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There's a single standard. You are free to engage in business with whomever you choose. This applies to everyone. But this freedom doesn't liberate you from the

There's a single standard. You are free to engage in business with whomever you choose. This applies to everyone. But this freedom doesn't liberate you from the social consequences of your actions. Cloudflare will probably endure social consequences for its actions - mostly inflicted upon them by social libertarians who believe they made this decision arbitrarily. Some of the social repercussions may be justified. But that doesn't mean their decision was unlawful, just frowned upon by certain quarters. It always comes down to a war of values. This discussion is just a proxy for the larger discussion, which concerns which values are right and which are wrong. And there is, most of us would say, a real, universal answer there. We might not know what it is, but we believe there is one. Or else all of this hand-wringing is just arbitrary, and it comes down to who has more power.

leereeves 9y ago
To paraphrase JFK: those who prevent peaceful self-expression make violent self-expression inevitable.
- Aqueous 9y ago
  I don't think Cloudflare is preventing DailyStormer from engaging in peaceful expression. They are just not going to help them do it. And based on events in Charlottesville, white supremacy is inherently a violent movement & don't need any excuses to engage in violence. If they say they engage in violence because media & internet companies shut them out, I'm not sure I buy that excuse.
  - leereeves 9y ago
    > based on events in Charlottesville, white supremacy is inherently a violent movement They've been marching for years without violence. Antifa, on the other hand...when have they ever protested without violence?
    - Aqueous 9y ago
      "They've been marching for years without violence." And then, when they felt they had a government sympathetic to their aims, they stopped being non-violent, and stopped covering their faces to hide their identities. And someone died being run over with a car, many people were brutally beaten (this has been captured on videotape), and two cops died responding to the chaos they caused. I don't know about the history of "Antifa" violence but I do know what I can see with my own eyes, which is that Nazis are violent. Their expressed philosophy of government is of white nationalism, of removing all non-whites from the nation (whether through deportation or genocide). It is a proposal of mass violence. It is a movement of violence.
      - leereeves 9y ago
        > I don't know about the history of "Antifa" violence I think a lot of people aren't aware; the media hasn't been reporting it much. Someone who wants the full picture of what happened in Charlottesville should learn more about their history of violence, everywhere from Berkeley to Hamburg. They've been violent against people ranging from neo-Nazis to college speakers to Trump supporters to police officers to the G20. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-ris...
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - seabird 9y ago
        Yes, I'm sure that the radical right marchers shot down the police helicopter with their readily available Strela-3 rocket launchers that they keep on hand, just in case the opportunity to do so arises. You're trying very hard to make a connection there. Antifa has been instigating full on riots since the election. We're talking beating people unconscious (captured on video), torching buildings (captured on video), looting businesses (captured on video), destroying property (captured on video), and blocking traffic (captured on video), all without significant media coverage (despite the video footage). This can mostly be attributed to the general populace not being familiar with Antifa or its downright violent tactics/rioting. It's a miracle Antifa hasn't managed to kill anybody yet. It is the only reason they haven't received significant media coverage; had the nut in the car not driven through a crowd, this whole mess would have flown under the radar, just like every political riot before this. I'd also like to add that Trump is "sympathetic" to neo-Nazis in the same way Bernie Sanders is; isolationism is popular among white nationalists and supremacists. Adolf Hitler supported gun control, strict conservation efforts, and discouraged smoking; is everybody who supports these ideas a Nazi?

leereeves 9y ago

To paraphrase JFK: those who prevent peaceful self-expression make violent self-expression inevitable.

Aqueous 9y ago
I don't think Cloudflare is preventing DailyStormer from engaging in peaceful expression. They are just not going to help them do it. And based on events in Charlottesville, white supremacy is inherently a violent movement & don't need any excuses to engage in violence. If they say they engage in violence because media & internet companies shut them out, I'm not sure I buy that excuse.
- leereeves 9y ago
  > based on events in Charlottesville, white supremacy is inherently a violent movement They've been marching for years without violence. Antifa, on the other hand...when have they ever protested without violence?
  - Aqueous 9y ago
    "They've been marching for years without violence." And then, when they felt they had a government sympathetic to their aims, they stopped being non-violent, and stopped covering their faces to hide their identities. And someone died being run over with a car, many people were brutally beaten (this has been captured on videotape), and two cops died responding to the chaos they caused. I don't know about the history of "Antifa" violence but I do know what I can see with my own eyes, which is that Nazis are violent. Their expressed philosophy of government is of white nationalism, of removing all non-whites from the nation (whether through deportation or genocide). It is a proposal of mass violence. It is a movement of violence.
    - leereeves 9y ago
      > I don't know about the history of "Antifa" violence I think a lot of people aren't aware; the media hasn't been reporting it much. Someone who wants the full picture of what happened in Charlottesville should learn more about their history of violence, everywhere from Berkeley to Hamburg. They've been violent against people ranging from neo-Nazis to college speakers to Trump supporters to police officers to the G20. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-ris...
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - seabird 9y ago
      Yes, I'm sure that the radical right marchers shot down the police helicopter with their readily available Strela-3 rocket launchers that they keep on hand, just in case the opportunity to do so arises. You're trying very hard to make a connection there. Antifa has been instigating full on riots since the election. We're talking beating people unconscious (captured on video), torching buildings (captured on video), looting businesses (captured on video), destroying property (captured on video), and blocking traffic (captured on video), all without significant media coverage (despite the video footage). This can mostly be attributed to the general populace not being familiar with Antifa or its downright violent tactics/rioting. It's a miracle Antifa hasn't managed to kill anybody yet. It is the only reason they haven't received significant media coverage; had the nut in the car not driven through a crowd, this whole mess would have flown under the radar, just like every political riot before this. I'd also like to add that Trump is "sympathetic" to neo-Nazis in the same way Bernie Sanders is; isolationism is popular among white nationalists and supremacists. Adolf Hitler supported gun control, strict conservation efforts, and discouraged smoking; is everybody who supports these ideas a Nazi?