13 ms·

When radio was king, many outlets chose to stop broadcasting Father Coughlin

• gxs 6y ago
  Often we confuse there being precedent for an event with the precedent being actually right. I understand both perspectives here: what's "morally" right and what is strictly by the book right. Personally, I lean towards the latter. As the famous quote says (paraphrased), I may not agree with what you say, but I'll always defend your right to say it. At the very least it should go through due process, not be at the whim of some private organization.
  • JohnTHaller 6y ago
    You're welcome to say it. Others should not be forced to listen, repeat, or amplify what you say.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • deleted 6y ago
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    • _Microft 6y ago
      That’s why I don’t like „retweets are not endorsements“. Spreading a message is endorsement, one way or another. They have the choice to retweet or not and when they choose to spread the message, they become co-responsible for its consequences.
      • gxs 6y ago
        But the key word is forced isn't it? Do we really have to police what people are allowed to endorse?
    • strangattractor 6y ago
      There is a difference between letting someone speak freely and handing them a megaphone. The Constitution does not give individuals the freedom to incite violence. It is designed to prevent it. Russia is putting Parler back online - at least they believe in free speech.
      • La1n 6y ago
        >Russia is putting Parler back online - at least they believe in free speech. This is not a given conclusion, they could just be interested in speech that negatively affects a geopolitical rival.
      • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        Russia believes in free speech when that speech incites social unrest in the US. When it incites social unrest in Russia? Not so much.
        • ratsmack 6y ago
          > Russian-based firm DDoS-Guard said in a statement to The Hill it started servicing Parler on Sunday night. The firm said Parler is not using DDoS-Guard as a hosting site, but did not detail what services it is providing the platform. I don't know if your statement is true, and since this thread is about "truth", maybe this needs further investigation.
    • engineer_22 6y ago
      Fine - let's run with this. We set up a system where certain ideas are not tolerated. There is a preferential system for use of mass communication platforms. Only officially sanctioned speakers or patterns of thought are allowed to be broadcast to the mass. A step further: Who decides what is acceptable? And on what grounds shall we suspend the speech of others? What stops this from becoming suppression of political speech?
      • shadowgovt 6y ago
        I believe you've described something akin to the existing infrastructure for issuing radio broadcast licenses via the FCC. https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-profane-broadcasts https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr... There is likely some guidance to be had on this topic from studying the way the FCC has navigated the Scylla and Charybdis of authorizing broadcast licenses vs. trampling the First Amendment rights of American citizens.
      • jakelazaroff 6y ago
        This is a little like saying that we shouldn't have speed limits, because who decides what speed is safe for driving? We all decide, collectively. That is how society works: a group of people making tradeoffs. Individual sacrifices for the benefit of the group. Obviously, no tradeoff will make every single person happy. But that doesn't mean we should throw our hands up and let people do 90 in a school zone.
        • gxs 6y ago
          The difference is our constitution doesn't explicitly say to remove speed limits. If it did, we'd have to go through proper process to get the constitution amended.
          • jakelazaroff 6y ago
            Sure, a constitution is just a formalization of those tradeoffs. But the US Constitution has nothing to do with this article or the parallel current events.
  • klmadfejno 6y ago
    Perhaps there's a middleground between allowing someone to say something privately and providing them a platform to broadcast that message to the world though
    • engineer_22 6y ago
      Good point. But it begs the next question: where exactly is the line between the two?
      • gedy 6y ago
        The answer seems to be from nearly everyone: "It's obvious, whatever my side agrees is acceptable of course." (Which does not help of course.)
      • x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
        When you use someone else's capital. The issue was that Coughlin was using other broadcasters infra to disseminate his message. If he had his own tower then it wouldn't have been a problem.
      • 52-6F-62 6y ago
        I'd argue the abstractions, at best, are getting in the way; at worst they're being intentionally manipulated to suit. Infrastructural requirements are cooperative requirements at their core—they're not detachable from the people that use, operate, and maintain them. Infrastructure that delivers such a mass of information isn't automatic, it's a concerted effort of many people. If the people you are relying on to amplify your message do not want to cooperate with you, should they be forced to? How it appears to me is that we've reached a point, a rare point, in which the majority of the people involved in those works have decided against cooperating with delivering the messaging of some people because they don't want to be a party to it. Not out of fear of reprisal, but out of disagreement with the stated goals of it.
        • engineer_22 6y ago
          This is an interesting point, and you're an excellent writer. So the obvious question: is it acceptable for the group of people you described (large corporations) to read your messages and insert themselves in private conversation?
• partiallypro 6y ago
  I know people will try to draw a parallel between this and banning Parler, Trump, etc from social media but they are quite different. A radio station operates more like a newspaper and vets everything that is broadcast on its channel and has to grant access to do so, that isn't true of social media. This would be more akin to CNN/MSNBC/etc refusing to air Trump rallies.
  • ceejayoz 6y ago
    Radio stations regularly have live interviews with listeners, and my local NPR station ends those segments with "the views expressed in this segment may not reflect those of the station, underwriters, or management".
    • partiallypro 6y ago
      That's no different than a "letter to the editor." Still not remotely similar to social media.
• engineer_22 6y ago
  Clearly, we've gotta change. Something needs to be done. But I think we should very carefully weigh our options, lest we become that which we seek to destroy.
  • rhino369 6y ago
    And if anyone thinks the answer is clear, many of the same people saying we need to blacklist anyone claiming election fraud were saying Trump was trying to steal the election in October. If we can be ban false claims of election fraud, we can ban true claims too.
    • ardy42 6y ago
      > We can be ban false claims of election fraud, we can bad true claims too. I think the terms "shun" and "ostracize" fit the current situation better than "ban."
      • rhino369 6y ago
        Whatever you call it, nobody would want lawyers to be fired or huffpo being de-platformed for saying Trump stole the election had Trump narrowly won instead of narrowly lost. The only difference is that the people in charge of big tech agree with you instead of the republicans. That won't always be the case.
        • dageshi 6y ago
          They didn't really deplatform until it went beyond speech and into targetted political violence and murder.
          • npsimons 6y ago
            > They didn't really deplatform until it went beyond speech and into targetted political violence and murder. This right here. Far too many fucking apologists are neatly eliding the insurrection against our lawfully elected government that was incited by a seditious terrorist leader, and the literal years of lies that lead to that incident. Those arguing this is unjust censorship are arguing in bad faith and should be ignored. He was given all the free speech he could handle, right up until he broke very clear laws against incitement. The only problem I see here is that platforms like Facebook and Twitter are monopolies and are not accountable to the people whose lives they affect (we the people). Either restrict their power (eg, break them up), or regulate them as common carriers. That being said, it's dirt cheap and easy to rent a website and post whatever you please, right up until you incite again.
• discohippy 6y ago
  Yes we already know that everyone on this forum is pro censorship. Can we all just move on? Im so sick of all this political news when all we really care about are apple gadgets and javascript frameworks.
  • medicineman 6y ago
    Wait, I can do a dang: "Afraid I'm not following you here."
• woodgrainz 6y ago
  The Paradox of Tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  • polishdude20 6y ago
    Ah that's a good point. The only think that need not be tolerated is intolerance itself. Sadly, tolerance easily can stem from the lack of backbone than from the abundance of it.
  • gadders 6y ago
    Yes, sadly that seems to be what has happened at Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.
  • whoopdedo 6y ago
    I would also propose there is a Dunning-Kruger Corollary of Tolerance, which is that the more intolerant a person is the more likely they are to perceive themselves as tolerant, and perceive people who disagree with them as intolerant.
• Ericson2314 6y ago
  Radio was a natural monopoly, but thanks to federation, social media need not be. (Note federation means one app, multiple echo chambers, should be easy.)
  • mcguire 6y ago
    How would that improve matters, exactly?
    • Ericson2314 6y ago
      Fox & Facebook have a profit motive for engagement at all costs, but federated social media would hopefully resist commercialization as various orgs ran servers / moderation for different purposes, you know, like the www. Even if they were running adds like the old forums and what not, it would be more to reach costs and promote a media empire. Yes, this all sounds like a rather wishful deescalation of the attention economy, but if nothing else, remember the hoi polloi didn't radicalize themselves in a vacuum, much as we see that narrative being pushed. I much prefer the above to some state capitalism regulated Facebook dystopia.
• safog 6y ago
  The big problem here is that writing a regulation that decides what's okay / not okay on a platform (either by the platform itself or by a govt) is basically impossible. Any sort of you-shalt-not-serve-this-content type of rulebook won't stand up to real world use and you need a team of lawyers to exercise judgement on if content is allowed or not allowed on a platform. A couple of examples to de-politicize this: - FB says gore / violence is not allowed. There was a Facebook post on how one of Mexico's most violet cartel members was killed that circulated on FB [1], received a lot of attention, and popped up in people's feeds leading to cries to take down the post (won't someone think of the kids!). They did take it down and then the Boston marathon bombing happened. Similar pictures of blood / gore circulated but this time FB was forced to keep the pictures up in "public interest". - Nudity is not allowed on the platform. As part of their nudity filtering, they kicked off a group on breastfeeding from FB which again lead to protest and FB allowing it and modifying their policy to specifically make an exception for breastfeeding. YT and Amazon suffer from this as well (though we haven't had a big PR bust up yet). Amazon algorithms for instance recommend "adult" fiction (with provocative cover art) along with children's books. Beyond just playing whack-a-mole with these products, and some half assed attempts to detect nudity in book covers, I don't think a lot of progress has been made. So yeah, I think Zuck will be more than happy to say, please tell us what to allow on the platform and we'll follow it to the letter and deflect the blame to the regulators. It's not even clear that there's a solution here beyond let the platforms exercise their best judgement and sort of muddle along. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/1/5569878/the-dark-side-of-the-facebook-revolution https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/1/5569878/the-dark-side-of-t...
  • walrus01 6y ago
    > Amazon algorithms for instance recommend "adult" fiction (with provocative cover art) amazon publishes way more than that, NSFW, google "chuck tingle". The famous author of "space raptor butt invasion", and who can forget the literary masterpiece "pounded in the butt by my own butt" https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=chuck+tingle https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=chuck+tin...
    • recursive 6y ago
• joshuaheard 6y ago
  The answer to dangerous lies is the truth, not censorship. We have a marketplace of ideas where bad ideas die and good ideas spread. Unfortunately, I see a trend towards restricting free speech, which will only harm the country in the long term.
  • thejellypen 6y ago
    bad ideas may eventually die by they may also cause harm before dying out.
  • rootusrootus 6y ago
    > We have a marketplace of ideas where bad ideas die and good ideas spread That is the ideal. The actual marketplace seems to operate in the opposite fashion.
  • ardy42 6y ago
    > We have a marketplace of ideas where bad ideas die and good ideas spread. If that were true, neither QAnon nor "Stop the Steal" would have gone anywhere. Instead, they spread like wildfire to the point where their adherents literally attacked the democratic process. The marketplace of ideas only works that way when its participants are rational actors with good judgement, and it's becoming increasingly clear that is not actually the case.
    • zug_zug 6y ago
      Yes, and we can simplify even more -- we have a case from 80 years ago where the greatest atrocity in history was committed by a population that got duped by an anti-semitic demagogue. To all those bandying about "free speech" without ever tackling any of the nuances of reality, I'd love to hear -- if push came to shove, would you have argued platforms should be giving megaphones to even Hitler? If not, you acknowledge there's a line, so let's define it.
      • dcolkitt 6y ago
        The Weimer Republic had extensive hate speech laws on the books, which they even used to prosecute the Nazis in several cases. Not only were those laws ineffective, but the Nazis coopted them to silence opposition. In contrast the US and the UK, with their free speech absolutism (British hate speech laws weren't put into place until recently), were one of the few major democracies without fascist parties winning any major elections.
• medicineman 6y ago
  The best part about this article is the pearl clutching downvote brigade in the comments here.
• burnthrow 6y ago
  Okay, now do McCarthyism!
  • medicineman 6y ago
    Let's just go back and see how many of your previous posts are problematic!
• ramoz 6y ago
  They do the opposite as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Collines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft#:~:text=The%20Reichs%2DRundfunk%2DGesellschaft%20(,for%20Nazi%20propaganda%20after%201933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft#:....
• rootusrootus 6y ago
  The best answer I can come up with for this problem is much stricter enforcement of antitrust laws. Private organizations should not be compelled to carry content they find objectionable, but they should also not be allowed to dominate the channel.
  • jakelazaroff 6y ago
    I think this is the only answer. I see a lot of people up in arms when it comes to speech they care about (e.g. Twitter removing QAnon) yet utterly silent when it comes to speech they don't (e.g. Tumblr removing NSFW). The "slippery slope" is only a problem when it hits close to home. This makes me think that if the shoe were on the other foot, team "free speech" would be more than happy to play censor. The only way to prevent that is to keep entities from gaining so much power in the first place.
    • deleted 6y ago
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  • ramoz 6y ago
    Agree. Government acquisitions regulation for tech itself is also a good example.(for COTs products, contracting dev/integration, consulting, research, etc). Gov't acquisition law has become so complex, yet has one single constraint in mind with every update: Protect and enable small and disadvantaged businesses. It's not perfect, in many new ways inefficient, but seems to do its job. But what is the constraint we need when it comes to propagating information? It's not as objectively clear as the acquisition case.
  • hypersoar 6y ago
    I'm all for that, but I think more radical action is needed in the case of social networks. Should social networking sites funded by advertising be allowed to exist? The business model rewards maximizing "user engagement". However much Facebook might be removing provocative material now (which I am in favor of), the fundamental incentives of their business will push them back to where they were, letting outrage-driven content spread. It's unreasonable to expect a corporation to do otherwise without intervention.
• fareesh 6y ago
  If the owner of a restaurant criticizes the local Mayor on television, and then the health inspector and fire safety inspector show up the next day and start measuring the distances between doors and windows down to the micrometer - this is all technically and legally correct. Everyone is acting with the authority that they have the right to. If violations are found, the penalties would also be 100% legal and correct. Now if we choose to be fools and ignore what has actually happened here, we have the right to do that too. Most of the conversations about freedom, censorship, misinformation, private corporations, rights, authority, etc. seem to be neglecting the tremendous scope for abuse. The mere accusation of being an infidel is enough to taint the perception of the person in question. Someone was banned from the radio for alleged misinformation. What's the vetting process? For most it's to check their political leanings, laugh, and not pursue the matter further. This is a dangerous standard to set.
  • Simulacra 6y ago
    An accusation today can ruin a person, more so than ever before.
    • mcphage 6y ago
      > An accusation today can ruin a person, more so than ever before It probably can, but unfortunately the people usually held up as examples of this generally haven't actually been ruined. I mean, what are some actual examples of people who have been ruined by accusation?
      • Alupis 6y ago
        George Zimmerman, for instance. The guy still receives death threats and worse, even though he was found not guilty by a jury of his peers. Social Media continues to perpetuate falsehoods about the case, trial and outcome. There is no safe place for Zimmerman in America today... and regardless of what you think of him as an individual, that's a problem.
        • mcphage 6y ago
• 99_00 6y ago
  Interesting history, and the subtext seems to be that this is precedence for deleting Trump from social media. But the connection isn't presented, it is assumed. And in my opinion, doesn't exist. >As a media historian, I find more than a little similarity between the stand those stations took back then and the way Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have silenced false claims of election fraud and incitements to violence in the aftermath of the siege on the U.S. Capitol – noticeably by silencing the claims of Donald Trump and his supporters. If you're going to link accusations of election fraud with Nazism you need more than "more than a little similarity". And bundling up accusations of election fraud with incitements to violence is very sloppy. Someone can believe fraud happened without advocating violence. If we don't allow that seperation, then anyone who is critical about anything to do with the election is inciting violence. Of course, when this standard is applied it won't be done evenly. Instead it will be targeted to certain groups. At that point it becomes political persicution.
• rmason 6y ago
  Being born in Detroit I heard about father Coughlin my entire life. Almost all of it was negative. Did you know that after losing his radio show the post office refused to let him distribute his newspaper, Social Justice? Despite many catholic parishes having closed Father Coughlin's church is still active. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Shrine_of_the_Little_Flower_Basilica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Shrine_of_the_Little_...
  • shadowgovt 6y ago
    The Wikipedia summary of the story with the post office is absolutely fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin#Cancellation_of_his_radio_show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin#Cancellation_... It appears that FDR's attorney general put pressure on the post office to revoke Coughlin's 2nd-class mailing privileges. In the end, the privileges weren't revoked, but (due in part to FDR putting pressure on the Catholic church itself), the bishopry commanded Coughlin to restrict his activities to local ministry.
    • rmason 6y ago
      Father Coughlin was a strong supporter of FDR dating back to when he was Governor of New York. It is only when he broke with FDR in 1936 that he started having problems.
• deleted 6y ago
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• rektide 6y ago
  I'd like to see a democratic/noospheric voice enter the picture, some day. I'm not sure it will be great, but giving the people a way to aggregate their voice, to say for themselves what they find objectionable & undeserving seems due. In a town square, one can just shout over jack-asses. But they keep being invited onto television/media! Stirs up more controversy, keep ratings high.
  • rektide 6y ago
    To be clear, I don't think that democratic vote should silence people. But I do think that people should have the option to stand & be accounted for, and one of the most important places to do that is in supporting, refusing, or outright censoring others. Government never had the option before of letting us chip in, letting us voice our support or distaste or alarm. Particularly the popular, the famous, those given the megaphone: they should be subject, real-time, regularly, to our accounts. And hopefully, our own accounts over time help us better determine who we were, where we were right, where we were wrong. So we can correct the record, keep becoming more perfect selves, as we try to head & govern towards our more perfect worlds.
• duxup 6y ago
  It's a tough call with private ownership of platforms and their rights and everything else. I'm perpetually wondering how much you tolerate the free speech of a group whose purpose or side effects would inevitably restrict the rights of others.
• olivermarks 6y ago
  Some context ...Coughlin was initially a powerful asset and supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, but then became a political opponent, accusing him of being too friendly to bankers. In 1934, he and others established a political organization called the National Union for Social Justice, supported by many German and Scandinavian immigrant Americans. membership was in the millions behind an agenda of monetary reform, nationalization of major industries and railroads, protection of labor rights and like the national socialists in Germany very anti communist. The 30's were an extraordinary time - Hitler was Time magazine man of the year in 1938 - and there was strong resistance to the USA entering an 'old country' war at the end of the decade. A rough equivalent to 'occupy wall street' in the mid 30's was obviously very anti banker and this was a large part of Coughlin's Catholic German appeal. (Many Irish catholics were heavily involved as well as Italian Americans who had Mussolini supposedly making the trains run on time while pushing back on some bankers). The William Kovarik (Professor of Communication, Radford University) article was originally titled 'That time private US media companies stepped in to silence the falsehoods and incitements of a major public figure … in 1938' in 'the Conversation' - the Smithsonian chose to re headline it. 1938 was a major turning point in US politics and as is the case today there was a major clamp down on free speech. This arguably subsequently partially resulted in the US entering WWII... https://theconversation.com/that-time-private-us-media-companies-stepped-in-to-silence-the-falsehoods-and-incitements-of-a-major-public-figure-in-1938-153157?xid=PS_smithsonian https://theconversation.com/that-time-private-us-media-compa...
  • mcguire 6y ago
    Note also the "cocktail putsch" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot)---one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot)---one of the few times you get to say "Smedley" with a straight face.
    • cafard 6y ago
      Actually, I believe that the USMC always has a bulldog mascot named Smedley.
  • kevinventullo 6y ago
• ausbah 6y ago
  deplatforming bad actors works
  • paulmd 6y ago
    In some circumstances, and for a while. For example Parler has found a new host in Russia, probably with a big helping hand from Russian intelligence. And sure that host could be deplatformed over it too, but if that continues to escalate then the ultimate endpoint is a balkanized internet where we don't tolerate traffic from ISPs that provide peer exchange to ISPs that provide data services to datacenters that provide services to hosting services that provide services to Parler. Effectively if Russia is willing to continue to escalate then the only practical solution to "de-platform" Parler would be to cut off Russia from the rest of the internet entirely.
• daveslash 6y ago
  This is off topic, but I can't get over how professional those protest signs look, especially given that this was before high availability of at-home publishing software, on-demand printing services and the like.
  • spoonjim 6y ago
    Overall hand skill used to be much higher in the US, out of necessity: making clothes, repairing houses, auto maintenance, painting and decorating, etc.
  • wil421 6y ago
    Some of the signs are the exact same. I doubt they created these at home. Printing companies were around back then.
  • allannienhuis 6y ago
    There were some interesting technologies before computer aided design in sign shops. When I was a kid one of my first jobs was silk-screening custom-made signs (like in those photos) and stickers. Much of it was done with light (UV?)-sensitive film techniques. A master was created carefully letter by letter from a bunch of letter 'stickers' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letraset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letraset], then the light-sensitive film was applied to the silk screen, and the master laid on to it and a lamp shone on it for a few minutes. The parts NOT exposed to the light (behind the letters) were capable of being washed away with a solvent of some sort (water in some cases if I remember correctly), leaving a very high resolution stencil that would be used to print onto whatever material desired, with a number of different types of inks. Pulling a squeegee and stacking hundreds of placards for drying was my summer job for several years. :) For the really custom stuff, our commercial artists were amazingly talented with both brush and penknife. Some of those guys could paint lettering by hand that was incredibly consistent and amazingly fast.
• kazinator 6y ago
  I don't buy the pattern of this argumentation which is basically: "We did something like X a century ago, so X is not chilling new trend; X is quite okay." It doesn't take much imagination to substitute various behaviors for X.
  • JKCalhoun 6y ago
    You seem to be creating the pattern yourself. I see: "We did something like X a century ago, history repeats, full stop." Where did "X is quite okay" come from?
    • kazinator 6y ago
      The tone of the article conveys agreement with the intervention. For instance, the closing remark "in both cases, private business had to step in when the consequences became evident" could be rendered neutrally as "in both cases, private businesses stepped in when the consequences became evident." "Had to step in" has the effect of defending the actions, by insinuating that they had no alternative.
      • JKCalhoun 6y ago
        Subtle, but I agree.
• upofadown 6y ago
  Father Coughlin was engaging in hate speech which is illegal in most countries (the US is an exception)[1]. Advocating sedition seems like a fundamentally different thing with a lot more political implications. Normally such a thing would result in the censure of individuals, not entire classes of individuals. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country
  • citizenpaul 6y ago
    Hate speech is not a thing. It is a falsity that dumb people accept as a form of censorship when they don't like something. There are simply things you don't want to hear and things you do. Threats right? Nope.
    • thelastwave 6y ago
      Surprised you're not being heavily downvoted already. (I don't agree with that, just surprised.) I do however think extreme hate speech is a real thing, it's just misapplied to the point where anything anyone disagrees with is labeled hate speech. Because at the end of the day, all negativity is based on hate, right? If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all (which is a nice convenient bromide for eliminating real critical thought.)
    • krastanov 6y ago
      It is true that "hate speech laws" are limits on free speech. It is perfectly reasonable to consider any limitation on free speech to be unethical, but pretending that "hate speech" is not well defined is willful ignorance. No country has absolute protection of absolute free speech.
      • thelastwave 6y ago
        This seems to blur the lines between "hate speech is a thing" and "hate speech should be banned." They are fundamentally different questions, and conflating them invites the normative fallacy.
    • 6y ago
• wnevets 6y ago
  Watching so many self proclaimed libertarians and free market cures all folks twist themselves into pretzels advocating the government should force companies to allow Parler, Trump and others use their services has been very entertaining. Too bad gay couples wanting to buy a wedding cake didn't receive that same kind of support from these folks.
  • krupan 6y ago
    I think if you paid better attention you’d notice the libertarians are not asking for the government to intervene. You can voice opposition to something without advocating for the government to regulate the thing. That is in fact a core tenet of libertarianism: persuasion instead of government coercion.
    • anigbrowl 6y ago
      It's kinda disingenuous of them to ignore the fact that Trump made a big thing out of repealing section 230 and has not only talked many times about regulating social media but formally petitioned the FCC to do so: https://www.ntia.gov/files/ntia/publications/ntia_petition_for_rulemaking_7.27.20.pdf https://www.ntia.gov/files/ntia/publications/ntia_petition_f...
      • krupan 6y ago
        I don't believe Trump or his followers have ever claimed to be libertarian?
    • wnevets 6y ago
      I think if you paid better attention you'd noticed I used the self proclaimed qualifier for a reason. I have no interesting in playing the true scotsman game.
      • krupan 6y ago
        Accusing you of not paying attention was wrong and I am sorry. It is quite possible that there exist people that profess to be libertarian and don't understand the point about about persuasion over coercion.
• tengbretson 6y ago
  I don't think the founders ever could have imagined the possibility of high-capacity, fully automatic broadcasting of speech when they wrote the first amendment.
• deleted 6y ago
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• maxharris 6y ago
  I find it troubling that this article omits the fact that Coughlin's newspaper was a weekly named "Social Justice", and that Coughlin was the leader and founder of the National Union for Social Justice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Justice_(periodical) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Justice_(periodical) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_for_Social_Justice_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_for_Social_Just... The overlap in names between Coughlin's authoritarian-right movement and today's increasingly authoritarian-left version may at first seem like a mere coincidence, but my view is that this is reflective of a deep epistemological commonality between these views. Despite the surface-level political differences, which amounts to disagreement on who to scapegoat and which group should wield increasingly authoritarian power over others, they are not very different. From where does this commonality stem? German philosophers that created the intellectual conditions within German society that made both the Weimar Republic and its collapse into Hitler's Nazi Germany inevitable: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/530716/the-cause-of-hitlers-germany-by-leonard-peikoff/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/530716/the-cause-of...
• dang 6y ago
  Url changed from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/time-private-us-media-companies-stepped-silence-falsehoods-and-incitements-major-public-figure-1938-180976771/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/time-private-us-media..., which points to this.
• tqi 6y ago
  The most frustrating thing about the whole debate around censorship/deplatforming that no one seems to want to acknowledge that there is probably no good answer, only acceptable compromises. Everyone wants to paint those who came to a different conclusion as stupid or acting in bad faith, as if the answer is as clear as the sky is blue. No wonder this discussion never goes anywhere...
• tinus_hn 6y ago
  In other news, you also can’t say ‘ass’ on the radio.