And that's where problems arise. Most of us are comfortable oppressing people we disagree with. The reality is that you can't silence voices you don't like without making yourself vulnerable to the same treatment. We either value the freedom to express ourselves within the limits of the law or we don't. As soon as there are more people who think like you do, none of us are safe and it just becomes a system that silences whatever and whoever is unpopular enough.
> Most of us are comfortable oppressing people we disagree with. The reality is that you can't silence voices you don't like without making yourself vulnerable to the same treatment.
I’m deeply ambivalent about a site like Cloudflare censoring anything but the logic here… absolutely not.
You can classify speech. It’s not terribly difficult to classify when something is an outright call for racial warfare. If I were a person calling for a ban to such speech my own speech wouldn’t automatically be subject to the same criteria.
> You can classify speech. It’s not terribly difficult to classify when something is an outright call for racial warfare.
We already have laws against speech that incites violence and you might be surprised how contested the lines themselves are. There are a lot of people these days who outright state that speech itself == violence and should carry the same consequences.
I'm not a free speech absolutist. When pressed, I don't think very many people are. I just think we need to be extremely careful when it comes to expanding those boundaries and that we're better off to err on the side of freedom because of the importance of what we stand to lose.
I don’t deny that there are difficult areas, blurred lines and so on when it comes to free speech. But that doesn’t mean all speech is one and the same.
The OP’s assertion was that if I oppose censoring Stormfront then I shouldn’t be surprised when I find myself censored. But of course I would: the speech I (and the vast majority of the population) engage in is nowhere near as inflammatory.
> the speech I (and the vast majority of the population) engage in is nowhere near as inflammatory.
According to who? History shows us that what people generally find acceptable or inflammatory has changed wildly over time. I think people should be able to love and marry any consenting adult they can convince to agree to it. That kind of talk would have had me crucified under McCarthyism.
You can't know what the prevailing opinion on the views you hold today will be even 5-10 years from now. People in recent times have been surprised to find themselves in very difficult situations because of that reality. In the US, our culture and values are less stable now than they've been in a long time. If you weaken free speech, as a right or an ideal, just to make yourself more comfortable today you might very well be surprised to find yourself censored or worse tomorrow.
Well for example the definition often used in the UK is from Elizabeth Stanko[1] and is ‘any form of behaviour by an individual that intentionally threatens to or does cause physical, sexual or psychological harm to others or themselves’. Which comes from "Counting the costs"[2]. Under that definition, threats of harm are explicitly defined as a form of violence.
The definition of a crime of violence[2] in the US also explicitly includes threats as a form of violence. "The term 'crime of violence' means—... (a) an offense that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another, or
(b) any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense." (18 USC § 16 my emphasis)
What's the argument against? Folks have been driven to suicide by targeted harassment and doxxing labeled "speech." The whole reason we have laws about public accommodation is because in a society you can drive someone to ruin by everyone collectively refusing to do business with them which was (and still is for the gays) backed by 1A. The threat of violence is violence, speech that is an implicit threat of violence is violence. Speech that makes people feel unsafe due that implicit threat is violence (say a neighborhood where every house had a flag with a black man hung by a noose). Verbal abuse is still abuse. Everyone who's ever been to school knows that bullying doesn't actually require anyone lay a hand on you to make you live in constant fear and that dynamic doesn't just go away when you become an adult.
Sure, we could coin a term like "diet violence" to mean actions that cause in people the behave as if they were under the threat of violence but which doesn't cause bodily harm but what would be the point? Legally it makes sense to do that to discourage escalation but to the victim the only difference is usually but not always the severity.
I'm sympathetic to folks when their messaging or iconography becomes recognized as an implicit threat of violence due to it being co-opted by others when they didn't mean it that way but if a bunch of people started flying communist flags and lynching people I would take mine down even if I was just really pro-workers rights. To me speech is about the content, the ideas, not any particular expression. In opposite world where "we're here we're queer" was a line that caused people to hide in their homes in fear I would be like yeah that's violence if I used that phrase in a speech. I can't separate cause and effect. I can still express my totally fine idea that queer folks do and will always exist, just using different words.
No, muddying up terms and words is not okay. The threat of violence is not violence. It's a threat. And I say that as someone who thinks that threats should carry a far (FAR) higher penalty than they currently do. This constant redefinition of words is done as an attempt to define a new morality but you know very well that there are many holes in it. And yet proponents of this new morality don't care to think about those holes. Being offended or scared can be subjective, therefore you cannot define threats and insults as violence. Otherwise the person which is most easily scared and offended wins. And what a surprise: That's how people already evolved under this new morality, how often do you now see people talk about how "terrified" they are of X or Y or Z or something their political opponent said. Obviously they are not actually terrified per dictionary definition but they use that word because they know that it gives them power under the new morality. Likewise being offended now equals power. You create a very dangerous system through these word redefinitions. Also by admitting that in a world where your views are the minority, you would define violence differently just proves what a problem this is: Whoever wins the social battle, gets to define what violence is. That is dangerous. Things must be based on objective reality.
I'm ambivalent towards this issue and I can't say I have a definite answer (and I'm also someone who thinks threats of violence should carry far far harsher penalties, just think of DV for example), however: that logic doesn't hold. You can certainly define when threats or other speech constitute violence. Just as brandishing a gun and threatening to shoot is not violence in the strictest sense of the word but it is violence for all intents and purposes. Just as burning crosses in front of the house of a black family. Of course these are the clear cut examples and leave no margin for error, the majority of situations are much more ambiguous, and there I agree we should tend to err on the side of caution.
If speech is violence then we have no means other than acts of violence to explore, discuss, and debate ideas. We need to be able to disagree with each other without it being assault and battery.
We need the right to offend, make uncomfortable, and challenge.
Exposure to an idea shouldn't be treated the same as being beaten with a fist because acts of violence are criminalized. Criminalizing unpopular speech is exactly what free speech is supposed to protect us against. Our freedom and ability to demand change depends on the ability to speak out against oppression without fear of being sentenced to prison just because of our words. If we need to speak out against those in power, we need the ability to use words they don't want to hear.
Blurring the lines between words that offend us and actual violence is dangerous and can only lead to actual violence. If there's something we disagree on, let's keep talking about it to reach a solution or at least an understanding of one another. If there is no difference between speech and violence we may as well just pull out guns instead and let might make right.
> The threat of violence is violence, speech that is an implicit threat of violence is violence.
Some speech really does rise to the level of threat and incitement to violence and we already have first amendment exceptions carved out in law to deal with that. We have laws against harassment. We don't need to expand that to include anything that someone doesn't want to hear. Even on the more extreme end, courts have tended to agree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...
The content on the kiwifarms site includes private people's home addresses and highly personal intimidating details that have no reason to be posted except for intimidation. The content violates existing criminal and civil laws and has nothing to do with "reasonable disagreements". It's an utter failure that the police don't do anything about online harassment. Even the EFF article admits this stuff is illegal.
The actions of individuals on that site have at times certainly been offline acts of harassment and abuse. I'd agree that police should take action against those people and I'd agree that it's a failure of the police and our legal system if that doesn't happen. I don't think that necessitates violating free speech ideals or that it justifies the actions of Hurricane Electric however.
> What's the argument against? Folks have been driven to suicide by targeted harassment and doxxing labeled "speech."
No they haven't, not on Kiwi Farms anyhow. This is a deliberate smear intended to justify any extrajudical action taken against the forum. The reality is that it's just a bunch of assholes gossiping about other assholes, and one asshole in particular is doing everything he can to eradicate the site because it has documented, amongst other horrible things, his confession of rape.
> The reality is that it's just a bunch of assholes gossiping about other assholes
Kiwi Farms has been more than just gossip. It's been used by people to harass people in the real world. People there have taken things way too far in the past, and that behavior has been encouraged and supported by the culture of the site. I don't think the forum should be silenced, but it's simply not accurate to say that it's nothing more than online gossip. It has at times been the source of outright harassment and abuse. I think we'd agree that it's an issue that needs to be handled with moderation and the law, but it's also a real problem.
> It's been used by people to harass people in the real world.
And libraries have been used by people to learn effective methods to harass or harm others in the real world. Quick! Let's shut down all the libraries!
> I think we'd agree that it's an issue that needs to be handled with moderation and the law, but it's also a real problem.
We already have such a law. It's called Section 230. Forum operators should not be subject to tortious interference, criminal harassment, or other manner of extrajudicial punishment because they choose to exercise speech that you find repugnant.
The operator of the forum has made harassing statements himself, and he has already lost his section 230 protections. The first lawsuit or prosecution that comes his way will take this into account.
Reporting what the "victims" themselves have said is not harassment. Reporting on the extralegal actions of these "victims" is also not harassment. If you have evidence of him engaging in actual harassment as legally defined then please share it as I'm sure those inclined to see him prosecuted would love to have that information. Don't worry... I'll wait.
There is a lot of dox on Kiwifarms and I am not linking directly to it and getting my HN account banned. You have to look for it yourself. Don't wait around.
You can put that straw man away. I made it clear that I didn't think the site should be shut down. I was only saying that its content and impact shouldn't be misrepresented as mere gossip.
You're probably being auto-flagged. Seems to be a feature intended to stop perpetually misbehaving users. Such as, ones who keep posting the same comment again and again and again for whatever weird obsessive reason. Or maybe it's just someone with very fast flagging fingers sweeping the new comments list.
> How about this then, I suggest, in order to both demonstrate freedom of speech and to entertain fans of KiwiFarms like content we create a KiwiFarms like site based on studying and publishing public facts on popular KiwiFarms members.
Sure, why not. Are there any potentially entertaining or ridiculous ones you have in mind, such that you feel it would be worth your efforts?
If you don't believe in freedom of speech for people you hate you don't believe in it at all. The refusal to use force to stop opinions the majority doesn't like is the only thing that makes any progress possible. Being able to say things other people want to stop you from saying is the defining characteristic of free speech.
You're right; I don't believe in it as a categorical virtue. I believe in it as an extremely useful feature of a system of government as a check against the failure mode of the leadership becoming so disconnected from the public that they fall to corruption. In short, "It's not okay for the government to turn the public square into an echo chamber."
Private people, groups, companies though? Not only may they curtail speech more or less arbitrarily in places they own, I believe quite firmly that they may respond to the exercise of freedom of speech by exercising their freedom of association and refraining from further commerce with the speaker because of the information the speaker has revealed. And with very few, narrow, specific cut-outs, American law agrees with that premise.
> I believe quite firmly that they may respond to the exercise of freedom of speech by exercising their freedom of association and refraining from further commerce with the speaker because of the information the speaker has revealed.
"freedom of association" is what a lot of people who owned diners felt enabled them to deny services to black people. Maybe you still feel that they should have been able to refuse service to anyone for any reason including skin color. We collectively decided that society works a lot better when we infringed on the rights of diner owners in order to protect the rights of everyone who wanted a seat at the lunch counter.
There's an argument to be made that in exchange for the privilege of corporate personhood, any company offering services to the general public should be required to serve any member of that public no matter what their beliefs. I'm not yet convinced that's an ideal situation personally, but situations like this make me more sympathetic to the idea.
I'd rather see our government take steps to make sure that no company is allowed to be in a position to oppress the American people leaving them without recourse. I'd sooner see companies with monopoly power broken up or pathways cleared to bring in meaningful competition. That should help protect the American people from oppression by non-governmental agencies while preserving the rights of companies to discriminate according to ideology (if that's a value we think is worth protecting).
> We collectively decided that society works a lot better when we infringed on the rights of diner owners in order to protect the rights of everyone who wanted a seat at the lunch counter.
We notably did not and that is a key distinction. We carved out very narrow obligation upon business owners to refrain from refusing service in a very specific set of intrinsic categories that have no bearing on the content of one's character. At the federal level, we notably stopped short of things like political affiliation.
In most states you can be refuse service for being a Nazi. Hell, a police officer was recently refused service because the obligation he has to open carry a firearm on duty ran afoul of the establishment's "no firearms on premises" policy (https://www.insider.com/san-francisco-bakery-reems-refuses-p...). The key difference is intrinsic versus malleable properties; a cop can go off duty and put the gun down, a Nazi can stop advocating for the genocide of people, and a KFer can cease to associate with a site tied directly to organizing abuse.
You can make a case that promoting the common welfare is served by maximizing the corporate obligation to serve citizens, but if you're trying to make it the burden's on you to explain why it promotes the common welfare for a person to serve those they know wish for their genocide or actively organize hate mobs against them.
... Anyway, I'd love to continue this thread, but as this site owner exercises their right to filter the content on their own site, I'm limited to the number of responses I may give per period of time. And that is reasonable, it is their site. ;)
Remember the Red Scare, when communists, socialists, and leftists were widely hated and persecuted? Do you think such a societal shift can't happen again? Freedom of association for businesses is all fun and games until society's values shift and all of a sudden it's you that's unpopular and businesses start refusing to serve you.
The extreme right is growing because the left is failing miserably in making a case for the public to vote for them. Attempting to squash the speech of their opponents when they're not succeeding legitimately just makes the left look even worse and gives the far right the opportunity to play the oppressed martyr.
Sure can happen again, if it happens again it can be dealt with the same way it was dealt with last time: vote the bastards out and maneuver around Hollywood to make the movies.
We have a very narrow carve out of service obligation that constrains businesses from refusing service for intrinsic properties. Apart from that, at the federal level: no, we don't and shouldn't obligate businesses to serve Communists. We don't obligate them to serve Nazis. We don't obligate them to serve the KKK. We don't obligate them to serve Democrats. A business that's too picky about the color of people's money is a business that leaves money on the table, and that is almost always counterweight enough.
No, you're drawing a false equivalence. Advocating for genocide of entire ethnic groups is not "an opinion I disagree with", in fact: the crucial point is that it is an opinion that if taken up would mean the end of freedom for other people. It's the old paradox of tolerance/freedom/etc. If you would like to preserve e.g. free speech and rule of law then you must resist, by force if necessary, people who would abolish that very same free speech under whose cover they propagate the idea of dismantling it.
The paradox of tolerance is about "unlimited tolerance" which already isn't a thing. We have exemptions to the first amendment for words that rise to the level of incitement of violence.
The author of that paradox also states:
"I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise." He only recommends such an extreme action when all else has failed and we're up against "fists and pistols".
I have yet to hear an argument for genocide that can't be countered by rational argument. When hate groups commit acts of violence (not just acts of speech), the US is certainly not sitting around tolerating that. We don't need to fear words. In fact, I much prefer it when racists make themselves known by their words rather than their actions.
This is an argument that seems reasonable but lacks important nuance and addressing it forms the center of "The Open Society and its Enemies" by Karl Popper, which I would recommend reading.
Popper's argument is essentially that tolerance is essential to open society and therefore to maintain openness, society must ironically be intolerant of those who are intolerant themselves or would spread intolerance. Nazis were specifically on his mind, WW2 having just occurred, and Popper uses them as an example of people who use tolerance by others to spread intolerance and therefore reduce freedom overall. For society to defend freedom, it has to not permit that.
Karl Popper discusses "unlimited tolerance" which literally no one is demanding. With very very few exceptions, we all accept limitations on speech. We have specific exemptions to free speech like incitements to violence for this reason.
Popper also states: "I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise." He only recommends such an extreme action when all else has failed and we're up against "fists and pistols". When hate groups are committing acts of violence (not just acts of speech), the US is certainly not sitting around tolerating that behavior.
It's not the opinion I disagree with, it's the actions and policy changes that result from it, which turn into genocide. If a website has people talking politics, that's fine; if a website has doxxing and organizing lynchings, that's not fine. The problem is that one thing (opinions) can lead to the other (genocide) if not kept in check.
Thankfully we already have laws against lynchings and genocide so there is no reason to violate the ideals of freedom of speech. If anyone is doing either of those things we can (and absolutely should) throw the book at them.
This isn't "people I disagree with". Stromfront, and the groups it enables, are literal nazis.
"Stormfront began in 1990 as an online bulletin board supporting white nationalist David Duke's campaign for United States senator for Louisiana. The name "Stormfront" was chosen for its connotations of a political or military front (such as the German Nazi Sturmabteilung (also known as storm troopers or SA)) and an analogy with weather fronts that invokes the idea of a tumultuous storm ending in cleansing.[11] The Stormfront website has been registered at Network Solutions since 1995 and was founded in 1996 by Don Black, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s and a member of the National Socialist White People's Party."
National Socialist White People = The American Nazi Party. That is literal. They changed from the NSWPP to the American Nazi Party in 1983. Their logo has a swastika on it. LITERAL NAZIS.
Nobody argues with this. But LITERAL NAZIS have free speech rights in the USA same as anyone else. Once upon a time the ACLU defended a similar group’s right to march loudly through Skokie, Illinois:
If Cloudflare or anyone else wants to have a different standard, that’s their right, too. But the First Amendment line is neon bright, which is a nice feature.
Cloudflare isn’t the government and has no specific requirement to enable the use of their platform to further a political agenda. Being a racist nazi advocating for violence isn’t a protected class, and private companies are not required to host content or otherwise provide a platform for any particular speech that’s not otherwise protected by law.
They can host their content on other platforms, or self host.
Cloudflare has issued statements in the past that they desire to provide their service to everyone, but have been put under immense external pressure not to.
Sometimes they cave, sometimes they don’t. But they’ve begged the public, and presumably the customers/investors pressuring them, to treat them as dumb pipes, not editors.
Perhaps, but my point is that the constitutional right doesn’t extend beyond the government. Just like HN can moderate without fear, so can cloudflare. They choose to take a more hands off approach - good for them. But it’s a choice, and there are apparently limits to their forbearance.
I don't think anybody in this thread has disputed that neo-Nazis have free speech rights under the First Amendment. What's disputed is whether this entitles them to any number of private services.
To make it intuitive: the First Amendment is just as much a guarantee of a right to not speak as it is a right to speak. In other words: it is just as much a guarantee that the state is not empowered to make you do or say things. Expecting the state to require private businesses to carry speech that they otherwise would never associate with is a remarkable incursion on 1A rights.
> What's disputed is whether this entitles them to any number of private services...Expecting the state to require private businesses to carry speech that they otherwise would never associate with is a remarkable incursion on 1A rights.
Freedom of speech is a right guaranteed by the First Amendment. It (in theory) protects us from oppression by our government. Freedom of speech is also an ideal that we should strive for in a free society. One would protect us from oppression by forces other than our government.
Private businesses don't have an obligation to uphold people's rights the way the government does, but that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't expect them to respect the ideals of freedom of speech. Because our country doesn't do enough to protect the people from what are basically monopolies we should apply extra pressure to companies who are uniquely positioned to oppress us.
I personally don't think the government should step in and force companies to carry speech they disagree with. I think they should make certain that no company has the power to oppress people leaving them without reasonably equivalent options.
Once a single company, or small group of companies, can decide who has a voice that company has become a liability to our security and freedoms. Those companies should either be broken up or others must be allowed and enabled to step into that space to create alternatives. That might mean that certain barriers to entry will need to be dismantled. It might mean changing laws to accommodate newcomers into the market. As long as truly competitive options exist and/or can be created, freedom can exist.
Sadly, right now we don't really have truly competitive alternatives for things like cloudflare or payment processors and there are many places where single entities hold dangerous amounts of power when it comes to the internet. Imagine if ICANN decided to refuse to provide IPs or domains to anyone whose political views they disagreed with. When non-governmental agencies hold too much power, as Hurricane Electric does, we have to hold them to a higher standard, take actions against them, or put alternate systems in place to protect ourselves from them.
I don't think we materially disagree about the civic importance of free expression.
> I personally don't think the government should step in and force companies to carry speech they disagree with. I think they should make certain that no company has the power to oppress people leaving them without reasonably equivalent options.
This maxim has not been violated in this case! HE is one of many ISPs; no evidence has been presented that it colludes with other ISPs[1] to stifle public expression.
And note: the logic of "reasonably equivalent options" doesn't entitle anybody to Internet access, for the same reason that the freedom of movement doesn't entitle me to a driver's license (or a horse). The government may not prohibit my expression; it is also under no particular obligation to supply me any particular venue for expression.
It's one of a very small number of ISPs that form the backbone of the internet (Tier 1-ish) and that puts it in a rare position to censor. The website they are censoring has no direct relationship with HE, yet they are still being silenced by them. That's the problem.
Indeed there is a long history of companies providing services (at inflated rates, of course) to people engaging in activity most are not comfortable with. Think payment processors for porn sites.
If Cloudflare or anyone else wants to have a different standard, that’s their right, too. But the First Amendment line is neon bright, which is a nice feature.
No one cares. This is class warfare. The proletariat needs the right to engage in debate free of interference from the bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie-adjacent. You're not going to win anyone over by saying that the law doesn't provide for that. Hang your laws. The natural rights of the proletariat should not be up for negotiation.
And they ARE free to engage in debate, and they DO - nazis are NOT oppressed in the US. But services like Cloudflare are ALSO free to not platform it. This is the freedom of choosing who to do business with. The "proletariat" can - and do - engage in debate in millions of ways. Else the insurgents couldn't have organized the Jan 6th coup attempt.
Calling people you don't like "nazis" doesn't change what you are doing. They are being deprived of their civil rights and no one is fooled. That's why we're having this discussion at all: you've managed to piss off the right people such that the problem isn't being ignored anymore.
Commerce is not the right to arbitrarily deny people services you have freely offered either, but here we are.
You people built an edifice at law, called it 'public accommodations', went to great lengths to stretch it as far as possible into a concept of commercial neutrality, and now here it is being applied against you. No one will care whether or not your idiosyncratic definition of 'public accommodations' applies here either. The proletariat's sense of justice has been offended. You did this to yourselves. Choke on it.
> Commerce is not the right to arbitrarily deny people services you have freely offered either
Yes, it generally is in the US. Legally, there are a small number of narrow exceptions in public accommodations based in historically widespread societal persecution, but those exceptions would not be necessary if the general liberty you deny were not the rule, and even those exceptions which have been established in statute have not-infrequently been narrowed or limited by the courts for infringing on speech, press, and association rights when applied beyond certain limits.
I am not interested in your arguments predicated on what bourgeoisie law courts have said. They have natural rights the same as anyone else, and they are being trampled upon. No one is fooled, and no one is going to get dragged into useless arguments to authority with you.
> I am not interested in your arguments predicated on what bourgeoisie law courts have said.
A nitpick, but "bourgeoisie" is the noun, "bourgeois" is the adjective; it is either "bourgeois law courts" or "law courts of the bourgeoisie".
> They have natural rights the same as anyone else
“Natural rights” are a thought-terminating cliché to avoid justifying one’s view of what concrete legal rights people should have while simultaneously pretending that the moral conclusion on that question one is offering is a material fact.
Outside of use within a community within which there is a non-controversial moral consensus as a shorthand for positions not in debate within that community, it is never productive to invoke it.
And, certainly, the right to compel others in society to involuntarily relay your views is not a consensus position on rights in our society, even if you leave the law courts, of the bourgeoisie or otherwise, out of it. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this debate.
What if the government reaches out to social media company and asks them to police speech that they don’t like, as was the case during Covid/Hunter Biden Laptop?
And yet it still happened, to the point where thousands died a preventable death.
"hunter biden laptop" was always a distraction tactic, just like "but hillary's emails". It was an attempt to muddy the waters and obscure the republican's long list of shit they got up to. Thankfully, we've gone from "fuck around" to the "find out" age now.
If Biden did a thing then the legal system will take care of it. That is all.
No, most of you seem to be comfortable ignoring when things turn into safety hazards for people who are not you. That includes Nazis for a sliding scale of people who are not part of majority culture (trying really hard to not say white men adjacent for your sensibilities).
The luxury of liberal principles - facing the threat of the rise of fascism - really can only be exercised by those least affected by such a rise.
I'd be really interested to hear how you think Hitler should've been handled in the 1920s and early 1930s. Could a debate parler have saved Germany's democracy?
A number of kiwifarms victims are guilty engaging in speech that the Kiwifarms users disagreed with. So Kiwifarms users launched criminal harassment campaigns and used the forum to coordinate sharing the personal information of these victims. Personal information that has no relevance except to intimidate. And then the owner of the forum comments in these threads actively encouraging the activity.
You characterize this as a difference of opinion. Despicable.
if you claim to support unrestricted free speech then of course this is hypocrisy. how could you possibly argue otherwise? "seeking to suppress" is still a form of speech. you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
if you don't support unrestricted free speech that's fine, but don't pretend you do. i personally don't either.
That logic can be used to suppress most other political/religious ideologies and speech. If all it takes to justify censorship is a slippery slope argument that "when XYZ ideology gains enough real following the resulting implementation attempts probabilistically/historically lead to a suppressed society with hateful class division and mass death" -- then everything from Marxist writing to religious proselytizing qualifies for banning too.
Freedom is speech protects people from retaliation by the government. It is not and was never meant to protect the infringing upon other people’s right to a good life.
Do you have any more alt-right copy pasta bullshit to spread?
I think people who consider Freedom of Speech, the principle, to be exclusively a government thing, are stupider than people who think the right to Free Speech applies to everything. Wonder why this misaligned perspective seems so popular with pseudo-intellectuals these days.
The grandparent comment explicitly draws a distinction between the social contract and the Constitution, and explicitly points to the Constitution as the mechanism that apparently protects Nazis, specifically pointing out that they aren’t talking about the social contract.
The freedom of speech is a guarantee to the people that they may exercise free thought and expression and not be subject to the use of force or fraud against them by any party, whether a state or private actor. The use of force or fraud against someone for speech you dislike does not magically cease to be a civil rights violation by virtue of being applied to someone you personally dislike. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history is well aware of intrusions by actors public and private to suppress speech that threatened their interests.
Put another way: All men have a natural right to the freedom of thought and expression, and no one cares what dead old men thought when they drafted their particular laws. This is about what matters to us here and now. The proletariat has a need for public debate free of interference from the bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie-adjacent. Period. Full stop.
Did you read beyond the first sentence of my comment? I feel like I provided enough context for what I was getting at.
I just meant that Nazi Germany, in comparison to any other authortarian regime, weren't anything special when it came to censorship, other than the racial focus making them easy to hate.
If we are trying to justify censorship as an effort to "protect" Freedom of Speech, then logically we would need to censor the more popular anti free speech political ideologies as well, and with higher priority even! But that wouldn't be free speech anymore would it?
The reality of it is that Nazis only get censored because they are unpopular, a dead political ideology. There is no nation that supports it, and none that can defend it, it's an easy target. People who want to censor Nazis aren't doing it to protect Free Speech, they are doing it because they don't like them, the argument is fundumentally dishonest.
If you just want to censor people you don't like, then you don't support Freedom of Speech. Just like every other autoritarian regime that banned whatever they disliked. The line is very clear here.
The Paradox of tolerance doesn't mean what you think it does. It talks about "unlimited tolerance" which already doesn't exist under law or the first amendment. We have many restrictions on freedom of speech, such as incitements to violence.
The author also states explicitly that his words shouldn't be used to "suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument" and that such extreme action should be reserved for situations where all else has failed and we're up against "fists or pistols"
Violence, not words, is the problem. Thankfully we're not tolerating their violence.
The operator of the Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin, is currently a fugitive. He lost a lawsuit regarding harassment he organized on the site and went into hiding instead of paying what the government ordered him to.
>The operator of the Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin, is currently a fugitive
Is there a warrant out for his arrest? "Owing money but not paying it and/or avoiding the debt collectors" isn't exactly being a fugitive, otherwise many of americans defaulting on their debt would also be "fugitives".
People who believe they should be treated equally and people who literally believe in a master race and genocide are not equivalent, and anyone trying to make an equivalence is either intellectually dishonest, or agrees with the Nazis.
"Some people think" is not an argument. Much of life is gray, this is not one of those times.
They dont need to be equivalent, they just need to be treated the same. What do you think will happen once "your side"/"the correct side" gets removed from power and replaced by the unguided reaction it created?
Thanks to all this stupid nazi fearmongering and virtue signaling i am currently faced with a far right party possibly wining my next election as a reaction. With the government having gained unprecedented powers to quell and control dissenting opinions.
This is literally what's happening here. No one is cutting off the admin's personal Internet connection to get on the Internet. They're taking his website down because it's full of abuse.
They're cutting off the company's internet connection, which isn't significantly better than a personal connection. The entity doing this is not the web host, it's the ISP. I would be fine with a web host refusing service, but that is not what is happening.
The Germans who died in the 30s and 40s would be alive if the Nazis had been denied access to oxygen. As some of their heirs openly talk about murdering us I don't think in the long run we'll still be mutually protecting each others rights.
It in fact might be kinder to deny them rights now than life later.
People who openly advocate for mass violence even if vague and theoretical belong in prison.
>As some of their heirs openly talk about murdering us
> People who openly advocate for mass violence even if vague and theoretical belong in prison.
Wait.......didn't you just openly advocate for mass violence (denying them oxygen) against the philosophical heirs of Nazis, even if only in a vague and theoretical fashion?
I did not. I said specifically that Germans in hindsight ought to have bled the Nazis rather than descend into the hellscape that followed and we with the gift of their terrible example should shut down the monsters now when this can be done non-violently. Please attend more carefully to my words.
> It in fact might be kinder to deny them rights now than life later.
Lock up the bad guys now so we aren't in a position where our only options are fascism or murder.
>People who openly advocate for mass violence even if vague and theoretical belong in prison
I very much agree but this is so one-sided. Would you support arresting Muslims who support Shariah?
Would you support arresting Stalinists?
There are sadly so many groups that advocate for mass violence I think it's pointless how people only seem to care about the single one that's most vilified and defeated.
I don't think this is complicated at all. If the are merely organizing and trying to use proper legal procedures to implement their designs they should be defeated at the ballot box if they plot to implement by force they belong in prison.
The constitution doesn't say you have a right to water, electricity, internet service, sewer service, etc.
Meanwhile the conservatives in the US are saying that corporations have a right to choose who they serve based upon their religious beliefs. See the SCOTUS Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling on whether they must serve a gay couple.
I'm pretty sure I could argue that Nazism is against someone's religious beliefs....
The constitution doesn't say a lot of things. The constitution is not the whole of the law, any more than the bible is the whole of religion. At the end of the day I think we've reached a point where the majority of the proletariat believe that they have a natural right to the freedom of thought and expression, meaning that they should not be subject to acts of force or fraud by private parties to interfere with that right. Further, the same believe that anyone engaged in commerce with the public should function as a public accommodation and offer their services to all and sundry. This just happens to be a very inconvenient opinion for bourgeoisie imperialists intent on silencing the proletariat to maintain their death grip on society.
To put it simply: Maybe if you'd just let people gripe away in peace on their little gossip forums you wouldn't have so many problems in the world.
Do you have evidence that Null knew about people organizing these on KiwiFarms and openly endorsed them or at least tolerated them? Do you have anything to confer upon him some kind of liability for the actions of his users other than "I don't like him so fuck him"?
> illegal in many countries
No one cares whether it's illegal in any random country. Other countries ban lots of things for utterly cretinous reasons.
Attempting to characterize a gossip column as a "harassment" site isn't working. The EFF is openly commenting now because people like you who are pushing that narrative have failed, and have managed to piss off all the wrong people. You might want to consider rethinking your position.
Some people have posted home addresses... just like some people have posted child pornography on Twitter. Does that mean Twitter is responsible for their actions? That is the key point that none of you seem willing to touch because you're desperate to latch onto any pretext to see KiwiFarms removed from the Internet. What is it you're so desperate to hide? What is it on there that you don't want people to read?
>Meanwhile the conservatives in the US are saying that corporations have a right to choose who they serve based upon their religious beliefs. See the SCOTUS Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling on whether they must serve a gay couple.
Unfortunately you are misinformed. The baker was quite willing to serve a gay couple. The Supreme Court never said the baker can not serve gays if he doesn't want to.
What the Supreme Court said is a baker cannot be forced to engage in an activity (gay wedding) that he disagrees with even if it is as remote as a baking the cake. The baker made it clear if they wanted a plain cake he would have sold it to them.
>Meanwhile the conservatives in the US are saying that corporations have a right to choose who they serve based upon their religious beliefs.
This gotcha only works when your opponent is pro business and you want them oppressed by businesses. However republicans are starting to turn anti-business. Take for instance the kerfuffle Ron DeSantis had with Disney.
Sure, conservatives have been pushing rights for conservative businesses.
But once those religious rights have been granted, it's possible for that pendulum to swing the other way.
Must a power company, say, give power to the NY State NAMBLA headquarters? That's the easy one.
The more complex one is arguing that the insurrection was against your religious beliefs (because your religion espouses non-violence), and then the power company could say cut off power to offices held by congress people that supported the J6 criminals?
The problem for me is that banning them makes them think that they’re correct. For many people who take hideous ideas to heart, they do so because they believe themselves to be under attack and fighting for “their people.” In this way, they attempt to justify themselves. By banning them, the attack is made more real. Don’t get me wrong, I dislike Nazis. They believe me to be inhuman. I just believe this to be the wrong strategic move.
The line isn't drawn at "literal Nazis", because for all the criticisms one can lob at KF it is clearly not dedicated to Naziism. It platforms Nazis, for sure, but if the argument is either that a large blast radius that hits a lot of non-Nazi content is acceptable or the old "well if you platform literal Nazis you are a literal Nazi, sorry" fallacy, it's not good.
I'd say KiwiFarms is about as "dedicated to torture" as say the tabloid industry (producers and consumers) is. Seems like a real stretch of language, really.
What constitutes a "Nazi"? I remember when people were up in arms claiming that Jordan Peterson (who I do not support) a Nazi and trying to get him deplatformed; there are countless other examples of people being branded as Nazis for being unpopular and distasteful.
So, I love reminding people of this -- when they dropped the "literal Nazis," they kept supporting ... ISIS Murder Sites. Videos where people were executed with detcord around the neck, toddler terrorists in training shooting people, people put in cages and set on fire. Cloudflare kept those sites up but hey "Nazis."
Now, if you're a reasonable human being, you would think that dumping political snuff video sites would take priority over Stormfront. It's just virtue signalling.
