Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[KittyTac]

Doesn't change the fact that Nazis do not deserve free speech. That's one part of the current Russian policy that I agree with.

That's not the point. The point is that eliminating them requires the forging of a sword, and that sword is all too easy to use for purposes of oppression. Thus, it better to never forge the sword at all. Or, to use a medical analogy, neo-nazis and other extremists are the flu - nasty, and potentially dangerous if we're not careful. Trying to ban them is deliberately exposing everybody to smallpox.


Right now, most of the nations that have such laws are unlikely to misuse them, because they are countries that spent time under the jackboot within living memory and thus have bone-in knowledge of the dangers. Others are ruled by "democratically elected" rulers that use those laws to become emperors in all but name.

Fine. It'll be better if we only used censorship as a last resort, and dealt with the neo-Nazis the same way we dealt with them before their resurgence.

[Imic]

Hate crimes are crimes. It’s in the name. Don’t be an asshole. It’s not going to become illegal to say your opinion on the government, but if tou’re going to rail on Jews for being the cause of all the world’s problems, you deserve whatever comes at you.

[TD1]

I think the issue is more in censoring groups because you think they are inherently evil, but later may not think so. All is subjective. The bogeyman of today will become the misunderstood victim of tomorrow. Homosexuality seems a good example - not too long ago, it may have seemed perfectly logical to censor such unnatural groups.

[Doomblade187]

I think the issue is more in censoring groups because you think they are inherently evil, but later may not think so. All is subjective. The bogeyman of today will become the misunderstood victim of tomorrow. Homosexuality seems a good example - not too long ago, it may have seemed perfectly logical to censor such unnatural groups.

This seems to hit on target. Legitimate hate and evil are valid reasons - general vague dislike less so.

The issue being the definitions of hate and evil change over time as well.

[Lord Shonus]

I think the issue is more in censoring groups because you think they are inherently evil, but later may not think so. All is subjective. The bogeyman of today will become the misunderstood victim of tomorrow. Homosexuality seems a good example - not too long ago, it may have seemed perfectly logical to censor such unnatural groups.

That's also a real issue, but not the main concern I was expressing. My point was that, even with a universal agreement that going after Evil Target Group is good, just, and effective; it is fundamentally impossible to smash Evil Target Group without providing the means to smash Not-Evil But Unpopular Target Group.

I reiterate that the current US President has openly called for his critics to be jailed as extremists. If we had the means to smash Evil Target Group, he would have had the power to make that actually happen.

[wierd]

Agreed.

But, that's actual civics, vs "DO SOMETHING!" politics.   The dark side of "do something!" politics, is that it endorses the movement toward situations like the one you just cited. 

1) Bad thing happens that could only be avoided with more aggressive monitoring or more aggressive enforcement.
2) "DO SOMETHING!"  --- "OK, we will do what has to be done to prevent this in the future."
3) People like Trump get into power, and suddenly really bad shit happens, because the things done to prevent the previous bad thing are now being used for bad things themselves.


I am a fervent believer in "Stop and evaluate" politics, not "Do something!" politics, for this very reason. 

In other words, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. The only way to know that is to stop and evaluate first, before trying to do something.

[CABL]

I think the issue is more in censoring groups because you think they are inherently evil, but later may not think so. All is subjective. The bogeyman of today will become the misunderstood victim of tomorrow. Homosexuality seems a good example - not too long ago, it may have seemed perfectly logical to censor such unnatural groups.

The thing is, homosexuality doesn't guarantee that you're a pedo; it simply means that you're attracted to the same sex. Nazism, on the other hand, is an ideology which core tenets say that anyone other than Weiss Ubermenschen* should be either slaves or be gassed. An ideology is also something you deliberately choose, and not something you're born with (like homosexuality), which means that the people who are trying to downplay Nazism, or worse, openly embrace it, are self-aware of their ideology choices.

*Despite being white, Slavs are "fake whites" according to Nazism.

[wierd]

which is why you should stop and evaluate, rather than DO SOMETHING about Nazism in specific.

More directly-- You should objectively teach that the very idea of believing oneself better than another person is not realistically supportable, and that no matter how appealing the message is, a message based on falsehoods goes nowhere constructive.

This is true of heterosexual people thinking they are better than gays.
This is true of white people thinking they are better than all other races.
This is true of men thinking they are better than women.
This is true of Jews thinking they are better than all other religious groups.
This is true of Muslims thinking they are better than all other religious groups.
This is true of native Japanese people thinking they are better than all those filthy gaijin.

etc.

This is an entire class of social pathology, NOT JUST Nazis. 

[ChairmanPoo]

Honestly, if you can't defeat nazis in a face to face argument then you have bigger problems than "too much free speech". Driving them underground just makes  them more appealing to uninformed people, and they'll find ways around your restrictions anyway... as they obviously have.  Does anyone here seriously entertain the idea that the alt-right is something other than new packaging for an 80-yesr-old product?


Also, it's pretty rich that we have a guy who is for all practical purposes a fellow traveller of putinists lecturing here about how freedom of expression is dangerous because people in favor of totalitarism might actually speak up.

[Lord Shonus]

Seventy years ago, the notion that black people were mentally inferior to whites and less able to control "savage" emotions wasn't ideology - it was generally regarded to be scientific fact. In those days, advocates for equality were viewed in much the same way Nazis are today - deluded morons at best, at worst dangerous wild-eyed radicals looking to butcher right-thinking people and destroy civilization itself.


The people of that time period were no stupider than we are today. We are just as capable, as a people, of making judgements that are that stupid. In the case of Nazis, it is unlikely that our collective disgust and disdain is wrong - they almost certainly are just as bad as we think they are. But trying to smash them would make it all too easy to smash somebody we might be wrong about, or that we might get talked into being wrong about by somebody who wants something from us. It is just too dangerous a tool to use.

[Yoink]

That is an extremely dangerous weapon to hand to a government, even for the best of reasons. It is very easy for unscrupulous leaders to take "this form of speech is incredibly vile, so we will ban it" through "my opponents are dog-whistling for the banned form of speech" to "any speech that criticizes me is outlawed".

This is pretty accurate.
Also the fact that governments even have access to so much of their peoples' data and information in the first place - but I suppose that's inevitable considering the advent of internet. Obviously it makes it easier for elements that are actually dangerous to plot things, even as it makes it easier for the government to spy on them along with everyone else.

...I don't really have any more of a point that I'm trying to make here. I'm pretty sleepy at this point.

[Maximum Spin]

People saying things you disagree with — horrible things, the most horrible things you can imagine — and having the freedom to continue doing so at leisure with no official censure is an unalloyed good regardless of whether the hypothetical restrictions might later come back to bite you in the ass or not.

That's certainly an additional reason not to per(or pro-)secute speech, but it would still be wrong even if you could guarantee there would never be bad consequences.

[KittyTac]

Hate crimes are crimes. It’s in the name. Don’t be an asshole. It’s not going to become illegal to say your opinion on the government, but if tou’re going to rail on Jews for being the cause of all the world’s problems, you deserve whatever comes at you.

Exactly my point. Defending Nazism in any way is morally wrong, since, as CABL said, it is inherently evil. You can be gay without being a pedo, since all that is required is being attracted to other men. However, you cannot be a Nazi without being a genocidal racist, since genocidal racism is inherent to Nazism. If you remove it, you get regular, run of the mill, authoritarianism.

[KittyTac]

Since this little derail has pretty much milked itself dry, I will terminate it in the classic (and fitting) way.

Hitler! Everyone here is Hitler!
Now, here's my WTF:

The number of people who actually, unironically think that "torturing" and "killing" dwarves in DF is morally wrong. This letter just got a red background! How horrifying! Do these people also protest against using glow and backspace?

[JoshuaFH]

Since this little derail has pretty much milked itself dry, here's my WTF:

The number of people who actually, unironically think that "torturing" and "killing" dwarves in DF is morally wrong. This letter just got a red background! How horrifying! Do these people also protest against using glow and backspace?

It's kinda like in Bioshock where your choice is to save children, or kill them for superpowers, it's just a digital representation but I imagine people might still be reluctant to kill. They're immersed in the game world.