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Sorry, that's not a great analogy. Are you saying that Alex Jones's views are just ahead of their time and the culture is not ready for it? I understand that

Sorry, that's not a great analogy. Are you saying that Alex Jones's views are just ahead of their time and the culture is not ready for it? I understand that there is one perspective on free speech that says any restriction means that in the future people will abuse it to suppress ANY ideas they disagree with, and I find that this is only true with a very specific type of religious, authoritarian, American, republican voice. The entire western world bans holocaust denial, and it hasn't led to a chilling effect on other expressions. Truth is truth. No matter how much some people try to redefine it to be meaningless today, there are still some essential facts. Humanity did go to the moon. The earth is not flat.

laichzeit0 6y ago
> The entire western world bans holocaust denial, and it hasn't led to a chilling effect on other expressions. Debatable. Banning holocaust denial is one of the greatest travesties in Western free speech. You just gave anti-Semites one more reason to believe there’s a global Jewish conspiracy going on and another recruitment tool.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  You'll have to explain why it's such a great travesty because it's not obvious.
  - asguy 6y ago
    Because the types of people that would believe in Holocaust-denial in 2020, are the same types of people that are fed by conspiracy theories when things are banned.
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      So what's the problem?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - TomMarius 6y ago
        The existance of such ban. It feeds the conspiracy theorists, and it's just weird - why only this genocide, and not the communist one, which is increasingly denied thanks to Russian online presence? Why saying "Heil Hitler" and the gesture is criminal offense, but "Cest praci, soudruhu" (a Czech communist greeting) is not, and why the Hakenkreuz is forbidden, but the star, hammer and sickle is not? Why do statues of Stalin and Lenin and other communist leaders remain standing around the world? Surely you can imagine the outrage if it was Hitler's statue. The laws shouldn't have such weirds corner cases of completely banning references to one thing and ignoring another, arguably worse thing.
  - wolco 6y ago
    Why is banning speech a great travesty? Because it hides the truth. Perhaps someone will discover people you wouldn't expect involved doing things we wouldn't expect which may cause some aspects from being denied to cease to be true. Silencing one groups end up silencing another. Why don't we have a law banning denial of other genocides like the Armenian genocide. There should be an equal concern for all genocides being denied.
chroma 6y ago
> Are you saying that Alex Jones's views are just ahead of their time and the culture is not ready for it? No. In fact I thought I explained that pretty clearly. I said, "So far, we haven't figured out a way to separate good ideas from bad ones besides exposing people to them and seeing which memes reproduce in the population. In other words: If you ban people like Alex Jones, you also ban people who are activists for causes that society will adopt in the future. And we all end up worse off." I don't know how you can interpret that to mean that I am somehow in favor of Jones. > The entire western world bans holocaust denial, and it hasn't led to a chilling effect on other expressions. That's not true. For example: David Irving's version of the Goebbels diaries is considered by many (including the late Christopher Hitchens) to be an important work. Irving was imprisoned in Austria for holocaust denial because of something he said 17 years earlier.[1] Apparently the statue of limitations is a long time when it comes to words. There are quite a few other examples, not to mention the chilling effect such laws have. There are also tiny annoyances such as Germany banning the swastika in Wolfenstein games and on models of Zeppelins. Is Germany's society so fragile that a symbol can topple it? They seem to think so. These laws have a cost. Maybe they're worth it. Maybe they're not. But don't pretend they're pure upside. Many countries have no laws about holocaust denial and get along just fine. Personally, I prefer places and platforms where I can decide for myself what I'm allowed to read and hear. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial
- deanCommie 6y ago
  > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial So someone got convicted for holocaust denial because they denied the existence of the holocaust? The system works! Not being facetious, this is not a problem. > If you ban people like Alex Jones, you also ban people who are activists for causes that society will adopt in the future. And we all end up worse off." I don't know how you can interpret that to mean that I am somehow in favor of Jones. Easily because that's the implication of your statement. That there is no way to differentiate between Alex Jones's ideology and the ideology of human rights activists. Which is a ridiculous premise.

laichzeit0 6y ago

> The entire western world bans holocaust denial, and it hasn't led to a chilling effect on other expressions. Debatable. Banning holocaust denial is one of the greatest travesties in Western free speech. You just gave anti-Semites one more reason to believe there’s a global Jewish conspiracy going on and another recruitment tool.

NotSammyHagar 6y ago
You'll have to explain why it's such a great travesty because it's not obvious.
- asguy 6y ago
  Because the types of people that would believe in Holocaust-denial in 2020, are the same types of people that are fed by conspiracy theories when things are banned.
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    So what's the problem?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - TomMarius 6y ago
      The existance of such ban. It feeds the conspiracy theorists, and it's just weird - why only this genocide, and not the communist one, which is increasingly denied thanks to Russian online presence? Why saying "Heil Hitler" and the gesture is criminal offense, but "Cest praci, soudruhu" (a Czech communist greeting) is not, and why the Hakenkreuz is forbidden, but the star, hammer and sickle is not? Why do statues of Stalin and Lenin and other communist leaders remain standing around the world? Surely you can imagine the outrage if it was Hitler's statue. The laws shouldn't have such weirds corner cases of completely banning references to one thing and ignoring another, arguably worse thing.
- wolco 6y ago
  Why is banning speech a great travesty? Because it hides the truth. Perhaps someone will discover people you wouldn't expect involved doing things we wouldn't expect which may cause some aspects from being denied to cease to be true. Silencing one groups end up silencing another. Why don't we have a law banning denial of other genocides like the Armenian genocide. There should be an equal concern for all genocides being denied.

chroma 6y ago

> Are you saying that Alex Jones's views are just ahead of their time and the culture is not ready for it? No. In fact I thought I explained that pretty clearly. I said, "So far, we haven't figured out a way to separate good ideas from bad ones besides exposing people to them and seeing which memes reproduce in the population. In other words: If you ban people like Alex Jones, you also ban people who are activists for causes that society will adopt in the future. And we all end up worse off." I don't know how you can interpret that to mean that I am somehow in favor of Jones. > The entire western world bans holocaust denial, and it hasn't led to a chilling effect on other expressions. That's not true. For example: David Irving's version of the Goebbels diaries is considered by many (including the late Christopher Hitchens) to be an important work. Irving was imprisoned in Austria for holocaust denial because of something he said 17 years earlier.[1] Apparently the statue of limitations is a long time when it comes to words. There are quite a few other examples, not to mention the chilling effect such laws have. There are also tiny annoyances such as Germany banning the swastika in Wolfenstein games and on models of Zeppelins. Is Germany's society so fragile that a symbol can topple it? They seem to think so. These laws have a cost. Maybe they're worth it. Maybe they're not. But don't pretend they're pure upside. Many countries have no laws about holocaust denial and get along just fine. Personally, I prefer places and platforms where I can decide for myself what I'm allowed to read and hear. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial

deanCommie 6y ago
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial So someone got convicted for holocaust denial because they denied the existence of the holocaust? The system works! Not being facetious, this is not a problem. > If you ban people like Alex Jones, you also ban people who are activists for causes that society will adopt in the future. And we all end up worse off." I don't know how you can interpret that to mean that I am somehow in favor of Jones. Easily because that's the implication of your statement. That there is no way to differentiate between Alex Jones's ideology and the ideology of human rights activists. Which is a ridiculous premise.