7 ms·

> 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. In

by 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.
  - zug_zug 6y ago
    This doesn't really pass the smell test. I know very little about Hitler, but the small amount I do know is Hitler was found guilty of treason and put in jail for 5 years, during which he wrote Mein Kampf [1]. It seems pretty obvious to me if he had been put to death (the ultimate form of censorship) the holocaust wouldn't have happened. You also dodge the central question - Do you believe Hitler had a protected right to free speech worth defending? I may or may not read your response because I don't believe you're arguing in good faith though. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch
  - pashamur 6y ago
    There is a good section on this in the book How Democracies Die where they go into detail as to why fascists could not come to power in America before Donald Trump. Basically their argument was that the party structures performed gatekeeping functions and that populists could not even get nominated to a party ticket (even with massive popular support, comparable to that of Donald Trump - they give the example of Henry Ford). Those gatekeeping functions were lessened after the violent Democratic national convention of '68 (where there was a clash between pro-war and anti-war factions) and primaries became a thing that actually mattered (in 68 Humphrey was selected by backroom insiders who did not participate in a single primary in that cycle, leading to public outcry). However, the gatekeeping effects persisted because of the control the parties still had over advertising channels and the media; that control fell apart post-2000, which setup the conditions that enabled a populist like Donald Trump to actually be elected to the presidency. So it's not free speech that kept fascists out of power in the U.S., it's institutional gatekeeping (in the 30's and 40's).
    - npongratz 6y ago
      Are those institutional gatekeepers the so-called "elites" that the populist demagogues constantly complain about? (To be clear, I'm not being argumentative and I think the premise of party gatekeeping helping to prevent extremists from seizing power is probably accurate)
    - dcolkitt 6y ago
      > Those gatekeeping functions were lessened after the violent Democratic national convention of '68 This point does not pass the smell test. Since 1968 the United States has become a vastly more tolerant, liberal, open and free society than prior to that point. You'd have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to say that the US is more prone to fascism than it was 50 years ago.
  - paulmd 6y ago
    Free speech absolutism was no defense against fascism - the Nazi Party was prominent in both the US and UK, to use your examples, during the 1930s. It just never quite tipped into power, but you can see from the rise of Trumpism that that didn't hold true this time. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323/when-nazis-took-manhattan https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323... https://time.com/4516276/cable-street-battle-london-east-end-80-years/ https://time.com/4516276/cable-street-battle-london-east-end... (the giant murals of George Washington and the talk about "job-stealing refugees" is particularly apropos given the current atmosphere of the Trumpist faction) It is obviously correct that once social norms have reached the breaking point that hate speech laws can become a cudgel used to further hate speech. The goal is to keep it from reaching that point. It is in fact probably correct to say that in either approach once the social norms have reached the breaking point, that either positive or negative freedoms can be weaponized. Freedom of speech can be used to rally a lynch mob, and hate speech laws can be used to oppress a minority, once you have reached the point where a hateful party has widespread social acceptance and control of a sufficient number of the political levers of power. In general though it is also not correct to say that the US has complete free-speech absolutism. Actually planning to lynch someone, for example, is not protected free speech. The argument for further restrictions is that those lines may not be correctly drawn by our forefathers - why should actually planning to lynch Tom Brown be illegal, but the KKK rallying to lynch somebody be legal and protected, as long as they don't name a specific name in advance? Why should arguing that people should be lynched in general without the specific intention to do so today be protected? There are many places we could concievably draw the line without really impacting anyone's actual freedoms to do anything other than incite hatred and ultimately inciting violence and death.
thursday0987 6y ago
the marketplace of ideas actually only works when people take the time to look past the branding of something, or the headline, and actually get into the meat and potatoes of the idea itself. to use your example, both QAnon and "Stop the Steal" had enough evidence that they were able to convince large swaths of people. dismissing the people who see that evidence as not "rational actors with good judgement" just conflates the problem. if anything, you assuming that 80+ million people (including several state governments) are incapable of looking at evidece and making up their own minds just because you came to a different conclusion is more of a problem than QAnon and "Stop the Steal" themselves.
dcolkitt 6y ago
> The marketplace of ideas only works that way when its participants are rational actors with good judgement You're leaving out the implicit assumption you're making, that the "authorities" in charge of the marketplace are rational actors. You better hope to hell, that they are. Because when some marketplace participants fail, they fail gracefully. When centralized authorities fail, they fail spectacularly and disastrously. I can virtually guarantee you that Qanon will be a footnote in ten years time. In contrast how would you like to live in Iran, China, Turkey, or any other regime where lunatics have taken over in the name of "protecting the people from dangerous ideas"? All those people clamoring for authorities to clamp down on irrational Trumpist extremists, have forgotten that Trump and his cronies were just recently in charge of all three branches of the government as well as a supermajority of state governments. This is how the political cycle always goes. All anybody sees is a sensible, incoming administration with likeminded views. And I actually agree. Biden's a decent man, and I honestly can't see him abusing even very broad powers. But what happens after? But there's no putting this genie back in the bottle. Do you trust President Donald Trump Jr. or President Tucker Carlson or President Josh Hawley with that power? This isn't even hypothetical. Most people here are too young to remember the post-9/11 hysteria. But I can virtually guarantee you that had the current crop of anti-speech activists managed to put their would-be "anti-extremist" laws in place, that opposition to the War on Terror would have been de facto illegal. Dealing with some stupid conspiracy theories and LARPer shamans, who have as much chance of overthrowing the American government as my toddler, are a small price to pay for fault-tolerance in liberal democracy.
- mcguire 6y ago
  I don't see that assumption anywhere in the parent comment. Nor any call for authorities of some unknown nature to clamp down. Just the point that the "marketplace of ideas" doesn't function very well when those in it are not acting in good faith. Qanon may be a footnote in ten years. The Tea Party is a footnote from the last decade. The Klan has gone down to footnote several times and been revived each time. (Although the current incarnation has gotten rid of the name and the outfits. Yay, progress!) I remember the 9/11 hysteria, and I remember checking on my Moslem friends about the free speech they were receiving. Anyway, and yet, here we are. Blind faith in the marketplace of ideas doesn't work any better than blind faith in the invisible hand of economics.
triceratops 6y ago
These "marketplace of ideas" zealots don't operate on evidence. No exceptions or qualifications to the sanctity of free speech exist. Free speech is a faith, and no such heresies are allowed. I love free speech. I think it's one of the most important things in society. But the whole "kill lies with more speech" meme needs to die because there's simply no evidence for it. We should have free speech for its own sake, and recognize and mitigate its harmful effects as much as possible. If we don't, society will turn against free speech entirely and everyone will be much worse off.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > These "marketplace of ideas" zealots don't operate on evidence. No exceptions or qualifications to the sanctity of free speech exist. Free speech is a faith, and no such heresies are allowed. I couldn't agree more. They also seem to have pretty extreme tunnel vision, and even seem to discard other First Amendment rights, like freedom of association and freedom of the press. Freedom of speech also means freedom to not speak, likewise freedom of association means freedom to not associate and freedom of the press means freedom not to publish. These are rights that aren't always in harmony, and need to be balanced if they're all to mean anything at all. I think some of the zealotry is caused by something like "knowing just enough to be dangerous." It's easy to fall into zealotry if you only really know oversimple versions of one or two things. However, I think at least some of it is bad-faith argumentation, where grand invocations of "freedom of speech" are just rhetorical cover for shitty opinions they'd like to spread unhindered.

by ardy42 6y ago

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.
- zug_zug 6y ago
  This doesn't really pass the smell test. I know very little about Hitler, but the small amount I do know is Hitler was found guilty of treason and put in jail for 5 years, during which he wrote Mein Kampf [1]. It seems pretty obvious to me if he had been put to death (the ultimate form of censorship) the holocaust wouldn't have happened. You also dodge the central question - Do you believe Hitler had a protected right to free speech worth defending? I may or may not read your response because I don't believe you're arguing in good faith though. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch
- pashamur 6y ago
  There is a good section on this in the book How Democracies Die where they go into detail as to why fascists could not come to power in America before Donald Trump. Basically their argument was that the party structures performed gatekeeping functions and that populists could not even get nominated to a party ticket (even with massive popular support, comparable to that of Donald Trump - they give the example of Henry Ford). Those gatekeeping functions were lessened after the violent Democratic national convention of '68 (where there was a clash between pro-war and anti-war factions) and primaries became a thing that actually mattered (in 68 Humphrey was selected by backroom insiders who did not participate in a single primary in that cycle, leading to public outcry). However, the gatekeeping effects persisted because of the control the parties still had over advertising channels and the media; that control fell apart post-2000, which setup the conditions that enabled a populist like Donald Trump to actually be elected to the presidency. So it's not free speech that kept fascists out of power in the U.S., it's institutional gatekeeping (in the 30's and 40's).
  - npongratz 6y ago
    Are those institutional gatekeepers the so-called "elites" that the populist demagogues constantly complain about? (To be clear, I'm not being argumentative and I think the premise of party gatekeeping helping to prevent extremists from seizing power is probably accurate)
  - dcolkitt 6y ago
    > Those gatekeeping functions were lessened after the violent Democratic national convention of '68 This point does not pass the smell test. Since 1968 the United States has become a vastly more tolerant, liberal, open and free society than prior to that point. You'd have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to say that the US is more prone to fascism than it was 50 years ago.
- paulmd 6y ago
  Free speech absolutism was no defense against fascism - the Nazi Party was prominent in both the US and UK, to use your examples, during the 1930s. It just never quite tipped into power, but you can see from the rise of Trumpism that that didn't hold true this time. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323/when-nazis-took-manhattan https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323... https://time.com/4516276/cable-street-battle-london-east-end-80-years/ https://time.com/4516276/cable-street-battle-london-east-end... (the giant murals of George Washington and the talk about "job-stealing refugees" is particularly apropos given the current atmosphere of the Trumpist faction) It is obviously correct that once social norms have reached the breaking point that hate speech laws can become a cudgel used to further hate speech. The goal is to keep it from reaching that point. It is in fact probably correct to say that in either approach once the social norms have reached the breaking point, that either positive or negative freedoms can be weaponized. Freedom of speech can be used to rally a lynch mob, and hate speech laws can be used to oppress a minority, once you have reached the point where a hateful party has widespread social acceptance and control of a sufficient number of the political levers of power. In general though it is also not correct to say that the US has complete free-speech absolutism. Actually planning to lynch someone, for example, is not protected free speech. The argument for further restrictions is that those lines may not be correctly drawn by our forefathers - why should actually planning to lynch Tom Brown be illegal, but the KKK rallying to lynch somebody be legal and protected, as long as they don't name a specific name in advance? Why should arguing that people should be lynched in general without the specific intention to do so today be protected? There are many places we could concievably draw the line without really impacting anyone's actual freedoms to do anything other than incite hatred and ultimately inciting violence and death.

thursday0987 6y ago

the marketplace of ideas actually only works when people take the time to look past the branding of something, or the headline, and actually get into the meat and potatoes of the idea itself. to use your example, both QAnon and "Stop the Steal" had enough evidence that they were able to convince large swaths of people. dismissing the people who see that evidence as not "rational actors with good judgement" just conflates the problem. if anything, you assuming that 80+ million people (including several state governments) are incapable of looking at evidece and making up their own minds just because you came to a different conclusion is more of a problem than QAnon and "Stop the Steal" themselves.

dcolkitt 6y ago

> The marketplace of ideas only works that way when its participants are rational actors with good judgement You're leaving out the implicit assumption you're making, that the "authorities" in charge of the marketplace are rational actors. You better hope to hell, that they are. Because when some marketplace participants fail, they fail gracefully. When centralized authorities fail, they fail spectacularly and disastrously. I can virtually guarantee you that Qanon will be a footnote in ten years time. In contrast how would you like to live in Iran, China, Turkey, or any other regime where lunatics have taken over in the name of "protecting the people from dangerous ideas"? All those people clamoring for authorities to clamp down on irrational Trumpist extremists, have forgotten that Trump and his cronies were just recently in charge of all three branches of the government as well as a supermajority of state governments. This is how the political cycle always goes. All anybody sees is a sensible, incoming administration with likeminded views. And I actually agree. Biden's a decent man, and I honestly can't see him abusing even very broad powers. But what happens after? But there's no putting this genie back in the bottle. Do you trust President Donald Trump Jr. or President Tucker Carlson or President Josh Hawley with that power? This isn't even hypothetical. Most people here are too young to remember the post-9/11 hysteria. But I can virtually guarantee you that had the current crop of anti-speech activists managed to put their would-be "anti-extremist" laws in place, that opposition to the War on Terror would have been de facto illegal. Dealing with some stupid conspiracy theories and LARPer shamans, who have as much chance of overthrowing the American government as my toddler, are a small price to pay for fault-tolerance in liberal democracy.

mcguire 6y ago
I don't see that assumption anywhere in the parent comment. Nor any call for authorities of some unknown nature to clamp down. Just the point that the "marketplace of ideas" doesn't function very well when those in it are not acting in good faith. Qanon may be a footnote in ten years. The Tea Party is a footnote from the last decade. The Klan has gone down to footnote several times and been revived each time. (Although the current incarnation has gotten rid of the name and the outfits. Yay, progress!) I remember the 9/11 hysteria, and I remember checking on my Moslem friends about the free speech they were receiving. Anyway, and yet, here we are. Blind faith in the marketplace of ideas doesn't work any better than blind faith in the invisible hand of economics.

triceratops 6y ago

These "marketplace of ideas" zealots don't operate on evidence. No exceptions or qualifications to the sanctity of free speech exist. Free speech is a faith, and no such heresies are allowed. I love free speech. I think it's one of the most important things in society. But the whole "kill lies with more speech" meme needs to die because there's simply no evidence for it. We should have free speech for its own sake, and recognize and mitigate its harmful effects as much as possible. If we don't, society will turn against free speech entirely and everyone will be much worse off.

ardy42 6y ago
> These "marketplace of ideas" zealots don't operate on evidence. No exceptions or qualifications to the sanctity of free speech exist. Free speech is a faith, and no such heresies are allowed. I couldn't agree more. They also seem to have pretty extreme tunnel vision, and even seem to discard other First Amendment rights, like freedom of association and freedom of the press. Freedom of speech also means freedom to not speak, likewise freedom of association means freedom to not associate and freedom of the press means freedom not to publish. These are rights that aren't always in harmony, and need to be balanced if they're all to mean anything at all. I think some of the zealotry is caused by something like "knowing just enough to be dangerous." It's easy to fall into zealotry if you only really know oversimple versions of one or two things. However, I think at least some of it is bad-faith argumentation, where grand invocations of "freedom of speech" are just rhetorical cover for shitty opinions they'd like to spread unhindered.