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> Hitler rose to power by manipulating people's sentiments with language. He created scapegoats and convinced people it's okay to channel their hate and frustra

by b6 9y ago

> Hitler rose to power by manipulating people's sentiments with language. He created scapegoats and convinced people it's okay to channel their hate and frustration towards those scapegoats. People should have the freedom to be persuaded to believe things that you don't agree with. It's OK to have a "wrong" opinion. Let people say what they want and believe what they want. I'm stunned that I still have to defend freedom of expression.

novalis78 9y ago
Exactly. And here I was thinking there was such a thing as 'being an adult' and 'education' and 'freedom of speech' - do we really want to undermine the basic tenets of the Age of Reason? Because if I am not mistaken, censorship was a widespread reality and it took a very long time and a lot of blood to crawl out from underneath it. In other words: Do you think Hitler could have been stopped by not letting 'The Stormer' publish?
- pluma 9y ago
  I think "could X have stopped Hitler" is asking the wrong question (and it betrays the same kind of black/white thinking that is fundamental to the rhetoric I mentioned). The Treaty of Versailles was crippling the economy, the royalists felt betrayed by the social democrats who ended the Great War by surrendering, the Great Depression destabilised the banks, and so on. Even a bullet in the brain wouldn't necessarily have "stopped Hitler" at the time (the reason we talk about "stopping Hitler" is that Hitler wasn't stopped so we don't know who'd have taken his place and where that would have led the movement at the time). But this is irrelevant because 2010s Germans aren't 1920s/1930s Germans. West Germany underwent a massive process of Denazification, we entered into and established ourselves in the European Union and Germans who grew up in post-war Germany are used to the idea that incitement is a crime and racial hatred has no place in a civilised society. It's irrelevant whether criminalising incitement ("censorship") would have stopped Hitler in the 1930s because a single law doesn't instantly transform society. It's 2018 and this is not a new law. But we'll never be able to tell whether it stopped Hitler today because if we stopped him we won't know who he is because he'll never ascend to the same significance in history in the first place. It's a strawman. You also seem to be under the false presumption that you having legal "freedom of speech" means you can express anything you want without consequences. As is being pointed out all the time, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, just freedom from direct legal consequences. If you hold no significant political power and say something other people find disagreeable, you will be called out at best and ostracized at worst. In fact, freedom of speech might actually help those seeking to harm you because they have the righteous fury on their side. If you hold significant power, there are plenty of examples in US politics how that usually works out (though time will tell how it works out for Trump in particular). Fun side effect: dehumanising people also makes it easier to justify war. The US has been in a perpetual state of war since WW2. Do you even remember how to recognise propaganda and war rhetoric if it's been part of the mainstream since before you were born?
robbiep 9y ago
Do you not think there might be a difference between expressing an opinion and inciting people to violence?
- b6 9y ago
  Is inciting people to violence really anything other than expressing the opinion that violence is a good idea, and trying to persuade others to agree? Expressing any opinion should be allowed, and trying to persuade anyone of anything should be allowed.
  - robbiep 9y ago
    Is it right that in civil society someone stands on a soapbox and calls for violence against a person or people? Witness Pres. Trump at his rallies. Not illegal but Really, telling a mob to punch someone is pretty off colour and not the sort of thing that we should be promoting. There are ways to express your opinion on any issue that don’t lead to vilification and potential or actual harm. So I disagree. It isn’t right to form a gang on the street and attack someone, and it isn’t right to form a gang on the internet and incite violence, or strongly disrespect a person or people. Even if you take at first step the difference between actual physical harm VS a ‘bytes on the internet’ approach, the mental health harms to the persecuted group are real and have lead to suicides in individual examples, or actual violence as demonstrated in the article. Speaking from a medical perspective, I don’t draw a difference between physical and mental harm (precious snowflaking aside). Sure it’s a grey area but carte Blanche in this domain is damaging.
    - pluma 9y ago
      Freedom of expression is meaningless unless you have the social/political power to back that expression up. If Joe Blow tweets "kill the kikes", nobody cares. If someone with millions of devout followers says the same, there will eventually be blood. Or in your case, if a person with influence tells their fan club to harass someone, the victim may suffer actual mental health issues when enough of them act on it.
pluma 9y ago
If you think anything is worth defending at all cost, that should give you pause. You seem to understand that speech can persuade people of wrong things. Do you think it's possible you've been wrongly persuaded to hold the belief that free speech trumps all? Maybe the same people that persuade you that you need free speech above all are also those that have the most to gain from being able to persuade you freely of whatever they want? If you think incitement should not be a crime and likely think libel and slander should not be a crime, where do you draw the line if fee speech trumps all? What about lying under oath? I'm going to guess (based on your name and the demographics of HN) you're American. Your nation's history is entirely written by itself and its only revolution was a secession which it was able to defeat. Maybe your country just hasn't learned the lesson Germany has? Just a thought: https://thenib.com/the-good-war https://thenib.com/the-good-war
- b6 9y ago
  > If you think incitement should not be a crime and likely think libel and slander should not be a crime, where do you draw the line if fee speech trumps all? What about lying under oath? I don't think libel and slander should not be crimes, I don't think lying under oath should not be a crime. I believe in freedom of expression. I especially encourage those people with the absolute worst most harmful ideas to speak often and loudly and publicly, so that everyone has a chance to hear their ideas and think about them and come to understand for themselves how bad they are. Freedom of expression means I can sit back and let Westboro Baptist Church explain to everyone what terrible people they are much more eloquently than I could ever hope to do. Neo Nazis, please, have a rally and explain to everyone in your own words that you latch onto pathetic ideas of racial superiority for lack of any accomplishments of your own to be proud of. Why do you want to restrict freedom of expression? Do you find it hard to refute somebody's argument? Do you not trust people to sort out good ideas from bad themselves? The solution to bad speech is more speech. I thought we'd settled this decades ago.
  - pluma 9y ago
    > I thought we'd settled this decades ago. I must have missed the part in WW2 where the Axis surrendered because Hitler lost a debate with Churchill and all the concentration camps were shut down because the guards realised they were the bad guys.

by b6 9y ago

novalis78 9y ago

Exactly. And here I was thinking there was such a thing as 'being an adult' and 'education' and 'freedom of speech' - do we really want to undermine the basic tenets of the Age of Reason? Because if I am not mistaken, censorship was a widespread reality and it took a very long time and a lot of blood to crawl out from underneath it. In other words: Do you think Hitler could have been stopped by not letting 'The Stormer' publish?

pluma 9y ago
I think "could X have stopped Hitler" is asking the wrong question (and it betrays the same kind of black/white thinking that is fundamental to the rhetoric I mentioned). The Treaty of Versailles was crippling the economy, the royalists felt betrayed by the social democrats who ended the Great War by surrendering, the Great Depression destabilised the banks, and so on. Even a bullet in the brain wouldn't necessarily have "stopped Hitler" at the time (the reason we talk about "stopping Hitler" is that Hitler wasn't stopped so we don't know who'd have taken his place and where that would have led the movement at the time). But this is irrelevant because 2010s Germans aren't 1920s/1930s Germans. West Germany underwent a massive process of Denazification, we entered into and established ourselves in the European Union and Germans who grew up in post-war Germany are used to the idea that incitement is a crime and racial hatred has no place in a civilised society. It's irrelevant whether criminalising incitement ("censorship") would have stopped Hitler in the 1930s because a single law doesn't instantly transform society. It's 2018 and this is not a new law. But we'll never be able to tell whether it stopped Hitler today because if we stopped him we won't know who he is because he'll never ascend to the same significance in history in the first place. It's a strawman. You also seem to be under the false presumption that you having legal "freedom of speech" means you can express anything you want without consequences. As is being pointed out all the time, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, just freedom from direct legal consequences. If you hold no significant political power and say something other people find disagreeable, you will be called out at best and ostracized at worst. In fact, freedom of speech might actually help those seeking to harm you because they have the righteous fury on their side. If you hold significant power, there are plenty of examples in US politics how that usually works out (though time will tell how it works out for Trump in particular). Fun side effect: dehumanising people also makes it easier to justify war. The US has been in a perpetual state of war since WW2. Do you even remember how to recognise propaganda and war rhetoric if it's been part of the mainstream since before you were born?

robbiep 9y ago

Do you not think there might be a difference between expressing an opinion and inciting people to violence?

b6 9y ago
Is inciting people to violence really anything other than expressing the opinion that violence is a good idea, and trying to persuade others to agree? Expressing any opinion should be allowed, and trying to persuade anyone of anything should be allowed.
- robbiep 9y ago
  Is it right that in civil society someone stands on a soapbox and calls for violence against a person or people? Witness Pres. Trump at his rallies. Not illegal but Really, telling a mob to punch someone is pretty off colour and not the sort of thing that we should be promoting. There are ways to express your opinion on any issue that don’t lead to vilification and potential or actual harm. So I disagree. It isn’t right to form a gang on the street and attack someone, and it isn’t right to form a gang on the internet and incite violence, or strongly disrespect a person or people. Even if you take at first step the difference between actual physical harm VS a ‘bytes on the internet’ approach, the mental health harms to the persecuted group are real and have lead to suicides in individual examples, or actual violence as demonstrated in the article. Speaking from a medical perspective, I don’t draw a difference between physical and mental harm (precious snowflaking aside). Sure it’s a grey area but carte Blanche in this domain is damaging.
  - pluma 9y ago
    Freedom of expression is meaningless unless you have the social/political power to back that expression up. If Joe Blow tweets "kill the kikes", nobody cares. If someone with millions of devout followers says the same, there will eventually be blood. Or in your case, if a person with influence tells their fan club to harass someone, the victim may suffer actual mental health issues when enough of them act on it.

pluma 9y ago

If you think anything is worth defending at all cost, that should give you pause. You seem to understand that speech can persuade people of wrong things. Do you think it's possible you've been wrongly persuaded to hold the belief that free speech trumps all? Maybe the same people that persuade you that you need free speech above all are also those that have the most to gain from being able to persuade you freely of whatever they want? If you think incitement should not be a crime and likely think libel and slander should not be a crime, where do you draw the line if fee speech trumps all? What about lying under oath? I'm going to guess (based on your name and the demographics of HN) you're American. Your nation's history is entirely written by itself and its only revolution was a secession which it was able to defeat. Maybe your country just hasn't learned the lesson Germany has? Just a thought: https://thenib.com/the-good-war https://thenib.com/the-good-war

b6 9y ago
> If you think incitement should not be a crime and likely think libel and slander should not be a crime, where do you draw the line if fee speech trumps all? What about lying under oath? I don't think libel and slander should not be crimes, I don't think lying under oath should not be a crime. I believe in freedom of expression. I especially encourage those people with the absolute worst most harmful ideas to speak often and loudly and publicly, so that everyone has a chance to hear their ideas and think about them and come to understand for themselves how bad they are. Freedom of expression means I can sit back and let Westboro Baptist Church explain to everyone what terrible people they are much more eloquently than I could ever hope to do. Neo Nazis, please, have a rally and explain to everyone in your own words that you latch onto pathetic ideas of racial superiority for lack of any accomplishments of your own to be proud of. Why do you want to restrict freedom of expression? Do you find it hard to refute somebody's argument? Do you not trust people to sort out good ideas from bad themselves? The solution to bad speech is more speech. I thought we'd settled this decades ago.
- pluma 9y ago
  > I thought we'd settled this decades ago. I must have missed the part in WW2 where the Axis surrendered because Hitler lost a debate with Churchill and all the concentration camps were shut down because the guards realised they were the bad guys.