This quote might have worked in another context, but it’s fucking bullshit in the present one. If you allow people to lie and lie and lie without significant pushback, you end up with the shit we are looking at right now.
And your right that is how we got where we are.
People we despise, sure. But not people who break the social contract. Using their freedom of expression to restrict the freedoms of others, or to advocate for the same. That behaviour violates the contract, and anyone who violates the contract is not covered by it.
Nah, fuck that.
There’s no valid reason to let fascists have a seat at any table.
Came here to say the same.
Free speech is not absolute and doesn’t have the right to be unimpeded when it diminishes the same rights of others.
Equal and opposite.
They can both be true.
Part of fascism is that the exercise of “speech” operates in such a way that it drowns out opposing speech. There’s a tendency to threats, deliberate deception, and mass-scale propaganda that by its structure is difficult to counter with “opposing” speech.
The original concept, that we can’t ban Nazis from publishing Nazi newsletters to be read by other consenting Nazis, and making the effort to ban that will be a counterproductive waste of time, is still true in my opinion. People might disagree. There is a necessary corollary, though, that you do need to ban certain types of “speech” that, because of their structure (and not their content), are distorting the machinery that democracy needs to have in place to function.
- Have a Nazi rally where you hit any counterprotestors with a baseball bat? Not speech, banned.
- Have a Nazi rally where you carry signs saying Hitler was great? Speech.
- Post a Lemmy comment saying that Biden did some good things? Speech.
- Run 100 Lemmy accounts batching up comments saying Biden did good things, flooding them into related stories, to distort the overall narrative of conversation in ways no individual could ever match or counter-argue? Not speech, banned.
- Run a news channel which contains neo-fascist content? Speech.
- Buy up hundreds of local news channels so that you can create a unified appearance of a consensus in favor of neo-fascism, in a variety of stories that come up, while disguising your ownership so it’s not obvious what’s happening? Not speech, banned.
Of course, some people could disagree with some of those, I’m just saying my opinion on it. And there are grey areas in the blurry section between the obvious-to-me extremes. But that’s my feeling on it: “Speech” in terms of communicating your message to a consenting audience isn’t something the government can ever even make the attempt to ban, nor should it. “Speech” in terms of using machinery or power relationships to distort the conversation so that your point of view gets a leg up so you can win struggles for power, needs to be banned. A lot more than it is right now.
And this is all irrespective of the conversation about censorship by the government versus moderation by the private owner of a server somewhere. The private server owner obviously “can” do whatever they want, and I would support their right to do so, I’m just saying my feeling on the ethics of the situation and what they “should” be doing in terms of the values they uphold when they do moderation on their server. In my opinion.
The bullshit assymetry principle (it’s much faster to come up with bullshit than to refute it) means that lots of stuff that would fit a pretty reasonable definition of speech is still disruptive enough be a problem. You can distort the conversation to give your side an unjustified leg up through things like oversimplifications and cherry picking evidence while what you’re doing is blatantly only speech, and plausibly in good faith (you can’t tell if someone’s coming up with things themselves or repeating what they’ve read elsewhere and believe to be true). Speech can, on its own, be used to make people see fascist content as the rational centre ground, and then seek it out on contexts where it goes entirely unchallenged, and become full-fledged nutters.
All completely correct.
On a very related note, I wish that the moderation culture on Lemmy tended a lot more to something like Something Awful. They’ve had a thriving culture for several internet generations now, and I think a lot of it is because of two things:
- It costs money to be able to participate. Not a lot (a one-time $10 fee), but enough to combat the “army of anonymous accounts” problem and the “okay ban me lol I’ll be back on another account” problem.
- The moderators have an extremely strict code with some very interesting features: Among them, as I understand it, is that if you are strawmanning someone else’s argument or arguing with them while refusing to engage with what they’re saying, out you go. That is radically different from Lemmy’s moderation style, where any kind of bad-faith bullshit goes, but if you get mad and call someone a dick because they’re doing that, out you go.
I think there is probably a big space to be filled, to combat what you are talking about, by good moderation of the space. The press used to do that, by at least nominally making an effort that the lazy and laughable claims wouldn’t get published and periodicals that published them would start to get laughed out of the room, but it’s not really that way anymore, and it’s formed a breeding ground for all sorts of toxic propaganda. I just think there’s a lot of room to deal with that at the platform and reputational level, instead of the “what is allowed vs not allowed to express” type of level.
That’s sort of what I was meaning about limiting speech based on the structure, instead of based on the content. But it starts to fall into a gray area where it’s a lot more hard to make determinations. I do agree with you though.
Beehaw has a complicated signup process (it at least used to require you to write an essay), which makes accounts more valuable without having to charge money. They ended up defederating from a lot of other instances, though, as obviously, letting anyone bypass the registration requirements by just using another instance would undermine them.
The “paradox” of tolerance is based on the misconception that allowing people to express their ideas is equivalent to endorsing them.
It’s based on the fact they’re endorsing them. I’m not worried about what letting Nazis speak says about me. I’m worried about them being Nazis.
“I’m going to kill you” is obviously intolerable.
“We’re going to kill everyone like you” is obviously worse.
That’s a strong opinion you got there. Good thing you are protected by freedom of expression, even though we have have a dangerous fascist at power, there is nothing he can do to you.
Do you get the importance of “freedom of expression” now? I hope so. Have a good day, sir.
even though we have have a dangerous fascist at power, there is nothing he can do to you.
Fascists don’t care about laws, and even under Dem presidents, peaceful protestors have still been attacked and had their rights violated.
How the fuck have you not noticed that?
Your example just underlines the importance of foe. And you still don’t understand just how important freedom of expression is?
So you want to give fascists freedom of expression, because fascists wouldn’t give it to anyone else when they’re in power?
…
The way this looks to me, there’s two likely reasons for someone to have that stance
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They’re a fascist hoping I’m the dumbest person on the planet and that I have zero critical thinking skills.
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Theyre exactly who #1 would be looking for
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Hate speech is one of the first steps of genocide.
Censorship is one of the first steps of totalitarianism.
The best way to build a healthy society is to construct it from one-liners that sound nice, applied without nuance.
Check out the tolerance paradox.
And yelling this is one of the excuses fascists use to just do what they want.
Free speech does not mean being able to do whatever you want.
Fuck Nazis.
Nazis will exist no matter if you allow them to speak or not. This just gives them a convenient excuse for their behavior – “we are being silenced, so we have to resort to violence”.
Stop trying to silence me!
