rope, and they hanged themselves, and now those images and reputation can keep others informed about who they are and never to give them an inch.
Free speech is the absence of consequences by the state, but once you know someone is a proud white supremacist, you don't have to keep them employed, or renew their lease, or hire them, or stay married to them, or invite them to your wedding, etc. A known Nazi can suffer social consequences all day and be socially ostracized, if they were emboldened enough to disclose that fact instead of spending their lives infecting people with shit like "I hate urban people in the inner cities." Shit like that can appeal to the weak minded.
I don’t believe you can see my reply but counterpoint: reddit and 4chan both went that route and host major nazi ideology funnels. Just like… ban assholes.
Counterpoint to your counterpoint: because they have bigot dens to spew their bile among like minded white nationalists, intelligence agencies now have their names and identities and they're now on lists. They can and have stopped violent actors that were given enough rope to feel safe discussing their plans online instead of being driven to bars and basements to plan out of view.
If you don't give the Nazis the the freedom say "hi im a Nazi" you don't know where the Nazis are, let alone have the means to find out what they're planning.
They're already doing that. It's 2023 ffs. They've been doing this since slavery was abolished. Time to signal to the entire world that it's not fucking okay. Letting Nazis talk has only ever allowed them to plant their insidious misinformation campaigns and gather followers. We don't give Nazis a fucking inch and they are not welcome in the town square. Kill your local Nazi.
I can't name a single Nazi. Even Richard Spencer, the guy whom most people think of as a Nazi, says that he doesn't identify as a Nazi. So, who identifies which people are Nazis and which aren't if they don't self-identify?
But that contained the problem for many, many years. And more times than not when members of the group experienced the real world, their indoctrination fell apart. Being in daylight emboldens them and lets them amplify their message and find like-minded people.
It's literally up to you to use your words to fight their words. As soon as you try to ban words and speech it will immediately be turned around against you. If you cannot fight their words with your words that's your problem not theirs.
We Germans are doing just fine with laws against certain kind of statements since... y'know.
I don't like the overall trend of restricting certain kinds of language, especially on social media where some concepts are forced to be expressed through some kind of doublespeak to be seen but I think it's fair game to outlaw the denial of the holocaust.
I don’t like the overall trend of restricting certain kinds of language, especially on social media where some concepts are forced to be expressed through some kind of doublespeak
Most nationalists (including Nazi) give no flying fucks about a rational discourse. If 2+2=4 hurts their precious fee fees, they say that 2+2=5 and no matter what you say will change it.
Plenty Nazi capitalise on Brandolini's Law. They know that it takes far less effort to utter bullshit than to refute it. In effect this means that people fighting against Nazi discourses through words will, as a group, get tired faster than the ones vomiting the Nazi discourse.
Because of those two factors, while I can certainly understand your point, I think that you're being short-sighted when you say "that's your problem not theirs".
I do agree that there's always a risk that mechanisms used to censor them might get misused against you. However I see this as a second risk that you need to balance out with the first one (the Nazi), and which risk is more relevant is heavily situational.
I'm not a big fan of Poo-per Popper but I think that his paradox of tolerance is spot on about those two things. At least in its original version (not its "Disney version" parroted in social media). I'll abridge it here:
If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies ; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right even to suppress them, for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument ; they may forbid their followers to listen to anything as deceptive as rational argument, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists.
Emphasis mine. For further context check page 226 of his book. (PDF page 232).
The fact that it takes a lot more energy to debunk a claim is why I said you can take a few and show that they are disingenuous. Spend a bit of energy to show that they always talk bullshit so that they can be proven liars and easily discounted by anybody with a brain. The people you are trying to convince are not the Nazis. They're basically a lost cause. They are few and far between but if people listen to what they say and nobody is around to disprove it or argue against it they gain a bit of power. They haven't created more Nazis so you have the same enemies to fight against. Cut off the head of the snake by showing their claims to be disingenuous and lies.
These are all things that do not require the power of law and force of government to silence people.
We already have a class of speech called true threats. If it is actionable then it is illegal. If they have concrete plans for it then we have laws that criminalize it. If they're just saying what they want to happen then you can call them monsters and show why what they are saying is wrong and terrible.
If you cannot fight their words with your words that’s your problem not theirs.
People pretend like some perfect argument can defeat Nazis. You cannot fight gut emotions like fear, dread, and hatred with "reasonable" words and "rational" thought.
People aren't rational, and they are easily pursuaded by things other than "the best possible idea selected by an objective evaluation of all available ideas from the marketplace of ideas".
People aren't robots, hatred and fear lean into their base emotions. It's partially why cults exist.
There's never really a perfect argument because we're not beholden to rationality. Utilitarianism comes after treating people well for me, so even if an action would result in a better outcome I may find it unethical.
Of course you can. It's the moment that desire to harm turns into intent to harm that it becomes actionable.
Though "polite discourse" in this case might be considered a crowd of demontrators boooing whomever is expressing their wishes to do harm until they get a headache :D
You can. It's just tacit announcement that you're a wishy washy enlightened centrist who couldn't even be bothered to keep up with current events. Caring about things is lame right?