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Believing in near-absolute protection of free speech is a lot easier when you're not the direct target of that "free speech." Not trying to assume your specific

Believing in near-absolute protection of free speech is a lot easier when you're not the direct target of that "free speech." Not trying to assume your specific social location, but I know a lot of centrists who feel as you do, and they are white men. They might be repulsed by Nazi's who advocate ethnic cleansing, but I have to actually worry about what those people might do if they take power. I have a vested interest in making sure they cannot radicalize more people, and as such I am firmly for censoring them.

ianai 8y ago
There’s also a difference between propaganda- especially foreign propaganda and free speech.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  No there isn’t. People who oppose free speech have claimed to be protecting people from just about anything you can imagine. “I’m protecting you from...” is how every censorship effort in history has been framed. It’s not the government’s job to protect you from ideas you don’t like, and people who live in a free society have the responsibility to think for themselves.
philwelch 8y ago
> Believing in near-absolute protection of free speech is a lot easier when you're not the direct target of that "free speech." Which is why I have a hell of a lot of respect for David Goldberger, the Jewish lawyer for the ACLU who defended the free speech of Neo-Nazis in 1977: https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0941-3.html https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0941-3.html The problem with your line of reasoning is that it forces you into what most on the left consider a very difficult fork. PREMISE: Imposing both government sanctions and private sector no-platforming is a justifiable response to murderous ideologies. (This is a decent, good-faith attempt to interpret the basic principle that seems to motivate people who say the things you say. In isolation, before you read the rest of my argument, I'm willing to bet that you would accept this premise as written. If you didn't, let me know.) 1. Communism is a murderous ideology. (See: all historical records of the 20th century.) Therefore, McCarthy did nothing wrong, and the members of the Hollywood Blacklist were merely the Alex Jones of their time. 2. Communism is not actually a murderous ideology. Therefore, Stalin did nothing wrong. The fork is basically that, once you accept the premise that allows you to censor and no-platform Nazis, you either have to be a McCarthyist or a Stalinist, or at least an apologist for one of them.
- nepeckman 8y ago
  While I do agree with your stated premise, I disagree with the notion that agreeing with the premise forces me to choose between McCarthy and Stalin. My counter point is this: McCarthy started a witch hunt that targeted nonmurdous views as well. It's my impression that people advocating socialist policies (or any policy not strictly capitalist) were also targeted. I feel I can object to this, while also objecting to horrors wrought by Stalin. I'm not advocating the censorship of conservative views in general, just the murderous views expressed by a small faction. As a personal side note, I've been enjoying this discussion with you. If you are interested in keeping it up, I'll reply sometime in the morning EST.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    > My counter point is this: McCarthy started a witch hunt that targeted nonmurdous views as well. Indeed. Which has a lot a parallels to the current political witch hunts going on today, regarding right wing views.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    > My counter point is this: McCarthy started a witch hunt that targeted nonmurdous views as well. Well, maybe. It turns out that the much-condemned “Hollywood blacklist” (which was not government action, just the act of private businesses!) only listed card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA, which was directly bankrolled from Moscow. Which makes those screenwriters far, far, far worse than, say, Alex Jones or James Damore, to name two recent victims of the current left-wing “witch hunt”. The main reason the various bans on political parties in Europe haven’t devolved into witch hunts is because the bans are in name only. The former communist states in Europe tended to ban the communist party, which immediately went back into business under another name, and no one cared. And, sadly, the crypto-fascist parties like BNP and FN and AfD are probably even more powerful than they would be if you just let them be honest about being fascists. At that point you’re just tabooing words and symbols. If you followed the same policy in the US, you wouldn’t actually end up censoring any KKK or neo-Nazis, because they would just rebrand as “pan-European nationalists” or something and pursue the same platform. It’s most reasonable to set that bar, if it must be set, at direct and unambiguous incitement of violence, which would not include things like flying swastika flags. Communist Party USA was never banned, unlike Nazi, fascist, and communist parties across Europe, and I agree with that policy. The marginal risk of Stalinism that is incurred by not outlawing CPUSA is much smaller than the marginal risk of totalitarianism inherent in ever allowing or normalizing the censorship of any political ideology. And honestly, neo-Nazis are an even bigger joke. Any ideology that’s unpopular enough to ban isn’t popular enough to represent a real threat. The people banning it, though—they’re the ones to keep an eye on. Antifa literally march down the street wearing black shirts and beating up people they perceive as enemies, and they don’t see the irony in that. Sure, they should go to jail as soon as they lay hands on anyone, just like anyone else should, but I’m not going to begrudge their right to wear ridiculous black outfits and wave black-and-red flags around, and they’re a lot more likely to end up sending folks to death camps than those neo-Nazi clowns.
rsj_hn 8y ago
Fun Fact: A lot of people, when discussing Free Speech, bring up Nazis and how some views should be banned. In fact, Weimar Germany, although much more liberal than the republic under Bismarck, cracked down on hate speech and jailed many Nazis, which only led to them getting a more sympathetic hearing and a broader audience: "Leading Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher, were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. And rather than deterring them, the many court cases served as effective pubic relations machinery for the Nazis, affording them a level of attention that they never would have received in a climate of a free and open debate. In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times. The more charges Streicher faced, the more the admiration of his supporters grew. In fact, the courts became an important platform for Streicher’s campaign against the Jews."[1] This pattern has been repeated in other countries as well. So, it's really a shame that people aren't looking back to history's lessons here. I understand that when you see something really offensive, your reaction is to ban it, but there are all sorts of unexpected things that happen when you do that, from the Barbara Streisand effect, to driving discussions underground, where they tend to become more extreme because they are only debated in an echo chamber with like minded individuals rather than brought out to the public square. [1]https://www.cato.org/policy-report/mayjune-2015/war-free-expression https://www.cato.org/policy-report/mayjune-2015/war-free-exp... I am obviously not talking about employer code of conduct. In my opinion, there should be no place for politics on the job site, but just be aware that you are not actually stomping out any offending beliefs by punishing those who express them -- at best you are driving those beliefs underground where they will go unchallenged, and at worst you are also creating a much wider audience of sympathetic ears, mostly drawn from a public who doesn't like to be told what to think.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  >at worst you are also creating a much wider audience of sympathetic ears, mostly drawn from a public who doesn't like to be told what to think. I very firmly believe that if it we're for the chorus of media outlets and public voices pushing the idea that anybody who didn't like Hillary, or who did like Trump, were all racist, sexist, deplorable... That Trump probably wouldn't have been elected.

ianai 8y ago

There’s also a difference between propaganda- especially foreign propaganda and free speech.

AmericanChopper 8y ago
No there isn’t. People who oppose free speech have claimed to be protecting people from just about anything you can imagine. “I’m protecting you from...” is how every censorship effort in history has been framed. It’s not the government’s job to protect you from ideas you don’t like, and people who live in a free society have the responsibility to think for themselves.

philwelch 8y ago

> Believing in near-absolute protection of free speech is a lot easier when you're not the direct target of that "free speech." Which is why I have a hell of a lot of respect for David Goldberger, the Jewish lawyer for the ACLU who defended the free speech of Neo-Nazis in 1977: https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0941-3.html https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0941-3.html The problem with your line of reasoning is that it forces you into what most on the left consider a very difficult fork. PREMISE: Imposing both government sanctions and private sector no-platforming is a justifiable response to murderous ideologies. (This is a decent, good-faith attempt to interpret the basic principle that seems to motivate people who say the things you say. In isolation, before you read the rest of my argument, I'm willing to bet that you would accept this premise as written. If you didn't, let me know.) 1. Communism is a murderous ideology. (See: all historical records of the 20th century.) Therefore, McCarthy did nothing wrong, and the members of the Hollywood Blacklist were merely the Alex Jones of their time. 2. Communism is not actually a murderous ideology. Therefore, Stalin did nothing wrong. The fork is basically that, once you accept the premise that allows you to censor and no-platform Nazis, you either have to be a McCarthyist or a Stalinist, or at least an apologist for one of them.

nepeckman 8y ago
While I do agree with your stated premise, I disagree with the notion that agreeing with the premise forces me to choose between McCarthy and Stalin. My counter point is this: McCarthy started a witch hunt that targeted nonmurdous views as well. It's my impression that people advocating socialist policies (or any policy not strictly capitalist) were also targeted. I feel I can object to this, while also objecting to horrors wrought by Stalin. I'm not advocating the censorship of conservative views in general, just the murderous views expressed by a small faction. As a personal side note, I've been enjoying this discussion with you. If you are interested in keeping it up, I'll reply sometime in the morning EST.
- stale2002 8y ago
  > My counter point is this: McCarthy started a witch hunt that targeted nonmurdous views as well. Indeed. Which has a lot a parallels to the current political witch hunts going on today, regarding right wing views.
- philwelch 8y ago
  > My counter point is this: McCarthy started a witch hunt that targeted nonmurdous views as well. Well, maybe. It turns out that the much-condemned “Hollywood blacklist” (which was not government action, just the act of private businesses!) only listed card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA, which was directly bankrolled from Moscow. Which makes those screenwriters far, far, far worse than, say, Alex Jones or James Damore, to name two recent victims of the current left-wing “witch hunt”. The main reason the various bans on political parties in Europe haven’t devolved into witch hunts is because the bans are in name only. The former communist states in Europe tended to ban the communist party, which immediately went back into business under another name, and no one cared. And, sadly, the crypto-fascist parties like BNP and FN and AfD are probably even more powerful than they would be if you just let them be honest about being fascists. At that point you’re just tabooing words and symbols. If you followed the same policy in the US, you wouldn’t actually end up censoring any KKK or neo-Nazis, because they would just rebrand as “pan-European nationalists” or something and pursue the same platform. It’s most reasonable to set that bar, if it must be set, at direct and unambiguous incitement of violence, which would not include things like flying swastika flags. Communist Party USA was never banned, unlike Nazi, fascist, and communist parties across Europe, and I agree with that policy. The marginal risk of Stalinism that is incurred by not outlawing CPUSA is much smaller than the marginal risk of totalitarianism inherent in ever allowing or normalizing the censorship of any political ideology. And honestly, neo-Nazis are an even bigger joke. Any ideology that’s unpopular enough to ban isn’t popular enough to represent a real threat. The people banning it, though—they’re the ones to keep an eye on. Antifa literally march down the street wearing black shirts and beating up people they perceive as enemies, and they don’t see the irony in that. Sure, they should go to jail as soon as they lay hands on anyone, just like anyone else should, but I’m not going to begrudge their right to wear ridiculous black outfits and wave black-and-red flags around, and they’re a lot more likely to end up sending folks to death camps than those neo-Nazi clowns.

rsj_hn 8y ago

Fun Fact: A lot of people, when discussing Free Speech, bring up Nazis and how some views should be banned. In fact, Weimar Germany, although much more liberal than the republic under Bismarck, cracked down on hate speech and jailed many Nazis, which only led to them getting a more sympathetic hearing and a broader audience: "Leading Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher, were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. And rather than deterring them, the many court cases served as effective pubic relations machinery for the Nazis, affording them a level of attention that they never would have received in a climate of a free and open debate. In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times. The more charges Streicher faced, the more the admiration of his supporters grew. In fact, the courts became an important platform for Streicher’s campaign against the Jews."[1] This pattern has been repeated in other countries as well. So, it's really a shame that people aren't looking back to history's lessons here. I understand that when you see something really offensive, your reaction is to ban it, but there are all sorts of unexpected things that happen when you do that, from the Barbara Streisand effect, to driving discussions underground, where they tend to become more extreme because they are only debated in an echo chamber with like minded individuals rather than brought out to the public square. [1]https://www.cato.org/policy-report/mayjune-2015/war-free-expression https://www.cato.org/policy-report/mayjune-2015/war-free-exp... I am obviously not talking about employer code of conduct. In my opinion, there should be no place for politics on the job site, but just be aware that you are not actually stomping out any offending beliefs by punishing those who express them -- at best you are driving those beliefs underground where they will go unchallenged, and at worst you are also creating a much wider audience of sympathetic ears, mostly drawn from a public who doesn't like to be told what to think.

AmericanChopper 8y ago
>at worst you are also creating a much wider audience of sympathetic ears, mostly drawn from a public who doesn't like to be told what to think. I very firmly believe that if it we're for the chorus of media outlets and public voices pushing the idea that anybody who didn't like Hillary, or who did like Trump, were all racist, sexist, deplorable... That Trump probably wouldn't have been elected.