Comment by wanda

Non-sequitur. It's from Noam Chomsky so it's not surprising, he has a predilection for fallacies.

Just because two "bad" people liked something in a certain way does not mean that "good" people must therefore like it the converse way. Both Goebbels and Stalin may also have liked butter and jam on their toast, but that doesn't mean I should eat toast with just butter.

If that seems a little facetious, consider it this way: many leading figures deemed "good" by history were also in favour of regulated free speech. That doesn't make regulated free speech good, of course — though one might suppose that it means that these "good" people were probably not as liberal as many people seem to think.

In fact, during times of war, and of apprehension/anticipation of war, I'd say that there were many things that went on, which would make many liberal people take umbrage today. I would say all free speech was heavily regulated by most nations up until the perhaps the '90s or even the '00s.

I do not think it is unwise to regulate free speech. It is not wise for a civilisation, with laws, to allow people to flaunt their breaking of, or desire to break, said laws, without some legal consequence.

Are we to have rapist support rallies next? Join the Rapist Party for the legalisation of rape? No. The rape of anybody is a crime, just like murder. It is not legally permitted to be perpetrated by anyone in most countries.

The same should apply to racism — and you might say that it should not be illegal to make racist remarks, but actually, it should not be tolerated in terms of free speech either, because it is objectively wrong to believe a race is superior to another race.

It's not a question about the meaning of life or the existence of supernatural deities, so the answer is not something that lies beyond the bounds of our language to discuss. It's a question of whether one race of people is superior to another race of people, and this question is answerable scientifically: there is no superior race.

Given that there is no superior race, just like there is no superior gender i.e. women are not inferior to men, it should not be permissible for people to advocate views contrary to this — not because it is a "dominant discourse" or whatever Foucault might have said, but because it is a scientific fact.

Science is not a discursive means to enforce order, it's just the application of logic to evidence. There are no meaningful genetic differences between different races, and there are no bounds set to what a person can achieve other than those set by political regimes and by the person's financial situation/access to education.

Nothing should be able to call into question a scientifically-proven fact other than other scientifically-proven facts i.e. new evidence. It should not be legal to spread sophistry or incite dissent and disorder based on sophistry.

So, racism should not be permissible simply because it carries no truth. If racism had a basis in science, or indeed any truth to it whatsoever, it would not require fanatical cults and violence to spread its message. It would just be taught, as it is already taught that homo sapiens outmatched the neanderthal (though this is actually speculative and remains to be conclusively proven, but that's another debate).

There is no universal rule for handling free speech and it's not something that should be considered in terms of setting precedents. Every case of permissible free speech is distinct and the question must be asked each time: is the message that being advocated logically plausible/scientifically justified?

Remember, "rape is bad" is not something you can scientifically prove because it's not a comparison between two people from different places, it's a moral statement, albeit one that most agree with.

Thus, if you permit racist discourse against science, you will set a far more dangerous precedent for the rapists, human traffickers, murderers and paedophiles around the world who also feel that for too long their voices have gone unheard.

I wonder if Chomsky would readily be the one to grant them the freedom to speak openly about their preferences for murdering and raping people, from his armchair.