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Totalitarianism is gaining power right now through bad actors operating under the cloak of free speech. The bigger their communities get, the more they infect t
by archagon 8y ago
Totalitarianism is gaining power right now through bad actors operating under the cloak of free speech. The bigger their communities get, the more they infect the communities around them with their hatred and lies. This should be blindingly obvious if you’ve been online for more than a couple of years.
Your mechanism against totalitarianism will lead you straight into a dictatorship.
- philwelch 8y ago> Totalitarianism is gaining power right now through bad actors operating under the cloak of free speech. The bigger their communities get, the more they infect the communities around them.... Your mechanism against totalitarianism will lead you straight into a dictatorship. Those might have been the exact words of a 1950's McCarthyite. How can you be so sure that you're just just as wrong as they were?
- archagon 8y agoTrump proudly came out as a nationalist a few weeks ago and is visibly salivating at the prospect of pitting thousands of troops against a migrant caravan. Unlike the Communists, these people are already in positions of power and are fighting to gain legitimacy by any means necessary.
- jesssse 8y ago> Totalitarianism is gaining power right now through bad actors operating under the cloak of free speech. I do not understand this assertion. The way I see it, Free Speech is an antidote against totalitarianism, in contrast to Censorship, which is a tool of totalitarianism.
- 8note 8y agoah, so that's how Hitler was beaten? everyone just started talking and the NAZIs just dissapeared?
- BurningFrog 8y agoThis is the "fascism is infectious" theory, under which we are all potential fascists if we just get exposed to the "infection". By this theory fascism is somehow so inherently attractive that is has to be regulated similar to an addictive drug.
- archagon 8y agoPeople are surprisingly easy to reprogram. You can read countless stories of once-liberal parents turning into hateful conspiracy nuts in their old age out of prolonged exposure to right-wing media. If you see people around you saying “white males are undergoing a genocide” or “brown people are criminals” every day, chances are you’ll eventually start to internalize some of those talking points. Without tremendous effort, we’re nothing more than a rough aggregation of the opinions we surround ourselves with.
- BurningFrog 8y agoPeople adapt to their surroundings, and try to fit in, of course. But that's not unique to fascism. By this argument you'd have to ban all ideologies.
- toasterlovin 8y ago> People are surprisingly easy to reprogram. You can read countless stories of once-liberal parents turning into hateful conspiracy nuts in their old age out of prolonged exposure to right-wing media. You should be more skeptical of your intuitions about which way the arrow of causality points.
- archagon 8y agoThese are people who now believe that Jewish cabals run the world and that the dead kids at our schools are crisis actors. Don’t you bullshit me.
- stcredzero 8y agoThere are also reasonable, nonviolent, left-leaning centrists who think everyone should have Free Speech, because no one can parcel out Free Speech and have it still remain free. The people who spout the nonsense you cite are a marginal fringe. They're probably greatly outnumbered by people in the far fringe left who are just somewhat not quite as bad. All should have the right of Free Speech.