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Getting a little tired of these 'exposure will cure-all' type of comments. The only thing accomplished by not quashing sites like Daily Stormer is desensitizin

Getting a little tired of these 'exposure will cure-all' type of comments. The only thing accomplished by not quashing sites like Daily Stormer is desensitizing us to them which only leads to legitimizing.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Getting a little tired of "not all speech should be free" comments. You're trading one brand of facism for another. Don't try to wrap your brand in the appearance of progress. To discuss does not legitimize. If you are fearful of an idea being debated, that says more about you than the idea.
- pupppet 9y ago
  You're confusing inciting violence with free speech.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    I prefer absolute freedoms that prevent interpretation from being used to suppress those freedoms. There are costs to living in a free society. I support those rights in their entirety, and I'm not sorry for doing so.
    - thinkfurther 9y ago
      > I prefer absolute freedoms that prevent interpretation from being used to suppress those freedoms. So wait, when someone says "kill all Jews" that's an idea to be discussed, but when someone says "let's censor people who call for that" that's somehow worse, and not simply also speech you can also discuss?
      - cortesoft 9y ago
        I don't think he is saying you can't ARGUE for that?
        thinkfurther 9y ago
        Then why are they "tired" of such comments? Has anyone here ever actually been near a group of, say, more than two actual nazi skinheads? Would you discuss their ideas in their basement? I'm not for censorship either, but I know what would be needed to confront such people -- namely, going past their "ideas" and to the root, their fucked up, impotent personality -- isn't even allowed on HN. If you get personal here, you're gone. So that's laughable from the get go in a way. Yet if you discuss "ideas" with a Nazi, you're just in endless quick sand. I tried discussing with Nazis, and I'm still up for it (I even tried discussing with pedophiles, but I totally noped out of there because it also achieved nothing and it was even more depressing than the Nazis). But I know the murderous cold that lingers there, and how no Nazi stands on their own. If you win the argument, you get a cold smile saying "just you wait", and that's it. Then you're back to square one. But if you didn't even try that you simply don't know what you're even talking about. edit: take the guy who murdered one person and wounded 19 severely by driving with their car into protesters. His father died early and his mother didn't know what he was up to. I'll just say, this family could used help 10-15 years ago. I don't know how or by whom, but in a magical fantasy world, that would have been the correct solution -- now you can do nothing, just look at the spilled blood. If you want to prevent more of that, look at the people who are growing up with pain today... but by the time their fist is clenched beyond a point, it will take something special or very big to change them, and otherwise they will just hate or even kill, just dwindle mentally or even suicide. Hitler wasn't random, he's the prototype. Stalin wasn't random, he's the prototype. Mental issues are the problem, fucked up childhoods are the problem, not "ideas". Don't assume everybody is that far gone, but also don't delude yourself thinking this is about ideas. And frankly, too many people here aren't even on to themselves enough to meaningfully look at anyone else's personality, and should deal with their own obedience and hiding behind abstractions first.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        liberte82 9y ago
        A lot of people still really don't truly understand the fascist mindset. They don't understand that they don't debate in good faith, and they don't care about facts, or free speech, or anything. They don't care about truth, or lies. They care about power, and they're fueled by hate. Their genius is their ability to use words as weapons, to strike at the weaknesses of a civilization as they are doing now in this free speech 'debate'. They'll use truth, or lies, as needed to get what they want. They're not bound by the usual rules framing debate. During the Charlottesville attack this weekend, these assholes were all over the internet claiming that the attacker was actually an antifa socialist, doxxing an innocent person in the process. After that turned out to be of course false, did they express shame or regret at their lies? Of course not. They went onto the next justification, claiming that the driver had been 'provoked' into driving into the crowd. Now they have the fringe Alex Jones element claiming that the Nazis at this rally were Jewish actors. That's what we're dealing with here. People need to get that through their heads and stop thinking that fascists can be reasonable. They're inherently unreasonable and they use that to their every advantage. They're not ashamed of lies, and they will tell different lies and different truths to different people to sow chaos, confusion and inaction amongst those who speak against them. After they've won, let's see exactly how much they hold up their reverence for free speech as they're claiming to do now. They don't care about free speech. In fact I wouldn't even say they're necessarily against free speech. They don't care about ideas - they'll just kill anyone who gets in their way. They're using our reverence for free speech against us. In some twisted way you could almost say they really are more evolved. Just as we are able to control animals in large groups by understanding their behavior and manipulating it, fascists dedicate their energies to manipulating human emotions and behaviors, both at the micro and macro level. By driving out all compassion from themselves, they open themselves up to actions and manipulations that most people would be prevented from doing by their human shame.
      - nv-vn 9y ago
        It's not that it's better or worse. Saying that you should kill all Jews is, morally, a horrible statement to make. However, saying it is different from acting on it. While it's a statement that most would (and should) find problems with, that is not enough to silence that person. My belief is that this discussion is not simply "one or the other," i.e. there's no point to weighing two views against one another. The moral outrage against a person calling for a genocide is not enough to justify silencing that person's speech, because the two levels of social misdeeds do not overlap.
        thinkfurther 9y ago
        It's not about moral outrage, heh. I guess the US is really a child when it comes to this, once the continent was laid to waste we probably can see eye to eye on this much better. Until then, did you deal with real Nazis before? I did. That guy who wrote a response and then deleted it, probably because they weren't anonymous, did. Anyone else? Anyone coming at this from the street instead of an ivory tower? Ever got chased by a group of Nazis? Stuff like "kill all Jews" is just a mating dance for them, the real talk, and the real weapon collection, happens behind closed doors. So, did anyone at least actually deal with even the TIP of that iceberg, before they're trying to tell me how I can defend myself?
        nv-vn 9y ago
        How is silencing someone's speech a form of defending yourself? And frankly, as someone who had multiple family members killed during the holocaust, trying to shame someone into agreement with you based on "encountering real Nazis" is ridiculous. Saying that the person who had to delete their response because of what "Nazis" said to them is even worse. You cannot compare people making mean comments or even threats against you on an online forum to a systematic genocide and denial of all human rights committed by your government on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Fearing for you life because a dictator has established a mass system designed for your extermination is a very different reality than how you feel after sharing an unpopular opinion under your real identity.
        9y ago
    - rpearl 9y ago
      There's a very clear social contract of tolerance though: Tolerate all speech by those who do not violate the social contract of tolerance by using their speech for intolerance. Tolerance is not an absolute. It's a peace treaty. Then you can pretty easily ask: civil rights protests? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract. They tolerate all who extend that contract to them. LGBT activists? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract. They tolerate all who extend that contract to them. The daily st-literalnazipropaganda-ormer? violating that contract. Suppress it. Destroy it. No platform should allow it. Nazis in Charlottesville shouting "Jews will not replace us"? violating that contract. Suppress them. Make them fear. They do not tolerate all who extend them that contract.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        A social contract is codified neither in the US constitution, nor US law. Legal constructs preempt social moores.
        rpearl 9y ago
        But we're talking about social mores and private actions here in this thread...
        cocoablazing 9y ago
        Social mores are social norms so widely/fervently held that they predicate the law itself, such as prohibiting incest. The term was invented to refer to these types of commonly held beliefs by a sociologist.
      - nv-vn 9y ago
        Your argument seems to boil down to "ban all ideas the left does not agree with" to me. Tolerance in your definition confuses me. It seems like you try to make it appear like it means tolerating other's speech (with the "Tolerate all speech..."), but your own comment is very clear about not tolerating the speech of all those groups of people (even if they would extend the right of tolerance to your speech -- obviously, literal Nazis might not, but someone like James Damore certainly would). With a close reading of your comment, it seems like you leave the definition of "tolerance" unopened. Does it mean the tolerance of lifestyles? Of speech? Of religion? What happens if someone's religion mandates intolerance? I think that, while tolerance works well as a vague social value, trying to define it and draw a border around what it is or isn't will only result in destroying the rights of one's opposition. The word can be used in a variety of way in a variety of contexts; I would propose that any use of violence against someone for holding another idea is a form of intolerance, and from your comment it clearly seems that you disagree. The only "clear social contract of tolerance" is one that is tainted by everyone's political views. Where you would advocate for the removal of those who stand against LGBT rights, a religious Christian/Muslim/Jew would advocate for the removal of you for denying their right to speak their minds.
  - cortesoft 9y ago
    This is such a tricky issue. I do think so many of these sites do nothing but promote hate and violence. However, let's imagine we decide to go with the rule 'You are allowed to shut down a website that incites violence' Someone has to determine what constitutes 'inciting violence'. There will be some websites that are targetted for shut down while some won't be; there is no way to get around this. What gets targetted will be the ones that go against the group who has the ability to choose the targets (a government agency or perhaps a private ISP). Second, what stops a false flag from getting a site shutdown? If a site allows comments, a person hostile to the site could post a violent comment, and then you would have justification for shutting the site down. Third, you will get false accusations. Take, for example, the civil rights movement in the sixties. You don't think state governments in the south wouldn't have accused the various protest groups as inciting violence? It doesn't matter that they were peaceful protests, they would have certainly argued that organizing sit ins and protest marches was a form of violence. While we might say, "Well clearly those were peacful and would be allowed to have their protest", that doesn't mean a court run by that same government wouldn't see differently. You don't think a southern court in the 60s would have sided with the government when they accused the civil rights groups of being violent? Once you give the government an out to get around free speech requirements, they will take it whenever they can.
    - jquery 9y ago
      > Once you give the government an out to get around free speech requirements, they will take it whenever they can. The current "out" is to let private companies run the entire infrastructure of speech itself. That's worrying.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- goialoq 9y ago
  What do you think the word "fascism" means? It doesn't mean "banning some behaviors". Calling humans "monkeys" is not debate. Why should Cloudflare be morally obligated to offer free speech to Daily Stormer, when Daily Stormer doesn't offer free speech to non-racist non-murderers?
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    Fascism isn't the only ideology that promotes suppression of speech, but it's probably the first one that comes to most people's head. I don't think it's that hyperbolic to declare censorship as fascist. Freedom of speech is a core democratic principle. You can't have a democracy without freedom of speech. It doesn't really matter if the censorship is done by a few big corporations or the government. The effect is the same. If some ideas become wrongthink and can't be distributed or discussed, democracy dies. Sure, it starts with the most extreme, least defensible things. Like stormfront. But it won't stop there. Before you know it any speech even mildly critical of immigration is silenced and you get the situation going on in Europe. What happens when the next red scare happens? Politics is like a pendulum - it goes back and forth. Just a generation ago Communism was the persecuted ideology. People on the far left were blacklisted, silenced, and discriminated against. Was that ok with you? You want it to be 10x worse next time, by establishing a culture with no tolerance of differing opinions? Because that is where we are heading. Defending freedom means defending undesirables first. Because undesirables are always the people who benefit most from freedom. Copyright violaters are the first people to adopt torrents. Pedophiles are the first people to adopt tor. Hackers and drug dealers are the biggest adopters of bitcoin. Undesirable extremists are going to be the group to benefit the most from free expression.
    - frankquist 9y ago
      "Before you know it any speech even mildly critical of immigration is silenced and you get the situation going on in Europe." This seems... odd. I don't think right now there's any (western) European country where this occurs. Sure: it has occurred and has contributed to a backlash against 'political correctness'. But this doesn't sound like a description of the Europe I live in. Just the stereotypical Europe shown on some american TV, where muslims run a lot of cities and all ghettos are offlimits to non-muslims.
- frankquist 9y ago
  An an European, I'm kind of offended you're stretching the definition of fascism to also include "anything that suppresses free speech". Can you please not water down the definition of a term linked to the killing of millions?
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    As an American, I look down on the limits of speech in Europe with disdain. Free speech isn't responsible for genocide; the electorate is.
    - CaptainZapp 9y ago
      OK, fine. Then how, as an American, do you justify Ag_gag laws? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag It seems to me that free speech values in the US are not quite as absolute as you make them out to be. Especially when the interest of powerful people or big corporations come to play.
      - GauntletWizard 9y ago
        Ag-gag laws are abhorrent. Most Americans agree. They're a relatively recent problem (Most have been passed or on the ballot since 2012, so last five years) caused by corrupt politicians that Americans are working to solve. Pointing at them is classic whataboutism. We have problems in the US. We mostly confront them headon rather than pretending they don't exist. Suppression of speech is pretending they don't exist. Another example: Americans are constantly blasted by Europeans for racism. Racism is a very real problem in America - That's why groups like Black Lives Matter exist. We deal with these problems with speech, like the aforementioned group. As such, some fairly basic indicators, like the public opinion on miscegenation have been trending in a good direction - Less than 20% of America disapproves of it[1]. The data is not quite quantified in the same way, but there's an argument that in Germany, that number is more than 40%[2]. Across the EU, 35% of people would be upset if their child were dating a black person. The numbers are not directly comparable - The US numbers are about interracial marriage as a whole, not personalizing it about "your child", and I've seen firsthand that there's a difference. But those aren't numbers that swing that far. It might be equally bad, it might be a little worse in the US. It's not the sea change that it's so often presented as - Racism is a global problem, not a US one. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States#Public_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_Un... [2]http://www.equineteurope.org/IMG/pdf/ebs_437_en.pdf http://www.equineteurope.org/IMG/pdf/ebs_437_en.pdf
- jauzeyimam 9y ago
  A private corporation deciding not to host /actually fascist/ content because they're getting bad press for it has nothing to do with free speech. And criticizing another corporation for hosting, again, /actually fascist/ content is perfectly within the scope of the 1st amendment. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357 https://xkcd.com/1357
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    Can you please point me to the comment where someone claimed it violated the first amendment? I can't find it.
  - blfr 9y ago
    Yes, yes it does have a lot to do with free speech. It strikes to the heart of the issue. Free speech isn't just a paragraph in the American Constitution that appeared there out of nowhere. It's a larger cultural norm that allows you to share your ideas and, much more importantly, allows you to hear other people's ideas without censorship. Whether censorship comes from the government, university, or some megacorp is completely irrelevant to whether it is an infringement on free speech.
    - MaxfordAndSons 9y ago
      > Free speech isn't just a paragraph in the American Constitution that appeared there out of nowhere. It's a larger cultural norm that allows you to share your ideas and, much more importantly, allows you to hear other people's ideas without censorship. Right. > Whether censorship comes from the government, university, or some megacorp is completely irrelevant to whether it is an infringement on free speech. Wrong, unless you mean a university or corporation literally physically censoring you from communicating something. See sib response by dragonwriter. If a university disinvites a speaker or a corporation stops hosting someone customer's website, nobody's right to free speech was infringed upon. Sure, you may accuse them of acting against the spirit of the value of free speech, but that's their prerogative and they are in fact simultaneously exercising their own right to free speech by choosing not to host/amplify another's speech they find repugnant.
- pluma 9y ago
  I'm German. We've seen "absolute freedom of speech" lead to Hitler's rise to power. We have not seen restrictions on freedom of speech lead to anything similar. I'm okay with us erring on the side of "fascism" this time around if we know the other path to have led us to actual fascism before.
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    Hitler's rise to power was not a consequence of free speech or democracy, as I've seen argued elsewhere. It was the result of a weak, young democracy that couldn't/wouldn't stop political parties raising private armies and beating the crap out of their opponents, combined with deep seated cultural problems (resentment at the outcome of WW1, latent anti-semitism etc). If you really believe suppression of free speech stops dictators committing horrible crimes, explain Stalin.
    - pluma 9y ago
      > explain Stalin The communist rise to power was an actual civil war. Hitler rose to power by democratic election (assisted by violent thugs and demagoguery and ultimately corruption but still an election).
      - peoplewindow 9y ago
        By that standard the USSR had lots of democratic elections. Some of the unwritten standards by which we judge an election democratic or not are things like "do people get beaten up for campaigning". When we see violence and then a leader who wins 97% of the vote in places like Africa, we don't hesitate to call it a sham democracy. Why would we do differently for Germany?
        pluma 9y ago
        Hitler wasn't elected with 97%. The NSDAP's election results looked like this: May 1924: 6.6% December 1924: 3.0% May 1928: 2.6% September 1930: 18.3% (second largest party) July 1932: 37.4% November 1932: 33.1% March 1933: 43.9% (last free election) November 1933: 92.1% March 1936: 98.8% April 1938: 99.1% Sure, the NSDAP won 90% of the vote after all other parties were dissolved in June 1933 but all elections before that were "democratic". The NSDAP didn't even get into power with a direct majority. They formed a coalition government with another party, the KSWR/DNVP (who got 8% of the vote). Also note that by that point the government had been destabilized since the 1920s, ruling only with an absolute minority of the votes. In 1930 the left-wing parties (KPD and SPD) actually campaigned against ever having another war with very successful demonstrations. The NSDAP campaign in 1930 was the first campaign organised by Goebbels. It was based on conspiracy theories like the economical crisis being an international conspiracy against Germany, appeals to national identity, scaremongering against communism and capitalism. They actually toned down the anti-semitism on Goebbels' orders. This was a "small government" democracy in action. An unstable one, yes, but the elections were democratic. The Nazis exploited the instability of the government and the economy and they used scaremongering and demagoguery to get the relative majority, but they won democratic elections and they had a significant share of the votes before being in a position to force the outcome.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  The Daily Stormer is not a 'debate' site. The owner/operator explicitly calls for war. I get you like the universal free speech idea but there isn't a valid form of Nazism that's A-OK once you get over the genocidal bits.
msla 9y ago
That's a very slippery slope there.
Meekro 9y ago
I would not consider an idea more legitimate just because it has a website, nor would I consider it less legitimate just because some censorious asshole in a web host's abuse department decided to kick it out.
curun1r 9y ago
Said more eloquently than I could ever hope to... "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." - Justice Louis Brandeis, Whitney vs California
- thinkfurther 9y ago
  You can have hundreds of years, if all you have is a piece of paper and 100m³ block of concrete, you still do not have enough time.
bsder 9y ago
> Getting a little tired of these 'exposure will cure-all' type of comments. The only thing accomplished by not quashing sites like Daily Stormer is desensitizing us to them which only leads to legitimizing. Perhaps this is because not enough people are stepping up? When was the last time you challenged a proclamation from some Fox News ditto head? When was the last time you looked at someone in your family spouting racist garbage and called them out on it? "Exposure cures all" only works if someone is also willing to take on the challenge of creating the exposure.
msla 9y ago
Your slippery slope is one other countries have already fallen off of.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Getting a little tired of "not all speech should be free" comments. You're trading one brand of facism for another. Don't try to wrap your brand in the appearance of progress. To discuss does not legitimize. If you are fearful of an idea being debated, that says more about you than the idea.

pupppet 9y ago
You're confusing inciting violence with free speech.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  I prefer absolute freedoms that prevent interpretation from being used to suppress those freedoms. There are costs to living in a free society. I support those rights in their entirety, and I'm not sorry for doing so.
  - thinkfurther 9y ago
    > I prefer absolute freedoms that prevent interpretation from being used to suppress those freedoms. So wait, when someone says "kill all Jews" that's an idea to be discussed, but when someone says "let's censor people who call for that" that's somehow worse, and not simply also speech you can also discuss?
    - cortesoft 9y ago
      I don't think he is saying you can't ARGUE for that?
      - thinkfurther 9y ago
        Then why are they "tired" of such comments? Has anyone here ever actually been near a group of, say, more than two actual nazi skinheads? Would you discuss their ideas in their basement? I'm not for censorship either, but I know what would be needed to confront such people -- namely, going past their "ideas" and to the root, their fucked up, impotent personality -- isn't even allowed on HN. If you get personal here, you're gone. So that's laughable from the get go in a way. Yet if you discuss "ideas" with a Nazi, you're just in endless quick sand. I tried discussing with Nazis, and I'm still up for it (I even tried discussing with pedophiles, but I totally noped out of there because it also achieved nothing and it was even more depressing than the Nazis). But I know the murderous cold that lingers there, and how no Nazi stands on their own. If you win the argument, you get a cold smile saying "just you wait", and that's it. Then you're back to square one. But if you didn't even try that you simply don't know what you're even talking about. edit: take the guy who murdered one person and wounded 19 severely by driving with their car into protesters. His father died early and his mother didn't know what he was up to. I'll just say, this family could used help 10-15 years ago. I don't know how or by whom, but in a magical fantasy world, that would have been the correct solution -- now you can do nothing, just look at the spilled blood. If you want to prevent more of that, look at the people who are growing up with pain today... but by the time their fist is clenched beyond a point, it will take something special or very big to change them, and otherwise they will just hate or even kill, just dwindle mentally or even suicide. Hitler wasn't random, he's the prototype. Stalin wasn't random, he's the prototype. Mental issues are the problem, fucked up childhoods are the problem, not "ideas". Don't assume everybody is that far gone, but also don't delude yourself thinking this is about ideas. And frankly, too many people here aren't even on to themselves enough to meaningfully look at anyone else's personality, and should deal with their own obedience and hiding behind abstractions first.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        liberte82 9y ago
        A lot of people still really don't truly understand the fascist mindset. They don't understand that they don't debate in good faith, and they don't care about facts, or free speech, or anything. They don't care about truth, or lies. They care about power, and they're fueled by hate. Their genius is their ability to use words as weapons, to strike at the weaknesses of a civilization as they are doing now in this free speech 'debate'. They'll use truth, or lies, as needed to get what they want. They're not bound by the usual rules framing debate. During the Charlottesville attack this weekend, these assholes were all over the internet claiming that the attacker was actually an antifa socialist, doxxing an innocent person in the process. After that turned out to be of course false, did they express shame or regret at their lies? Of course not. They went onto the next justification, claiming that the driver had been 'provoked' into driving into the crowd. Now they have the fringe Alex Jones element claiming that the Nazis at this rally were Jewish actors. That's what we're dealing with here. People need to get that through their heads and stop thinking that fascists can be reasonable. They're inherently unreasonable and they use that to their every advantage. They're not ashamed of lies, and they will tell different lies and different truths to different people to sow chaos, confusion and inaction amongst those who speak against them. After they've won, let's see exactly how much they hold up their reverence for free speech as they're claiming to do now. They don't care about free speech. In fact I wouldn't even say they're necessarily against free speech. They don't care about ideas - they'll just kill anyone who gets in their way. They're using our reverence for free speech against us. In some twisted way you could almost say they really are more evolved. Just as we are able to control animals in large groups by understanding their behavior and manipulating it, fascists dedicate their energies to manipulating human emotions and behaviors, both at the micro and macro level. By driving out all compassion from themselves, they open themselves up to actions and manipulations that most people would be prevented from doing by their human shame.
    - nv-vn 9y ago
      It's not that it's better or worse. Saying that you should kill all Jews is, morally, a horrible statement to make. However, saying it is different from acting on it. While it's a statement that most would (and should) find problems with, that is not enough to silence that person. My belief is that this discussion is not simply "one or the other," i.e. there's no point to weighing two views against one another. The moral outrage against a person calling for a genocide is not enough to justify silencing that person's speech, because the two levels of social misdeeds do not overlap.
      - thinkfurther 9y ago
        It's not about moral outrage, heh. I guess the US is really a child when it comes to this, once the continent was laid to waste we probably can see eye to eye on this much better. Until then, did you deal with real Nazis before? I did. That guy who wrote a response and then deleted it, probably because they weren't anonymous, did. Anyone else? Anyone coming at this from the street instead of an ivory tower? Ever got chased by a group of Nazis? Stuff like "kill all Jews" is just a mating dance for them, the real talk, and the real weapon collection, happens behind closed doors. So, did anyone at least actually deal with even the TIP of that iceberg, before they're trying to tell me how I can defend myself?
        nv-vn 9y ago
        How is silencing someone's speech a form of defending yourself? And frankly, as someone who had multiple family members killed during the holocaust, trying to shame someone into agreement with you based on "encountering real Nazis" is ridiculous. Saying that the person who had to delete their response because of what "Nazis" said to them is even worse. You cannot compare people making mean comments or even threats against you on an online forum to a systematic genocide and denial of all human rights committed by your government on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Fearing for you life because a dictator has established a mass system designed for your extermination is a very different reality than how you feel after sharing an unpopular opinion under your real identity.
        9y ago
  - rpearl 9y ago
    There's a very clear social contract of tolerance though: Tolerate all speech by those who do not violate the social contract of tolerance by using their speech for intolerance. Tolerance is not an absolute. It's a peace treaty. Then you can pretty easily ask: civil rights protests? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract. They tolerate all who extend that contract to them. LGBT activists? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract. They tolerate all who extend that contract to them. The daily st-literalnazipropaganda-ormer? violating that contract. Suppress it. Destroy it. No platform should allow it. Nazis in Charlottesville shouting "Jews will not replace us"? violating that contract. Suppress them. Make them fear. They do not tolerate all who extend them that contract.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      A social contract is codified neither in the US constitution, nor US law. Legal constructs preempt social moores.
      - rpearl 9y ago
        But we're talking about social mores and private actions here in this thread...
      - cocoablazing 9y ago
        Social mores are social norms so widely/fervently held that they predicate the law itself, such as prohibiting incest. The term was invented to refer to these types of commonly held beliefs by a sociologist.
    - nv-vn 9y ago
      Your argument seems to boil down to "ban all ideas the left does not agree with" to me. Tolerance in your definition confuses me. It seems like you try to make it appear like it means tolerating other's speech (with the "Tolerate all speech..."), but your own comment is very clear about not tolerating the speech of all those groups of people (even if they would extend the right of tolerance to your speech -- obviously, literal Nazis might not, but someone like James Damore certainly would). With a close reading of your comment, it seems like you leave the definition of "tolerance" unopened. Does it mean the tolerance of lifestyles? Of speech? Of religion? What happens if someone's religion mandates intolerance? I think that, while tolerance works well as a vague social value, trying to define it and draw a border around what it is or isn't will only result in destroying the rights of one's opposition. The word can be used in a variety of way in a variety of contexts; I would propose that any use of violence against someone for holding another idea is a form of intolerance, and from your comment it clearly seems that you disagree. The only "clear social contract of tolerance" is one that is tainted by everyone's political views. Where you would advocate for the removal of those who stand against LGBT rights, a religious Christian/Muslim/Jew would advocate for the removal of you for denying their right to speak their minds.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  This is such a tricky issue. I do think so many of these sites do nothing but promote hate and violence. However, let's imagine we decide to go with the rule 'You are allowed to shut down a website that incites violence' Someone has to determine what constitutes 'inciting violence'. There will be some websites that are targetted for shut down while some won't be; there is no way to get around this. What gets targetted will be the ones that go against the group who has the ability to choose the targets (a government agency or perhaps a private ISP). Second, what stops a false flag from getting a site shutdown? If a site allows comments, a person hostile to the site could post a violent comment, and then you would have justification for shutting the site down. Third, you will get false accusations. Take, for example, the civil rights movement in the sixties. You don't think state governments in the south wouldn't have accused the various protest groups as inciting violence? It doesn't matter that they were peaceful protests, they would have certainly argued that organizing sit ins and protest marches was a form of violence. While we might say, "Well clearly those were peacful and would be allowed to have their protest", that doesn't mean a court run by that same government wouldn't see differently. You don't think a southern court in the 60s would have sided with the government when they accused the civil rights groups of being violent? Once you give the government an out to get around free speech requirements, they will take it whenever they can.
  - jquery 9y ago
    > Once you give the government an out to get around free speech requirements, they will take it whenever they can. The current "out" is to let private companies run the entire infrastructure of speech itself. That's worrying.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
goialoq 9y ago
What do you think the word "fascism" means? It doesn't mean "banning some behaviors". Calling humans "monkeys" is not debate. Why should Cloudflare be morally obligated to offer free speech to Daily Stormer, when Daily Stormer doesn't offer free speech to non-racist non-murderers?
- Houshalter 9y ago
  Fascism isn't the only ideology that promotes suppression of speech, but it's probably the first one that comes to most people's head. I don't think it's that hyperbolic to declare censorship as fascist. Freedom of speech is a core democratic principle. You can't have a democracy without freedom of speech. It doesn't really matter if the censorship is done by a few big corporations or the government. The effect is the same. If some ideas become wrongthink and can't be distributed or discussed, democracy dies. Sure, it starts with the most extreme, least defensible things. Like stormfront. But it won't stop there. Before you know it any speech even mildly critical of immigration is silenced and you get the situation going on in Europe. What happens when the next red scare happens? Politics is like a pendulum - it goes back and forth. Just a generation ago Communism was the persecuted ideology. People on the far left were blacklisted, silenced, and discriminated against. Was that ok with you? You want it to be 10x worse next time, by establishing a culture with no tolerance of differing opinions? Because that is where we are heading. Defending freedom means defending undesirables first. Because undesirables are always the people who benefit most from freedom. Copyright violaters are the first people to adopt torrents. Pedophiles are the first people to adopt tor. Hackers and drug dealers are the biggest adopters of bitcoin. Undesirable extremists are going to be the group to benefit the most from free expression.
  - frankquist 9y ago
    "Before you know it any speech even mildly critical of immigration is silenced and you get the situation going on in Europe." This seems... odd. I don't think right now there's any (western) European country where this occurs. Sure: it has occurred and has contributed to a backlash against 'political correctness'. But this doesn't sound like a description of the Europe I live in. Just the stereotypical Europe shown on some american TV, where muslims run a lot of cities and all ghettos are offlimits to non-muslims.
frankquist 9y ago
An an European, I'm kind of offended you're stretching the definition of fascism to also include "anything that suppresses free speech". Can you please not water down the definition of a term linked to the killing of millions?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  As an American, I look down on the limits of speech in Europe with disdain. Free speech isn't responsible for genocide; the electorate is.
  - CaptainZapp 9y ago
    OK, fine. Then how, as an American, do you justify Ag_gag laws? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag It seems to me that free speech values in the US are not quite as absolute as you make them out to be. Especially when the interest of powerful people or big corporations come to play.
    - GauntletWizard 9y ago
      Ag-gag laws are abhorrent. Most Americans agree. They're a relatively recent problem (Most have been passed or on the ballot since 2012, so last five years) caused by corrupt politicians that Americans are working to solve. Pointing at them is classic whataboutism. We have problems in the US. We mostly confront them headon rather than pretending they don't exist. Suppression of speech is pretending they don't exist. Another example: Americans are constantly blasted by Europeans for racism. Racism is a very real problem in America - That's why groups like Black Lives Matter exist. We deal with these problems with speech, like the aforementioned group. As such, some fairly basic indicators, like the public opinion on miscegenation have been trending in a good direction - Less than 20% of America disapproves of it[1]. The data is not quite quantified in the same way, but there's an argument that in Germany, that number is more than 40%[2]. Across the EU, 35% of people would be upset if their child were dating a black person. The numbers are not directly comparable - The US numbers are about interracial marriage as a whole, not personalizing it about "your child", and I've seen firsthand that there's a difference. But those aren't numbers that swing that far. It might be equally bad, it might be a little worse in the US. It's not the sea change that it's so often presented as - Racism is a global problem, not a US one. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States#Public_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_Un... [2]http://www.equineteurope.org/IMG/pdf/ebs_437_en.pdf http://www.equineteurope.org/IMG/pdf/ebs_437_en.pdf
jauzeyimam 9y ago
A private corporation deciding not to host /actually fascist/ content because they're getting bad press for it has nothing to do with free speech. And criticizing another corporation for hosting, again, /actually fascist/ content is perfectly within the scope of the 1st amendment. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357 https://xkcd.com/1357
- Houshalter 9y ago
  Can you please point me to the comment where someone claimed it violated the first amendment? I can't find it.
- blfr 9y ago
  Yes, yes it does have a lot to do with free speech. It strikes to the heart of the issue. Free speech isn't just a paragraph in the American Constitution that appeared there out of nowhere. It's a larger cultural norm that allows you to share your ideas and, much more importantly, allows you to hear other people's ideas without censorship. Whether censorship comes from the government, university, or some megacorp is completely irrelevant to whether it is an infringement on free speech.
  - MaxfordAndSons 9y ago
    > Free speech isn't just a paragraph in the American Constitution that appeared there out of nowhere. It's a larger cultural norm that allows you to share your ideas and, much more importantly, allows you to hear other people's ideas without censorship. Right. > Whether censorship comes from the government, university, or some megacorp is completely irrelevant to whether it is an infringement on free speech. Wrong, unless you mean a university or corporation literally physically censoring you from communicating something. See sib response by dragonwriter. If a university disinvites a speaker or a corporation stops hosting someone customer's website, nobody's right to free speech was infringed upon. Sure, you may accuse them of acting against the spirit of the value of free speech, but that's their prerogative and they are in fact simultaneously exercising their own right to free speech by choosing not to host/amplify another's speech they find repugnant.
pluma 9y ago
I'm German. We've seen "absolute freedom of speech" lead to Hitler's rise to power. We have not seen restrictions on freedom of speech lead to anything similar. I'm okay with us erring on the side of "fascism" this time around if we know the other path to have led us to actual fascism before.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Hitler's rise to power was not a consequence of free speech or democracy, as I've seen argued elsewhere. It was the result of a weak, young democracy that couldn't/wouldn't stop political parties raising private armies and beating the crap out of their opponents, combined with deep seated cultural problems (resentment at the outcome of WW1, latent anti-semitism etc). If you really believe suppression of free speech stops dictators committing horrible crimes, explain Stalin.
  - pluma 9y ago
    > explain Stalin The communist rise to power was an actual civil war. Hitler rose to power by democratic election (assisted by violent thugs and demagoguery and ultimately corruption but still an election).
    - peoplewindow 9y ago
      By that standard the USSR had lots of democratic elections. Some of the unwritten standards by which we judge an election democratic or not are things like "do people get beaten up for campaigning". When we see violence and then a leader who wins 97% of the vote in places like Africa, we don't hesitate to call it a sham democracy. Why would we do differently for Germany?
      - pluma 9y ago
        Hitler wasn't elected with 97%. The NSDAP's election results looked like this: May 1924: 6.6% December 1924: 3.0% May 1928: 2.6% September 1930: 18.3% (second largest party) July 1932: 37.4% November 1932: 33.1% March 1933: 43.9% (last free election) November 1933: 92.1% March 1936: 98.8% April 1938: 99.1% Sure, the NSDAP won 90% of the vote after all other parties were dissolved in June 1933 but all elections before that were "democratic". The NSDAP didn't even get into power with a direct majority. They formed a coalition government with another party, the KSWR/DNVP (who got 8% of the vote). Also note that by that point the government had been destabilized since the 1920s, ruling only with an absolute minority of the votes. In 1930 the left-wing parties (KPD and SPD) actually campaigned against ever having another war with very successful demonstrations. The NSDAP campaign in 1930 was the first campaign organised by Goebbels. It was based on conspiracy theories like the economical crisis being an international conspiracy against Germany, appeals to national identity, scaremongering against communism and capitalism. They actually toned down the anti-semitism on Goebbels' orders. This was a "small government" democracy in action. An unstable one, yes, but the elections were democratic. The Nazis exploited the instability of the government and the economy and they used scaremongering and demagoguery to get the relative majority, but they won democratic elections and they had a significant share of the votes before being in a position to force the outcome.
anigbrowl 9y ago
The Daily Stormer is not a 'debate' site. The owner/operator explicitly calls for war. I get you like the universal free speech idea but there isn't a valid form of Nazism that's A-OK once you get over the genocidal bits.

msla 9y ago

That's a very slippery slope there.

Meekro 9y ago

I would not consider an idea more legitimate just because it has a website, nor would I consider it less legitimate just because some censorious asshole in a web host's abuse department decided to kick it out.

curun1r 9y ago

Said more eloquently than I could ever hope to... "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." - Justice Louis Brandeis, Whitney vs California

thinkfurther 9y ago
You can have hundreds of years, if all you have is a piece of paper and 100m³ block of concrete, you still do not have enough time.

bsder 9y ago

> Getting a little tired of these 'exposure will cure-all' type of comments. The only thing accomplished by not quashing sites like Daily Stormer is desensitizing us to them which only leads to legitimizing. Perhaps this is because not enough people are stepping up? When was the last time you challenged a proclamation from some Fox News ditto head? When was the last time you looked at someone in your family spouting racist garbage and called them out on it? "Exposure cures all" only works if someone is also willing to take on the challenge of creating the exposure.

msla 9y ago

Your slippery slope is one other countries have already fallen off of.