← Back to context

Comment by zorpner

9 years ago

Well, there's no need for pointless hypothesizing about what might happen, because this is actual Nazis. It's not "[just] people with a different moral or ideological framework" -- it's people who are declaring their allegiance to a group that literally killed millions in the name of racial purity.

Freedom of speech does not apply to those who would take away your freedom of speech with what they are advocating (in this case, killing us). This is the nature of the paradox of tolerance. We need not and must not be tolerant of the intolerant.

12 comments

zorpner

Reply
imron  9 years ago

> because this is actual Nazis.

Yes they are, but look at how the term 'Nazi' is being thrown about with abandon these days [0].

Once you have established that it's ok to ban/silence Nazis, then all you need to do to silence your opponents is brand them as a Nazi.

That is not hypothetical, and is something that is actively happening right now.

> it's people who are declaring their allegiance to a group that literally killed millions in the name of racial purity.

Where do we draw the line? Do we kick people off the Internet if they declare allegiance to communists - a group that literally killed millions in the name of ideological purity?

> We need not and must not be tolerant of the intolerant.

Actually, we must. The only speech worth defending is offensive speech or speech you don't like.

No-one tries to stop you from saying nice things that they already agree with.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWFMUIP3lHo

  • zorpner  9 years ago

    Once you have established that it's ok to ban Nazis, then all you need to do to silence your opponents is brand them as a Nazi.

    No, that would require everyone to be a credulous idiot -- people have thrown Nazi around as a pejorative for as long as there have been Nazis. Fortunately it's easy to tell who the actual Nazis are -- they're the ones with Nazi flags doing Nazi salutes saying they're Nazis, and advocating genocide.

    Again, this is the paradox of tolerance -- tolerating the intolerant decreases the total amount of tolerance in the world. You are spending time and effort arguing with me that Nazis should be allowed to speak while they threaten those that speak out against them directly with violence.

    Perhaps you should go and speak to the Nazis to tell them about how they should defend speech they don't like.