| ▲ | felixgallo 14 hours ago |
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| ▲ | putzdown 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| No. This perspective is wrong in both directions: (1) it is bad medicine and, (2) the medicine doesn't treat the disease. If we could successfully ban bad ideas (assuming that "we" could agree on what they are) then perhaps we should. If the damage incurred by the banning of ideas were sufficiently small, perhaps we should. But both of these are false. Banning does not work. And it brings harm. Note that the keepers of "correct speech" doing the banning today (eg in Biden's day) can quickly become the ones being banned another day (eg Trump's). It's true that drowning the truth through volume is a severe problem, especially in a populace that doesn't care to seek out truth, to find needles in haystacks. But again, banning doesn't resolve this problem. The real solution is develop a populace that cares about, seeks out, and with some skill identifies the truth. That may not be an achievable solution, and in the best case it's not going to happen quickly. But it is the only solution. All of the supply-based solutions (controlling speech itself, rather than training good listeners) run afoul of this same problem, that you cannot really limit the supply, and to the extent you can, so can your opponents. |
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| ▲ | paulryanrogers 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | What do you think about measures that stop short of banning? Like down ranking, demonetizing, or even hell 'banning' that just isolates cohorts that consistently violate rules? | | |
| ▲ | rahidz 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not OP, but my opinion is that if a platform wants to do so, then I have zero issues with that, unless they hold a vast majority of market share for a certain medium and have no major competition. But the government should stay out of it. |
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| ▲ | felixgallo 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No. You are objectively wrong. It's great medicine that works -- for example, in Germany, and in the US, and elsewhere, it has stemmed the flow of violent extremism historically to stop the KKK and the Nazis. You can't even become a citizen if you have been a Nazi. Even on the small scale, like reddit, banning /r/fatpeoplehate was originally subject to much handwringing and weeping by the so-called free speech absolutists, but guess what -- it all went away, and the edgelords and bullies went back to 4chan to sulk, resulting in the bullshit not being normalized and made part of polite society. If you want to live in a society where absolutely anything goes at all times, then could I recommend Somalia? |
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| ▲ | unclad5968 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Can we stop with the Nazi stuff. I don't know if they stopped teaching history, but there is nothing happening in the US that is within an order of magnitude of the evil the Nazi's perpetrated. Being anti-vax is not comparable to genocide. |
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| ▲ | jjk166 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The Nazis in 1933 hadn't done anything within an order of magnitude of the evil they would perpetrate in 1943. They nevertheless were still Nazis, and everyone who did not actively condemn them then was in part responsible for what they did later. Many evil people weren't Nazis; some Nazis weren't necessarily evil. Evil is not part of the definition of Nazism. Promoting authoritarianism, exclusionary nationalism, institutional racism, autarky, anti-liberalism and anti-socialism are the hallmarks of Nazism. Anyone who holds the beliefs of the Nazis is a Nazi, regardless of what level of success they have to date achieved in carrying out their aims. | | |
| ▲ | unclad5968 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The Nazis in 1933 hadn't done anything within an order of magnitude of the evil they would perpetrate in 1943. They nevertheless were still Nazis, and everyone who did not actively condemn them then was in part responsible for what they did later. Only because what they did in 1943 surpassed anything imaginable. In 1933 the Nazi party immediately banned all political parties, arrested thousands of political opponents, started forcing sterilization of anyone with hereditary illnesses, and forced abortions of anyone with hereditary illness. Evil is absolutely an identifying part of Nazis. The idea that Nazis are just anti-liberals is exactly why we cannot go around calling everyone we don't like Nazis. The Nazis were not some niche alt-right organization. If you genuinely think there are Nazis controlling youtube or the government, and all you're doing is complaining about it on hackernews, you're just as complicit as you're claiming those people were. | | |
| ▲ | jjk166 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | One is not immune to being a Nazi because they are not evil, being a Nazi makes people evil. Much of the horror of the Nazis was that seemingly normal, reasonable people committed those atrocities; many without even considering that what they were doing was wrong until after the fact. We do not call people Nazis because we dislike them, we dislike them because they are Nazis. Most non-Nazis, when accused of being a Nazi, point out how their views differ from the Nazis. I won't claim it's always the case, but the people who argue they can't possibly be Nazis because Nazis are bad, and they are not, typically are. The Nazis very much were an alt-right, anti-liberal group. They were more than that; I gave a whole list of core tenets to their beliefs. Overlapping some tiny amount doesn't make someone a Nazi. Hitler being a vegetarian is not an indictment of vegetarians. But if a person were to go through the list of those 6 things the Nazis championed and find themselves championing 4 or 5 of them, it should be cause for alarm. | | |
| ▲ | unclad5968 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Listing "anti-liberalism" as one of the worst characteristics of a group that committed genocide, eugenics, enslaved minority groups, and attempted racial extermination is the issue. The idea that being anti-liberal is what makes you a Nazi and not the other stuff is ignorant at best, which is my original point about education. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | That wasn't a list of the worst characteristics. It was a list of useful identifying characteristics. And Nazis were Nazis before they did any genocide. |
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| ▲ | epakai 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We read the history, a lot of it rhymes. Conservatives failed, and exchanged their values for a populist outsider to maintain power (see Franz von Papen). The outsider demeans immigrants and 'sexual deviants'. The outsider champions nationalism. He pardons the people who broke the law to support him. Condemns violence against the party while ignoring the more common violence coming out of the those aligned with the party. Encourages the language of enemies when discussing political opponents and protestors. Nazi has a lot more connotations than genocide. I'm not sure it is worth nitpicking over. Even if you tone it down to Fascist or Authoritarian there will be push back. | |
| ▲ | tehjoker 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
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| ▲ | dotnet00 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How can you say that banning Nazis has worked well considering everything so far this year? |
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| ▲ | felixgallo 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Europe is sliding, but has done ok so far. Crossing fingers. | |
| ▲ | miltonlost 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well it would if we would actually ban Nazis instead of platform them. They haven't been banned. That's the problem. | | |
| ▲ | dotnet00 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You'd have to ban them from society outright without somehow devolving into an authoritarian hellhole in the process (impossible). Trump still primarily posts on a platform specifically created to be a right wing extremist echo chamber. | | |
| ▲ | felixgallo 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | the choice is not 'devolving into an authoritarian hellhole' or 'give the nazis the ability to do whatever they want'. There is a middle ground that we have lived in for many decades effectively, until recently. | | |
| ▲ | dotnet00 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | What changed recently? Until the latest admins, most platforms didn't change their stance on what is and is not allowed all too much. I'm not trying to imply that dichotomy, just saying that simply banning nazis is not effective, because they just retreat into their echo chambers and fester until they can trick enough people into giving them power. I don't know what the ideal solution is, but simply banning them doesn't seem to be it, and neither do the two extremes mentioned seem reasonable. |
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| ▲ | cpursley 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What is a Nazi? | | |
| ▲ | indy 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | For a lot of people it's "anyone who I disagree with". |
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| ▲ | knifemaster 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] |
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| ▲ | tehjoker 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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| ▲ | indy 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | Perhaps not the wisest comment to make in light of recent events | | |
| ▲ | tehjoker 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | I didn't say violence. Whatever you read into that comment is a projection. I'm not even sure violence is effective, but something more muscular than op-eds is called for. For example, labor organizing and various forms of self-defense organizations, of which there are many kinds, not only militias. For example, anti-ICE organizing which protects vulnerable people from the gestapo. |
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