Comment by xenihn
5 years ago
First they deplatformed the Nazis, and I did not speak out -- for I was not a Nazi.
>The problem is when governments go against legitimate opposition and abuse social pressure.
Legitimate according to who? Isn't any opposition to a government illegitimate opposition? Or exclusively legitimate, depending on how you feel about the concept of government itself.
I've been self-censoring for more than a decade now. I really like how the information is presented in this SocialCooling site.
As you have pointed out, the effects are good if they lower the voices you disagree with, and raise the ones that represent your views. My advice to everyone reading HN is to pick the winning side, and conform to it. Fortunately for us, picking the winners isn't hard.
Funny; I thought it was "First they deplatformed Nazis, and I did not speak out because Nazis can get fucked." ;)
> I've been self-censoring for more than a decade now
Good! I recommend it. It's a basic skill that is useful when living in a society with other human beings whose situation (social power, emotional state, world view) we must account for. We have entire empathic neurological systems to support that behavior.
> My advice to everyone reading HN is to pick the winning side, and conform to it.
My advice is never pick the Nazis.
> Funny; I thought it was "First they deplatformed Nazis, and I did not speak out because Nazis can get fucked."
The original quote which you're abusing begins "first they came for the Communists".
These were Communists in the era of Josef Stalin, to be clear. Mass-murdering totalitarians, exactly the sort of people you wouldn't want taking over your country.
It appears you missed both the lesson of Herr Niemoller, and a key part of the history of the rise of Nazism in Weimar Germany.
Pity.
Someone missed a lesson from history. Might be me; might not.
In modern Germany, it's still illegal to explicitly disseminate means of propaganda of unconstitutional organizations. Is this wrong? I think I'll defer to the modern Germans on that question.
There's also difference of degree. Deplatforming Nazis (which is how parent post bastardized the quote initially) is not the same as incarcerating them. I was playing off the bastardization.
If you want to continue to defend platforming Nazis, be my guest, but I don't have to discuss it with you.
2 replies →
German communists most likely weren't aware of what was really happening in the USSR at the time. (Whether an hypothetical communist revolution in Germany would have resulted in Stalinist-like horrors is an interesting question.) French communists have had a disproportionate part in French resistance, and a disproportionate part in French after-war policies for a long time.
IMHO Nazis aren't the core problem - it's the hate speech that tends to come with them that is.