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There's no historical reason to think that not supporting extreme speech will lead to fascism. There are historical reasons to think that curbing extremist spee

There's no historical reason to think that not supporting extreme speech will lead to fascism. There are historical reasons to think that curbing extremist speech protects democracy (see the Weimar Republic).

tarboreus 5y ago
Why focus only on fascism? What about authoritarianism? Look at the USSR and the modern CCP.
- tetranomiga 5y ago
  Because the west and especially the US has, very specifically, a fascism problem.
  - dang 5y ago
    It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Can you please not do that? It's against the rules here because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to exist for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of what their ideology happens to be. See [1] for more explanation. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
    - tetranomiga 5y ago
      Sorry, just saw this. Will do.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
There are also historical reasons to think that tyranny has to suppress free speech in order to survive. So even if extreme speech can lead to tyranny, free speech can lead you back out - if you can keep the tyranny from destroying the free speech.
- tetranomiga 5y ago
  That's an "if" so big I don't know what your point is.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    My point is to keep track of the order of cause and effect. Unlimited free speech may create a tyranny. But tyranny always at least tries to limit free speech. So when you see a limiting of free speech, you should ask "Is this really in defense of liberty? Or is it just tyranny trying to preserve and extend itself?" Note that tyranny trying to preserve and extend itself almost always says that it's in defense of liberty...
    - tetranomiga 5y ago
      "Is this person defending free speech in favor of liberty? Or because his anti-liberty extremism won't be tolerated otherwise?". It works both ways so this isn't a practical way of looking at implementation of free speech. You can't keep a system that doesn't protect itself free forever - propaganda travels faster and further than truth, and I doubt the founding fathers wrote the first amendment with mass media in mind. You can start the argument of who gets to decide what should be allowed and what shouldn't, and in the current political climate (at least in the USA) the answer to that is obviously nobody. Ideally those decisions would be made during a time of cultural unity, where a whole nation can say "These are our values that we want to write in stone", like Germany did with the new constitution in the 20th century where it put well-defined limits on what kind of speech should be forbidden. It's doubtful if that kind of unity is even possible in the USA anymore, so I'm worried that, on a long enough time-scale, unfettered free speech will inevitably lead to tyranny of a kind because there is no system in place to protect it.
    - jl2718 5y ago
      > Unlimited free speech may create a tyranny. Citation required.
      - 5y ago
waterhouse 5y ago
> There are historical reasons to think that curbing extremist speech protects democracy (see the Weimar Republic). You think the Weimar Republic is a point in favor of that claim? In my research, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic and found that, contrary to what most people think, Germany did have hate‐speech laws that were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti‐Jewish sentiment is irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti‐Semitic speech had been banned has little basis in reality. 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 public 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. Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, points out that cases were regularly brought against individuals on account of anti‐Semitic speech in the years leading up to Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933. “Remarkably, pre‐Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti‐hate law,” he writes. “Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti‐Semitic speech… https://www.cato.org/policy-report/may/june-2015/war-free-expression https://www.cato.org/policy-report/may/june-2015/war-free-ex...
- tetranomiga 5y ago
  An American libertarian think-tank is not a source of historical interpretation I'm going to trust at face value and neither should you. I'll reply more thoroughly to this after work.
- hodgesrm 5y ago
  This is a great comment. It seems to me that some in the US far right and left wings have an analogous view of using the political system as a way to garner publicity rather than governing. It's less obvious in the court cases. Many of the people associated with the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol folded pretty rapidly once they were indicted.
ixacto 5y ago
What exactly is extreme speech? I don’t recall for advocating for illegal speech. Everything up to imminently calling for violence in the US is protected so if that is what you are saying then I’d agree with you. However what is “hate” or “intolerant” depends on the person and identity group. E.g. “All lives matter, marriage is between a man and a woman, men can’t get pregnant, Muhammad was a pedophole, flipping the bird to a police officer” all would offend different groups of people but are protected speech.

tarboreus 5y ago

Why focus only on fascism? What about authoritarianism? Look at the USSR and the modern CCP.

tetranomiga 5y ago
Because the west and especially the US has, very specifically, a fascism problem.
- dang 5y ago
  It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Can you please not do that? It's against the rules here because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to exist for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of what their ideology happens to be. See [1] for more explanation. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
  - tetranomiga 5y ago
    Sorry, just saw this. Will do.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

There are also historical reasons to think that tyranny has to suppress free speech in order to survive. So even if extreme speech can lead to tyranny, free speech can lead you back out - if you can keep the tyranny from destroying the free speech.

tetranomiga 5y ago
That's an "if" so big I don't know what your point is.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  My point is to keep track of the order of cause and effect. Unlimited free speech may create a tyranny. But tyranny always at least tries to limit free speech. So when you see a limiting of free speech, you should ask "Is this really in defense of liberty? Or is it just tyranny trying to preserve and extend itself?" Note that tyranny trying to preserve and extend itself almost always says that it's in defense of liberty...
  - tetranomiga 5y ago
    "Is this person defending free speech in favor of liberty? Or because his anti-liberty extremism won't be tolerated otherwise?". It works both ways so this isn't a practical way of looking at implementation of free speech. You can't keep a system that doesn't protect itself free forever - propaganda travels faster and further than truth, and I doubt the founding fathers wrote the first amendment with mass media in mind. You can start the argument of who gets to decide what should be allowed and what shouldn't, and in the current political climate (at least in the USA) the answer to that is obviously nobody. Ideally those decisions would be made during a time of cultural unity, where a whole nation can say "These are our values that we want to write in stone", like Germany did with the new constitution in the 20th century where it put well-defined limits on what kind of speech should be forbidden. It's doubtful if that kind of unity is even possible in the USA anymore, so I'm worried that, on a long enough time-scale, unfettered free speech will inevitably lead to tyranny of a kind because there is no system in place to protect it.
  - jl2718 5y ago
    > Unlimited free speech may create a tyranny. Citation required.
    - 5y ago

waterhouse 5y ago

> There are historical reasons to think that curbing extremist speech protects democracy (see the Weimar Republic). You think the Weimar Republic is a point in favor of that claim? In my research, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic and found that, contrary to what most people think, Germany did have hate‐speech laws that were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti‐Jewish sentiment is irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti‐Semitic speech had been banned has little basis in reality. 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 public 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. Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, points out that cases were regularly brought against individuals on account of anti‐Semitic speech in the years leading up to Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933. “Remarkably, pre‐Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti‐hate law,” he writes. “Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti‐Semitic speech… https://www.cato.org/policy-report/may/june-2015/war-free-expression https://www.cato.org/policy-report/may/june-2015/war-free-ex...

tetranomiga 5y ago
An American libertarian think-tank is not a source of historical interpretation I'm going to trust at face value and neither should you. I'll reply more thoroughly to this after work.
hodgesrm 5y ago
This is a great comment. It seems to me that some in the US far right and left wings have an analogous view of using the political system as a way to garner publicity rather than governing. It's less obvious in the court cases. Many of the people associated with the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol folded pretty rapidly once they were indicted.

ixacto 5y ago

What exactly is extreme speech? I don’t recall for advocating for illegal speech. Everything up to imminently calling for violence in the US is protected so if that is what you are saying then I’d agree with you. However what is “hate” or “intolerant” depends on the person and identity group. E.g. “All lives matter, marriage is between a man and a woman, men can’t get pregnant, Muhammad was a pedophole, flipping the bird to a police officer” all would offend different groups of people but are protected speech.