Comment by losvedir
9 years ago
> The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups.
This is an extremely frightening statement to me. I'm terrified by the fact that you'd paint me as a Nazi sympathizer because my meta-level beliefs that text and speech should be protected are stronger than my object-level beliefs that Nazi philosophy is evil.
The Nazis are not reviled today because they had disgusting beliefs. They're reviled because they actually murdered millions of innocent citizens.
I'm okay with neonazis saying disgusting things, as long as they play by the rules and don't commit any violence. (Hell, people brought AK-47's and AR-15's to Charlottesville but didn't use them, despite the violent clashes.) Whatever happened to "sticks and stones"? Do kids not learn that mantra anymore?
To be clear, this is a separate question from whether major internet infrastructure providers should be considered de facto public systems and fall under the 1st amendment. I don't think they should, so I think this falls within Cloudflare's rights (although I wish they had done otherwise). I'm just objecting to the characterization that the only people who could possibly object to Cloudflare here are neonazis or their sympathizers.
For what it's worth, I tried to find the Daily Stormer site to see what it is they actually advocate for, but I was unable to. I'm not sure if it's because of the domain name issues, Cloudflare, Google search or what, but it's a little disconcerting to me that ideas can be so easily expunged from the internet. So much for the "right to forget" controversy - I guess it is possible after all, if the companies were motivated to do so.
I'm okay with neonazis saying disgusting things, as long as they play by the rules and don't commit any violence. (Hell, people brought AK-47's and AR-15's to Charlottesville but didn't use them, despite the violent clashes.)
So intimidation and threats of violence are ok? Are you really commending these people for their restraint in not using AK-47s at a demonstration?
One of the lessons from the first round of Nazis is that, by the time the threatening talk turns to actual large-scale violence, it's too late. When Hitler got out of prison in 1924, he made sure that he would be seen as an "all talk" kind of guy by those who could have shut him down.
Think forward a little bit. The "all talk" guy with vile opinions backed by a violent mob is already in the White House. He won. Now is exactly NOT the time to try to curtail free speech in any way, lest that same precedent be used by the administration to stifle dissent by his opposition - you - in the future.
Freedom of speech (and in fact a lot of the Constitution) is constructed to curtail governmental powers so that dangerous groups in charge aren't able to fundamentally re-shape the country. Why would you want to undermine that when the country is arguably very close to being in that position?
(Personally I think CloudFlare is within its rights to fire a client it doesn't like; non-governmental entities don't have first amendment obligations, just a requirement not to break certain class-based discrimination laws. I don't know if neo-Nazis are a protected class in that respect but it's difficult to see how they would be, since they are not a political party or recognized minority group.)
edit: parentheses
Fortunately the all talk guy can not do much because there are still some other branches of government. But that doesn't mean that he wouldn't if he could.
The freedom of speech thing matters not one bit to the alt-right and the Nazis longer than it takes them to overthrow the present order, after that it will go out the window very quickly.
Democracy can be destroyed, it has happened before and it likely will happen again, there is absolutely no reason to believe that it could not happen in America.
Anyway, this whole discussion isn't about free speech to begin with, it is about hate speech and inciting to violence.
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> This is an extremely frightening statement to me. I'm terrified by the fact that you'd paint me as a Nazi sympathizer because my meta-level beliefs that text and speech should be protected are stronger than my object-level beliefs that Nazi philosophy is evil.
Well, your theoretical beliefs are now put to a much more practical test, sympathizing with the Nazis in any way shape or form, even if it comes down to just sympathizing with their 'right to a platform' is an excellent way to see how strong ones beliefs really are.
If this is the first time you are in a situation where your strongly held principles are put to the test then I sympathize with you, the longer you live the more this will happen and the more likely you will end up in a situation where there is a conflict between a strongly held belief and a negative consequence for yourself.
Note that bringing weapons (loaded or not) to a march sends a message: we're an army, and we're armed. Not using those weapons should not get them points. One of them brought his car and did use it, the damage was as bad or even worse as if he had fired a rifle.
> The Nazis are not reviled today because they had disgusting beliefs. They're reviled because they actually murdered millions of innocent citizens.
And they would do so again in a heartbeat if they knew they could get away with it.
> I'm okay with neonazis saying disgusting things, as long as they play by the rules and don't commit any violence. (Hell, people brought AK-47's and AR-15's to Charlottesville but didn't use them, despite the violent clashes.) Whatever happened to "sticks and stones"? Do kids not learn that mantra anymore?
Neo Nazis only say disgusting things because they know they are still living in a society where they can not get away with doing more but make no mistake, the overthrowing of that very society is their goal and I'd love to see you arguing for 'free speech' in the society that they wish to create.
You'd be up against the wall faster than you can say 'jack shit'.
The internet archive? https://web.archive.org/web/*/daily%20stormer
And they'll gag be back up by tomorrow no doubt. "Hell, people brought AK-47's and AR-15's to Charlottesville but didn't use them, despite the violent clashes." What restraint.
> I'm okay with neonazis saying disgusting things, as long as they play by the rules and don't commit any violence.
So people should be allowed to say anything? So you can organize any imaginable crime, threaten people and promote false information as long as you don't do any physical harm?
I agree that just objecting Cloudflare's decision doesn't make you anything. One being a potential Nazi sympathizer just because they don't see any limits to where free speech ends can just be a very crazy conspiracy theory - nothing else.
Speech intended to incite violence and threatening isn't protected by the 1st.
I'm not an American and I didn't talk about something being legal or not. I was lucky enough to leave Turkey before they started jailing people based on their ideas, so I know how bad it may get if legal protection on free speech is weakened.
If you are referring to "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never break me", clearly you have other problems with sympathy and empathy.
Free speech does not protect dangerous speech.
Yes, it does. Explicitly and confirmed by several Supreme Court cases.
Here's a quick and current take on the issue from Eugene Volokh: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
That's talking about hate speech, which is absolutely covered by the first amendment.
Sufficiently dangerous speech is not protected (Schenck v. United States, Dennis v. United States). Whether or not this speech was sufficiently dangerous is a matter of debate, but the comment you're replying to is correct.
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That's talking about hate speech. Explicitly dangerous speech, or 'fighting words', as acknowledged in the article, are not a protected class of speech under the First Amendment, as established in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire 1942.
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Relevant: https://xkcd.com/1357/
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See, and now you're attacking the character of a person: "clearly you have other problems".
This type of psychological attack is precisely the issue at hand with counter-nazi progress online at this precise moment in time.
Uh, ad hominems didn't just appear this year in counter-nazi speech. Really: "Many sides". Further, Nazi ideology and arguments are literally ad hominems anyway...
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The problem is who defines "dangerous speech"?
Dr. King himself was labeled as "the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security"
Dr. King wasn't calling for the "cleansing" of our nation. This "but it's a slippery slope" thing is ridiculous when the analogy is to someone who was seeking equality and peace. You know, the EXACT opposite of what these idiots are doing.
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The Supreme Court defines 'dangerous speech'. Very specifically in fact. The First Amendment is one of the most well defined of the Amendments and has tons of legal decisions surrounding it.
Perfect example of the snowflake generation.
"Free speech does not protect dangerous speech."
One of the neo-nazi's ran over a bunch of people with their car in attempt to kill and injure them. Did you miss that video? These nazi's are trying to kill people, they deserve life long prison sentences, not an internet platform to spew hate and calls to violence.
> This is an extremely frightening statement to me.
It truly is to me as well. It's something you expect nazis to say.
Imagine if the comment was
"The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by israel and other jewish sympathizing groups."
It's a form of intimidation to silence groups one disagrees with. I can't believe his comment is the most upvoted on HN of all places.
All the pro-censorship people here are behaving no differently than the neo-nazis they claim to hate. Not only that, both groups share the hatred of free speech and the principles which kept the US from being a nazi germany.
Everyone here is forgetting that Nazi Germany happened because germans supported censorship. Censorship allowed a minority group like the nazis to take over the government and silence everyone else. If the germans had an appreciation for free speech back then nazi germany would have been impossible since most germans opposed hitler and the nazi party. Nazi germany happened because of censorship laws which allowed hitler to ban all political parties and all speech he disagreed with.
But nobody learns history or philosophy anymore it seems.
> Whatever happened to "sticks and stones"? Do kids not learn that mantra anymore?
It seems like kids are taking gender studies instead of philosophy and that is frightening. All the arguments are based on emotion rather than reason.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle and ignoring our request to stop. That's not what this site is for, it destroys what it is for, and we ban accounts that abuse the site this way.
Would you please stop creating accounts to break the site guidelines like this?
>We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle and ignoring our request to stop.
Stop making things up. What ideological battle? Why aren't you banning the pro-censorship side?
> That's not what this site is for, it destroys what it is for, and we ban accounts that abuse the site this way.
There are far more pro-censorship comments? Why aren't those ideologies banned?
This is fundamentally untrue, but the nice knife twist against gender studies was a nice bit of rhetoric.
I guess the idea coming out of this is that if you want to be forgotten on the Internet, commit wrongspeak. If you want your arrest record and record of your divorce to disappear from the Internet, add some wrongspeak in there - Google, Cloudflare, and others will pull it down in an instant.