Comment by Arkhaine_kupo
10 hours ago
> If you really believe that your fellow citizens can be easily influenced to undertake extreme actions by a twitter post
so words have no capability of influencing people? Why speak at all if it can never change anyones opinion?
See what happens when you do reduction to absurdity of any argument?
But seriously, ask yourself: Is the entire ad industry a sham? Are state actors like the kremlin troll farms, the chinese fake newspapers and the cia meme department all wrong and no one can ever be influenced because they are adults and rational actors all the time? Are objectively effective misinformation campaigns like Brexit not proof of succesful compelling speech through channels like cambridge Analytica?
> why not end democracy altogether?
democracy is about empowering people. Leaving people to construct an identity through heaps of misinformation is not democracy, its insane and it cannot work.
> Since citizens are seemingly perpetual minors who lack agency over their actions.
Someone spending billions of dollars in anti intellectualism propaganda, political smear campaigns and capturing media networks is not the fault of the individual citizens, they are not minors they are victims of targetted hostile information hazards.
> This is why all authoritarian regimes absolutely love hate speech laws.
Authoritarian regimes tend to brag about how free their speech is. America spent the 50s chest bumping while sending people to jail over "communist ties" under mccarthyism, they spent the 60s bragging about free speech while sending students to jail for complaining about vietnam, they spent the early 2000s talking about free speech while punishing allies who did not agree with Irak (like France) and sending people to black sites like Guantanamo. And now they brag about free speech while the sitting president Elon decides which individual words get flagged in his social network and the vice president Trump jails 3 different judges over their rulings
you know all that free speech
Citizens are supposed to have critical thinking to distinguish what's right and wrong, what's true and false.
Freedom of speech allows to hear different views and apply this critical thinking. The problem is that you seem to know better and want to choose what's allowed and not allowed to say, given your political bias and contempt for your fellow citizens.
Last, democracy is not about empowering (what an empty word...) people, but about managing the various interest to end up with something that is acceptable. If a subgroup is being bullied, it is normal that it expresses its resentment. For instance, when white british people are being mass raped, and in some case, likely eaten[0], with no or little enforcement by the Police due to fear of being seen as "racists".
As a side note, all of the examples that you give are about reducing freedom of speech, so I don't really see your point. You could have cited the Weimar Republic, that had stringent hate speech laws, which did not prevent the access of the NSDAP to power.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Charlene_Do...
> Citizens are supposed to have critical thinking
i wish someone didnt dismantle the education department of the federal goverment....
> Freedom of speech allows to hear different views and apply this critical thinking.
thats all well and good except it has never existed in the US, with countless examples of people being jailed for wrongthink it just happened that those people were all leftist. The second accountability crossed the aisle the uproar began. No one gave a shit when people were sent to jail for protesting Vietnam, or when the black panthers where jailed on terrorism charges but the second someone asked if Rupert murdoch should be held accountable for spreading lies for 30 years then it became a chest thumping issue.
> The problem is that you seem to know better and want to choose what's allowed and not allowed to say, given your political bias and contempt for your fellow citizens.
56% of americans cannot read past a 6th grade level. its not contempt, its pity
> democracy is not about empowering
Demos - people. Kratia - power. Gezz someone should tell the greeks they dont even know their language.
> but about managing the various interest to end up with something that is acceptable
that is not democracy, that is politics. Democracy is a form of politics, which has certain principles, like empowering the people (in liberal western democracy this is usually views that spawn from the french revolution, aka humanistic principles, education and voting and creating political groups to represent interests.
> If a subgroup is being bullied, it is normal that it expresses its resentment.
being bullied and FEELING they are bullied are different things, and certain personality disorders, education levels and religious views have a much larger overlap with those feelings. I personally do not care that a bunch of rich christians feel they are the butt of the joke, they have both monetary and political capital their feelings are literally not supported by reality. And arguing about their feelings is a pointless exercise in trying to explain to a entitled child why they are wrong.
> For instance, when white british people are being mass raped
not happening. Source: white british person.
> with no or little enforcement by the Police due to fear of being seen as "racists".
This is also not true. It is a literal talking point of Tommy Robinson, famous neo nazi, over the grooming gang that affected a small town in britain a few years ago.
i know YOU dont care, because you are just here to racist dogwhistle but I will explain the context for the people who might stumble upon your comment.
A small town in england had a serious problem, a group of men where grooming and hurting little girls. The police and local council were aware, however the town being small were scared that such a big scandal would tarnish their reputation. The police force, lacking funding and training fucked up the case beyond recognition and asked for support, the local council told them to keep it under wraps. A reporter a DECADE later brought the case up, as little girls were still being harmed. Due to how the justice works in the UK there is a media blackout (no one is allowed to report while a case is active) in this media blackout Tommy Robinson made up the unfounded lie that the police did not chase them due to fear of being called racist. Once the case was settled, a local council man (who was aware of the problem before it came to light) repeated Tommy Robinsons views as it exculpated him of letting little girls get hurt with his knowledge.
Other mass grooming cases with white perpetrators like the catholic schools in scotland case, reported by the same reporter and also decades long was somehow not national news in the same newspapers that reported the Tommy Robinson "fear of being racist" lines.
A neo nazi made up a lie, based on nothing and a council man who allowed the pain of minors in his council repeated it to not be accountable for his failings as a man. And now youre here a decade later, repeating it because you either know its false but want to spread hate, or dont know its fake and are contradicting your own claims that people are critical and can distinguish true and false.
> As a side note, all of the examples that you give are about reducing freedom of speech
by goverments bragging about their freedom of speech. You said countries who hate freedom of speech are the auth ones, I gave you examples of the country who uses the word freedom more than they use the word "the".
> which did not prevent the access of the NSDAP to power.
The big difference there is that Germany was an incredibly poor and unstable country. Syria is not haviing a civil war due to their freedom of speech laws, and neither did Germany. How free the press is in Sudan is not the reason they are being investigated by the UN for genocide.
Then how about empowering them to - speak? Not just say what you believe is allowed to say (this is authoritarian).
I'm talking about the practice of democracy, by the way.
And regarding mass rapes, being British yourself is clearly not a reference for truth. The wikipedia article I linked mentioned a mass grooming case in this town. You can't close your eyes on the evidence each time it doesn't follow your totalitarian narrative and expect that people will just shut up. Or you have to pass laws to do it, which ends up with the toxic situation of the UK, that has nothing to envy to the USSR.
Which is kind of funny given that you have laws to punish people who said something "creating anxiety", which is ... a feeling and totally subjective?
And there is no difference with Germany. Freedom a speech isn't something only for the affluent, first world. And the war in Syria started due to political repression against free speech being expressed against the regime. It didn't end so well for said regime.
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> A small town in england had a serious problem, a group of men where grooming and hurting little girls.
The exact same thing happened in dozens of English towns. It wasn't just Rotherham. This is trivially provable by simply going to the Wikipedia page. It's also still ongoing.
> the unfounded lie that the police did not chase them due to fear of being called racist
This was in fact not an unfounded lie made up by right-wing extremists, but what was actually found in the council report.
> The report found: "Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-289516...
You can also find stories featuring the very words of police chiefs: https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/18/rotherham-police-chief-admits...
I think it's very concerning that you could be so dangerously misinformed on this and still post about it. I do think this is one of those stories that is so horrifying it's better not to think about it. But just dismissing it as insane racist nonsense is even worse.
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