We take down Al Qaeda terrorist websites all the time because they can be used to radicalize people. Nazis are no different. They are calling for the systematic violent overthrow of the US government and for the extermination of many millions of so called undesirables. This is a terrorist threat. I take this threat very seriously as do many people in the Jewish, Hispanic, and African American community.
There are literally thousands of hosts out there in and outside the United States. The idea that Cloudflare is a public space requiring the protection of the first amendment from a company's policies is laughable. The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups.
^^^ The parent comment hits the ball out of the park.
The commentary on past posts on HN and elsewhere floors me. It seems one or two things are prevalent:
1. Folks will gladly loan the hangman the rope that he will use to hang you, your family, and your neighbors — all because of "purity of belief" in free speech. Sorry, hate to break it to you, but these illiberal forces are a clear and present danger to this comfortable society you call home.
2. Support for Cryptofascism (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-fascism) is rampant. Either folks don't know that they already support it, or they wittingly do and are too afraid to say it out in the open.
Immensely disturbing. As someone who cherishes the rule of law over the rule of man, not aiding and these illiberal parties is the minimum. They are not pluralists; they don't care about the rules of the game. They won't politely tolerate you. Deviants will be chastised, expelled/expatriated, jailed, or killed. Ignoring prudence (preservation of self and the society at-large) is perilous.
I just don't see where this is stopping. What else needs to be taken down? /pol/? Who about Breitbart? Or maybe some 2nd WW Nazi propaganda? Or something from the US civil war?
You guys seem to be ok with this very slippery slope being assessed by random private companies accountable to who knows. And then you have the nerve to call us who believes that limits of free speech should be set by courts and open process "nazis"?!
>You guys seem to be ok with this very slippery slope being assessed by random private companies accountable to who knows.
To me its strange someone would consider closing down /pol/ a "slippery slope". I am amazed that someone would consider 4chan a moral compass for the type of things their admins should put up with. moot has closed down /pol/ for this very reason in the past with even less "political" awareness than the CEO of cloudflare.
4Chan is "free-speech" not through effort but through negligence & apathy. moot shut down /pol/ (aka /n/) before, twice, on a whim because he didn't like the content. It's not the first time it has devolved into nazi-fetishism. While 4chan has the reputation for being a seedy place, moot has taken stands and banned people and conversions from 4chan (for example most recently gamergate on /v/) for reasons that can be boiled down to that he didn't like it (mods of 4chan have done this as well, such as no Naruto on /a/). The current iteration of /pol/ has likely been allowed to live through negligence - moot is no longer involved with 4chan, and the new owner hiroyuki has been as absent as moot during his VC startup days. Simply put 4chan never had any moderator accountability (see Rule 9 of the internet).
In conclusion, the notion that this is a "slippery slope" is nonsense. "Free speech" on the internet never really existed, the current view points that exist only exist because their operators have never bothered to flex their muscles - and the reason they haven't has rarely been because of some moral high ground. At the end of the day there is plenty of "reasonable" content YouTube won't host for you, and that Facebook will kick you for. If you are concerned about being silenced by a corporate vendor, then choose your partners wisely. If none will support you - then self fund. Free Speech doesn't mean the NYT is obligated to print your content, only that the government wont stop circulation of your newspaper. If you can't acquire the resources to start your own print, then tough luck.
> If you are concerned about being silenced by a corporate vendor, then choose your partners wisely.
The issue here is more nuanced. It's about any site on the Internet being censored by a mob. That's why the YouTube or Facebook analogies don't hold. You could always host the content yourself. But DDoS can knock out any unprotected host anywhere. And DDoS protection isn't really something you can DIY.
So the issue here is not about being silenced by a corporate vendor. It's about being silenced, period, wherever you host.
Free speech doesn't stop a child's parents from shunning him when he swears at them, free speech doesn't mean that you get to yell in church with diplomatic immunity towards being silenced, free speech doesn't mean that you go around soliciting sex in public without possibly getting arrested. You get silenced if you act like a cunt, that's freedom, and it's not an issue.
A forum is just a kind of website. And people get banned for spamming or trolling forums where they're not welcome all the time. But they're not imposing on anybody in their likeminded forums.
All those things are contrary to the principle of free speech. There are some things we consider important enough to override that principle - the right to avoid people you don't like, or to form a private association that excludes people you don't like (I won't get into the sex one because there's no clear simple principle there, rather we have a lot of complex and entangled notions).
It's important that a small private business should have the right to not do business with someone they don't want to do business with, but that's not an absolute principle, just as free speech is not[1]. Or rather, all of our principles can come into conflict.
The idea that an entity that processes 10% of internet traffic can exclude someone from expressing their opinions - vile and hateful as they may be - via that entity, is scary. Scarier than not being able to express a given opinion in many countries, frankly. I'm not even saying CloudFlare is necessarily in the wrong here, but it's certainly not a non-issue.
[1] Not to be confused with the US First Amendment, which is very close to absolute where it applies, but does not apply to many cases where the principle of free speech is relevant.
>n this bazaar are now thugs, they sell wares designed to disrupt the bazaar, to addict customers, and to stop more complex goods from being sold.
The problem with that example is the same thing can be used to describe MLK during the 60s. He was all of that by most of the people who lived during that time. It can be applied to pornography, or Catcher in the Rye. You either squash distasteful ideas or you don't. Here's a little secret for you younger folks. The stuff the next generation does, you might find distasteful, but it's the future. They have to be allowed to try on new ideas. If you don't those ideas become more attractive because they are forbidden fruit.
The nice thing about allowing Stormwhatever to speak, is it allows people to see them for what they are. If you squelch them, well, that just makes them stronger.
You have to be able to apply it to people who you admire and people you despise.
I do: I apply it to both. And I'm what passes for the new generation of grey beards.
I too am an acolyte for the cult of free speech.
The key difference being I test the ideas and beliefs in the real world. I signed up to mod a subreddit which was in trouble and I saw what worked and what didn't.
I urge you and others to make that time investment.
You are worried about catcher in the rye- we're long past protecting it. What's being fought are memes - mind bombs and channel stuffers.
We are fighting to let thought survive, in the face of people intentionally releasing material designed to hijack human brains via emotion.
Catcher in the rye is not what's being protected.
The foundation for civilization scale thought is what's being defended.
You are using a paragon to defend something unrelated.
You assume a lot of things about the current state of discourse and the motives of the attaxkers.
They aren't debating Marxism or porn. They're trying to drown out other ideas, and to tie Down people who present cogent counter arguments.
Want a non tech example? Take a look at anti vacc or creationism.
Those are ideas designed to be consumed by human brains- polarize them and then herd them away from information which could counter the infection.
That's not the bazaar of ideas. Thats not free speech.
>intentionally releasing material designed to hijack human brains via emotion.
That sounds like every news station since the 80s, or the Washington Post forums. People on both sides do nothing but prey on emotion, it's a common tactic. Their opinion and even news articles prey on emotion. Fox of course does it as well. News is now a liability in the US; sold their soul for the almighty dollar.
>And we have nothing to defend against it.
Reason and logic. A good BS detector helps too. I understand our educational system is in shambles though. I don't disagree that is a problem, but censoring it won't solve it, at least censoring by blocking websites to register.
A lot of speech attempts to convince. I've read an analysis of the emotional manipulation techniques in Letter from a Birmingham Jail; that was also "intentionally releasing material designed to hijack human brains via emotion". If we don't believe that the truth will win in the marketplace of ideas then we've already lost, because what's the alternative? Relying on some kind of Ministry of Truth?
Wait, so you're saying censoring creationist and anti-vaccine sites is acceptable too? That's precisely the slippery slope your interlocutor is referring to.
You are far from an "acolyte for the cult of free speech" if think ideas you disagree with should be kicked out of the bazaar by mobs.
I re-read what I wrote, and I believe I was clear.
Here is my statement
> , in the face of people intentionally releasing material designed to hijack human brains via emotion.
And then later
> They aren't debating Marxism or porn. They're trying to drown out other ideas, and to tie Down people who present cogent counter arguments.
>Want a non tech example? Take a look at anti vacc or creationism.
How you went from there, to
>Wait, so you're saying censoring creationist and anti-vaccine sites is acceptable too?
I am not sure.
SO let me re-iterate my main point.
The battle being fought right now, is between people who are using techniques to stymie actual discussion and actual trade of ideas.
The idea is to "hack" the human brain, to target emotions, logical errors, rhetoric and so on, and to then build a block of people who can be counted to work together.
The active target is free speech itself, science, and so called "liberal" values, which is now just a label for an ever expanding field of targets.
You want to look at creationism and anti vacc to study how those non factual ideas were propagated.
Remember that these ideas won in the country which had the greatest claim to carrying the torch of civilization and science.
You look at those topics for study, not censorship.
You then understand the techniques used once you study those topics.
Once you do that, you realize that this is not about free speech, and that nothign in free speech can really deal with what is happening.
If you're "not sure" that censoring creationist or anti-vaccine sites is acceptable, then at the very least you cannot claim in any way, shape or form to be anything close to a "free speech acolyte". That is clear.
Free speech is not contingent on the subject that is being "targeted" -- science, liberal values, or even the concept of free speech itself (if challenged merely by speech). Free speech is simply the right to speak your views, no matter how unpopular, illiberal or radical. The proper response to speech you disagree with is: more speech. As soon as you designate certain speech as dangerous, "brain hacking" speech that we need to censor for the sake of "civilization and science," you begin sliding down the slippery slope into censoring stuff like creationism.
The correct way to respond to creationism, and Nazi ideas, is by explaining how wrong they are. And that means that unpopular Leftist ideas (of which I am a subscriber), as "dangerous" as they may be to some, also get their forum in the bazaar.
I've already applied those ideas, "more speech". We've seen it repeated on so many forums now, so many subreddits a year, that the follow up pattern is already known.
It sadly doesnt work.
You can hold your view all you like mate, but in the end - its just a theory.
And do you honestly think, you are special and the only forum moderator, or forum attacker to NOT know those theories?
Really?
This isn't undiscovered country. Its just undiscovered for you.
Read what I have written.
As for your specific charge against dealing with Creationism.
1) why the hell are you fixated on creationism? are you some sort of free speech bouncer? Unless I wear the colors and say "I shall protect Creationism, even though I don't agree with it", you won't listen to me?
2) Creationism is REGULARLY debunked. In mass media, on forums, everywhere.
It makes no whit of difference to its target audience. Studies show that showing counteracting information often results in those views becoming EVEN MORE entrenched.
People debunking creationism can easily walk into a discussion - expecting that it will be a discussion.
Instead its a Specatcle, in the old Roman sense of the word - The opposite side hits them with a technicality "You can't explain all of evolution. See! theres even a debate among scientists on evolution!"
Which the antagonists then spin into "Teach the controversy!".
How can you have speech, when the other side never intended to speak in the first place?
3) WHy stop at creationism? What about jihadist recuritment material? What about JIhadist material explaining the pain they suffer, and the good reasons (according to them) they have for killing infidels?
4) What about libel? What about Laws against subliminal advertizing for that matter?
And here are some real life scenarios for you to answer -
What are you going to do when you get DDOSed? What do you do when the forum gets over run or brigaded?
What do you do when the people making speech are targeted and harassed, and thus removed from the discussion?
What do you do when people use the forum rules like lawyers, and tie forum mods into knots in order to make space for hate speech?
What do you do when experts enter a discussion, but the other side uses it as an opportunity to go "YOU CANT EXPLAIN EXTREMELY COMPLEX SUBJECT IN 2 SENTENCES! SEE THEY ARE FRAUDS!"
There are some things we consider important enough to override that principle - the right to ... to form a private association that excludes people you don't like
Please cite your source for showing where a "private association" that is not a public accommodation cannot discriminate, or explain why any church can bar non-believers from membership.
You've just made an unsupported leap of logic. The question is who is silencing who and in what context. Parents may discipline their children. Church staff may eject anyone they like. Soliciting sex is a crime. None of this means a mob can rightfully silence unpopular, legal speech. And certainly not in the name of freedom.
It really doesn't. The issue is what is an acceptable way to express that intolerance: with speech or by forcefully shutting the mouths of those you disagree with?
DDoS attacks could be considered forcefully shutting those mouths, and I don't agree with that. Do you propose forcing a private entity (Cloudflare et al) to publish those they disagree with?
You raise a very good question. We agree that DDoS is the digital equivalent of forcing someone to shut up, and that is contrary to freedom of speech. It's also true that private entities don't have any legal obligation to honor freedom of speech. Certainly you or I would not enjoy Instagram more if there was a bunch of hate speech on it.
But we can make a distinction between destinations, like Instagram, and infrastructure, like streets and public parks and libraries that allows you to access the destinations of your choice. DDoS is something that kicks people off of the very infrastructure of the Internet itself, thus denying others the choice to visit them.
The underlying problem is that core Internet infrastructure is managed by private entities. This is unlike "meatspace" where there are public spaces protected by the police / government who block the physical equivalent of DDoS (duct taping mouths / burning down printing presses). So, what does this mean as more of our communication as a society moves into the digital realm? Is it a blessing that it is more privately managed, empowering those managers to block "bad" speech? Or should we extend the same "meatspace" principles of free speech for all by requiring Internet infrastructure providers to provide unimpeded access to all?
Ok cool. The question stands. How do you feel about ISIS does? Do you leave terrorist recruitment up or take it down? And if ISIS does have to go, why are white terrorists different?
The whole Gamergate shitfest was disallowed on /v/ because it constantly hijacked the board, had tangential relevance in most cases, and the legal implications weren't worth supporting a largely off-topic subject. Having five pages of threads on a single subject would pretty much never be allowed on any board (save /b/), especially if that subject focused on a holy war between two radical elements.
/j/ was temporarily accessible through a bug and IRC chatlogs are widely available. The moderation on 4chan is very much active, it's just not compelled to fast and hard action for anything save child porn or an impending murder. Much of the hooliganism is largely explicitly allowed, at least according to the info currently available to us.
It is also an ideal ground for groups with bad intentions to manipulate folks. Who is actually operating those keyboards? What are their actual motives?
So how does one distinguish between a genuine kill-all-the-scum Nazi, and a child who's pretending to be one, for the lulz? You get lulz from people who get upset. And you get lulz from people who agree with you. It's a win-win.
Ultimately, there's no way to tell. It's a textbook example of Poe's Law. And indeed, there's no observable difference. Maybe everyone behind Nazi sites are in it for the lulz. And/or for the money, or fame. You get the same fucked up social impacts, either way.
No, it's not. But it helps to put the phenomenon in context. The anomie of the young, especially young men, has always been hazardous. But now, with the Internet, it's chaotic around strange attractors. Such as the alt right. And ISIS. And undoubtedly other stuff that I'm not aware of yet.
Yes, this is all true. So you recognize there is a problem with 'angry young men', the question then becomes once these angry young men decide to band together guided by smart old men who aim to use them as tools in their arsenal whether or not you hold them responsible. Once they're over 18 as far as I'm concerned they are fair game. Old enough to vote: old enough to think.
I agree. But there's more to anomie than anger. Angry young men have always been canon fodder. But now we have cynical young men who are posing as angry, but really just in it for the lulz, who can organize themselves through the Internet. It's a new dynamic.
I am really not convinced of that. I believe they have been marginalized by society and this is their way to regain their relevance. The fact that that conveniently plays into the agenda of those that would like to see the world change in that way as well but who do not have sufficient agency to do it themselves doesn't help at all.
Anyway, we've seen this movie before and it did not end well back then, I wonder how many people saw the trainwreck happening in slow motion and realize they were powerless to stop it. It's like an explosion or an avalanche. Once sufficient activation energy has been added the end result is inevitable, even if you as an observer of the first act feel the need to warn of the impending disaster it will happen anyway and you're going to be along for the ride until a new stable configuration has been reached at a lower energy level.
Do you think various groups trying to influence politics and culture would try to manipulate this impressionable group? For the lulz is an easy way to sweep aside the very real, and likely, possibility that state actors manipulate these anonymous boards for their own ends.
>If you can't acquire the resources to start your own print, then tough luck.
"See, we just had a misunderstanding. I thought I lived in the USA, the United States of America, and actually we live in the USA, the United States of Advertising: freedom of expression guaranteed, if you've got the money!"
> "Free speech" on the internet never really existed
Long before 4chan repeated everything Usenet had done many years earlier there was plenty of free speech on the Internet.
Not because nobody was in control to prevent it, but because the news admins who were in control believed in free speech enough to facilitate it. Although Usenet is a shadow of its heyday, that still applies even to this day.
I think it was probably a tongue in cheek statement (since a lot of people would have accused them of being secret Nazis over this eventually) that Cloudflare took seriously, or at least saw as a good excuse to shut them down to appease some people while positioning themselves as strong supporters of free speech on the internet at the same time.
> Then DailyStormer says CloudFare are secretly nazis.
According to CloudFare... Can't seem to find exactly where they say this. Their platforms on which to say things seem to be dropping like flies here.
Not saying they didn't claim that, but that's one of the problems with taking away someone's speech entirely - your only "source" for knowing what they have actually said is the claims of the people who just shut them down.
Many European countries (like Germany etc.) have operated with free speech restrictions since the end of WW2 and the slippery slope that is always brought up never materialized.
Slippery slope arguments are only valid if you believe that your jurisdiction doesn't have proper rule of law. Otherwise experience, at least in European countries, showed that courts are very well capable of recognizing the importance of free speech even for tasteless and hateful speech.
> slippery slope that is always brought up never materialized
The targets of the 234,341 criminal insult investigations conducted by German police last year[1] might argue otherwise. A few thousand of those were elementary school kids. Sixteen were preschoolers.
> courts are very well capable of recognizing the importance of free speech even for tasteless and hateful speech
Bless your heart. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your personal experience is untainted by exposure to actual courts. Prosecutors in the United States are not exactly known for rigorous exercise of discretion, and defending yourself in court can be ruinously expensive even if you prevail.
You do not need to convict or even formally charge someone in order to have chilling effect on speech; when the police investigate you for a crime, and the mere possibility of being charged and convicted hangs over your head, you will think twice about what you say.
And while I know little about German jurisprudence, I do know that prosecutors in this country do not need to attain a conviction in order to destroy someone's life. Once a prosecutor claims you are guilty, plenty of people will believe it no matter the outcome, and that's on top of depleting your life savings on legal representation. I urge everyone to keep this in mind when contemplating how European-style hate speech laws (or any proposed laws) would play out in the United States.
The stats I linked above suggest a clearance rate of 89% for criminal insult investigations. While that number dwarfs the 56% average clearance rate for criminal investigations across Germany, it is unclear to me whether those figures describe how many investigations led to convictions, indictments, a suspect being formally charged, or merely the positive identification of a suspect. I believe the term generally refers to the proportion of investigations that lead to a suspect being formally charged, but I wasn't certain, so I left that figure out.
My point is that those cases are the result of people reporting them to the authorities, who are then obliged to investigate. That the vast majority of them go nowhere is a good indication that the system works, in a country with 10's of millions of people with a single digit percentage of fringe elements you'd expect roughly that number of reports (actually, somewhat more).
What evidence do you offer to support the notion that "the vast majority of [criminal insult investigations in Germany] go nowhere"?
Going by the most common definition of 'clearance rate', around 208k of those 234k investigations led, at minimum, to someone being formally charged with a crime. Frankly, that in itself is horrifying.
How many people are charged is not relevant, what is relevant is how many people are convicted. A charge being cleared means that the accusation had some basis in fact clearing the minimum bar for the authorities to formally charge someone.
Given the total number of people in Germany and the size of the fringe this number is not at all horrifying but in fact in line with expectations. It is on the rise but this is a reflection of the fact that in Western Europe the number of ultra-right wing supporters is on the rise.
> the slippery slope that is always brought up never materialized.
Very true. Well, except maybe for that one time when Germany became an open-air rape camp under the noses of police who did nothing for fear of being accused of racism. That kind of sucked.
> And, oh yeah, there was that time they threw a lawyer in jail for defending a Holocaust denier.
That's not an honest reading of the article you linked. From the article, "[the lawyer] also signed a motion during Zündel's trial with "Heil Hitler" and shouted that the lay judges deserved the death penalty for "offering succour to the enemy" -- leading the court to dismiss her." She was a neo-Nazi herself.
"A man was arrested for walking." and "A man was arrested for walking and aiming a rifle at a woman." are clearly different actions.
A lawyer went to prison, for illegal statements she made, in court, in defense of her client. These illegal statements that would be illegal even outside the context of being a federal court lawyer.
I can't understand this fetish of generalizing to the point of total vagueness. Case-by-case analysis is just as important now as ever.
Oh it was ILLEGAL. Why didn't you say so? That makes it totally palatable that a lawyer might be imprisoned for doing his job, and doesn't AT ALL impeach the entire concept of a "trial."
> would be illegal even outside the context of being a federal court lawyer.
You have it backwards, friend. The inside of a courtroom needs MORE protections for speech, not fewer, than the outside. Laws like libel simply don't apply there (disclaimer: in the US. Can't speak for how they do it in failed states like Germany), and for very good reason.
Let's put the issue of Nazi speech being illegal in Germany aside for a moment.
If my lawyer yelled "Heil Hitler" and claimed the judge in my case should be murdered, while ostensibly defending me, I'd want them at the very least disbarred and wouldn't mind a bit of jail time.
BTW, I highly doubt a judge exhibiting this behavior in the USA would keep their law license, and they'd probably end up slapped with a contempt charge as well.
> The inside of a courtroom needs MORE protections for speech, not fewer
Perhaps for the defendant. But actually, in every country -- including the USA -- lawyers have extremely strong and often vague constraints on their speech.
And even then, what you're saying just isn't true, even in the USA. There are far more constraints on your speech during a trial than in the public square. Judges in the USA have extremely wide latitude in determining what can and cannot be said, how those things should be said, etc. Those are constraints that judges can enforce in their courtroom but cannot enforce in the public square.
Also, FWIW, knowingly committing libel during a trial is probably a bad idea. Even in the USA.
> disclaimer: in the US. Can't speak for how they do it in failed states like Germany
Well, if you consider Germany a failed state then I'm not really sure what to say. They have their problems, but then so does the USA. No place is perfect.
E.g., using your metric, the USA has THREE TIMES more rape than Germany. So if you put your identity politics aside for a second and look at the data, you come to a far different conclusion.
Also, IMO German citizens have a lot more practically useful freedoms than US citizens, even speech-related freedoms. "Don't be a Nazi" is something the Germans are pretty serious about, but they're a lot more lax about a lot of other speech that is de facto prohibited in many parts of the US. Eg, I seriously doubt Damore would've lost his job in Germany. And the Germans I talk to claim it'd be unambiguously illegal. And cultural self-censorship matters as well -- I'm much more comfortable discussing Christianity in Bavaria than in Alabama.
Germany draws their lines differently from the USA, but we're talking more about delineations at the fuzzy edges than actual differences in kind.
So again, if Germany is a failed state, I'm not really sure what a non-failed state looks like. At this point it's kind of hard for me to take you seriously.
>> what you're saying just isn't true. There are far more constraints on your speech during a trial than in the public square.
Which, OBVIOUSLY, is responding to:
> The inside of a courtroom needs MORE protections for speech, not fewer, than the outside.
and NOT responding to:
> Laws like libel simply don't apply there
The object-level claim is that even with exceptions like that one you link to, speech is MORE LIMITED in court rooms than in the public square everywhere -- including the USA.
And yes, yelling that a judge should be murdered in open court would land a US lawyer in jail.
You're nit-picking (and what's more, nit-picking over a willful misinterpretation of the argument I'm making), not responding to the substantive object-level claim.
> (disclaimer: in the US. Can't speak for how they do it in failed states like Germany)
While neither is much like a failed state, the US right now is a lot closer than Germany (and more clearly heading in the direction of getting closer yet.)
I have nothing to say really about your first point where you do nothing but speculate about police motives, but the second one doesn't prove anything either.
The second case is not a slippery slope because it does precisely what's codified in German law, nothing more and nothing less. The lawyer herself denied the holocaust and that's punishable in Germany. So the law was correctly applied. That has absolutely nothing to do with the slippery slope discussion.
You can defend her if you can resist your urge to praise Hitler and deny the Holocaust yourself in court. Again, that's all transparent and clearly defined in German law, so it literally had nothing to do with the original slippery slope discussion.
>Very true. Well, except maybe for that one time when Germany became an open-air rape camp under the noses of police who did nothing for fear of being accused of racism.
What an awful example and has nothing, what so ever to do with the laws against being a Nazi. Do you honestly believe the US has never avoided reporting something for fear of being labeled? Really?
The other example you gave was covered by others in the thread. Spoiler: it's a lie.
> nothing, what so ever to do with the laws against being a Nazi
You are very poorly informed. The laws against "being a Nazi" are generic "no bad speech" laws. Nazism is just their most well-known application. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
> Spoiler: it's a lie.
A lawyer went to prison, for statements she made, in court, in defense of her client. That's not supposed to happen. It's not a feature.
Daily stormer, pol, and breitbart are all free to find another web host/CDN or start their own. There is no slippery slope with one business refusing to do business with another one. The business does not need to be accountable to anyone, because they have no requirement to host the daily stormer in the first place.
What makes you think the discussion is limited to what the law is, versus what it should be, or more broadly, what the 'right' thing to do is, regardless of the law?
Your link does not necessarily refute the post you're replying to. Gay people are not a protected group under Federal law; nor, AIUI, are they in most states.
What's with everyone bending over backwards to equate Nazis with non-genocidal, non-terrorist groups of people?
Given the chance, gay people will try to live their lives in peace.
Given the chance, Nazis will try to exterminate billions of people.
Nazis haven't been systematically persecuted and killed for millennia. Ironically, gay people have been systematically persecuted and murdered by Nazis. Such persecution is why there are protected classes, which some governments recognize gay people as belonging to.
> What's with everyone bending over backwards to equivocate Nazis with non-genocidal, non-terrorist groups of people?
That's not what is happening, as I understood it. The grandparent simply refuted the general argument that "The business does not need to be accountable to anyone" by providing a counterexample whereby unconditionally following this argument can lead to an unwanted outcome.
Actually, it is that simple. The grandparent made a false equivalence. Sexual orientation, color of skin, race etc. is not a choice that someone makes. Your political orientation is a choice you make. One of them is not the same as the other.
The equivalence the gp is making is between businesses, not clients. Businesses obviously are accountable to someone if they must serve gay people. It has already been pointed out that gays are a protected class, but deliberately(?) missing people's points has never helped a cause.
Do you have insight on what small groups of Nazis say or do? Even the groups at the Unite the Right rally called for ethnic cleansing of the USA. Which could be seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIrcB1sAN8I
So have you tried actually believing something politically completely different from what you believe right now?
Because it's not really a choice. You can pretend play to advocate for whatever political ideology. The same way you can have sex with women even if you're gay or vice versa. You can choose your sexual behavior.
But political orientation is not really a choice. It is perhaps a result of your choices, early influences, social group, etc.
But did you consciously set out to have a different political mindset than the one you had at the time? Because that's the only thing that matters (in this comparison at least).
Mine too, but it took years and a fairly complete change of people I interacted with and longterm exposure to various ideas and life experiences. It was not a decision/choice. This kind of change is a long process of learning new ways of thinking and abandoning the old ways.
This is independent of anyone's political beliefs, there should be limits to radical jihadists, radical anti-democratic communists, radical anti-democratic fascists of all sort, etc. You can choose to pursue your political aims with non-violent means and practice tolerance.
The idea is that you can believe whatever you want, but as soon as you start to propagate violence and pose an active threat against democracy - like e.g. making detailed plans to overthrow the government, advertising that only certain people should be allowed to vote, etc - there should be reasonable limits.
I agree. The point is that one's political orientation is not a simple choice no matter how radical. It may not be as fixed as sexual one, though, but still difficult to change.
It's kind of a water a person swims in. It's the way he thinks. It's too meta for most people to even think about it as something chooseable.
I don't think I agree with the grandparent, but usually swing voters don't change their political views, but rather political parties adapt their programs (or rather, propaganda) to appeal to them. So I don't think that's a good example.
There are millions who insist that their sex orientation is their choice. They can try X, experiment with Z, and whatever. That was part of the idea of "fluid genders" and sexual liberation in the sixties and especially seventies.
Your sexual orientation might not be a choice, but if and how you express it definitely is. "Oh, yes, Jews are subhuman. One bread please." is on the same level as "I love me some pussy, obviously, because i'm a man. One bread please".
How is forcing people to take up a different political view to buy bread better than forcing them to change their sexual preferences to buy bread? That whole protected group thing is completely nuts.
So you voluntarily choose to see the world completely differently, just so that you can buy bread? How is that a choice? It's force.
And some people choose different sexual orientations in their life, so how is it not a choice?
In both cases the discrimination would just force me to pretend to be something other than I am.
I understand that this is your dogma, yes. And I understand that you want to legitimize the things you want to force on people.
I don't disagree about color, but the way how you can or cannot force people to avoid visibly and openly living their political identity OR their sexual identity is exactly the same, as it is for religion. It's always outside force, forcing you to pretend to be other than you really are.
That will be very sad place when business is forced to service someone even being against it for their personal believe, just because that something is not their choice but rather a set in stone fact.
My brother in law is mentally ill.m and his local diving center won't take him for a dive. I have to ask him to sue them for refusal of service based on his sicknes and because his sickness is not his choice.
If the cake is denied because the baker doesn't want to create content they disagree with (as opposed to being denied merely because the requestor is homosexual), then why not?
Actually nobody knows why homosexuals are homosexual nor why Nazis are Nazis. There is very little scientific evidence to support any cause for either outlook.
I'm curious, if you imagine a possible historical situation, let's say a German business owner in the 1930s that took a stance of not offering services to Nazi organizations, does that appear commendable, or bad in the same "slippery slope" way that you apply in the present situation?
It seems to me that such a business owner would seem in hindsight to have been acting virtuously, and it seems that businesses that did in fact offer services to e.g. the Nazi party are now tarnished morally because of that.
>I'm curious, if you imagine a possible historical situation, let's say a German business owner in the 1930s that took a stance of not offering services to Nazi organizations, does that appear commendable, or bad in the same "slippery slope" way that you apply in the present situation?
How about the possible historical situation where a business owners doesn't offer services to the irish, jews, gays, blacks, etc?
Because those things have also happened -- and when you say it's ok to refuse those services to a group, you open a window for refusing those services to other groups too.
Just because consensus or power today is with the "good groups" (as far as you're concerned) doesn't change that fact.
It's even worse when what's right and wrong is even more muddy. E.g. someone criticizing their own country (like the Vietnam war protests) or in favor of a regime change etc.
Being Irish, Jewish, gay or black are not choices (for the most part, anyway) and do not inherently imply that you're intolerant of any other group. Being Nazi, on the other hand, is clearly a choice, and intolerance is inherent to it. I think the difference is clear.
Also, people arguing that companies should be required to serve and even create safe spaces for particular marginalised groups usually do so not from a "First Amendment" standpoint, but from the point of view that a sex life, gender identity or religious belief has higher inherent value than any particular prejudice against it.
If people would like to make the argument that Naziism also has higher inherent value than prejudices against Naziism, they are welcome to do so explicitly...
What if I consider infant/child circumcision mutilation? Jews and Muslims do this for religious reasons. Would it be therefore okay for me to bar them from service?
What if I'm an American Christian and think abortion is literally murder? Would it be therefore okay for me to ban customers who identify themselves as Pro-Choice?
Or if I consider the Catholic church a criminal organisation for enabling systematic child abuse? Does that mean I can ban Catholics?
If you say no, what about white supremacists who merely spread the idea that whites are superior but don't encourage violence against other races? If the KKK formally promised to never commit any violent acts again and leave POC alone but continue preaching racial superiority and claiming the US as a white nation?
> What if I consider infant/child circumcision mutilation? Jews and Muslims do this for religious reasons. Would it be therefore okay for me to bar them from service?
Are there muslims and jews that don't circumcise/mutilate their children? Are they still muslims and jews? If you say yes, then it's not a religious tenet, but a cultural tradition.
> What if I'm an American Christian and think abortion is literally murder? Would it be therefore okay for me to ban customers who identify themselves as Pro-Choice?
I was raised Christian and no one in those circles takes issue with the choice of abortion. Seeing as you explicitly wrote "American Christian", it's clear it's trying to make a distinction, which I agree with, that there is an evangelical branch of Christians in America that are radical, and that it's not what Christianity is about.
> Or if I consider the Catholic church a criminal organisation for enabling systematic child abuse? Does that mean I can ban Catholics?
Catholics condemn child abuse, it's not a part of their religion, but I think they should allow priests to marry instead, because forced celibacy is unnatural for humans, and it clearly leads to a disturbingly high rate of abhorrent criminal misconduct.
> If you say no, what about white supremacists who merely spread the idea that whites are superior but don't encourage violence against other races? If the KKK formally promised to never commit any violent acts again and leave POC alone but continue preaching racial superiority and claiming the US as a white nation?
So what you're asking is: If white supremacists don't act on the core principle of their organisation, should they be allowed to practice?
Sure, I don't see the point of them keeping it up at that point, but whatever floats their boat.
>Are there muslims and jews that don't circumcise/mutilate their children? Are they still muslims and jews? If you say yes, the it's not a religious tenet, but a cultural tradition.
There's no difference between the two. You can break any religious tenet and still belong to the particular religion/faith.
Heck, you can murder people and still be considered a christian saint for example.
I think you are misinformed (I assume you talk about natzis).
Not all natzis are violent or are looking for violence. There are plenty of pre-war natzis that loved how Hitler pulled their country from dispair of economical and technological swamp, created economy of solid growth and created hundreds of thausands of jobs. Up to this point Hitler was an incredible leader and actually all those real successes as a politican made him being voted to become Germans fuerer.
As with any other group or person views, a reasonable person never agrees with anyything they say or believe. Thats called fanatism. Look at Trump. Mamy things he do or say are reasonable and as a POTUS he sould be praised for. On the other hand you shouldnt agree with him when he talks crap.
So its wrong to say all natzis are looking for violence, just like its wrong to say all Muslims are looking to blow thmeselves up in crouded spot.
So your point is some of the Nazis were reasonable other than the ones that want to commit genocide?
It doesn't even hold up today because you are saying historically there were Germans that supported the Nazi party because of Hitler's leadership in other areas. But we're in 2017 where everyone knows that Nazis committed a genocide. So anyone like the Daily Stormer that supports Nazis we know to be dangerous. And It's okay to not do business with dangerous people who want to harm innocents.
To your point about Muslims, we know that there are millions of peaceful non-violent practicing Muslims. You are trying to make a logical equivalency here and what I believe is more important is the facts that we know about the real world we live in. Supporting Nazis is explicit support of genocide. Practicing Islam has an unfortunate overlap with violent terrorists. But practicing Christianity also has an unfortunate overlap with domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and Dylan Roof. I don't think existing in this theoretical world of forced equivalency even benefits your argument as much as you believe it does.
> So anyone like the Daily Stormer that supports Nazis we know to be dangerous.
How is it exactly dangerous? How did they views hurt you or your family? How did they affect you? IF you children happen to be listening and turn to Natzis, I can bet even if DS never existed in the first place, they would get to be Natzis somehow anyways.
Point being, limiting free speech is never a good idea. Especially of something SO silly as a website where it is NOT pushing itself on you, but to the contrary - you have to visit it to be a "part" of it.
> Not all natzis are violent or are looking for violence [...] Up to this point Hitler was an incredible leader
Hitler was openly advocating persecution of Jews and annexing countries through war. Supporting Hitler at the time, even without hindsight, was to be in active support of violence to say the least.
Normally you don't need to point out the link between Nazism and violence, but these don't seem to be normal times.
>Hitler was openly advocating persecution of Jews and annexing countries through war.
The US (and France and co) were quite antisemitic at the time as well. Hitler took that sentiment and run with it to unprecedented murdering levels, but it was there (and of course, when it was millions of developing worlds colonial slaves who got the axe, nobody really cared. Heck, people didn't even care that much for Jews at the time either: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267 ).
As for "annexing countries through war" the European colonial powers had been doing exactly the same to 2/3 of the world for centuries (and continued to do so after WWII).
The difference is that Hitler did that "annexing" to other European countries, not to third world people (for whom hypocritical Europeans could not care less).
(Of course European countries have also had a long bloody history of fighting and annexing each other for centuries up to WWI as well).
> As for "annexing countries through war" the European colonial powers had been doing exactly the same to 2/3 of the world for centuries (and continued to do so after WWII).
How is this relevant? Get back to me when people proudly call themselves neo-colonialists, and I will gladly call them idiots. No one is defending that part of British history (for example).
>No one is defending that part of British history (for example)
You'd be surprised. I recall the British being quite fond of their Falklands war -- for an astonishingly remote land that has absolutely no historical connection to the isle and population of Britain apart from the colonial plundering.
Plus, it's not like the big powers are not invading and bombing countries here and there to this day under various pretexts...
> You'd be surprised. I recall the British being quite fond of their Falklands war -- for an astonishingly remote land that has absolutely no historical connection to the isle and population of Britain apart from the colonial plundering.
Yes, I would be surprised, because it's inane. You've got a poll? I must've missed the large gatherings of Brits protesting to take back India.
> Plus, it's not like the big powers are not invading and bombing countries here and there to this day under various pretexts...
Yes, and like I asked last time, what's your point? Show me a movement bent on persecution of a people, leading to invasion of other countries, that is hence emulated elsewhere, and not criticized as neo-Nazis are.
Iraq was unrelated to 9/11, was about oil, but used 9/11 as an excuse to look for WMDs, and is immensely unpopular.
Are you claiming that there are neo-Bushists organizing to take back America from Saddamists that aren't criticized like neo-Nazis are?
Does that proposition sound ridiculous? It's because it is. You are not making a comparison, you are bringing up non-sequitors to gaslight the issue.
There are wars and invasions, and most if not all are very unpopular, and any that revolves around eradication of peoples are historically reviled. Except for neo-nazis views of 1940s Germany, for some reason. Do you have a comparison to that?
>As a rhetorical lesson, notice how easily whataboutism can be turned in service of Nazism.
I don't consider "whataboutism" an offense -- rather it's what people used to call "calling a spade a spade" and not siding with pots in calling the kettle black, but rather pointing the finger and both the pot and the kettle.
(Of course I don't belong to either the pot or the kettle. I can understand why compatriots of one or the other would take offense at "whataboutism". They'd rather only the other is called out).
I also don't particularly see how if reality proves that both sides in WWII were bastards, or that the best between them dropped nukes on civilians with the same ease the Nazis murdered Jews (but just for 200.000 people, not 4 million) that's "in service of Nazism".
Rather it's in service of the truth those other victims ALSO deserve.
I wouldn't be satisfied if we just didn't repeat Nazism.
I also want us to not repeat imperialism and colonialism [1].
> I also want us to not repeat imperialism and colonialism
And I want us to not repeat the murder of JFK. However Oswaldians aren't a side in the conversation.
The opposition to nazis aren't colonialists. They are anti-nazis, democrats, republicans, human beings, ie people that don't like persecution of peoples. That's not a bad, equal, or comparable side to any obfuscation you've managed to dream up.
Since you are new to Hacker News, I suggest you read the HN Guideline before you take on any further historical book [1].
Furthermore, your response doesn't support anything at all but only steer conversation off to a different course.
As you can rewind, I was merely responding to previous post not to equal Nazism with violence, just like you can't equal Muslim religion with violence. In that context, I couldn't care less about some historical book. I assume in your country you have access to Amazon, so go ahead dive in their books section. You welcome!
>I must have missed the memo on us hackers. What group of traits in people do we blame for our woes? Just so I know who we want to exterminate.
You've probably missed the memo. Not all neo-Nazis, and certainly not all modern alt-right/new-right groups are against Jews or want to exterminate any particular group. In fact many are pro-Israel and are even OK with homosexuals and blacks, but favor a strong state, discipline, no immigration, traditional values, etc. So, that means you're ok with them then?
> You've probably missed the memo. Not all neo-Nazis, and certainly not all modern alt-right/new-right groups are against Jews or want to exterminate any particular group. In fact many are pro-Israel and are even OK with homosexuals and blacks, but favor a strong state, discipline, no immigration, traditional values, etc. So, that means you're ok with them then?
I am well aware that there are normalizing voices within their ranks, that vocally proclaim a nuanced view. The news and discussions on daily stormer does not mirror that, nor did the conduct in Charlottesville. If they held those views you claim, they would not carry the Nazi flag, do the salute, use SS and other symbols, shout "Heil Trump", etc, etc, etc.
You either identify as a neo-Nazi, or you don't.
I can't say that I'm a vegan, but that I eat meat, eggs, fish and dairy.
You instead look at what someone eats, and then determine if they are an omnivore or other.
A more realistic historical example than yours (which assumes hindsight): what about the McCarthyism? "If these guys are communist let's not give them jobs, particularly in the medias where they could spread their ideas".
The US liberals kept a pretty sour memory of McCarthyism. But fundamentally it is no different.
1. Nazis started WW2 with around 80 million deaths, including hundreds of thousands US soldiers, and killed 5-6 million Jews in the gas chambers of concentration camps.
2. McCarthyism originated from and was systematically exerted by the US government in many official capacities. There were vetting committees, job prohibitions, and other direct government interference including using intelligence agencies to gain information on US citizens. They didn't let Charlie Chaplin enter the US.
That's very different from a private company that ceases to make business with a Nazi website due to violations of their ToS.
On a side note, John von Neumann suggested to government officials to pro-actively launch a nuclear strike on Moskow. That tells you how different the climate was then as opposed to now.
This is complete and utter nonsense. WW2 was started by the Germans under direct supervision and order of Adolf Hitler, by attacking Poland under false pretense. Later on Hitler attacked Russia despite a peace treaty he had signed, and yes, a large majority of the victims of WW2 were Russians who had the highest death toll among all nations.
Your comment and many others in this thread are a shame for humanity, and I mean that seriously without hyperbole.
Soviets attacked Poland few days after Nazis and split it exactly as described in peace treaty you mention. Soviets later rolled through Baltic states, Bessarabia and attacked Finland. Exactly as agreed in said peace treaty. While Nazis did their part of the deal in the West.
A big part of Soviet deaths were thanks to utter mismanagement and not paying much attention to human life. Even catastrophes like Leningrad siege may have been avoided (or at least greatly reduced) if Soviets were more humane.
It's a shame to humanity to call USSR a victim of WW2. Not only they started it, but they also took home the most. For a half of Europe, WW2 ended only after the fall of Iron Curtain. After nearly 3 decades, the division is still huge. It will take a long time to get rid of USSR legacy.
Twist it as you like, fact is that Germany started WWII - as you also admit, since the facts you mention fully support that and not your point of view.
What fact? That Nazis and Soviets had a pact on how to split Europe and started WW2 together acting on it? And then had a parade to celebrate splitting Poland?
But yes, technically Nazis started WW2 few days earlier and then Soviets joined in :) I doubt that makes much of a difference.
By the way, just to mess with your mind more... It was Soviets who attacked my country first and started terrorising civilians. Nazis were sort of liberators when they attacked from the other side although they soon turned out not much better. Then Soviets came back, fucked shit up even more and forgot to leave for 50 years. Cool, huh? Sorry, saying that WW2 was Nazi job and claiming that Soviets didn't start it hand-in-hand with Nazis is just a disgrace to thousands for people who died at the hands of either.
> It seems to me that such a business owner would seem in hindsight to have been acting virtuously,
No it wouldn't - There is a large percentage of population joining Nazi parties for convenience, for their career or even out of fear. Are you going to deny them the food you sell from your shop? If they are Nazi's, are they still not human beings deserving to access food in the market?
Does someone being a member of the Nazi party mean we can let them starve to death? Shoot them and push them into a trench even?
The moment you dehumanise vast swathes of the population, you've already lost and dropped to the level of "Nazi's". It's not wise to let your enemies turn you into them.
The penalty for leaving Islam (apostasy) is death. Many muslims believe it (like, the majority of the populations of places like Pakistan and Egypt). I guarantee you that you could not, consistent with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, deny service to Muslims merely for expressing the belief that apostates should be put to death.
First, that's not true: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi.... In Bangladesh, where my family is from, 82% of Muslims favor making Sharia the law of the land. Of those, 55% (over 40% of the population) believe in stoning as a punishment for adultery. 44% (over 30% of the population) believe that apostates should be executed.
Second, it's irrelevant. In my hypothetical, I'm talking about specific individuals who have conceded to believing that apostates should be executed. If they invoke their religion as a shield for having that view, and have done nothing otherwise illegal, you can't refuse to serve them under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Alright, I'll gladly concede that I did not know that, but I strongly disagree that my comparisons you neglected are "irrelevant". I think that's the key discriminator.
The view on stoning in Bangladesh could be religious, but it could also be cultural, as it's not equal elsewhere where practicing muslims reside.
And if it, as I posit, isn't a core tenet of the religion, and if it is, as I posit, one in nazism, it can't be solved through cultural tolerance.
I dispute your point - not everyone could have chosen to stop being nazis and live.
"Approximately 77,000 German citizens were killed for one or another form of resistance by Special Courts, courts-martial, People's Court and the civil justice system. "
"Almost every community in Germany had members taken away to concentration camps. As early as 1935 there were jingles warning: "Dear Lord God, keep me quiet, so that I don't end up in Dachau." (It almost rhymes in German: Lieber Herr Gott mach mich stumm / Daß ich nicht nach Dachau komm.)[17] "Dachau" refers to the Dachau concentration camp"
Well, I might ask whether you think there is a difference between selling food to an individual who happens to be a member of the Nazi party, and catering for a Nazi party event?
Let me ask you this then. If a homeless Nazi begged me for a dollar to get a McMuffin (not sure if those are on the dollar menu but take it as part of the hypothetical here) so they won't starve that day and I refuse to give them a dollar because they are an unrepentant Nazi, am I a bad person?
At what point do I as an individual have the right to not associate with a group or ideology that's seeks my destruction? Because that's really what's at the heart of the matter whether we're talking about Cloudflare or just me because I'm sure that Cloudflare has Jews, racial minorities, and LGBT folks on their staff. And I'm sure even some of those folks are even investors. So why should the investors and employees of Cloudflare protect Nazis who seek their destruction? For money? I can accept that it's a matter of profit, but if you're asking for a moral basis to aid those that want to kill you I can't see there being any argument in favor of protecting or aiding them.
People sitting on the fences talking about slippery slopes are only ceding space to people pushing the conversation down.
I'm sorry but The space to sit idly and think about it is gone. All of society is on the slope because America didn't realize that some points are raised not to discuss, but to tie down discourse and keep logic at bay.
Leaving the field open for emotion and lazy logic to defeat whoever remains.
There's rules to how this is done, and they have little to do with facts but everything to do with owning the communication channel.
Congratulations, you've just employed the Sex With Ducks argument. Remember before employing slippery slope arguments to explain why we haven't already fallen down the slope when we banned terrorist websites.
And taking down The Daily Stormer was speech. If you want to regulate that kind of speech, it's your right to say so. But don't pretend you're supporting the First Amendment when you do so.
Don't pretend you're supporting the First Amendment - a restriction on governments making laws against press freedom - when you use it to compel companies to assist in the dissemination of Nazi propaganda against their will.
It's not a defence of political freedoms to compel people - rhetorically or otherwise - to disseminate messages that appall them; it's a grotesque imposition upon their political freedom.
That is indeed a tough question. And to Cloudflare's credit, they discuss it at some length. I'm quite impressed.
But in any case, it's Cloudflare's business, and so it's Cloudflare's decision to make. What concerns me more are censorship mechanisms involving DNS and BGP games. Which the US has been quite fond of using, to take down what it considers to be illegal content. That's a vulnerability of the Internet itself, reflecting continuing US dominance.
So hey, we have Tor and other overlay networks.
Edit: And just to be clear, I'm a communitarian anarchist. I'm not at all sympathetic to fascists. But I do oppose all censorship.
It would be interesting to see how much of this applies to sub sects of Islam, namely the sub sects that promote violence or which promote child marriage.
My big issue here isn't the logic itself, but the selective application of it. For a similar related topic, whose statues should we have up? What is the objective criteria by which we should decide if a statue is allowed (on public property/at a memorial) and will it be applied to all statues?
If Breitbart or /pol/ are hosting discussions in the open between known Nazis or people who are advocating to take terrorist actions and they do not moderate and delete these things then yea they actually should be shut down. We would not tolerate this from Al Qaeda or with child porn so I really don't understand the problem. Nazism has caused orders of magnitude more suffering in the history of man than either of the previous things I mentioned.
> If Breitbart or /pol/ are hosting discussions [...] advocating to take terrorist actions and they do not moderate [...] they actually should be shut down.
> [...] shut down every communist site as well?
And you completely disregarded the conditions why?
You mean communists don't discriminate people they don't agree with? Take a look at any communist-ish state what happens when they get a chance to discriminate said people.
As for domestic terrorism, when was the last leftist riot?
Communism, as an ideology, disagrees with capitalism... and capitalism equally disagrees with communism.
However neither ideology discriminates against the other - a capitalist company will employ a communist if the individual is a productive employee, and a communist commune will welcome a capitalist if they strengthen the commune.
Individuals within both groups do advocate for violence against the other, but the ideologies do not. Contrast that with Nazism or literal Islamism - ideologies that explicitly espouses violence and discrimination against "the other".
That's the key part. Either you're one and fit the narrative, or you gotta GTFO in communism. You couldn't come to communist commune and establish a company or bank or invest money or whatever like in capitalist community. It's not like you could come in and own personal property as in capitalism either. The most you could do would be a closet capitalist and keep your ideas to yourself. But you could be a closet gay in nazi country too.
When communists came to my country, it wasn't pretty. Either become one and dropped property if you had anything worthwhile or you were fucked. To be fair, I don't know how else could they have attempted to install communism. But communism doesn't tolerate different ideologies on the same soil.
And today's communists do discriminate capitalists on day-to-day affairs. E.g. disregard of private property. Wether it's calling a gay person names or spitting on rich man's car, both are discriminating people that don't fit one's narrative. Ultimately, if either person got into power, they'd do harm to the other person or at least kick them out from the community.
Of course, somewhat personal action feels worse than doing something to property. But ultimately it's the same - discrimination based on one's ideas.
> They won't politely tolerate you. Deviants will be chastised, expelled/expatriated, jailed, or killed.
If they have the power to? Yeah, in a heartbeat. But they're not the only ones, or the most powerful ones, just the most ostentatiously intolerant.
> 1. Folks will gladly loan the hangman the rope that he will use to hang you, your family, and your neighbors — all because of "purity of belief" in free speech.
If both Nazis and (as an example) Communists have free speech, then I can be supremely confident that I have free speech, and that I can use it without being expelled, jailed, or killed. (Chastisement, well, as long as you mean the verbal kind, I'll just have to cope.) I sure as Hell don't defend their rights because I like them.
Have you never actually felt your ability to speak out meaningfully threatened by the society around you?
A white supremacist killed someone at the weekend for protesting. If their free speech gives you supreme confidence, then you are simply wrong.
The evidence is fresh. You will have free speech - as long as you only go to the right places, say the right things, wear the right clothes, have the right colour skin.
Over time, supremacist movements reduce that free space in greater and greater amounts. This is what the evidence of history tells us, very clearly. We can see it happening now.
If despite the hard evidence that these groups are opposed to free speech and willing to kill those exercising it, you still defend their right to try and subjugate or kill people merely because of their DNA, you are not defending free speech. What you're really doing is celebrating your own virtue - you're defending their rights because you like yourself. You are taking a calculated risk with other people's lives to do so. Even if they're not even trying to speak at all, but just walking down the street while being the wrong race/gender/religion/etc.
Fundamentalist free speech advocates make an implicit assumption: that a race of billions of social animals can completely avoid situations where one group makes another even feeling uncomfortable. It's purist nonsense. Occasionally feeling you aren't entirely free to speak is part of being a social animal.
Part of living is learning when keeping your trap shut means you're being oppressed or censored, and when you are just being respectful to someone else's house, or a workplace, or suffering beyond your experience.
You can't use a civilised person's inevitable experience of "well, I didn't want to cause offense" to justify Nazis.
And this is why in Germany you can't protest with any guns, military swat gear, masks, or other weapons. Doing so is illegal because a large group of people with weapons can intimidate another group into not being able to exercise their free speech.
Quite ok, actually. Nobody was killed. There were no "minutemen of the patriotic revolution" in fatigues and with automatic weapons. There were fantastic, peaceful protests such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeXRmurPTRI
Yeah, there was property damage. So what?
Also, I'm not quite sure what you're actually trying to say? Are you suggesting the protests would have been /better/ if protesters had had automatic weapons?
> Are you aware that some property damage and or arson in protests is a tradition in Europe, and we don't consider it the end of the world?
I am European, and I am not aware of any such tradition. Regardless, (1) "tradition" doesn't make something morally right, and (2) a protest involving arson and hundreds of injured people cannot be called peaceful, period.
> Sometimes, we even behead our kings and burn down their palaces.
That is, in my opinion, romantic nonsense. Neither of those things happened here, by any stretch of imagination. No kings were beheaded, and the only thing that was burned down were the houses and carriages of random peasants.
>I am European, and I am not aware of any such tradition.
Well, there's a 40+ year history of such demonstrations, going back to before May '68 -- in France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Spain, etc, that's been recorded historically, and many consider an important tool against a passive democracy were people merely vote every 4 years.
>Regardless, (1) "tradition" doesn't make something morally right, and (2) a protest involving arson and hundreds of injured people cannot be called peaceful, period.
(1) In practice tradition is the strongest force that makes something morally right: one finds "morally right" what their era considers as morally right, which in turn is what it has been passed on and taught as morally right (aka tradition).
Apart from that, there are some kind of universal principles we all more or less agree to (no killing etc), but you'd be surprised how many people would consider those things morally OK to violate when their era finds it OK for political, patriotic etc reasons.
But I didn't say it's "morally right" -- but that it's a tradition, and it has been proven fruitful in the past in keeping those in power at check, at least somewhat.
(2) Sure, but it's not like only peaceful protests are OK. Some of the more effective protests, like the May 68 rights that forever changed the ethics of modern Europe, were not "peaceful" in that sense.
(1) With regards to the moral argument , I agree in the case that a tradition enjoys wide-spread use and is universally accepted by a given society as being morally right.
I now see that you in fact did not make the case that this tradition involving property damage is morally right (in the above sense). I must have read too much into your comment. Apologies.
(2) OK, then we are in agreement here. However, the only reason I brought up the arson in the first place was because the original parent specifically characterized the protests as "peaceful".
>(2) OK, then we are in agreement here. However, the only reason I brought up the arson in the first place was because the original parent specifically characterized the protests as "peaceful".
Often there are peaceful parts and non peaceful parts (blocks?) of a demonstration (including people who just go there to break things).
Police has also been known to instigate violent acts, usually with being overly pushy and provocative, but sometimes also by having fake-protesters lead others to such things.
Citizens burning the property of other citizens is an effective deterrent to tyranny? Your second statement mentions beheading the king and burning palaces, which would be more akin to the citizenry marching on the house of government and setting it ablaze with the politicians inside.
I think it would be fair to say that the public is concerned with both, but more actively threatened by the fact that their house might have its windows smashed in because a protest happened to occur near to them. Like it or not, we tend to be more frightened of things that affect us personally.
People don't have their windows smashed. Even in Hamburg, the most violent protests in the last decade, only upscale stores and expensive cars were targeted, all of which were insured.
That's not to excuse those actions–personally, I think they're counterproductive to whatever the cause may be. But people really aren't afraid of these protests. I was actually in Hamburg at that time, and even though I was walking around in a suit & tie, I freely walked right through the protest hotspots without even a hint of aggression directed at me.
FWIW also in most cases where there are antifa "riots" in Germany, it's usually known beforehand where they will happen so most people know better than to park their expensive cars there.
Of course that doesn't make vandalism okay, especially when it harms private citizens (even with insurance the damage can be a financial drain for shop owners) but it puts the extent into perspective when you compare it to neo-nazis who actively try to harm human beings or entirely destroy their (already quite modest) livelihoods.
With respect, this is a crucial point if one desires to be taken seriously by gun owners when talking about guns, because confusing it reveals a lack of basic knowledge of the subject.
Apart from some property damage and a few minor injuries it worked out pretty well. Nobody got killed and over the weekend only a single gunshot was fired (in the air).
I dont want to imagine what would happen if a protest like the g20 one would clash with the police when guns are involved on both sides...
> A white supremacist killed someone at the weekend for protesting. If their free speech gives you supreme confidence, then you are simply wrong.
The GP said no such thing. He talked about speech, and you changed the subject to violence.
If the white supremacists limited themselves to speech, then yes... their free speech should be protected. And, it serves as an indicator that we truly have free speech.
The whole point of free speech is to give freedom to views you disagree with. The alternative is the Soviet Union / North Korea bullshit of "everyone has free speach, but only one viewpoint is allowed".
FWIW Germany still allows for parties like the NPD (Nationalist Party of Germany), DVU (German People's Union), REP (The Republicans) and AfD (Alternative for Germany) to exist, despite having pretty strict laws about actual nazis.
The NPD is closely tied to neo-nazis and always on the verge of being banned.
The DVU was almost identical but much smaller and eventually merged with them in 2011 after several alliances.
The Republicans are a more moderate right-wing anti-immigration party that is mostly insignificant.
The AfD are populist nationalists (similar to UKIP) who try to keep some distance to actual neo-nazis but share many of the same ideas and affiliations (although much less prominently than the NPD does). They currently hold 24.4% of votes in Saxony-Anhalt, 20.8% in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and are represented in every state parliament except Hesse (as of 2013, though that might change with the upcoming election this year).
I think on an absolute spectrum the AfD is the closest thing Germany has to the US Republican party but most Germans consider the AfD literal nazis (albeit in sheep's clothing).
The problem with discussing Neo-Nazis in terms of free speech is that violence is their core value. They are explicitly, and not even secretly, organizing for the violent overthrow of the US government to impose a white ethno-state. If the President helps them along, all the better from their perspective, but they are not organizing to give speeches, they are organizing and training to commit mass murder.
Sure, that's a discussion worth having. But, I think it should be in terms of how we end white supremacist violence, and not in terms of how we defend white supremacists up to the point where they commit violence.
I'm not suggesting white supremacists don't, or shouldn't, have freedom of speech. But, unless you're also suggesting that Al Qaeda, Daesh, ISIS, whatever, should be able to hold recruiting rallies across the US as long as they aren't commiting violence at the rally, I think we probably agree that there are and should be limits to free speech if the speech is an incitement to violence.
Neo-Nazi groups are organizing and training for the violent overthrow of the US government to institute a white ethno-state. Right wing extremists are responsible for more terrorist attacks in the US than any other group (including Muslim extremists). Without acknowledging the violent nature of these organizations, we can't have a useful discussion about where the line is drawn.
That Al Qaeda can't get a permit for a rally tells us there is a line. So, why do we let Nazis step way past that line over and over?
Unfortunately, yes. It's not even a new phenomenon.
When I was in high school, I drove a friend to visit his girlfriend at night. We arrived at a locked gate in the middle of nowhere, in the mountains of South Carolina. Moments after we arrived, someone drove up in a truck to let us through the gate, after shining a flashlight into the car at every passenger. We drove down a gravel road, about a quarter mile, into what can only be described as a compound. A few men with AR-15s and in fatigues were milling about. I learned later (after my friend had broken up with her) that her father was a militia leader; she wasn't allowed to socialize with black folks or Jews or LGBTQ folks. That was ~25 years ago.
Before the recent crackdown, you could readily find discussions on the web from many of these groups, where they talk about their goals and plans; often in a generalized way that likely wouldn't be legally actionable, but it's easy to read between the lines. They train together on military tactics, they discuss guns and military gear, and they actively recruit people in the military and police officers for their tactical skills and access to weapons. Many have bunkers, or compounds, where they plan to hunker down when the race war they seek finally comes.
Stormfront.org, one of the leading neo-Nazi forums, remains up and running, but the interesting topics (like "Strategy and Tactics" and "Self Defense, Martial Arts, and Preparedness") are private, and require an invitation. Some people have found their way in over the years, though, and stuff has leaked out.
The various groups have different priorities, and some are more militant than others, but the militant branches were well-represented at Unite The Right, as evidenced by the presence of dozens of AR-15s and men in military gear.
The Klan has been a militant racist presence in the US since the end of the Civil War, with literally thousands of lynchings at their back, with the most recent that I know of being in 1998 in Jasper, TX. The Klan had been in decline for decades before Trump. This is the first major event where the Klan had a large and visible presence that I'm aware of in recent years.
III%ers are probably the most active/obvious in military training for their members. They do not officially have a white supremacist message, but their presence at Unite the Right was large, and they were marching and chanting with gusto (they were the folks with the AR-15s and military fatigues, as I understand it). They are explicitly and visibly training for violent revolution. The name derives from a belief that 3% of people in the American colonies waged the Revolutionary War to achieve independence from Britain, and they will be the 3% that takes up arms to tip the US into revolution.
Oath Keepers were another presence at the event, and it is made up of former/current police and military. They don't publically claim to be a white supremacist organization, but their obviously supportive presence at many white supremacist events speaks volumes. I find them among the most frightening, as their numbers are large and they have military training, presence within local police forces, etc. As with III%ers, they avoid racist messaging and speak fondly of the Constitution, which gives them a patina of legitimacy.
A number of the other groups that were present, like Traditionalist Worker Party, Vanguard America (the group James A Fields was photographed with and seemingly claimed affiliation with), and Identity Evropa, are quite recent, founded just in the past few years. Much like the term "alt right", these groups seem like rebranding efforts to make white nationalism and white supremacist groups more marketable to young audiences. It also sanitizes their history; the people who operate these groups (and profit from them) have often long been associated with white supremacist groups but in less notable roles. The presence of well-known white supremacist figures (many of whom have spent time in prison for terrorism and violence) among the recently founded groups at Unite the Right seems to make this connection pretty clear.
It's all part of their model for achieving respectability, which has worked frighteningly well. Our president has effectively endorsed them as "very fine people". Then again, his father was a Klansman, and Trump himself has been successfully sued for violations of the Fair Housing Act in treating people of color unfairly in his rental properties.
Anyway, their online presence has sort of gone underground recently, so it's actually harder to find their discussions. It happens in private facebook groups, on twitter and YouTube under pseudonyms which come and go (kinda like ISIS), and even IRC on private servers. You can still find wikipedia coverage of them and Anti-Defamation League and SPLC coverage on their hate group monitoring sites.
The thing about hate groups is that they can only appear respectable for so long before revealing their hand as a racist hate group because they aren't spreading their message of white supremacy during that respectable phase.
Sorry, this got a little long. Curiousity got the better of me as I started digging into the actual list of participants and who's connected to what organizations through the years. It's an incestuous group. These are just some really nasty people with a long and violent past, many were radicalized in prison. No matter how "dapper" they dress today, there's not really any hiding how ugly they are as human beings.
Edit: I think I should also make clear that these people are a very small minority of Americans. Their beliefs are repugnant to a majority of us. While the US does have a very troubled history and present on issues of race, and we do have many systems that further white supremacy, overt racism is not considered acceptable on the whole.
That's not the problem, that's the point. Sadly, those words inspire and convince some people. Words are how they recruit. I fail to see how how people fail to see this. Limiting the spread of such hateful ideologies is, IMO, a good thing. The government cannot take action to limit their speech in the US because of the first amendment. Which is probably, on balance, a good thing. Thus, it is up to citizens to to both condemn and take (peaceful) action --
such as not doing business with them -- to limit the spread of hateful ideologies.
There are many groups which are accused of having violence as their core value.
e.g. The Nazi attacks on the Jews, who were alleged to be dedicated to the destruction of the Aryan race. That allegation was used as justification for "self defense", and attacking all Jewish people.
I understand where you're coming from, but we've seen what happens when people start picking and choosing which speech is allowed, and which is forbidden. The end result is the violence and genocide that they claim to hate.
What takes incredible mental acrobatics is the ability to read what I said, and not understand simple English.
You apparently believe that it's OK to suppress the speech of "bad people". My point is that such suppression is, in fact, similar to all oppressive regimes.
The reason the Nazis were bad is not just the genocide they committed, but the reasons behind the genocide. The idea that we can "get" the bad people has been used to justify all kinds of atrocities, world-wide.
Anyone who honestly opposes the "bad people" like Nazies should denounce their tactics. All of their tactics. Not just the violence, but the underlying idea that there are "bad people", who deserve all possible punishment, no matter how nasty or evil.
Do believe that free speech should be suppressed, simply because you don't like the people? Or you don't like the topic of their speech?
a) yes - you don't believe in free speech
b) no - you do believe in free speech
I live in Canada, which had the concept of "hate speech", that you apparently are in agreement with. It got repealed because it was stupid, abusive, and being abused.
I gave a concrete example, you've asked a hypothetical.
I believe in and have activated (actual feet-on-the ground, talking to reps, writing letters, teaching free classes on encryption, etc., real activist shit) for free speech for decades. I also believe in and will activate for a world free of Nazis. There is no conflict there, and I'm completely comfortable with my position on both free speech and opposing Nazis in every way possible.
You still haven't answered my question: Do you believe Al Qaeda, not some amorphous blob of "free speech", should be able to obtain permits and police protection to hold recruiting rallies across the US?
This isn't about whether I "like" or "dislike" certain speech, this is about known terrorist organizations recruiting with the consent and participation of our government.
I live in the US, where the stakes are real. White supremacy has a long, deadly, history in my country. You have your own white supremacist problem in Canada (and some of them came to the US for the Unite the Right rally), but it may not currently be an existential threat to your democracy. It is exactly that, right now, here in the US.
> A white supremacist killed someone at the weekend for protesting.
Well, yeah, there's been an awful lot of death and injury at protests of late. Charlottesville is easily the worst, but isn't where it started, and it's not where it's going to finish. There were thugs at UC Berkeley smashing property, lighting bonfires, and putting pepper spray in protestors' faces.
Now, I wouldn't want to bring that up first thing like I'm some sort of spineless "both sides!!" equivocator (coughdonaldtrump) after some fucking Nazi runs people down, because it's obviously materially worse than any previous incident to date. But hey, if you we want to articulate a policy of ad-hoc censorship of speech because it reduces the free space to express opinions, let's go there! Why aren't you calling for content providers to root and and destroy all the publications telling us that "speech is violence" and should be met with violence? Where's the pressure for Reddit to drop /r/antifa? Can I get a statement condemning the shenanigans at Evergreen State College, where a professor got death threats for saying he was uncomfortable with a proposed "Day of Absence" which would see him excluded from the campus on account of the colour of his skin? Can we see Huffington Post's cloud service suspended for defending the student protestors who did so?
I can't say I like Berkeley's leftist thugs much more than I like Charlottesville's Nazis, but I'm damn uncomfortable with censorship that targets either. (And yes, it's censorship, even if it's not government censorship.)
But yea, you're right about one thing, it's a sucky time all around if you care about free speech.
> You can't use a civilised person's inevitable experience of "well, I didn't want to cause offense" to justify Nazis.
Well no, you don't justify Nazis period. You use them as the legal equivalent of a meat shield.
> Fundamentalist free speech advocates make an implicit assumption: that a race of billions of social animals can completely avoid situations where one group makes another even feeling uncomfortable.
"Completely avoiding situations where one group makes another feel uncomfortable" sounds more like a conservative caricature of political correctness than any component of fundamentalist free speech advocacy.
> A white supremacist killed someone at the weekend for protesting.
> these groups are opposed to free speech and willing to kill those exercising it
This is a false equivalence. His group was not calling for violence, let alone murder. You're using the same logic that the right-wing all over the world uses against Islam.
> A white supremacist killed someone at the weekend for protesting. If their free speech gives you supreme confidence, then you are simply wrong.
Let's ban Christian websites then. Christians have killed lots of people over political and moral issues. Of course not those specific Christians, but who ares.
That is whould shold be careful about how ware ou go with cenrsorship.
> The evidence is fresh. You will have free speech - as long as you only go to the right places, say the right things, wear the right clothes, have the right colour skin.
Applies to recent Google memo leak pretty well. Or other left-leaning cases. This is a problem with people who can't have a civil discussion and tolerate different point of views. Rather than left or right issue.
I'm sorry, was the government preventing Daily Stormer from starting a hosting company or CDN? I'm pretty sure it wasn't so they have the same free speech that everyone else does.
CloudFare has free speech rights too. They are excersizing those rights by saying they don't want Daily Stormer on their network.
All it takes is a few key fascists in government positions to tear all of this down. All it takes is one false flag terrorist attack to justify the systematic persecution of a group of people. This is what happened in Germany. Recently in Turkey. And it can happen here just as easily.
>If both Nazis and (as an example) Communists have free speech
That's where the argument become null, communists ideas have been banned from the US political landscape for a long time and even mild socialists propositions are a call for arms for many USians.
They aren't banned in any sense whatsoever - there's a communist party in USA, they're free to publish their views, do rallies, advocate their position, run for elections, and they're "banned" only in the sense that almost noone votes for them or supports their views.
That's the exact treatment that Nazis, ISIS, North American Man/Boy Love Association and all kinds of other disgusting groups should get - they should be free to associate and state their views publicly, so that the public can hear them, be disgusted, and vote against them. If some of them do violent acts or incite violence, then those particular people can and should be charged appropriately, but not the rest of the group.
You are technically incorrect (the worst kind of incorrect).
See, for example, the [Communist Control Act of 1954][0], various [state laws][1] [that prohibit communists from holding office or working in state jobs][2], and [exclusion from anti-discrimination laws][3]
Do you mean the act that, according to the same source, "no administration has tried to enforce" and whenever states have attempted to do similar things, the restriction has been found unconstitutional (e.g. Blawis v. Bolin)?
The USA legislation has a bunch of things "on the books" in their legislation that haven't been repealed since noone wants to touch them (e.g. sodomy laws), but aren't law in any practical sense since they aren't and cannot be enforced.
Despite the things you quote, the Communist party of USA does exist, can participate in elections and has done so. Of course, almost noone votes for them, but that's their own fault.
Many of the proposals and discussions in this thread are very similar to McCarthyism. Just as it was back then, despite people wanting to do so, the key acts and limitations of McCarthyism are fundamentally incompatible with Constitution of USA; just as it was (found to be) wrong and overstepping authority regarding communism back then (even if it took a bunch of years for the courts to override all the activism of the government), it's the same thing for any other radical ideologies now.
>Folks will gladly loan the hangman the rope that he will use to hang you, your family, and your neighbors — all because of "purity of belief" in free speech. Sorry, hate to break it to you, but these illiberal forces are a clear and present danger to this comfortable society you call home.
Replace like 3 words in your comment, and I could make it into a rant advocating persecution of Communists. Which has happened before in the US. But it's ok now because it's against your political enemies?
Second, no they are not. They are a tiny tiny percentage of the population. They have been losing power and numbers for decades. They get little representation in the mainstream and in the media. When they speak up with their beliefs or attend a protest unmasked, they often lose their jobs. They are not even remotely a serious threat. Just like communists during the Red Scare.
>Replace like 3 words in your comment, and I could make it into a rant advocating persecution of Communists. Which has happened before in the US. But it's ok now because it's against your political enemies?
If by "it's against your political enemies" means "it's against people who want to overthrow your society and replace it with a repressive one" then the two cases are exactly the same in principle and only differ in details.
So yeah, I'd say that they're both OK, under the exact same logic.
It's not a matter of opinion that the goal of communists is to overthrow every existing social institution. Marx explicitly states it in The Communist Manifesto.
Given that the United States is a free country where most of the social institutions have formed through voluntary free association, it also follows that overthrowing those institutions would require ending people's voluntary support of them. Because most people have no reason to end their support of social institutions voluntarily, this eventually requires instituting a repressive society.
Thus, it is not a matter of opinion that communism would create a repressive society within the American context. Nor is it a matter of opinion that Nazis would seek to do the same; I hope I don't need to outline that for you.
I recommending watching 'The People vs. Larry Flynt' for a (much-needed) lesson in what Freedom of Speech means in the United States. I am certain Larry Flynt had a hard time finding print houses willing to publish Hustler but the fact he was being arrested and prosecuted – by the government – for distributing Hustler is when/where the line was crossed.
I have doubts that SCOTUS will ever consider 'The Nazis vs. Cloudflare'.
I always wondered why we didn't see the term crypto-fascism come up more in the last few years. Perhaps because it is too honest and gives room for manoeuvre (although equally it is going to be hard to disprove). Hence people shouting 'Nazi' - which reminds me of kids calling the cops in the UK 'The Feds' - both of which sound idiotic. We had the terms we needed (Neo-Nazi and Crypto-Fascist) and they both meant something.
I would say we also need to introduce a counterpart. e.g. crypto-stalinist or crypto-communist. As it is an equally plausible accusation to make that some people with hidden beliefs on that side of the spectrum could take them to those dark places.
I've got to agree. I was quite shocked by some of the comments on earlier threads about this topic.
For example, someone suggested that the German Nazi party was advocating mild socialist reforms very similar to modern social democrats, entirely ignoring "minor details" like that the SA actively beat up people on the streets and spread terror wherever they showed up, that the nazis attempted a Coup d'Etat, and that socialists and communists later went to prison and concentration camps for their political views. Not to speak of killing 5-6 million Jews and being responsible for the death of about 25 million soldiers and 55 million civilians in WW2...
The largest cognitive dissonance is with those people who suggest that jihadist propaganda should be interrupted but Nazi propaganda should be allowed to thrive unconditionally. That sounds very crazy to anyone who knows a little bit about history and can compare orders of magnitudes.
> As someone who cherishes the rule of law over the rule of man, not aiding and these illiberal parties is the minimum.
That's good. But the rule of law should apply over "not aiding" those people.
In the private sector, there have been a number of cases where companies (a) don't apply their ToS to people they agree with, and (b) over-apply their ToS to people they disagree with.
See Vidcon && Sargon for the most recent example.
i.e. When given the choice, the groups that value "inclusiveness" and "tolerance" and "due process" violate all of that...
Safe spaces and diversity are diametrical to due process and tolerance. You're assumed guilty and treated as lesser if "privileged", which means white, male or both.
> They won't politely tolerate you. Deviants will be chastised, expelled/expatriated, jailed, or killed. Ignoring prudence (preservation of self and the society at-large) is perilous.
Except I never really seen a 'neonazi' saying "punch a communist" I never seen mass media encourage such behavior either.
Do you not realize that this is cyclic reinforcement of behavior? (Antifa says punch nazis, nazis punch back, antifa ups their game with HIV needles and guns, nazis up their game etc)
Both sides are disgusting, but the fact that the media covers up for the leftist violence makes me stand on the side of the so called "right wing extremists".
Just calling yourself a Nazi or doing the chants or whatever carries with it an implicit provocation and threat of violence toward minority groups.
Responding with actual violence in turn is not the right approach, but when we see large armed mobs forming and declaring themselves pro-genocide, it's absurd to call the people protesting them the 'real problem'.
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. - Desmond Tutu
We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. - Elie Wiesel
I'm not sure that argument holds water when it's 2 groups of violent political agitators going up against each other. The fundamental question is whether you think the communists in this situation are good guys, or if their ideology is just as harmful as that of Nazis. The body count would seem to indicate the latter even if it sounds better in theory.
I agree completely. My comment was more about the logic (using your quotes as examples) that if you don't like the mouse then you HAVE to support the elephant. You're free to hate the mouse all you want for other reasons, and also call on the elephant for stepping on its tail. As I said, life is not binary.
Sorry, hate to break it to you, but these illiberal forces are a clear and present danger to this comfortable society you call home.
No, it's the last gasps of a dying breed of racists, empowered by the Internet and that look a lot more popular than they are due to media focus. Nazis are lame, but you leave them alone and there's nothing to fuel the fire. You send out counterprotesters, get in fights with them, act like these people are on the verge of starting a civil war and in their minds you've proved them right (delusional though they may be), and they get energized and then you have a real problem.
Kicking nazis off the Internet is one thing, but yours (and the grandparent) is the language that causes the slippery slope arguments. That people can't even discuss the issue of free speech without being assumed to be nazi sympathizers or "cryptofascists" or whatever we want to label people we don't agree with isn't ok.
Someone having a debate about the right of nazis to use modern services is not by extension a nazi.
"No, it's the last gasps of a dying breed of racists, empowered by the Internet and that look a lot more popular than they are due to media focus."
Really? Because yesterday the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES defended white nationalists and neo-nazis on national TV.
This discussion also shouldn't have much to do with free speech. If private companies do not want to allow pro-nazi websites to use their servers, they should be allowed to refuse them.
The only slippery slope here is the idea that Nazis are dying and there is no need to take them seriously. People in Germany did not take them seriously when Hitler started his rise to power, then the country fell into disarray and Hitler had simple answers to hard questions. After everything that has happened over the past year, it is time to stop thinking that something like Hitler's rise to power could never happen again. We are in uncharted waters.
There are more dangerous things in life than nazis, like bad drivers, and well-meaning but ignorant people with power. You are more likely to have been killed by Islamic terrorism than nazism in the US over the last couple decades (going back to OKC at least).
Trump is unscrupulous, he'd defend anyone who would be his friend (and there aren't many of those these days, so he's left with the dregs). He's not a slick political maneuverer who is going to overturn the federal government. He'll be gone in a few years. The displays like this last weekend are hundreds or a couple thousand people. They aren't parades of uniformed militia (like Hitler's rise saw).
These people want attention. They're getting it especially when we exaggerate the threat they pose, which only fuels their grandiosity and recruitment.
From what I understood Trump is rather refusing to pick side, which is a bit different. And less shocking than outright supporting neo-nazis. And I tend to agree personally. If a bunch of far-right thugs gets to fight with a bunch of far-left thugs, why should I have to pick a side? I support neither.
The last sentence is the main reason why the world is so fucked up today. "Unless you agree with my radical leftist agenda you are a nazi/racist/<some_imaginary_word>"-mentality and the complete unreasonability of the left is the reason why normal people are fed up with all this crap and are voting for Trump, Brexit etc.
No matter how evil some group is (may they be pedophiles, satan worshippers, nazis, whatever...) silencing them and assaulting them is a crime and is against freedom of expession. The problem with making these exceptions like "Let's have freedom of speech but not for these and these people...yadayadayada" is we can never be sure where to draw the line.
(Neo-)Nazis are sure dumb as hell but as long as they have peaceful protest and they don't harm anybody physically (unlike their counter-protesters) it doesn't matter. And don't even start with the car-thing. An individual psycho does not compare to organized widely accepted violence.
If we were to ban nazis and far-right organizations because they are racist and apparently a "threat" then what about anarchists? They also are extremely violent and want to overthrow the government. (and in the US officially categorized as terrorist threat) What about BLM which is openly racist and violent (July 2016 anti-white/police sniper attack, riots, assaults, highway blockings etc.) If we start going down this slippery slope will have shitloads of organizations and ideas to ban.
Anarchists and communists have long been banned from entering the US. And I've noticed a strong push back against most of the more mild socialists ideas. The US have not been "the land of the free" for a long time.
And I will argue that communism is fundamentally a good ideology. While fascism has never leaned on the good side of human nature.
PS: statues of Lenin and Stalin were removed without much second thought, only USians would keep statues of their (war criminals)|(rebels) for 150 years. And political bronzes are not art, they are at best political camping and grandiloquence.
The US dropped its blanket ban on anarchists and communists well over 20 years ago. I personally know people in both camps who have visited the UK and one who has permanent US residency.
I'd argue that while the US has many problems when it comes to its treatment of the left, things have moved in the opposite direction of what you indicate. E.g. the far rights attack on Obama coupled with generations now growing up who never experienced the cold war combined to make words like "socialism" far less scary.
> Anarchists and communists have long been banned from entering the US. And I've noticed a strong push back against most of the more mild socialists ideas. The US have not been "the land of the free" for a long time.
American citizens are perfectly free to hold those beliefs. They are also free to determine what kind of people they want to allow in their country, just like every other country on Earth can. That they choose not to allow people who openly advocate destroying all existing social institutions (which is the end goal of communism as stated by Marx in The Communist Manifesto) to enter the country does not mean that the country is not free.
> And I will argue that communism is fundamentally a good ideology. While fascism has never leaned on the good side of human nature.
There are 100 million people who died in the 20th century who would disagree with you.
But, even if we ignore that, the US does not allow Nazis to enter the country either, for very similar reasons. As a matter of fact, if you apply for permanent residency today, you still have to sign a statement that says you're not a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party or adhere to any of its beliefs, even though that party is defunct and most of its members are dead.
Yes, I am rebutting the comment I replied to. Not every reply to every comment needs to assume the grandparent comment as necessary context; it's perfectly fine as far as I know to start tangents.
Also, the grandparent comment did not discuss immigration policy, so by your standard the parent is an irrelevant rebuttal.
>And I will argue that communism is fundamentally a good ideology.
This is a dangerous thing to say publicly! As you mention yourself, the United States has had red scares just a generation ago. Who is to say it won't happen again? And that is exactly why you should support freedom of speech and tolerance of differing ideologies. Or the next red scare will be even worse.
>statues of Lenin and Stalin were removed without much second thought, only USians would keep statues of their (war criminals)|(rebels) for 150 years.
As far as I know most of the USSR world war 2 monuments are still standinding. The US is removing even monuments to soldiers that don't feature any specific general or leader. By your logic we should tear down the famous Vietnam war memorial because the US lost the war.
It doesn't cost me much, apart from internet points. And really the ideas of sharing, equal laws, global humanism and opposition to the centralization/concentration of capital genuinely seem good to me. And I'm not from the US, having those opinions seems quite mild to me.
But yeah, I've made several political comments on HN these past few years, and the amount of votes (in both directions) seem to vary wildly according to what countries are awake, generally more downvotes when the US are awake.
You missed my point. I was saying that if a red scare happens again, you could be persecuted for having written that comment. I admit it's a bit implausible. But not completely so, when you consider US history and the declining respect for freedom of expression.
... as opposed to the glory days of... when? A few decades ago, when blacks could say whatever they wanted, as long as they said it at the back of the bus?
... or was it when women's opinions weren't taken seriously at all, not when men were speaking?
... or was it more recently, with Bush's 'Free Speech Zones'?
Sure a century ago minorities had less freedom. That's a great argument to increase the freedom of minorities, not decrease freedom for everyone. Is that really your argument? That black people had less free speech in the past, so we should get rid of free speech now?
>The US is much more polarized now than in previous decades
I've seen this and I believe the data behind it, but I also think that while the US politics are very polarized right now, the actual spectrum of politics represented at the national level seems very narrow, and very right leaning (Reps and Dems).
> Is that really your argument? That black people had less free speech in the past, so we should get rid of free speech now?
No, that would be you putting words in my mouth. I'm asking when was this supposed time in history when freedom of speech was much higher in the US than it is today; what peak is the respect 'declining' from?
> By your logic we should tear down the famous Vietnam war memorial because the US lost the war
Nonsense, the statues are not being removed because they are from the losing side, they are being removed because they commemorate terrorists and traitors, and were in many causes erected by racists later on.
They largely went up in two waves, in the 1890s and the 1960s, as explicit symbols of white supremacy. They were not erected shortly after the war to commemorate soldiers. They falsely evoke a time right after the war when Southerners held great respect for confederate "heroes," but that's misleading. I was surprised to learn this too.
I don't find these articles terribly convincing. It's typical for monuments to be built decades after the event they commemorate. The world war 2 memorial in DC wasn't built until 2004.
I find it difficult to believe that it's just a coincidence that most of these monuments were erected during the eras of Jim Crow, and then the heyday of the KKK, and later still during the Civil Rights era.
Like I said, they celebrate traitors and terrorists, and they were mostly erected by racist terrorists later on during the days of Jim Crow, the KKK and the Civil Rights movement.
To be fair, anarchists didn't exactly make anyone their friends from the late 1800s forward. There was an incredible amount of political violence at the time.
Russia saw tens of millions murdered because the anarchists and communists (of that day) got exactly what they wanted in the overthrow of the old regime. It's weird how communism and fascism seem to appear out of the ether together and fight with each other.
How many states were destabilized by that combo in the last 100 years? Russia, Germany, Spain, at least, South American countries, etc. Fascists and communists are like pb & j.
There must have been a lot of normal people who just wanted to live normal lives but saw them destroyed by extremists who knew the right way to live.
The anarchists in Russia, and a substantial proportion of the communists fought against the Bolshevik coup, and most of them ended up murdered or in exile for it. Or both.
Trying to paint them all with one brush is ignorant.
The anarchists in Russia were murdering thousands of people a year from 1904 forward. They killed one of the few liberalish emperors in 1881. Russia could have been a very different place in 1915 without their action.
The sailors on Kronstadt who supported Lenin during the July Days and were one of his strongest bases of support ended up getting put down and executed when they rebelled after the revolution.
Guess it suggests that making friends with violent people is a bad idea, regardless of convenience or agreement.
The idea of treating anarchists of all people as one singular, cohesive unit, when even the elitist, strictly organised Bolsheviks with their high party discipline took many years to manage to fully purge/murder even the opposition within their own party, is beyond ridiculous.
The Russian left was deeply divided to start with, and split further as the Bolsheviks intentions became clearer, leading to a number of uprisings against them from the left as well [1].
Frankly, it is deeply offensive to the memories of the many thousands of them who ended up laying down their lives to try to stop the Bolsheviks that you're lumping them all together and trying to assign them blame for things they fought to the bitter end.
Some of them had at some point made the fault of trusting Lenin, at a time when the Bolsheviks had not yet demonstrated much willingness to oppress, but most had not.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_uprisings_against_th... (with the caveat that the page contains a number of statements about specifics that to me seem overly biased in favour of the Bolsheviks, but the specifics of which groups opposed them looks reasonably correct)
The problem is for the most part very few (no?) people are calling for explicit violence, even really abstract violence. Calling for muslim bans, border walls, deportation of illegal or even legal immigrants, restricting immigration to "white" countries and honouring racist war "heroes" are all abhorrent and racist views, but they are all clearly not inciting violence in any way.
How do you restrict the speech of people who advocate for white supremacy in non-violent ways? You could specifically ban white supremacy, but such a narrowly targeted law would probably lead to more radicalization.
Why does this story about CF dropping the Daily Stormer have not simply one comment saying "Good."? Why is there even a discussion? No one is defending it explicitly, but many do implicitly.
Because you can't operate systems as big as the internet on a case by case basis. People are concerned that this action could lead to other, more noble, speech being suppressed by corporations like cloudflare.
I'm happy they're offline for the moment, but I wish it was because of a court order focused on specific actions (eg incitement of specific violence) rather than a single person's disapproval of their (really quite terrible) message.
> I'm happy they're offline for the moment, but I wish it was because of a court order focused on specific actions
but
> you can't operate systems as big as the internet on a case by case basis.
So - you want such pages to be impossible to persecute for illegal activities in practice?
Anyway - having a website on a particular server is not a human right. If I come to your newspaper and demand you put my stuff in there - you can say "no" and don't have to explain yourself, and it's not a violation of free speech.
The violation of a free speech would be if somebody forbid you to print your newspaper at all. It's not the case - daily stormer can put servers in basement and publish their propaganda from there. So - free speech is irrelevant to this case.
It's simply about people refusing to do business with assholes, and I am quite confused why would anybody oppose that attitude.
Private internet companies should operate with scalable, predictable rules. They should be required to operate without discrimination against legally protected classes, but otherwise are free to deny service to anyone.
Courts should punish people and organizations that produce violence, discrimination against protected classes, and/or libel. This production may be direct or indirect; Judges draw the line. When those people/organizations are punished, all their outlets should be effected.
Mostly I just want these actions to be super credible and super effective. The fascists are crying unjust censorship left and right... I want social decency enforced in a way that undermines that argument.
For example, I wish the Charlottesville counter protest was 10,000 people standing together, in silence, holding signs saying "SHAME" and "Liberty and Justice for ALL." Then the Nazis would have no grounds to claim their speech was suppressed, and also no grounds to claim that they represent anything but an angry, alienated minority.
The right to your own ideas is not an absolute. It's a pact you have to respect and it involves respecting other people rights first. Neonazi and white supremacist are betraying this social pact by furthering the idea of a superior race and the extermination of the different, that's why they're walking a really thin line when it comes to their right to First Amendment protection.
You just resorted to what I call "the bad child argument". The bad rich child who already has everything wants an icecream. Mom, for once, says no. The child throws a fit and blames mom for it: if you gave me the ice cream I wouldn't have thrown a fit.
All political ideologues think their opposition wants to take away their freedoms. If you make the rule that people who want to remove freedoms don't get them, you create a tool for any party in power to silence their opponents.
There is no prerequisite like that in the first amendment. Go read the thing. Monarchism was a serious threat to the founders. Monarchists don't believe in many freedoms including freedom of speech. But the founders didn't specify it only applied to non-monarchs. Because they knew such a feature could be abused.
>You just resorted to what I call "the bad child argument". The bad rich child who already has everything wants an icecream. Mom, for once, says no. The child throws a fit and blames mom for it: if you gave me the ice cream I wouldn't have thrown a fit.
What on Earth are you talking about? Neonazis are spoiled rich kids that get everything they want? Freedom of speech is a luxury like icecream?
> Neonazis are spoiled rich kids that get everything they want
They aren't. They are what was once the middle class, which has been chipped away at for the past 40+ years.
There's systems of misdirection that have been set up to convince them they are coming up short not because of how the rules are constructed by those in power, but because of a dis-empowered scapegoat.
This redirection trick away from the powerful to the unfamiliar outsider is literally (and literarily) from antiquity. It's part of an ancient bagful of common political slight of hand tricks used to fool people.
It doesn't work on everyone, but those it does work on...well we've seen what that looks like yet again.
So just as we wouldn't allow people to go around and seriously promote say smoking in front of infants for the health of the baby, we should think twice about allowing dangerous political nonsense to be spread and entertained as if it's true - especially ideas with a history of inciting mass murder.
> All political ideologues think their opposition wants to take away their freedoms. If you make the rule that people who want to remove freedoms don't get them
Analogous would be "if you make the rule that people who you think want to remove freedoms but actually don't" -- instead you're switching goal posts mid-sentence.
Who gets to determine that? The abortion debate is essentially about both sides claiming the other is taking away a persons rights. On one side it's bodily autonomy on the other right to life (and maybe some religious freeeddom too).
It's bloody common sense. If you don't respect my rights, there will come a time, as history has shown time and again, when I will gather enough power to be able to not respect yours. And so, slavery was abolished.
What are you talking about? You shouldn't have the right to setup an organization to proactively further killing just because you're not actually killing all the time.
HOW in the world is a white supremacist different from a radicalized muslim american citizen who never wore a suicide vest but is strongly convinced that all the infidels should die?
Why isn't he allowed to express this thoughts freely? Do you see the double standard here?
It's critical to draw the line at clear action. The FBI doesn't arrest people for declarating jihad, it arrests them for attempting to detonate fake bombs.
Similarly, it should be legal for these fascist assholes to spew their garbage, but they should be locked up as soon as they demonstrate clear intent to hurt someone.
Problem is - we need the line. If someone is openly calling for someone else's death, is it ok?
And neo nazis - just by embracing the historical association - seem to be ok with crossing any line.
Of course it brings other problems, as any regulation ever (e.g. calling nazi anyone you disagree with), but society needs to set at least some limits. Enforcing them will be always subject to debate, as is natural and (imo) good in democracy.
You must have seen my grandparents - the ones that have witnessed the real horror of nazisme/ww2 - radical to the bone. Doing all dangerous violent stuff with their walker and wheelchair. A whole life of attacking "good people" from the extreme right or whatever orange buffoons choose to describe them these days.
The notion that anybody that is anti-facisme - which for me should be natural for anybody with some minimum of values - is a radical of extreme-whatever is plain ridiculous.
I'm beginning to think that as soon as someone says the word 'agenda', you can safely ignore what they have to say. That word is never used constructively in political discussions.
No, the "radical leftist part" is that anyone who disagrees with what cloudflare has done is a "nazi sympathizer", I have Jewish parents, biracial, queer, and a communist. I'm about as a far from a "nazi sympathizer" as you can get.
Yet I still think that what cloudlfare has done is wrong because the same social norms that lead to such behavior, would have in the past lead to people stifling the communications of things I am very much for (civil rights, gay rights etc...)
Sure, Nazi's are obviously evil. But so what? In the past lots of things we think of today as "good" were in the past "obviously evil" and it took a great deal of hard work to turn those tides around.
There is a cost to letting people we hate have easy communications. But there is also a cost to making it hard for people we hate to share their ideas. The cost is that when we as a society hate wrongly, as we have done in the past with respect to people of various races, sexuality, and gender, if the people we hate have a difficult time communicating, we will not be able to progress as a society.
So yeah. I think the kind of thought that leads to what cloudflare has done, is dangerous because it makes it will make it difficult for society to have moral progress. And according to you that makes me a "nazi sympathizer".
So yeah. That is what people are condemning for, and rightly so. Not for being "against nazis", for saying that anyone who disagrees with what cloud flare has done is a nazi sympathyzer.
You see this a lot in engineering circles. Too much hope, idealism and theory, not enough real-world socialization.
We have to identify and solve the problem of libertarianism wherever it pops up. There's something wrong with these unsocialized libertarians. The result is Nazi marches.
Isn't perjury a crime? What about death threats? It's all speech, and it's the type of speech hate groups use - the type that is already a crime and we want to protect under some strange interpretation of the first amendment to your constitution.
If a group is threatening the security of non-white people, some even going to the extent of carrying guns (as is their right) whilst they make said threats and spread lies, I don't know what else you need to shut them down.
> The problem with making these exceptions like "Let's have freedom of speech but not for these and these people...yadayadayada" is we can never be sure where to draw the line.
There's no problem here. You have freedom as long as you don't hurt other people. Different nuances of what "hurt" means which are not covered directly by law are decided in courts of law by judges.
Most ISIS content is already illegal for things like inciting violence. If the Daily Stormer is breaking the law by inciting violence, then it should be dealt with the same way. There is an existing legal process and it doesn't require the discretion of Cloudflare's CEO.
The first sentence is the main reason we are so fucked. There's literally nothing radical or leftist in what I said. Nazism is literally responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths world wide. Fact.
You know how I know you're actually a shill?
> And don't even start with the car-thing. An individual psycho does not compare to organized widely accepted violence.
Whataboutism in literally the next paragraph:
> What about BLM which is openly racist and violent (July 2016 anti-white/police sniper attack, riots, assaults, highway blockings etc.)
99.99% of all people who have ever been to a BLM protest are peaceful. Blocking cars is called Civil Disobedience. It is literally what the Nazis are doing when they demonstrate in a liberal town in which they don't even live. It's just as annoying when they close down the center of a town for Nazis as it is when BLM blocks a street in Baltimore.
You are literally equating Nazis to people who want universal healthcare, equal pay for equal work, and to not get shot at by police for the color of their skin.
We're only talking about Nazis. Not the right wing. The Nazis claim they are "alt-right" or whatever but someone who is advocating for lower taxes and a decrease in government spending and for abortion to be illegal isn't the enemy. Nazis are the enemy. Stop conflating Nazis with the legitimate right wing of the nation.
I am not qualified to analyze the rest of the comments, but the last/first sentences strikes dear to me. In succession they were:
> > > The idea that Cloudflare is a public space requiring the protection of the first amendment from a company's policies is laughable. The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups.
> > The last sentence is the main reason why the world is so fucked up today. "Unless you agree with my radical leftist agenda you are a nazi/racist/<some_imaginary_word>"-mentality and the complete unreasonability of the left is the reason why normal people are fed up with all this crap and are voting for Trump, Brexit etc.
> The [previous citation] is the main reason we are so fucked. There's literally nothing radical or leftist in what I said. Nazism is literally responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths world wide. Fact.
The radical part of your first assertion, Akujin, is that it is hard to interpret your statement as anything else than "person A saying that Cloudflare is a public space requiring the protection of the first amendment from a company's policies implies that A is a Nazi sympathizer". These kind of statements are highly polarizing, hurtful and anger-inducing, because they deny A to have any rationally positive reason for their statement and instead generalize A to belong to an undesirable group. Notice how arguments structured in this way will never convince anyone that is not already of your opinion and will increase the outrage of those readers that are already of your opinion. I would call this radicalizing.
I Akujin is right. Often I have the feeling we moved from the left-right spectrum to a triangle, where the "middle" from before has become its own extreme, that is touting the "free speech for Nazis" over and over again most because they fear of taking any sides.
I haven't heard any touting from the middle in support of any agenda. But the free marketplace of ideas doesn't work if there are exceptions. Dumb ideas should be loud and clear so everyone has the opportunity to hear how dumb they are. If you think an idea is so dangerous that just being heard will convert people, then I think you should be concerned about how you feel about that idea.
I really think BLM supporters, for example, fear this white-supremacy propaganda because it's so similar to their own tactics and agenda. Their goal is to sweep across the country by taking hold of the narrative, so they think this garbage has the potential to sweep the country too. But the average person is at work and paying bills, trying to live a peaceful life, and sees all this stupidity for what it is.
That's a nice infographic and all, but we're not talking about that level of tolerance. Tolerance of a website that has some words and pictures on it, or tolerating someone saying something you disagree with on a college campus, is a lot different than tolerance of Germany invading Poland. We have laws against violence, harassment, and even defaming in some areas that cover when these things go past just talk. At that point everyone is onboard with enforcement because it's gone too far.
Again I'll provide a real example of how hard it is to draw a line : is discussing the number of casualties resulting from the Nazi agenda during WW2 (discussion which you can for an example find in this precise thread) considered pro-nazi or not ?
Should this discussion be shut down ? Some people are convinced that discussing a number is just the foreshadow of radical negationism and therefore should be banned speech.
We have come to the point where comments in here is accusing an other HN commenter of being a shill and doing Whataboutism. Maybe we should take a step back and focus on what, if anything, the disagreement is about?
How would you formulate a general law which forbids only neo-nazi organizations and neo-nazi demonstrations? The first thing that comes to my mind is a law against organizations that write that they intend to use violence, but then you just end up with organizations that don't explicitly write that down anywhere but still practice it. If you applied it more flexible, like for example that any organization which members ever express an intention of violence, you would very fast find that doing a test run on history would catch a much large number of organizations than intended.
You could define it as "anything classified as a terrorist group by the state", but again many groups has been classified as such in the past, the state has occasionally change their mind, and animal right activists is an famous example that the FBI classified as "serious domestic terrorist threat". That leaves the system that Germany currently have, and leaves the details to the legal system to figure out what is nazi and what isn't.
I think there's two paths that seem like they might be worthwhile to pursue:
1. Remove the "imminent" requirement of the incitement restrictions on free speech. Currently, speech is already prohibited if it's an incitement to imminent lawless action and is likely to result in lawless action. I personally don't see all that much reason why "Go kill that specific jew with this bat" is substantially different than "All jews should be killed".
2. Ban specific iconography such as swastikas, white hoods, etc. I don't think frankly this is all that effective, supremacists can easily just take on a new symbol. But there's precedent in other countries and I don't think there's a slippery slope if every icon requires seperate prohibitions.
Note in both of these cases these ban the speech / symbols themselves, and not the groups. I don't think there's any way you can ban an organization altogether in any reasonable way.
> Ban specific iconography such as swastikas, white hoods, etc
Funnily enough the ADL has done this for a long time (well, not specifically ban but add icons to their list of hate symbols) and have been criticised for recently adding Pepe the frog to their list. I'm sure we've all been on the internet long enough to see someone with a Nazi Pepe profile picture so it clearly is used in reference to the alt-right, but at the same time it's just a generic crap meme that's been hijacked. What stops other symbols that have more meaning than a stupid meme (like the swastika, which originates from Hinduism I believe) being banned in legitimate use because it's been hijacked by Nazis?
That has very little to do with banning the symbols or not though. The swastika was highjacked regardless of whether the symbol was banned. It's unfortunate, but I don't see much of a solution beyond resisting any attempt to highjack important symbols before they're associated primarily with Nazis / white supremacists / whatever.
If your point is that banning will also restrict the non-racist interpretation of that symbol, context and reasonable interpretation when enforcing these laws can be used. I'm no expert on Germany / other places that ban iconography, but I would guess that a swastika clearly used in it's original context would be allowed to be displayed.
Sounds reasonable. Here in Sweden we have both, through we also have organization which people would identify as Neo-Nazism, and they also demonstrate and get into fights with counter-demonstraters.
This is not what the parent is employing. The parent commenter is saying that if you enable arbitrary lines in the sand that those in power WILL ENGAGE in Whataboutism, taking the corner case of "we're just going to ban Nazi speech" and stuffing the precedent down the throats of the courts until it sticks close enough.
As the parent commenter said, there is enough evidence to show that there are violent sects of BLM and other groups that promote equality, and that might just be enough to get the corner case precedent to hammer and crush the same freedom of assembly we just happened to carve out for white supremacists.
> Nazism is literally responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths world wide. Fact.
Not true. "hundreds of millions" implies >= 200 million. According to wikipedia, total deaths during WW2 were 70-85 million. Not all of these were to do with the actions on Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, so the total bodycount for fascism would be c. 50-60 million.
This is a lot, but considerably less than your overblown claim.
>There's literally nothing radical or leftist in what I said.
"The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups"
Can be expanded to:
"There are people in the world who disagree with me. It cannot possibly be that there is a rainbow of opinion and some people draw different lines in different places. Nay! My opinion is clearly infallible and indeed no less than the very standard of all educated men, so all who disagree must be members of organized hate groups infiltrating our pristine website."
This clearly implies the follow on sentence:
"And therefore we should gag them all to prevent their hateful agenda".
Expanding it that way makes you sound like a prat, that's my bias shining through. Take a guess on whether I agree with you on whether we're the victim of a sustained nazi infiltration conspiracy or not. That must make me an evil internet-nazi spearheading the covert assault on the hacker news psyche. Stand clear people, I'm dangerous and infectious.
You are talking about raciscm and white supremacy in general. They are talking about Naziism itself, which didn't arise until the early 20th century in post-WW1 Germany.
It seems people have no idea that Nazis are actually extremely violent people. I'm not talking about your average racist, but people that identify with the Nazi party. Violence is central to their philosophy. If you actually met any modern-day Nazis, you would know this. It took me about two days of hanging out with Nazis before they literally tried to blow me up.
This isn't some free-speech issue where you debate politely and sip iced water and other frippery.. this is actual people killing other people. This is how the the real world actually operates, instead of libertarian-nerd theory world.
And you know Nazis would be extremely violent people because no rational person would self identify with that group, so already they're batshit insane, which means they're likely to be extremely violent. And sure enough, when hundreds of Nazis gathered this weekend in Charlottesville, you actually ended up with an event measured in terms of "death toll".
We have to treat these people like armed and dangerous criminals, like you would ISIS or any active shooter.
And we all need to understand that government limits speech in many, many ways, not just the "fire in the theatre" example, but with things like sedition and other criminal conspiracies to more mundane things like copyrights and libel.
People forget that we went to war against these people and used to kill Nazis wholesale less than 80 years ago, because the Nazi party went to war against America. Identifying with them means you've actually declared war against the US. Not sure how much clearer you could be in declaring yourself to be a violent and dangerous criminal than that.
Just ban them. Arrest their members. Don't be the socially inept libertarian nerd that thinks only in terms of theory without any real-world experience. It's perfectly fine to limit rights and freedoms in the real world. You can do it!
1. I was watching the news and in a picture I noticed one of the counter protesters using some sort of spray can as a flamethrower. I also saw the counter protesters beating up a spokesman for the protesters before the police saved him. So violence goes all around.
2. Arresting people just because someone like the parent here calls them violent is a really bad idea. As in, it's horrendous. If all someone has to do is call you violent to have you arrested, then boy can it be used to silence people that say things inconvenient to whoever wants to silence them. Saying "arrest their member" about a political group is extreme, ignores any legal precepts of innocent until proven guilty, and can be used by the most authoritarian groups to silence anyone they choose.
That said I do find protesters very unlikable. The counter protesters I have found a little bit more likeable but still unlikable, because they seem somewhat hypocritical and dishonest, given they have been somewhat violent as well, and have said that it doesn't matter that they were violent as well.
The difference isn't the violence at any one rally. The difference is that one group (the one with the swastikas) actually advocates genocide. As in: there were people in Charlottesville who openly told reporters that they want to send jews/blacks/muslims to gas chambers. And even if there were only a few of those, the swastika, "heil X", and nazi salute are undeniably linked with the history of the Nazi party, the holocaust, and WW2. I just scrolled through a few pages of pictures, and I think it's fair to say that the protest were pretty homogenous in that regard. I don't see many history professors among these people demonstrating to preserve the value of confederate monuments for science. It's also somewhat telling that I'm having trouble finding a single woman among that side of the protest.
Given such a protest–and even if you disagree with the above, please entertain this as a hypothetical–what would be the makeup of the group of people opposing such a protest? It seems to me that, in principle, everybody who disagrees with the far-right ideology of these protesters could, or even should, be among the counter-protesters. You can be a Nazi, or you can be against Nazis. But I'm having a hard time imagining someone being neutral: "I think the idea of sending the jews to the gas chamber has potential, but I will reserve judgement until I have studied it in more detail" just doesn't seem like a common opinion.
And that's why people are so outraged with the President's "there are always two sides" equivocation: one side wants genocide, the other wants "no genocide". Even if both sides had been similarly violent (which they were not: only one committed a terror attack killing someone), they aren't comparable. Because for these Nazis, the opposition is in the way of their fantasy of a whites-only country, whereas for these opponents, the step after keeping the upper hand against the Nazis is "going home".
Action can and should be taken against individuals that make a credible threat. We certainly don't want to have people fearing for their life. I don't think that "openly told reporters that they want to send jews/blacks/muslims to gas chambers" is in the slightest bit likely top happen, fortunately. Also, you don't go after a group because of one guy; imagine if that was applied to blacks, it would be horrible.
One can criticize both groups and still not be neutral. As I have stated, I do not like the neo nazis (not sure if all the original protesters are that or if only a few of them are, either way, they all seem quite unlikable).
What I have really been against is the "just arrest people for being seen in a group" which is what my comment was really replying to. Asking for discriminatory laws like this is backwards, harking back to when there were discriminatory laws against people with black skin. Although I know this is not what you were replying to, this is just to show why I made the comment in the first place. Also I seem to be being called a libertarian just for disagreeing with what I replied to, I don't think I have ever actually agreed with anything that someone calling themselves a libertarian has said, that I remember anyway.
If you didn't want to be arrested, then you shouldn't be a member of a group that has waged war against the US?
It's a good idea to arrest violent people. Don't be the libertarian theory nerd that thinks of people as academic concepts only. In the real world, people are violent and dangerous, and they get to be arrested.
Government limits rights and freedoms of individuals to deal with the real world.
Person A is nazi and killed someone during a protest.
Person B is also nazi
Therefore person B potentially killed someone during a protest.
Therefore we should arrest all nazis
How hard is this to understand the following
GROUPS != INDIVIDUALS
You're advocating to punish individuals by what group they belong to instead of what they did.
Sounds familar?
Person A is a jew and lends money and is rich by "stealing" money from the borrowers via interest
Person B is also a jew
Therefore person b "stole" money
Therefore we should arrest all jews
This is a false equivalence. I think it's much more like, Person A is a nazi and killed someone after being indoctrinated by violent nazi rhetoric, therefore we should stop allowing violent nazi rhetoric to be spread.
And even then it's not actually that, because a private company has decided to stop hosting the content, the government/law enforcement was never involved.
Only if they are actually being violent, there is no reason to arrest people because they might be violent. Now let's apply your statement more broadly. Islamists successfully destroyed the World Trade Center. They have actually caused more death than those 'neo nazis' in recent times. If you were to apply what you are advocating for fairly, then every Muslims would be arrested in the US. After all it's members have waged war against the US, and some of its members still do. It would be more appropriate. Now I don't agree with arresting every Muslim as I don't agree with arresting every stupid neo nazi. If someone espouses arresting those protesters but not Muslims, then surely they are a hypocrite, who only applies what they preach very selectively.
> If you were to apply what you are advocating for fairly, then every Muslims would be arrested in the US.
No. Just no.
Islamists =/= Muslims
The honest comparison would be to ask if anyone who professes to be a member of Al Qaeda or ISIS, is considered a criminal by simple association.
And if they provide "material support or resources" (like organising/publishing/translating, at the lower end of terrorist criminality) they would be so.
Did you realise the point of my comment was not to criticize Muslims at all, just showing where the 'Just arrest them' mentality would actually lead to. There is a reason why I put both Islamist and Muslim in my comment, which was to separate them, because I know the difference. You somehow didn't understand that. So what you are replying to is not what I meant or wrote.
I don't think your comment was designed to criticise Muslims, but I think you did a sloppy job making your point, and equivocated (maybe accidentally) the wrong sets and members.
Charitably, your comment reads that people who call themselves Nazis today are as far removed from (and do not bear the mantle of) the Nazis of WW2, as Muslims are removed from Islamist terrorists.
Again, charitably, that is an appalling comparison. Because it implies the reverse too; that Muslims are as responsible for the crimes of 9/11 as one believes modern Nazis are for bearing the history of the National Socialist movement - which of course they (modern Nazis) are.
More clearly: The perpetrators of 9/11 are only tangentially part of the same group as Muslims in general. You may as well group these NeoNazis with the set "Americans", or "White Men", as their motivations have as little bearing as regular Muslims and the men who brought down WTC.
As before, the better comparison is to ask if non-violent members of ISIS or Al Qaida can be assumed criminals/terrorists, as their violent companions are.
To put it simply, I do not agree that it is an appalling comparison like you say. I think the perpetrators of 9/11 thought of themselves as Muslims, just as other Muslims thought the 9/11 perpetrators as Muslims. So yes, they identified as Muslims, and were part of the group "Muslims".
You know why I made that comparison, because someone was saying arrest them just for associating with the group, I was showing how it would apply more widely, indeed it could apply to people who associate with BLM, it is terrible to throw away due process like that.
I think that the people who carry swastikas and the like are morons, who have a fantasy view of what actual Nazis were. They are certainly not part of the Nazi Party, because it died at the end of WW2. If you think my view of them is wrong, then please correct me.
> We literally declared war against them, and killed them wholesale.
Except we didn't kill them wholesale. The United States pardoned or looked the other way for lesser Nazis and Imperialists in Japan to run their respective postwar governments. How do you think these countries functioned after the war? It's not like they systematically shot every remaining Nazi.
I don't think comparing state actions against other states is very useful or instructive when you're talking about non-state actors. We don't "wage war" against domestic political groups. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything, but I hope you realize that military action is an extreme response to what amounts to a relatively small (but worrying) group.
Whbat part of Islamists have waged terror that you did not understand. I am not advocating arresting Muslims for simply being Muslim, just as I am not advocating arresting neo nazis for being neo nazis. We don't want laws that are different for certain groups, or how rich someone is. That the law applies equally to everyone is something that is valuable to preserve. We don't want to go back to the old days where blacks were treated by the law as inferior. Suggesting you do this to any groups because you don't like them is a travesty of justice.
Amen! Wow I'd like to hug you for these words (libertarian-nerd theory world: right on the money!).
In the end it doesn't matter if it is a leftist or a rightist organization that calls for murder or other criminal or sedituous behaviour: if we can be sure that you use your means of communication to murder people and destroy society, then this has consequences. In Germany I know as well of leftist as rightist groups/activists who were prosecuted on these grounds, so this is by no means something that is just used against nazis.
However: almost all nazi-groups are concerned by this, as violence and hate are constitutive for their movement, while almost all of the leftist groups go uninvolved, since their fundamental interests are compatible with our basic humanitarian values etc.
So, to all you libertarian-nerds: stop whining (and seeming stupid thereby) that it would be sooooo hard to detect speech that is used to murder people, poison the civil society and destroy the democratic form of government. There is nothing valuable about hateful agitation, we can do fine without it. And please stop acting as if it didn't matter: the whole point of the Charlottesville-demonstration was to show that people can be motivated by hateful agitation and propaganda on the internet to go out and intimidate the rest of the world. That people can be motivated to let go of all inhibitions if they see day after day that it is okay to talk about killing jews, homosexuals and afroamericans, that other people kudo them when they deride minorities themselves.
Oh and by the way: go and check your priviledges. It is easy to act as if hateful speech wouldn't matter if you aren't affected by it (or are intelligent and eloquent enough to turn the tables). But: hateful speech harms the people that are affected by it and can make life a living hell for them. I mean: it is obviously the aim of it, isn't it? I deride and intimidate minorities, so that ... they feel derided and intimidated. It's just that simple.
What about anti-nazis that constantly cry out how every nazi is an armed, dangerous criminal that should be killed or arrested wholesale.
My opinion about those?
Just ban them. Arrest their members. Don't be the socially inept libertarian nerd that thinks only in terms of theory without any real-world experience. It's perfectly fine to limit rights and freedoms in the real world. You can do it!
The good thing about that argument: nobody who has anything to say in this world is ever going to take it seriously. Not only does it miss the point of the argument that it pretends to reply to, it also lacks common-sense and good judgement.
Well done, sir. This is why nobody takes libertarians serious.
> The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups.
This is an extremely frightening statement to me. I'm terrified by the fact that you'd paint me as a Nazi sympathizer because my meta-level beliefs that text and speech should be protected are stronger than my object-level beliefs that Nazi philosophy is evil.
The Nazis are not reviled today because they had disgusting beliefs. They're reviled because they actually murdered millions of innocent citizens.
I'm okay with neonazis saying disgusting things, as long as they play by the rules and don't commit any violence. (Hell, people brought AK-47's and AR-15's to Charlottesville but didn't use them, despite the violent clashes.) Whatever happened to "sticks and stones"? Do kids not learn that mantra anymore?
To be clear, this is a separate question from whether major internet infrastructure providers should be considered de facto public systems and fall under the 1st amendment. I don't think they should, so I think this falls within Cloudflare's rights (although I wish they had done otherwise). I'm just objecting to the characterization that the only people who could possibly object to Cloudflare here are neonazis or their sympathizers.
For what it's worth, I tried to find the Daily Stormer site to see what it is they actually advocate for, but I was unable to. I'm not sure if it's because of the domain name issues, Cloudflare, Google search or what, but it's a little disconcerting to me that ideas can be so easily expunged from the internet. So much for the "right to forget" controversy - I guess it is possible after all, if the companies were motivated to do so.
I'm okay with neonazis saying disgusting things, as long as they play by the rules and don't commit any violence. (Hell, people brought AK-47's and AR-15's to Charlottesville but didn't use them, despite the violent clashes.)
So intimidation and threats of violence are ok? Are you really commending these people for their restraint in not using AK-47s at a demonstration?
One of the lessons from the first round of Nazis is that, by the time the threatening talk turns to actual large-scale violence, it's too late. When Hitler got out of prison in 1924, he made sure that he would be seen as an "all talk" kind of guy by those who could have shut him down.
Think forward a little bit. The "all talk" guy with vile opinions backed by a violent mob is already in the White House. He won. Now is exactly NOT the time to try to curtail free speech in any way, lest that same precedent be used by the administration to stifle dissent by his opposition - you - in the future.
Freedom of speech (and in fact a lot of the Constitution) is constructed to curtail governmental powers so that dangerous groups in charge aren't able to fundamentally re-shape the country. Why would you want to undermine that when the country is arguably very close to being in that position?
(Personally I think CloudFlare is within its rights to fire a client it doesn't like; non-governmental entities don't have first amendment obligations, just a requirement not to break certain class-based discrimination laws. I don't know if neo-Nazis are a protected class in that respect but it's difficult to see how they would be, since they are not a political party or recognized minority group.)
Fortunately the all talk guy can not do much because there are still some other branches of government. But that doesn't mean that he wouldn't if he could.
The freedom of speech thing matters not one bit to the alt-right and the Nazis longer than it takes them to overthrow the present order, after that it will go out the window very quickly.
Democracy can be destroyed, it has happened before and it likely will happen again, there is absolutely no reason to believe that it could not happen in America.
Anyway, this whole discussion isn't about free speech to begin with, it is about hate speech and inciting to violence.
Well, those things aren't the same. 'Hate speech' is protected in America (by omission; it's not defined anywhere). Incitement to violence is emphatically not, and is an offense. That being said, I certainly don't intend to limit our debate to semantics when it's actually the broader thrust of your argument that I want to challenge. (There is quite a good write-up here on definitions[1])
I agree that there is no reason why such destruction could not happen here. That is why I believe it is particularly important not to argue for narrow exemptions to important constitutional protections on the grounds of a perceived acute threat. Those protections are shields against the kind of 'democracide' that we may face, so why would we take them apart ourselves?
Furthermore, I think we're safer for having these Nazis out in the open. Their ideas are more easily ridiculed; they are denied the romantic attraction of being driven underground; and their members are more easily monitored (and infiltrated) by the FBI such that any planned atrocities are more readily stopped. They are not an existential threat to the republic, rather, a tiny minority of dangerous people who need to be monitored and arrested whenever they break a law.
I think your comment must have landed here through a time warp of sorts, it appears to have been written last Wednesday and does not take into account the developments since then.
Maybe you would like to update it to present day knowledge?
Since you didn't actually write anything substantive in your quite witty comment, I'll have to put words in your mouth. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
You see Wednesday as a sign of an emboldened neo-Nazi movement, an indication of a growing threat, a sign that a formerly dormant group has begun taking direct action.
I see it as a new national awareness of a group of people who have been here all along, a desperately sad act of murder by a damaged man, and a discredited and clumsy president managing to align himself publicly with an evil ideology decried by everyone except those same neo Nazis.
And you're advocating for, well, I'm not actually sure, but some sort of legislative change to tackle the threat you perceive because you believe it will make us safer. I'm pushing for the opposite, because I believe that your way will drive dangerous people further into the shadows while undermining those defenses we talked about above.
Probably there is a middle way, maybe involving using existing laws such as those used to combat gangs to break apart specific groups of neo Nazis, or quietly increasing the funding of those parts of the FBI which are responsible for domestic extremism.
Probably I am wrong and you are right. I do not think I can convince you, but perhaps you can convince me.
> And you're advocating for, well, I'm not actually sure, but some sort of legislative change to tackle the threat you perceive because you believe it will make us safer.
No, I'm not advocating for that at all.
For the rest I would class your assessment as 'mostly accurate', but the devil is in the details.
If you would like to take this off-line I'd be more than happy to converse with you, jacques@mattheij.com.
> This is an extremely frightening statement to me. I'm terrified by the fact that you'd paint me as a Nazi sympathizer because my meta-level beliefs that text and speech should be protected are stronger than my object-level beliefs that Nazi philosophy is evil.
Well, your theoretical beliefs are now put to a much more practical test, sympathizing with the Nazis in any way shape or form, even if it comes down to just sympathizing with their 'right to a platform' is an excellent way to see how strong ones beliefs really are.
If this is the first time you are in a situation where your strongly held principles are put to the test then I sympathize with you, the longer you live the more this will happen and the more likely you will end up in a situation where there is a conflict between a strongly held belief and a negative consequence for yourself.
Note that bringing weapons (loaded or not) to a march sends a message: we're an army, and we're armed. Not using those weapons should not get them points. One of them brought his car and did use it, the damage was as bad or even worse as if he had fired a rifle.
> The Nazis are not reviled today because they had disgusting beliefs. They're reviled because they actually murdered millions of innocent citizens.
And they would do so again in a heartbeat if they knew they could get away with it.
> I'm okay with neonazis saying disgusting things, as long as they play by the rules and don't commit any violence. (Hell, people brought AK-47's and AR-15's to Charlottesville but didn't use them, despite the violent clashes.) Whatever happened to "sticks and stones"? Do kids not learn that mantra anymore?
Neo Nazis only say disgusting things because they know they are still living in a society where they can not get away with doing more but make no mistake, the overthrowing of that very society is their goal and I'd love to see you arguing for 'free speech' in the society that they wish to create.
You'd be up against the wall faster than you can say 'jack shit'.
And they'll gag be back up by tomorrow no doubt. "Hell, people brought AK-47's and AR-15's to Charlottesville but didn't use them, despite the violent clashes." What restraint.
> I'm okay with neonazis saying disgusting things, as long as they play by the rules and don't commit any violence.
So people should be allowed to say anything? So you can organize any imaginable crime, threaten people and promote false information as long as you don't do any physical harm?
I agree that just objecting Cloudflare's decision doesn't make you anything. One being a potential Nazi sympathizer just because they don't see any limits to where free speech ends can just be a very crazy conspiracy theory - nothing else.
I'm not an American and I didn't talk about something being legal or not. I was lucky enough to leave Turkey before they started jailing people based on their ideas, so I know how bad it may get if legal protection on free speech is weakened.
If you are referring to "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never break me", clearly you have other problems with sympathy and empathy.
That's talking about hate speech, which is absolutely covered by the first amendment.
Sufficiently dangerous speech is not protected (Schenck v. United States, Dennis v. United States). Whether or not this speech was sufficiently dangerous is a matter of debate, but the comment you're replying to is correct.
'Fighting words' as defined by the courts is a very very narrow definition, however, and I've seen a lot of really naive comments referrencing that exemption.
I think it's important to point out that almost every time you think speech is 'fighting words', it's not.
This has been proven in the courts over and over. If some idea or words really anger or disgust you, I can almost guarantee that it's protected speech.
I know, which is why I'm trying to be clear that how dangerous this is is a matter of debate. Just because speech is political does NOT mean it is protected (see Dennis v. United States).
To be 'fighting words', they have to be specific, actionable, and immediate. Typically, they also need to be specifically directed.
'Kill all the <insert chosen group>' is not.
'Kill those <specific bunch of persons> over there right now' is... probably...maybe.
That's talking about hate speech. Explicitly dangerous speech, or 'fighting words', as acknowledged in the article, are not a protected class of speech under the First Amendment, as established in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire 1942.
I challenge you to find even one instance of where citation of the Chaplinksy case has ever been used ever since the ruling itself to defend the merit of a clamp down on open speech anywhere in the U.S.
It's doubtful that the case would even be decided the same way today.
There doesn't have to be. The decision shows that the Supreme Court intended to exempt a narrow range of abusive speech from constitutional protection.
It's true that the definition of 'fighting words' has narrowed considerably over the years, but the Chaplinsky case is foundational to the debate on what counts as free speech and has weighed heavily on subsequent judgments.
the Chaplinsky case is foundational to the debate on what counts as free speech and has weighed heavily on subsequent judgments
It's been nothing but a hypothetical argument from the grab-bag of people looking to silence speech they don't agree with by people who write newspaper op-eds. It's never actually been used to deny anyone freedom of speech.
Uh, ad hominems didn't just appear this year in counter-nazi speech. Really: "Many sides". Further, Nazi ideology and arguments are literally ad hominems anyway...
Dr. King himself was labeled as "the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security"
Dr. King wasn't calling for the "cleansing" of our nation. This "but it's a slippery slope" thing is ridiculous when the analogy is to someone who was seeking equality and peace. You know, the EXACT opposite of what these idiots are doing.
Indeed, and yet Dr. King would likely have been censored on the internet by the EXACT same justification (he is dangerous to us) in the not so distant past, if the internet were around back then.
Which is why it is important to have equality of speech.
"Slippery slope" is a poor analogy for restricting speech. A more accurate analogy would be a double edged sword which cuts both ways.
No, he really wouldn't have. You act as though the minority racists ran the entirety of the country and that's just not true. If your statements were based in fact he never would've gotten television or print coverage, and he got ample amounts of both.
You can keep saying that it will be applied to both good and evil until you're blue in the face but it won't make it fact.
If we allow the government to punish people for rape, next thing you know they'll be punishing people for consensual sex. It's a double edged sword.
Dr. King was in fact censored, ignored, slandered and misrepresented by the television and print media. Especially when he protested the war in Vietnam and began his poor people's campaign.
>You can keep saying that it will be applied to both good and evil until you're blue in the face but it won't make it fact.
How are you so sure corporate censorship can never be used for malicious purposes?
Was the war in Iraq a good thing? Because MSNBC censorsed/fired their popular TV host Phil Donahue for questioning it.
The Supreme Court defines 'dangerous speech'. Very specifically in fact. The First Amendment is one of the most well defined of the Amendments and has tons of legal decisions surrounding it.
One of the neo-nazi's ran over a bunch of people with their car in attempt to kill and injure them. Did you miss that video? These nazi's are trying to kill people, they deserve life long prison sentences, not an internet platform to spew hate and calls to violence.
> This is an extremely frightening statement to me.
It truly is to me as well. It's something you expect nazis to say.
Imagine if the comment was
"The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by israel and other jewish sympathizing groups."
It's a form of intimidation to silence groups one disagrees with. I can't believe his comment is the most upvoted on HN of all places.
All the pro-censorship people here are behaving no differently than the neo-nazis they claim to hate. Not only that, both groups share the hatred of free speech and the principles which kept the US from being a nazi germany.
Everyone here is forgetting that Nazi Germany happened because germans supported censorship. Censorship allowed a minority group like the nazis to take over the government and silence everyone else. If the germans had an appreciation for free speech back then nazi germany would have been impossible since most germans opposed hitler and the nazi party. Nazi germany happened because of censorship laws which allowed hitler to ban all political parties and all speech he disagreed with.
But nobody learns history or philosophy anymore it seems.
> Whatever happened to "sticks and stones"? Do kids not learn that mantra anymore?
It seems like kids are taking gender studies instead of philosophy and that is frightening. All the arguments are based on emotion rather than reason.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle and ignoring our request to stop. That's not what this site is for, it destroys what it is for, and we ban accounts that abuse the site this way.
Would you please stop creating accounts to break the site guidelines like this?
I guess the idea coming out of this is that if you want to be forgotten on the Internet, commit wrongspeak. If you want your arrest record and record of your divorce to disappear from the Internet, add some wrongspeak in there - Google, Cloudflare, and others will pull it down in an instant.
"If a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Popper came to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance."
> IMO this is the ideal rebuttal to the 'be tolerant' argument.
It's an interesting point, but at what point does the intolerance of intolerance become intolerance in it's own right?
If the compromise on things we stand for (Freedom of speech, due process, equality for all) where is the line where we cease to be the things we claim to stand for?
FWIW I'm all for charging Nazis with crimes and putting them in jail whenever they commit them. I would be happier if they weren't covered in the media at all. I'd be over the moon if they didn't exist. But if we allow mob rule (which negates the rule of law) to take over, then we risk claiming to stand for things that we do not.
Popper's Paradox illustrates the theoretical. I would argue as a counterpoint that we're successfully as a society not tolerant without limit because of the rule of law.
It's a circular argument that leads nowhere. Just recurse one more time to see it: the people shutting down StormFront, Milo Whatshisname, James Damore, Brendan Eich etc are paragons of intolerance. They scream, they shout, they blockade, they demand firings and other forms of retribution, they DDoS and sometimes they get violent. Meanwhile many in the media and at places like Google stand by and do nothing to stop them.
So by your own argument, should we start tossing Google executives in prison, for tolerating intolerance?
This makes me think of the game theory site linked in an HN comment the other day. I suppose 100% tolerant people would be the naive "always cooperate" players, and 100% intolerant people would be the "always cheat" players.
Interesting to think about how we should behave in this context... If I recall correctly, the ideal behavior would be the copy-cat?
This seems to validate the 'intolerant of intolerance' objective.
Nassim Taleb talks a bit about this in his draft book on Medium. There's a concept of group renormalization which is quite interesting in relation to hardliner absolutists and how the majority must inevitably accommodate their positions.
But I want to know exactly what and how the people who "hate" me think. The idea that censorship solves the problem is pretty flawed; I assume Trump got elected in part by people who felt they couldn't speak their own thoughts out loud anymore. Just like with the Google memo, you create silent resentment instead of keeping a debate open (in as far as some of these people are capable of debate – that's another discussion). You can stick a Nazi label on pretty much anything you don't like, it doesn't mean it's a good idea to censor the other side to death and pretend their concerns don't exist, even if some of those concerns are inapprehensible or appalling.
In some European countries, you were (and well, still are) not allowed to say certain politically incorrect things out loud, which in some countries gave the far right a lot of votes and almost a majority. So people didn't grieve their concerns out loud, but the resentment came out amplified in votes and by other means... While an open debate would likely have created a better atmosphere and perhaps have presented some solutions.
In the long run, you are doing yourself a disservice not pulling everybody into the debate, including terrorists and people sliding into that direction.
I think censorship should be avoided, unless there is a direct and unambiguous call to violent action or a clear violation of other peoples' personal privacy (e.g. "doc'ing", releasing personal information that harms a person).
Cloudflare here admits that large companies are increasingly gatekeeps to the internet, especially in the case of controversial content. They have made a trade-off, and this is probably more about philosophical considerations or personal ideology, but I'd have put freedom of speech and neutrality before censorship of questionable content.
>> But I want to know exactly what and how the people who "hate" me think.
Then go ask them. If there are people that you think probably hate you nearby, I am almost sure there are places in a city where you could go to talk to them.
I know, personally, there has never been a time where I couldn't call the right evangelical church and find out exactly why I am hated.
I've experienced my share of drunk homophobic comments in my direction that do occasionally get violent. I certainly now where to go to find out 'exactly what and how the people who "hate" me think,' I don't for a minute believe they need the internet, let alone cloudflare, to achieve this goal.
That's not why they took them down. You can argue for censoring threatening dangerous terrorist speech all you want but it is incorrect to suggest that is the stance cloudflare took. They censored because stormfront falsely claimed cloudflare sympathized with their cause and pissed of the CEO. Not because the speech itself presented a clear and present danger.
Foreign hosts are not really the right solution to freedom of speech on the internet. First of all it depends on the agreeability with the opinion rather than the right to express it. But moreover they can be DDoS'd just the same without a service like cloudflare. Cloudflare is a proxy not a host.
The core problem is that the Internet is a modern public space while its management has been handled by private entities. Cloudflare is essentially performing the function of the police permitting the KKK to march, which the US constitution permits. They don't have to do it as a private entity, but if DDoS becomes the norm for unpopular speech then the internet is no longer a public space, just a space for views that don't get DDoS'd.
> Cloudflare is essentially performing the function of the police permitting the KKK to march, which the US constitution permits
The better analogy is that Cloudflare is performing the function of private security instead of a police force.
The United State government doesn't require any private entities to provide armed security for political groups they dislike (in fact, the US government couldn't make such a mandate as the mandate itself would fall afoul of the first amendment).
If we believe that there must be a steward of this resource that should provide this kind of service in a first amendment protected manner, then we should advocate that the government offer DDoS protection services.
I agree. As our society moves more to Internet-based communication we must consider how to preserve and apply the principles of free speech when so much of it is governed by private entities. Is free speech not a desirable trait? Is it merely something that racists exploit, and thus the move to autocratic private management is a blessing, a relief from the constitutional shackles that would compel, say, a law enforcement officer to beat back a mob intent on torching a KKK newspaper? Is that a better world?
Remember that these same principles apply to progressive views as well... which have not historically been as popular, and greatly benefited from free speech protections. I would say we would not be where we are now as a society without them.
I don't understand your downvotes. I agree with the overall point you are making. Private ownership, for better or worse, is leading to the erosion of free speech itself. Taken to its logical end, a society where everything is conducted through private enterprise is going to turn quiescent or hew to the middle at the very least.
As a brown immigrant currently living/working in the States I'm not a Nazi sympathizer by any stretch but I wanted to post in support of your broader point.
Much appreciated. I'm as Left as they come. It is a bit odd to be arguing basic free speech, Enlightenment principles in this day and age. I think we're all having an emotional moment. But it's good, it's healthy to scrutinize our beliefs and ensure they stand up to challenge. (Which is why freedom of speech is so important.)
What is this "public space" statement based on? Only because I can go there? Like in a shop or restaurant? So if I set up a server as a private person, it's a "public space" too?
Looks like some heavy reality bending for a questionable cause to me.
No, your server, shops and restaurants are private spaces. The Internet, the park and the street are public spaces. The questionable cause you speak of is the right to express views in public spaces.
DDoS is the internet equivalent of a mob censoring public speech. Proxies like cloudflare are the equivalent of the police protecting the right to speak, no matter the view.
Remember that these principles, which date to the Enlightenment, work for all views and have benefited the civil rights, antiwar, suffragist, environment and other movements immeasurably.
You do realize that "the internet" is a giant web of mostly private servers right? And therefor not a public space. It's not a park or a street.
But even if it was. You must get a permit just like in real life. Which a private entity doesn't have to grant you. Because you know... personal freedom.
Streets are a giant network of mostly private destinations. The streets themselves are public, and the public has a right to access. Cloudflare is operating on the streets level, not the destination level.
Cloudflare is not bound by regulations, but that's not the issue. DDoS is a relatively new phenomenon and so no regulations exist.
The question is, should the Internet be a free and open public forum or not? Should we permit mobs to knock legal servers off the Internet?
That would seem to run counter to the idea of an open internet embodied in net neutrality, upon which certain laws have been developed and passed over the years. It would be a mistake to merely look at the current laws on the books without grasping the underlying general principles.
Please don't. Rather, if you have a substantive point, give us the information, so we can all learn. Conversely, if you don't have a substantive point it's best to abstain.
This is blatantly wrong. Streets are a giant network of publically owned land which is why they are public. Seriously. What are you even talking about?
Except it is different. The CEO has clearly stated that they won't take terrorist sites down, or any other kind of site, because it's not their job as a utility provider. [1] Its concerning because of its a violation of clearly established policy with an arbitrary decision by the CEO. If it were policy, it wouldn't be a big deal, my own company has anti-terrorism/hatred etc policies. We take this stuff down. It sets a bad precedent for them, they can't have it both ways.
Well, should we be taking down Alqueda websites? There seems to be an implicit assumption in this whole philosophy that if you prevent people from speaking their socially-backward beliefs (online, in person, in websites, in writing) then you'll somehow prevent negative behaviors.
I'm not convinced that's the case. I think progress requires a more nuanced approach than "punish the baddy," but an examination into the psychology and a discourse that shows you understand the frustrations that are being channeled into blind-rage.
The problem with this is that your definition applies to literal Nazis, and it's effectively become a fad to call people Nazis who aren't even remotely. The media being partly to blame with the Trump/Bannon/Brietbart 'fascist'/'white supremacist' hysteria.
An atmosphere of free speech that allows for satire and conversation are the best weapons against extremist ideology.
Your post is incredible; you are stating that advocates for free speech are Nazis and shit posters. You are stating that there are no good faith defenders of free speech.
Not all of us will argue to the contrary. On the other hand, expect no sympathy when the powers-that-be decide to knock your favorite site(s) off the grid because they haven't passed the (next fashionable) purity test. You've no leg to stand on.
> The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups.
Are you serious? "And anyone who disagrees with me must be a Nazi or Nazi sympathiser."
Combined with the fact that the rest of your comment seems to be calling for Nazis to be silenced... I don't think I'm comfortable with where this is going.
"The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups."
What it comes down to is that the people arguing for "free speech" here feel safe in this world, with a growing neo-nazi presence.
They don't feel threatened--they're not a target, the system will protect them, maybe they even have guns or plans to live off the grid, whatever.
They can argue that neo-nazi speech is OK because it isn't an existential threat to them. They may even look at the terrorist car attack in Charlottesville and think "lone wolf, random unplanned attack," but what it comes down to is: they're going to be OK. Cops will protect them, their stuff, the system is on their side.
Those of us who are OK with Cloudflare shutting down the Nazis, we don't trust the system to keep us safe. Cops won't protect us, the system is not on our side. We see the actual threat of nazi violence and death coming our way, and the "free speech" people are doing nothing to stop it.
Al Qaeda websites are not taken down in the US because they can be used to radicalize people; they're taken down when they are used to radicalize people.
It's a mixture of teenagers trying out shock humor, people trying to be ironic, people who don't identify as Nazis but certainly identify with many of their ideals and straight up Nazis. There's a lot of abyss-gazing that pushes people over the edge into extremism.
/pol/ is not one person and it is in no way an organized movement. Some obviously sympathizes, other are edgelords. /pol/ seems like one of the last places where you can actually have a conversation with political adversaries without risking getting banned / shadowbanned or downvoted to obvlivion for having violated some snowflake safespace.
Why would you even reply? This is so out of context, and its a petty attempt at being snarky. I think its funny that /pol/ is better at engaging soberly in a political debate than a forum such as Y-combinator. At least add something more, an argument or you know just an actual REPLY.
Out of context? You're accusing someone of shaming a group of people an then proceed to shame him for being a 16 yr old communist. That's just blatant hypocrisy.
Yup, I've been saying for a while that HN has a vocal majority of racists and sexists. They're now being exposed. Great. There should be a legal fund to sue the entire white supremacist and sexist assholes for damages, every time they speak.
Be careful of this. There are very few actual national socialists in the United States, and they certainly aren't all part of a single organisation like Al Qaeda.
Even among them the majority are probably against genocide since they all deny the holocaust.
What you say does however apply to The Daily Stormer. So I agree that they're a threat and should have been taken down years ago.
Holocaust denial is a pro-genocide ideology. To deny the holocaust of the past is part of denying violence in the present day. It also implies that Jews are liars - it's a very strong piece of anti-semitism.
Holocaust denial is not something people come to accidentally or through a rational evaluation of the evidence. It's something people reach through anti-semitism. What do you think the reactions of someone denying the holocaust in the past would be to evidence of more genocide being planned in the present or future? Deniers are signalling their willingness to help genocide by turning a blind eye to it. They're showing that fear or hatred of Jews is more important to them than facts.
"The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups."
Exactly. Thank you for this beautiful statement.
Dear writer of faul thoughts; have you considered that maybe one day this HN forum that you love so much will be closed due your writings here? Let's keep our forum clean from your Nazi sympathizing so that HN can continue as a part of the beautiful open web.
There are literally thousands of hosts out there in and outside the United States. The idea that Cloudflare is a public space requiring the protection of the first amendment from a company's policies is laughable. The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by /pol/ and other Nazi sympathizing groups.