Comment by guidovranken
9 years ago
To dashundchen and others who feel nazism is the absolute threshold beyond which speech ceases to be free.
> How about literal neonazis waving swastikas, calling for violence to exterminate Jews and blacks? Ones literally identify with Nazi facists.
> Do you not accept a line where free speech threatening violence harms other free individuals? This isn't a thought excercise, the Daily Stormer is a group calling for the extermination of people based on race and religion.
So how about jihadists who mutilate genitals at music concerts and behead little children? And who are very clear about their intent to kill millions more?
There are few things I hate more than muslim extremists, yet I am strongly in favor of not obstructing these people's ability to put their stuff online. We can even learn a thing or two from it that helps us defeat them, same goes for nazis.
Isn't it obvious that everything besides radical freedom of speech is bound to descend into a quagmire of arbitrarily constructed and enforced rules?
It is really a little embarrassing to see that "the vaguely Marxist but comfortably bourgeoisie hacker community" as James Mickens beautifully put it is split on an issue around free speech.
I'm pretty OK with saying the marketplace of ideas has evaluated the ideals of Nazism and found no need remaining to preserve or protect them. We have, after all, tried the experiment of negotiating with Nazis, appeasing Nazis, and seeking peaceful coëxistence with Nazis, and we've learned what the resulting body count is.
People like to say "never again", but it's important to actually mean it.
The marketplace of ideas evaluated the ideals of Nazism, and rejected them by itself the first time. The fact we even call them Nazis is testament to that - it's an insulting reference to the fact National Socialists were uneducated country bumpkins. In battles of wits and words, Nazis lost every single time. So the idea we need to violate our ideals about freedom of speech, to defeat an enemy who never did stand a chance against us in that way, makes no sense. Do you really think our society's beliefs are truly so weak? That we are truly that vulnerable to pernicious memes?
Now, if you want to talk "never again" - it is not words that should frighten us, but violence. It was the brown shirts working the streets and savaging anyone who dared speak contrary to the Nazis that allowed them to obtain real power in the elections. It was the night of the long knives that saw the Nazi's staunchest critics in the Reichstag assassinated, and Hitler's control finally secured. It was the night of broken glass that normalized widespread violence against Jews, and set the stage for what was to come. It was violence that gave strength to Nazism, that let it rise to prominence, that let it overcome the Prussian elite who despised it and let it seize control of the country.
Nazism only succeeds by first putting its boot to the throat of the public, and threatening to crush the windpipe of any critic. Without that, it is just incoherent, anti-intellectual gibberish concocted by brutish thugs - and is torn apart in the market of ideas as a result. I fear a non-violent Nazi about as much as I fear a toothless wolf.
I fear a non-violent Nazi about as much as I fear a toothless wolf.
Once you tolerate the "non-violent" Nazi, the violent ones won't be far behind. Nazism has proven that it cannot be tolerated, period. Not a little bit here and there. Not for a short time while we try to reason with them. Not anywhere, not ever, not in any way. If an amendment to the US Constitution came up to exempt Nazis from first-amendment protection I'd be for it in a heartbeat, because there is no longer any need to be hemming and hawing and talking about how on principle we need to let them have their little march and their website and... no. There is no such thing as a "safe" amount of Nazism.
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The problem is not them beeing clearly nazis, its there opponents never stopping with the censor-ship and persecution once they get going.
Having a professor who finds intellectual differences by race in his social studys? Definatly a nazi. Not even worth studying, to search for a remedy, better to ignore a problem forever.
And this goes on and and on and on. So we concluded, that if your limitation tendencies of free speach are unlimited, they must be limited at the root. Thus the speech is free. They are not free to act. They are not free to maim, free to violate others rights. One is free to ignore them- (as large parts of the country have) until the sjw circus visited theire town and gave them attention and manpiulated a large neutral crowd into supporting them with the usual passiv-agressive discourse controll speach.
> The problem is not them beeing clearly nazis, its there opponents never stopping with the censor-ship and persecution once they get going.
And if it wasn't this excuse to not denazify, it would be another.
> your limitation tendencies
That's like saying someone suggests cutting out cancer just because they like mutilating bodies.
But of course, I can't call that a tendency for mental masturbation, and warn of the consequences of it remaining unchecked, right? Right.
> until the sjw circus visited theire town
As someone who thinks the BLM chicks screaming at Sanders would be in jail if they had been white guys screaming at Hillary, as someone who things Google shit the bed with the "memo guy", as someone who doesn't even like Bill Maher anymore but like him wishes he could have Camille Paglia -- even that "circus" deserves more respect than those who think people marching with swastikas and torches are expressing an idea. I still have so much beef with "SJW", but still, there's priorities.
Yeah, they came to their town and "gave them attention". And shame on those who did not.
> manpiulated a large neutral crowd into supporting them
The fuck? So the SWJ manipulated people into liking Nazis? If ANYTHING IN THE WORLD can make you side with Nazis, you already have it in you, and the next set of questions I'd have for you would be about your childhood and adolescence.