Comment by Aqueous
9 years ago
There's a single standard. You are free to engage in business with whomever you choose. This applies to everyone. But this freedom doesn't liberate you from the social consequences of your actions.
Cloudflare will probably endure social consequences for its actions - mostly inflicted upon them by social libertarians who believe they made this decision arbitrarily. Some of the social repercussions may be justified. But that doesn't mean their decision was unlawful, just frowned upon by certain quarters.
It always comes down to a war of values. This discussion is just a proxy for the larger discussion, which concerns which values are right and which are wrong. And there is, most of us would say, a real, universal answer there. We might not know what it is, but we believe there is one. Or else all of this hand-wringing is just arbitrary, and it comes down to who has more power.
To paraphrase JFK: those who prevent peaceful self-expression make violent self-expression inevitable.
I don't think Cloudflare is preventing DailyStormer from engaging in peaceful expression. They are just not going to help them do it.
And based on events in Charlottesville, white supremacy is inherently a violent movement & don't need any excuses to engage in violence. If they say they engage in violence because media & internet companies shut them out, I'm not sure I buy that excuse.
> based on events in Charlottesville, white supremacy is inherently a violent movement
They've been marching for years without violence.
Antifa, on the other hand...when have they ever protested without violence?
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