4 ms·

Freedom Is for Nazis

10 points by feross 5y ago

donatj 5y ago
I really wish this had a title… was anything else. Something that more clearly illustrated the angle this is taking. I was ready to skip past it.
logicalmonster 5y ago
I grew up being taught that one of the reason that the Nazis were bad was because they wanted to shut down free speech and burn their opponents beloved books, and I think that I took this lesson to heart. And yet today, you have to be the one on the side of book burning to avoid being labelled a Nazi. You have serious people who seriously claim that a libertarian vision for the Internet is a dictator's fantasy. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/12/elon-musk-internet-twitter https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/12/elon-m... It's hard to understand how reality has shifted so far.
- ttfkam 5y ago
  If that was the primary reason you were taught regarding why the Nazis were bad, you had a substandard education. Yes, they suppressed speech, which was bad. Yes, they burned books, which was bad. But there are WAY worse things the Nazis did in the 1920s and 1930s before WW2 started that far outweigh lighting some books on fire. Extreme nationalistic fervor, declaring true (Aryan) Germans vs everyone else, for one. Demonizing all other political parties, for another. Treating other humans as expendable toward a "greater goal" such as homosexuals, gypsies, the disabled, etc., for yet another. Singular calls for scapegoating Jews for almost all the nation's ills probably most of all. Sorry, but the book burning was a symptom at best and nowhere near among the worst aspects. Storming a primary seat of government in order to assert political control of the nation? That was the Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch. Our closest analogy was Jan 6 at the Capital, many of whom were so-called "free speech advocates" chanting, "Hang Mike Pence!" for refusing to overturn a national election. After the failed coup, the Nazis switched tactics to using propaganda, racism, and physical intimidation to sway elections to their favor. After gaining political power, putting party loyalists and the racially "pure" into powerful positions rather than appointing purely by merit. With a minority of popular support, the Nazis gamed the system to amass greater and greater power until once they had sufficient power, they stopped all political choice at all. And all of that was BEFORE they annexed Austria, invaded Czechoslovakia, started WW2, and killed millions of civilians let alone combatants. But sure. Apparently burning books was one of the worst parts. The Nazis demanded free speech too… just before they denied it to everyone else.
  - logicalmonster 5y ago
    I wrote about one of the reasons that was relevant to the topic at hand. Just about everything you wrote in response to my reasonable and supportable point is a hallucination of my opinion.
ttfkam 5y ago
Nobody light a match. There's a lot of straw men in such a small space. Let's be clear: no one wants Nazis or advocates for pedophilia or folks fetishizing the consumption of feces on their online platform. Because they hate free speech? No. Because they like censorship? No. If you let Nazis and Flat Earthers hang out in your servers, most everyone else will leave; they don't want to listen to same old nonsense and bile when they have better things to discuss and share. That suppresses ad revenue, lowers profits, makes you lay employees off, etc. Let's see examples like Parler and Gab. Launched as online communities free from censorship. Who went there? Folks who believed in free speech as a principle, some random other folks, and a few Nazis. Why would you want to go somewhere with folks constantly going on about Jewish space lasers? So random people leave. What's left? More Nazis per 1,000 users, which makes the platform more intolerable for non-Nazis who accept that The Holocaust actually happened and was unambiguously a BAD thing. So more free speech advocates leave because the Nazi rhetoric and other 4chan-like speech ceases to be worth it for them. Nazi per 1,000 user level continues to rise. Wash, rinse, and repeat. It's not censorship to be denied a megaphone by Twitter when you'll gladly be given one on Gab. That's not censorship; that's simply folks not wanting to subscribe to your newsletter. There is no universal right guaranteeing that people must pay attention to you. It should be noted however that many of the same people crying censorship are the same ones trying to get books like "To Kill a Mockingbird" removed from public school libraries. If you want to fight against censorship, I wouldn't start with Twitter.
- bediger4000 5y ago
  I'm getting ready to bail out on Twitter. After justifiably banning the Qanon violence types, Twitter has gone back to ignoring problems rapidly at scale. I don't care to be bombarded with Nazi or Qanon propaganda. Where do I go next? I've got no real commitment to Twitter, so I'm open. I looked into Parler, they seemed to want a huge amount of PII to get an account, so that's out on that basis.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Mastodon is nice. You have to put in a little work to find an instance that reflects your values, but I personally love the microblogging concept merged with the IRC crowd and moderation ethos.

10 points by feross 5y ago

I really wish this had a title… was anything else. Something that more clearly illustrated the angle this is taking. I was ready to skip past it.

logicalmonster 5y ago

I grew up being taught that one of the reason that the Nazis were bad was because they wanted to shut down free speech and burn their opponents beloved books, and I think that I took this lesson to heart. And yet today, you have to be the one on the side of book burning to avoid being labelled a Nazi. You have serious people who seriously claim that a libertarian vision for the Internet is a dictator's fantasy. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/12/elon-musk-internet-twitter https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/12/elon-m... It's hard to understand how reality has shifted so far.

ttfkam 5y ago
If that was the primary reason you were taught regarding why the Nazis were bad, you had a substandard education. Yes, they suppressed speech, which was bad. Yes, they burned books, which was bad. But there are WAY worse things the Nazis did in the 1920s and 1930s before WW2 started that far outweigh lighting some books on fire. Extreme nationalistic fervor, declaring true (Aryan) Germans vs everyone else, for one. Demonizing all other political parties, for another. Treating other humans as expendable toward a "greater goal" such as homosexuals, gypsies, the disabled, etc., for yet another. Singular calls for scapegoating Jews for almost all the nation's ills probably most of all. Sorry, but the book burning was a symptom at best and nowhere near among the worst aspects. Storming a primary seat of government in order to assert political control of the nation? That was the Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch. Our closest analogy was Jan 6 at the Capital, many of whom were so-called "free speech advocates" chanting, "Hang Mike Pence!" for refusing to overturn a national election. After the failed coup, the Nazis switched tactics to using propaganda, racism, and physical intimidation to sway elections to their favor. After gaining political power, putting party loyalists and the racially "pure" into powerful positions rather than appointing purely by merit. With a minority of popular support, the Nazis gamed the system to amass greater and greater power until once they had sufficient power, they stopped all political choice at all. And all of that was BEFORE they annexed Austria, invaded Czechoslovakia, started WW2, and killed millions of civilians let alone combatants. But sure. Apparently burning books was one of the worst parts. The Nazis demanded free speech too… just before they denied it to everyone else.
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  I wrote about one of the reasons that was relevant to the topic at hand. Just about everything you wrote in response to my reasonable and supportable point is a hallucination of my opinion.

ttfkam 5y ago

Nobody light a match. There's a lot of straw men in such a small space. Let's be clear: no one wants Nazis or advocates for pedophilia or folks fetishizing the consumption of feces on their online platform. Because they hate free speech? No. Because they like censorship? No. If you let Nazis and Flat Earthers hang out in your servers, most everyone else will leave; they don't want to listen to same old nonsense and bile when they have better things to discuss and share. That suppresses ad revenue, lowers profits, makes you lay employees off, etc. Let's see examples like Parler and Gab. Launched as online communities free from censorship. Who went there? Folks who believed in free speech as a principle, some random other folks, and a few Nazis. Why would you want to go somewhere with folks constantly going on about Jewish space lasers? So random people leave. What's left? More Nazis per 1,000 users, which makes the platform more intolerable for non-Nazis who accept that The Holocaust actually happened and was unambiguously a BAD thing. So more free speech advocates leave because the Nazi rhetoric and other 4chan-like speech ceases to be worth it for them. Nazi per 1,000 user level continues to rise. Wash, rinse, and repeat. It's not censorship to be denied a megaphone by Twitter when you'll gladly be given one on Gab. That's not censorship; that's simply folks not wanting to subscribe to your newsletter. There is no universal right guaranteeing that people must pay attention to you. It should be noted however that many of the same people crying censorship are the same ones trying to get books like "To Kill a Mockingbird" removed from public school libraries. If you want to fight against censorship, I wouldn't start with Twitter.

bediger4000 5y ago
I'm getting ready to bail out on Twitter. After justifiably banning the Qanon violence types, Twitter has gone back to ignoring problems rapidly at scale. I don't care to be bombarded with Nazi or Qanon propaganda. Where do I go next? I've got no real commitment to Twitter, so I'm open. I looked into Parler, they seemed to want a huge amount of PII to get an account, so that's out on that basis.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Mastodon is nice. You have to put in a little work to find an instance that reflects your values, but I personally love the microblogging concept merged with the IRC crowd and moderation ethos.