7 ms·

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.
        cortesoft 9y ago
        "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side." - Jean Paul-Sartre, Anti-Semite and the Jew
  - 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]

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.
      - cortesoft 9y ago
        "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side." - Jean Paul-Sartre, Anti-Semite and the Jew
- 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]