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[brewer bob]

Funny of you to think that Nazis can change their mind very often, especially online. They can generally never be turned. The only solution is to silence them.

This. Giving any public space and platforms to fascist views just helps them spread their message. They can cry and whine all they want about being silenced, but if that isn't done and they gain power, there won't be no freedom of speech no more. It won't change their minds, sure, but that's not the point. The point is to protect those the fascists seek to destroy. There should never be any dialogue with fascists.

(Edit: Just to clarify, I do not believe censorship or banning fascists makes them go away or solves the underlying issues, but it does make it more difficult for them to organize and mobilize.)

[MaxTheFox]

You are idealistic, Cathar. I appreciate that. But the kids and merely misguided people are a minority within Nazis. Those can, sure, be turned. But the vast majority of Nazis are so embroiled in their own propaganda that nobody, especially a "leftist SJW" who they will not listen to on principle, can change. I don't care for their viewpoints, I don't care for any """growth""" I can have by listening to them. It's easier to simply censor them and throw them into the oubliette of uncensored communities. They are scum.

I fully agree with Cathar here. As in most public debates, you're not trying to win over your opponent - your game is to win over the audience.
And I also would support the claim that it can work. I always think back to the global warming here. Ten years ago the local-language internets were swarming with bunk arguments, proliferating like crazy and seeping into real life conversations. But a conscious effort to clear the misinformation was made, conducted almost entirely online by just a handful of people. And it worked. The same old hardcore crackpots still try to post the same old tired bullshit. But these days, by and large, if anyone tries to drop an argument that global warming is a hoax, they get organically booed out of the conversation and given a reading list as a farewell gift. Nobody's got patience for them any more. They've lost the audience. Not because they were banned from talking, but because their arguments have been exposed as bunk in the public eye.

The majority of people already hate Nazis. That isn't making them disappear by itself. Only online censorship does.

[Starver]

In another online space, recently, someone effectively necroed a particular discussion area with an "I aint getting no vaccine!" rant with 'reasons' that basically weren't even the best reasons of their perspective's total armoury. Nothing microchippy, just misconceptual. And a complaint that their opinion is always censored.

So I put a basic point-by-point refutation in there. Neither censoring nor letting such stupid arguments stand without clear anullment (lest it be taken as an authoritative last word).

No sign that it was a troll. Not sure I could break into the perpetrator's internalised mindview, if it was at least honest. But it seemed the best net sollution when considering future readers who might stumble onto it.

That said, I did get the feeling I was wasting my own time, for all the externalised benefits.

[Il Palazzo]

The majority of people already hate Nazis. That isn't making them disappear by itself. Only online censorship does.

It doesn't make them disappear. It only makes them disappear from your view.

[Cathar]

That said, I did get the feeling I was wasting my own time, for all the externalised benefits.

By that account, this very discussion is a waste of time, yet I don't have the feeling it is not worth having.

[None]

Man, I can't even convince my flesh and blood brother in one-on-one conversations that he needs to get the covid vaccine (he'd rather just lose his sense of taste/smell forever) and that the war on Ukraine doesn't stem from NATO aggression and that giving up several regions to Russia to placate them (even though it 'was nato aggression') is a totally unreasonable thing for a sovereign country to do. The people supplying this torrent of garbage misinformation have weaponized psychology and misinformation to turn even sensible people into hateful rubes, and once they're turned this way, they don't ever argue or debate in good faith. The onus is on you to provide facts, logic, and counterpoints, which they'll spit on and ignore with their next tirade of bullshit, and the worst part is that this reinforces them.

The appropriate place to change hearts may well be in one-on-ones, but open congress built on hate just begets hate, and there's a lot of disinformation out there designed to foster that sort of hate. You deplatform that shit. Giving it fair discussion ground just validates it - reddit had a pretty infamous 'ask a rapist' thread which lived for too long and was eventually taken down because it was validating that behavior.

[Strik3r]

Censorship is life support for unviable ideas.
If one needs to censor the opposing viewpoint in order to "prevent it from spreading", then maybe their own idea wasn't all that good to begin with if it can't stand on it's own without being propped up.

[voliol]

The memetic strength of an idea does not equal its quality. By that argument fascism is not the worst idea ever, because it has spread before and may still do.

[MaxTheFox]

The majority of people already hate Nazis. That isn't making them disappear by itself. Only online censorship does.

It doesn't make them disappear. It only makes them disappear from your view.

I know. The aim is to isolate them from the public. They might as well have disappeared if they are chased into echo chambers like 8chan. I don't care if they are Nazis there.

Censorship is life support for unviable ideas.
If one needs to censor the opposing viewpoint in order to "prevent it from spreading", then maybe their own idea wasn't all that good to begin with if it can't stand on it's own without being propped up.

The opposing viewpoint is "gas the Jews and gays" or "allow a pandemic to spread". And it's less to prevent it from spreading and more like to punish them for their harmful speech. Antivax rhetoric can kill people, so can incitement to violence against minorities. What a piss-poor generalization.

[None]

Censorship is life support for unviable ideas.
If one needs to censor the opposing viewpoint in order to "prevent it from spreading", then maybe their own idea wasn't all that good to begin with if it can't stand on it's own without being propped up.

That's woefully selfish and only empowers bigotry and disinformation. There are ideas that certain people don't deserve to live and by anything I stand for, I am NOT going to give floor to that kind of discussion.

[Cathar]

You are idealistic, Cathar. I appreciate that. But the kids and merely misguided people are a minority within Nazis. Those can, sure, be turned. But the vast majority of Nazis are so embroiled in their own propaganda that nobody, especially a "leftist SJW" who they will not listen to on principle, can change.

Not in my assessment. I've met a few people who cannot be turned, and that I really want out of my sight. One of them is the matron in my extended family, who is a bigot in pretty much every way you can imagine. She can die for all I care. The problem is she has the ears of people who I care about, cousins and nephews that may actually die as the result of her actions.

Leaving people you disagree with to their own devices is fine until the day you receive a phone call and learn that your uncle and two of his son are in reanimation because his wife insisted he would not wear a mask nor get a vaccine. Not confronting bad ideas allow them to fester.

Another I know is mostly attracted to far right ideas because misguided ecologic policies are destroying game in the forests he is hunting in, and because the locale governance-party townhall does not take the step to protect small business in the town, leading to general unemployment and reduction in the quality of life. None of them care strongly about race and gender, but those issues are trusted upon them by proximity with actual fascists.

You may be fine with that, and I'm not arguing that you have to listen to them. I'm fine with people not liking them.
I'm arguing that, in my point of view, discussing wth is a worthy endeavour, as it may 1°) turn them and 2°) lead to solutions of actual problems that did not appear at first.

Also : I do not believe for a second that 44% of french people are fascists. Not for half a second. It is not normal that far right parties do that high of a score here. This has to be adressed and censorship does not adress that at all.

[None]

The matron isn't on a public platform in your circumstance, and your concern is that she's spewing hate the same way that suppressing it online would be beneficial. You'll note that the has a finite quantity of cousins and nephews she can turn in private.

Anyways, for general reading pleasure, I'd like to introduce the paradox of tolerance and the words of Jean-Paul Sartre for why you don't give bigots a platform:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

[Cathar]

Also Sartres was writing around the student revolt of 1968, where people would be actively fighting in the streets and inside the Sorbonne university, not bickering in a 140 charcter-limited online platform. That sword cuts both way it appears.

You sure as hell don't want antisemites in a student revolt, for a lot of reasons, and outing them is perfectly justified in this context. As for when it is justified in general, the general rule stated by Noam Chomsky is that power has to justify itself constantly, and have to be constantly questionned. If a power fails to justify its existance, it has to be dismantled.

The corrolary is, you have the right to exert power if the use of power is justify, and it is on you to justify yourself. "I don't like him, he is scum" is not an acceptable basis for the use of coercion.

[WealthyRadish]

I fully agree with Cathar here. As in most public debates, you're not trying to win over your opponent - your game is to win over the audience.
And I also would support the claim that it can work. I always think back to the global warming here. Ten years ago the local-language internets were swarming with bunk arguments, proliferating like crazy and seeping into real life conversations. But a conscious effort to clear the misinformation was made, conducted almost entirely online by just a handful of people. And it worked. The same old hardcore crackpots still try to post the same old tired bullshit. But these days, by and large, if anyone tries to drop an argument that global warming is a hoax, they get organically booed out of the conversation and given a reading list as a farewell gift. Nobody's got patience for them any more. They've lost the audience. Not because they were banned from talking, but because their arguments have been exposed as bunk in the public eye.

I think there are a few differences with the modern platforms that make this less effective. For one, the sites are run by algorithms that decide what to push into someone's face, based mostly what has previously driven "engagement". Everything is also aggregated, with only a tiny percentage of the most "engaging" material reaching a significant audience. I think those things together mean that you will almost always be "preaching to the choir" if you do the dull work of being the sensibility police (and an empty choir at that), while whatever is currently considered controversial and generating disagreements will automatically funnel people to another choir-preacher ready with affirmation.

It also really doesn't help that the people who use these systems most effectively are the worst liars and frauds, nevermind their politics. InfoWars is a good example; it's difficult to summarize briefly just how useless and dishonest that source of information is (the Knowledge Fight podcast is the most comprehensive cataloging of it), but suffice to say it is one of many scam operations which absolutely loved being on places like Twitter and YouTube. The deplatforming was a disaster for them, and they continually try to circumvent it, and is true of most career-trolls getting banned. The people who make money off of fake information have long-since integrated attempts by others to debunk the information into their business model. Anything that drives engagement is good (it brings in new traffic), and their audience will never be exposed to the best counter-arguments anyway. It's made worse by the format of the platforms themselves being practically designed to only support incomplete and pithy remarks that are almost always in some way false; the people doing the debunking often get things wrong in minor or major ways, and it only takes one mistake by the detractors or "mainstream" to further affirm to the audience that these other sources can be dismissed.


It's shitty to say "I love censorship", but frankly, I agree with Max here. These tech companies have stumbled ass-backwards into creating platforms that are finely-tuned to spread innacurate information to the targeted audience most susceptible to it, and the handful of personalities getting rich off making affirmational propaganda are having wildly disproportionate effects on the broader society. You can't engage with it for the sake of an unseen audience because there's a middleman deciding exactly who that audience is and registering your "engagement" as further endorsement (and it is typically turned effortless around on you by experts in deflection and bad-faith rhetorical tricks in the absence of a long-form medium). The companies will do a hackneyed, biased, irresponsible, and arbitrary job that aligns solely with their desire to avoid regulation and secure future rent-seeking, but deplatforming does genuinely work against the grifters who are obviously just in it for the money.

Pre-edit: 13 new replies... This post may have expired, bleh, sending it anyway

[MaxTheFox]

You are idealistic, Cathar. I appreciate that. But the kids and merely misguided people are a minority within Nazis. Those can, sure, be turned. But the vast majority of Nazis are so embroiled in their own propaganda that nobody, especially a "leftist SJW" who they will not listen to on principle, can change.

Not in my assessment. I've met a few people who cannot be turned, and that I really want out of my sight. One of them is the matron in my extended family, who is a bigot in pretty much every way you can imagine. She can die for all I care. The problem is she has the ears of people who I care about, cousins and nephews that may actually die as the result of her actions.

Leaving people you disagree with to their own devices is fine until the day you receive a phone call and learn that your uncle and two of his son are in reanimation because his wife insisted he would not wear a mask nor get a vaccine. Not confronting bad ideas allow them to fester.

Another I know is mostly attracted to far right ideas because misguided ecologic policies are destroying game in the forests he is hunting in, and because the locale governance-party townhall does not take the step to protect small business in the town, leading to general unemployment and reduction in the quality of life. None of them care strongly about race and gender, but those issues are trusted upon them by proximity with actual fascists.

You may be fine with that, and I'm not arguing that you have to listen to them. I'm fine with people not liking them.
I'm arguing that, in my point of view, discussing wth is a worthy endeavour, as it may 1°) turn them and 2°) lead to solutions of actual problems that did not appear at first.

Also : I do not believe for a second that 44% of french people are fascists. Not for half a second. It is not normal that far right parties do that high of a score here. This has to be adressed and censorship does not adress that at all.

First of all, that is not my experience with fascists online. It's just too impersonal and too easy to dismiss someone as "yet another shitty liberal" when you can't see their face or hear their voice. Besides, letting them shout to "kill the jews" in public is more harmful than isolating them because less "borderline" and unstable people can hear the calls to violence. It's a small risk but it's there. Not to mention I don't want to read that shit.

Second, I implied that in real life it is easier to turn people. Thus I agree with you on the last point. But I was only talking about ONLINE. Censorship is the second best option-- but the best one is impossible online.