Why I Believe In Free Speech inc Nazis

[Cloud_Strife]

Driving them "into deeper recesses" gives them less opportunity for expansion. Sure, it doesn't keep them from plotting among themselves. Nothing can keep them from plotting among themselves. But it does limit their outreach.

Sadly there are too many broken people who think Nazism was defeated by logic and arguments.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Send them off to live with the babe threads everywhere?

Is it just me, or were things a lot less... tense around here when they existed?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Is it just me, or were things a lot less... tense around here when they existed?

Correlation but no evidence of causality. Possibly relevant though.

 

[Gorbles]

Did you read the article? You're always going to have the hardcore ones willing to kill.

Most I suspect are stupid kids being stupid kids. Social media is mostly cancer IMHO and I don't use it except for FB messenger.

The assumption that they're mostly stupid kids being stupid kids is entirely your own, and not backed up by any article provided. You have fun with that line of defense, I just wish it extended to other ideological fringes.

 

[Fippy]

Using the term Nazi and especially in America..so silly either way.
Germany had Nazis ~80y ago. They are gone.
Now they may call wannabe "Nazis" far right idiots, or i guess just stupid braindead works as well.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Let them speak. Prosecute them for inciting racial hatred, slander etc when they break the law.
That doesn't mean they have to be given a platform. Nick Griffin was leader of a tiny party that gets a miniscule amount of votes. He should never have been on Question Time.
Nor do universities or student unions have an obligation to allow any speaker IMO.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Nah. Treat them the same way as we treat ISIS ideology tbh. Don’t see any utility in protection of persecuting speech.

If you don't see utility in protecting "persecuting speech", why are you advocating for persecuting speech?

Counterpoint(s):

No platforming works.

Other examples.

Technological advances are always going to happen. Hate groups are going to keep up with the times as much as anyone else. To say deplatforming hate groups causes them to somehow become more effective is failure in logic because it precludes the idea that they can become more effective anyhow, independently of any platform they have.

The reason we set up free speech is to prevent scenarios where whoever is in power defines "wrong speech" and gets to "no platform" whatever they want. Having a fringe minority of idiots talk about awful stuff is a price paid for that, but it beats the alternative.

I see no reason to protect hate speech. We have hate laws in Canada, and this has served to curb some behaviors that, if unchecked, would likely have resulted in people advocating violence against specific minority groups, whether on ethnic lines, religious lines, or sexual orientation.

Good. I now proclaim your post as "hate speech" and therefore not protected. Maybe you shouldn't post it then.

There are already laws against plotting violence/threatening people, and those aren't settled by de-platforming or defining them as "hate speech".

I don't think it's acceptable for societies that are based on equality before the law and which recognize human rights to allow open discussions on whose people it should be allowed to exterminate just because they are born

Yes, violence against people + planning for it should be illegal.

I'm also not opposed to deplatforming or job loss. Freedom if speech is only for criminal stuff. Doesn't mean you have to give then a megaphone or allow them to use your one.

Since I don't like what you say and I'm in power, I hereby say that banks won't work with you. You can't get a credit card. You're not allowed to use "the state's" public transportation. And I will penalize employers if they hire you or people who have expressed views similar to yours. In fact, even associating with you will result in penalties for other people.

But no worries, you're technically not a criminal and you're not being charged with a crime so it's fine!

Letting nazis freely spout their **** causes material and existential harm to minorities and if you support and enable the speech of nazis YOU own the results, so congrats Zaardner you are the hand wringing liberal centrist moderate who has no problem allowing the likes of the alt right being amplified, even as your own country suffers it's worst terrorist attack.

Your posts are an existential harm to the people of this country. No reason to give such hostility a platform. Shut it down.

Hmm. Let me point out that while the ad hominem does make quoted a weak post, I'm not actually advocating silencing people, in contrast to said post. Just showing why free speech is better than the alternative. If you disagree, go ahead and follow the quoted rationale to take yourself off the platform.

I'd say I'm pro-deplatforming.

Some research (I think Gorbles linked to it) indicates that while the immediate aftermath of a ban from major platforms leads to an upsurge of interest in the banned site/personality, in the longer term lesser/private platforms can't quite provide the same level of exposure. And therefore their influence declines and eventually fades away.

Yes. Practices like those in China are well aware of this effect. Now its your turn, time for your voice to be silenced and gradually fade away.

If that doesn't sound good to you, maybe you should consider the standards for "deplatforming" carefully. We have already seen people "deplatformed" and blocked from financial transactions in a supposedly free country despite not directly threatening harm to anybody. They simply expressed beliefs/opinions that were "wrong" or "disliked" by the people in power. What stops the next bout of censorship of speech X doesn't like?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Nick Griffin was leader of a tiny party that gets a miniscule amount of votes. He should never have been on Question Time.

On the other hand, it was that appearance that pretty much ended his relevance. But also, even a leader of a miniscule party is surely more qualified to be on Question Time than Generic Russel Comedian 42.

 

[Senethro]

If you don't see utility in protecting "persecuting speech", why are you advocating for persecuting speech?



The reason we set up free speech is to prevent scenarios where whoever is in power defines "wrong speech" and gets to "no platform" whatever they want. Having a fringe minority of idiots talk about awful stuff is a price paid for that, but it beats the alternative.



Good. I now proclaim your post as "hate speech" and therefore not protected. Maybe you shouldn't post it then.

There are already laws against plotting violence/threatening people, and those aren't settled by de-platforming or defining them as "hate speech".



Yes, violence against people + planning for it should be illegal.



Since I don't like what you say and I'm in power, I hereby say that banks won't work with you. You can't get a credit card. You're not allowed to use "the state's" public transportation. And I will penalize employers if they hire you or people who have expressed views similar to yours. In fact, even associating with you will result in penalties for other people.

But no worries, you're technically not a criminal and you're not being charged with a crime so it's fine!



Your posts are an existential harm to the people of this country. No reason to give such hostility a platform. Shut it down.

Hmm. Let me point out that while the ad hominem does make quoted a weak post, I'm not actually advocating silencing people, in contrast to said post. Just showing why free speech is better than the alternative. If you disagree, go ahead and follow the quoted rationale to take yourself off the platform.



Yes. Practices like those in China are well aware of this effect. Now its your turn, time for your voice to be silenced and gradually fade away.

If that doesn't sound good to you, maybe you should consider the standards for "deplatforming" carefully. We have already seen people "deplatformed" and blocked from financial transactions in a supposedly free country despite not directly threatening harm to anybody. They simply expressed beliefs/opinions that were "wrong" or "disliked" by the people in power. What stops the next bout of censorship of speech X doesn't like?

One big slippery slope post.

 

[Synobun]

Using the term Nazi and especially in America..so silly either way.
Germany had Nazis ~80y ago. They are gone.
Now they may call wannabe "Nazis" far right idiots, or i guess just stupid braindead works as well.

A pointless distinction when the agendas of "real" Nazis and "wannabe" Nazis are the same.

@Zardnaar: Anyways, it's easy to say everyone deserves a platform when you're in a demographic safe from the existential threat that poses. You keep saying you had a rough-and-tumble childhood, that you were poor, that you lived in vulgarity and the sewers of human behaviour on the docks. That's cool. I bet it sucked. I'm sure you had to become okay with a lot of things in order to survive. But you're still in a demographic that, should Nazis/Fascists/Authoritarians/Your-Preferred-Term-That-Doesn't-Matter rise to power, would be safe and likely propped up by the process. It harms you little, if at all, to clap your hands and rally to their rights, because the only possible result for you is empowering people who will give you more social cachet if they succeed.

This is less the case if you are... anything else, really. If you're an Other, you are put into existential danger by having these "rights" supported, "rights" which end up translating directly to legislation and normalization of restricting someone's right to exist. Giving these people a platform and the paradox of tolerance only grants them the ability to make their dreams come true, dreams which put everyone else in danger. You don't care because you're not threatened. You think it's just words, an aimless meandering of the mind. You think this because you've never had to be on the other side of these people saying that people like you should be exterminated or, in modern PC language, subject to dozens of hoops and bureaucratic systems in order to scrape the bare minimum to survive, and even then likely falling short (and then having the state apparatus necessary to say it's due to personal failure, moral or otherwise, that you were forced into the dredges of society and then subsequently lost).

There are several people on CFC today who in certain parts of the world would be outright executed or subject to public mobs. We don't want anything like that to happen in Western society. We don't like seeing in the news every year a bunch of bills from one country or another that asks the burning question: "Is [Demographic] really worth keeping around?"

You legitimize their BS by giving them a platform, by arguing that their views are equal to everyone else's. They want to hurt people. That's their goal. They want to hurt people in order to empower themselves, but they've demonstrated time and time again that they'll take aimless suffering as a reasonable consolation prize. They see someone like Cloud, like Valka, like me, like whoever, and they see someone they want to hurt. They want people like us to hurt so badly that they try to convince everyone else in broad daylight that we deserve to suffer, that we should be forced into obscurity and hopefully one day death. They try to legislate this, to make it law, that we become disenfranchised and hated.

Your argument is that we should allow this, because of some sanctity present in free speech that overpowers humanism. Free speech over everything, all the while ignoring that their "free speech" operates solely to advocate harm, and that allowing their advocacy has a fairly clear path from "just words" to "written law."

Also: You can't really point to de-platforming as the cause of radicalization when the increase in radicals is tied to immensely public figures espousing or indirectly supporting their views. They are emboldened by it being okay to say the things they've been led to believe. They can turn on the television or go to one of the most trafficked sites on the internet and see a charismatic dude with millions of followers saying all the right things to lock in their beliefs, making indirect comments about how there's a threat and if only someone would do something about it, because the government sure won't. The president of the god damn United States does this. The rise in radical behaviour is tied to publicity and normalization. Make it impossible for them to spout filth to an audience, willing or otherwise, and you hobble it entirely. People will still seek it out, but far fewer, and they'll have to go out of their way to find it instead of being funneled to it directly by the YouTube recommendation algorithm, or Facebook suggestions, or the president's/Fox News' timelines linking directly to god damn Breitbart.

Give your head a shake and realize there's a world that exists outside your personal story.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Your posts are an existential harm to the people of this country. No reason to give such hostility a platform. Shut it down.

Hmm. Let me point out that while the ad hominem does make quoted a weak post, I'm not actually advocating silencing people, in contrast to said post. Just showing why free speech is better than the alternative. If you disagree, go ahead and follow the quoted rationale to take yourself off the platform.

The weakest, most pathetic take i've seen.

You are equating my posts to the same **** that neo-nazis, homophobes, transphobes etc post and it's disengenuous as **** not to mention insulting, but you already know that don't you but yet here you are doing it, intentionally and to what end?

I don't think you care about the consequences of allowing Neo-Nazis and their ilk speak freely, if such thoughts even enter your mind at all, because you aren't the type of person they want to eliminate, hurt or harrass and thats your priviledge, your lack of empathy to overcome, not mine. Go be a better person and stop turning a blind eye to people who want to eliminate others, be it through actions, rhetoric or policy.

One big slippery slope post.

It's all he has, but never mind that, try pointing out the fact that people being allowed to openly spew bigoted crap results in an atmosphere where hate crimes and more importantly, deaths, are more likely to occur.

He's VERY concerned about hypotheticals but can't seem to bring himself to care about the actual state we live in and the actual lived real life experiences of people who have to endure this **** that he is more than happy to tolerate, how strange why it's almost as if he doesn't care!

 

[AmazonQueen]

On the other hand, it was that appearance that pretty much ended his relevance. But also, even a leader of a miniscule party is surely more qualified to be on Question Time than Generic Russel Comedian 42.

Being more qualified than Russell Brand isn't really much of an argument.
Still, a comedian is a public figure. If a comedian or sportsperson or author is on its presumably because they are well-known and the Beeb thinks people will be interested in their views. A politician is a representative of a party, if they are miniscule one suspects very few people care about their views. If you're going to argue that all views should be represented presumably you want every episode of Question Time to have at least one representative of a fringe group on it but I don't think many people are eagerly awaiting the appearance of the Worker's Revolutionary Party, the Scottish Libertarian Party or the Church of the Militant Elvis Party.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Yes. Practices like those in China are well aware of this effect. Now its your turn, time for your voice to be silenced and gradually fade away.

If that doesn't sound good to you, maybe you should consider the standards for "deplatforming" carefully. We have already seen people "deplatformed" and blocked from financial transactions in a supposedly free country despite not directly threatening harm to anybody. They simply expressed beliefs/opinions that were "wrong" or "disliked" by the people in power. What stops the next bout of censorship of speech X doesn't like?

Thing is, unlike the China scenario, we're talking about private companies taking these measures without the influence of government. Or would you propose the Trump administration is pressuring YouTube, Twitter et al to deplatform the people they've been implicitly wooing and encouraging?

This isn't really about free speech, as much as the alt-righters may try to make it so. Free speech protects from government persecution, and this isn't the case. Businesses are free to avoid associating with individuals which may well negatively impact their own corporate image.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

If you're going to argue that all views should be represented presumably you want every episode of Question Time to have at least one representative of a fringe group on it but I don't think many people are eagerly awaiting the appearance of the Worker's Revolutionary Party, the Scottish Libertarian Party or the Church of the Militant Elvis Party.

Not going to argue that, but it is actually quite a decent idea to do that, at least occasionally. It is the BBC after all, if that still means anything. But really I was just saying that I think Nick Griffin's appearance did him more harm than good. Not that that's the barometer to decide whether he should have been there or not, but still worth remembering.

 

[MaryKB]

I feel it's anti-free speech to tell YouTube they *have* to provide a platform to people they don't want to. If you're running a company, and someone wants to advertise with you but you think supporting them is going to hurt your business, then you have every right not to do business with them (exception of course being discrimination)

I don't understand why right-wingers always seem to think "free speech" only applies to them.

And Zardnaar, on a larger note, what exactly are you trying to do here? Why do you keep making these threads that obviously look like you're spoiling for some kind of fight? You seem to be posting like one every day or two, with a very controversial opinion, and I don't believe for one moment you're here to really discuss. Not once have I seen you actually take anything away from anything someone has said, you just keep repeating the same tired and thoroughly debunked things over and over ad nauseam, and like @Manfred Belheim said this thing's already been beaten deep into the dust.

 

[Fippy]

A pointless distinction when the agendas of "real" Nazis and "wannabe" Nazis are the same.

Well i disagree, by calling them Nazis they feel complimented.
Also new recruits (or however we want to call that) are more likely to be attracted by an ultimate historical crime, rather than just thinking "yay i can become racist". Imo it's part of the problem, they should be called what they really are: cheap, criminal copycats and racists.
And nope those are not the same agendas, at all. I see no Hitler running around who tempts peoples by restoring their pride after world war 1..do you?

 

[Synobun]

It's a bit of a hot take to imply Hitler's agenda was restoring pride, innit?

Also, you can call Nazis criminals and racists. Because they are.

 

[Farm Boy]

One big slippery slope post.

Logical fallacy in a behavioral argument? I suppose it has a place. It's not the throne, but no reason it shouldn't be in the room for reference.

But ruh roh. We've started wandering into specifics regarding the actual namesakes? Not appreciated. Screws up modern usage like some sort of social enemy would, doesn't it?

Is it just me, or were things a lot less... tense around here when they existed?

Ah common bonds. Can you think of anything more controversial?

 

[Fippy]

@Synsensa Obv. he showed his real plans later, but it's why he got power:
Creating workspace (like highways and other industrial projects), and in general reaching a country that felt beaten.
He did not become leader by shouting i want a holocaust.

 

[Synobun]

Right, and these wannabe Nazis get power by shouting they want to put "money in your pockets" and "make America great again" and what-have-you. Crappy people obscure their goals. That's kind of how we know the trick here and can suitably resist it by limiting their mobility.