Comment by dibstern
9 years ago
I'm Jewish, and a huge portion of my family was killed in the holocaust. Two great aunts were operated on by Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz. I hate and fear neo-nazis and people who ascribe to similar hateful, violent ideologies. I was shocked and scared by what I saw happened in Charlottesville. A small part of me even briefly fantasised about a modern day Inglorious Bastards.
But I know freedom of speech needs protection, because today, it is easier than ever to be given a label and associated with the worst of humanity, and for people to think that you're a racist/sexist/etc., even when you are very far from it. We all just saw this happen to James Damore, a pro-diversity guy, who suggested ways to make his workplace more attractive to a larger proportion of women, and cited only science that has been backed up by a significant number of studies. The tyrannical Left felt some of his comments go against their narrative, the narrative that oppression is the cause of everything unless proven otherwise. A intellectually lazy and innacurate narrative, obviously. The world is never so simple, and the evidence doesn't support such a view. If we give up freedom of speech and punish people like James Damore, we will have lost the freedom that supports our society, and allows us to have political discourse.
Do you know what separates us from Russia, China, and the rest? The freedom of speech. Democracy is only truly held by a country when political discourse is allowed. Obviously.
The Left is guilty of demonisation of their opponents and alienation of their allies, and is, from what I've seen, the only group wanting to stop freedom of speech, and impose tyranny on all others. People need to wake up to its threat. It is much less obvious than the hideous Neo-Nazis, far more insidious.
The fact that I fear being called 'right-wing' for what I have just said is absurd. Friends of mine are members of both Left and Right-wing political parties in my country, and I refuse to be associated with either, because parties and wings create division and move us further apart, and distract us from the same values that we do share. And of course because I disagree with both wings. They are both driven by fear instead of reason. Nothing clouds one's judgement more than strong negative emotion. The crocodile brain. The worst part of ourselves.
My limit? The explicit threat or encouragement of violence. This is never acceptible. This is where we can and should be coming down on the neo-nazis, white supremacists, socialists, antifa, and the rest of them. They are violent people, so this isn't hard.
Encouraging neo-nazism, given the holocaust, might be considered encouraging violence. This makes some sense to me. So perhaps, where there is incontrovertible evidence of encouraging Nazi belief, or belief systems that are explicitly and historically supportive of violence, we can consider the implicit threat of violence an explicit one. Can anyone poke holes in this? Or any of what I've said? Unlikely anyone will read this absurdly long comment, but I still want to post it.
I believe you have the right to express your views freely and I agree with you that violence on any end of the spectrum is unacceptable. Groups like Antifa and BLM have legitimate grievances which their violent actions completely undermine in my eyes. The narrative of the "middle class rural uprising" we've been presented with as the reason for Trump's election has, at its core, exposed perfectly understandable issues regarding middle American economic and political disenfranchisement, which have unfortunately been taken up as a banner by white supremacists, and twisted into a justification of their ideals.
However, I have to object to what I see as an attempt to portray yourself as a politically unbiased observer:
>Friends of mine are members of both Left and Right-wing political parties in my country, and I refuse to be associated with either, because parties and wings create division and move us further apart, and distract us from the same values that we do share.
Prior to this, you assert that "the Left" is "the only group wanting to stop freedom of speech, and impose tyranny on all others." Earlier, you refer to the "tyrannical Left" and mention that you consider James Damore to have been a victim of censorship, and their "(obviously) intellectually lazy and inaccurate narrative."
You may reject political parties but you appear to disagree with one ideological wing far less than the other. Such language only serves to poison the well, and encourage exactly the distraction and emotionally charged polarity you claim to oppose.