The problem is, if you condemn them back to the shadows and basements, they fester and pass their hatreds down within their in-group. They’ll just teach their children “the south with rise again” in private, with no pushback because others don’t know it’s happening.
At least letting them talk in the name of free speech lets you know who the Nazis/fascists/white supremacists are, instead of having them going back to using toxic, slowly indoctrinating dogwhistles and regrouping.
At the end of the day, secrecy just prolongs and exacerbates problems. We should rise or fall as a society on who we all are, not on the basis of who has the most appealing web of lies. Let the Nazis bury themselves by speaking their fucked up beliefs, because otherwise they’ll temper their messaging, which will recruit more people than the horror of their actual endgame.
You wrote three paragraphs to demonstrate how thoroughly you missed the point of this extremely blunt comic. Don’t get mad at me for pointing this out, I’m just exposing my own opinion the to purifying effect of public discourse.
No, I anticipated an angry response to providing the kind of discourse they portrayed as necessary.
At least letting them talk in the name of free speech lets you know who the Nazis/fascists/white supremacists are
That’s great and all, but knowing who the Nazis are is just step one. Without taking additional steps, that knowledge is useless.
That knowledge literally ended the employment of a lot of white supremacists that were filmed in Charlottesville overtly chanting against Jewish people. You see? They were given enough rope, and they hanged themselves, and now those images and reputation can keep others informed about who they are and never to give them an inch.
Free speech is the absence of consequences by the state, but once you know someone is a proud white supremacist, you don’t have to keep them employed, or renew their lease, or hire them, or stay married to them, or invite them to your wedding, etc. A known Nazi can suffer social consequences all day and be socially ostracized, if they were emboldened enough to disclose that fact instead of spending their lives infecting people with shit like "I hate urban people in the inner cities." Shit like that can appeal to the weak minded.
It’d obviously be better if the Nazi ideology never surfaced in the first place, but that would require a good level of education, empathy, and social support…or as the right puts it, “leftist woke indoctrination.”
Instead you have disingenous discourse defended under the banner of free speech. Fascists have historically used this right as their anchor point to undermine Democratic institutions.
Usually they amplify their racist/hate speech, xenophobic messaging, and nationalistic fervor during times that Democratic institutions are under particularly extreme pressure by natural disasters or domestic/foreign wars. Democratic societies tend to propagate comfortable and idealistic upper/middle class citizens when they’re doing well (not under said pressures), often fostering the sentiment for a live and let live philosophy, even for those with dangerous hateful ideologies and rhetoric.
Then, when the Democratic institution is inevitably put under stress by external or internal circumstances, Fascism accelerates and gains momentum in the public consciousness not because they debated better or have genuinely good ideas on how to solve the society’s problems, but because they argue that is the only way everyone can survive, when in fact they are usually just narcissistic megalomaniacs who want to control everything and everyone around them, ultimately destroying personal freedoms and diverse communities in the name of moralist, nationalist hegemony.
I don’t believe you can see my reply but counterpoint: reddit and 4chan both went that route and host major nazi ideology funnels. Just like… ban assholes.
Counterpoint to your counterpoint: because they have bigot dens to spew their bile among like minded white nationalists, intelligence agencies now have their names and identities and they’re now on lists. They can and have stopped violent actors that were given enough rope to feel safe discussing their plans online instead of being driven to bars and basements to plan out of view.
If you don’t give the Nazis the the freedom say “hi im a Nazi” you don’t know where the Nazis are, let alone have the means to find out what they’re planning.
Now I’m not sure how the partial defederation works… anyway, they move offsite to websites owned by the moderators, in the case of Reddit, so that’s not exactly true. It’s equal parts money-making and radicalization effort and it largely flies under the radar. 4chan, on the other hand, makes as many nutters as it stops. It’s not effective for your mosquito spray to kill 5 mosquitos and create 5 more from the ether.
They’re already doing that. It’s 2023 ffs. They’ve been doing this since slavery was abolished. Time to signal to the entire world that it’s not fucking okay. Letting Nazis talk has only ever allowed them to plant their insidious misinformation campaigns and gather followers. We don’t give Nazis a fucking inch and they are not welcome in the town square. Kill your local Nazi.
Let’s just murder anyone who doesn’t agree with us. This will surely lead to an orderly, civilized society.
No, let’s just murder anyone whose skin colour I personally hate.
The difference is, your scenario is made up, and the scenario I described happened a lot
Go to Russia or North Korea and start saying things the government doesn’t agree with. I’m sure you’ll be fine.
Oh, I have just escaped Russia, not going back there any time soon, thank you. Still, you are getting jailed and killed there for openly expressing very particular sort of ideas, which is very different from jailing and killing everyone from different ethnicity indiscriminately
noo but as long as they agree with MY views they are fine (my views are objectively correct) /s
So what happens when someone has views that objectively do threaten everyone else? Do we sacrifice the safety of all just to not be hypocrites? Because I’d personally rather be a hypocrite than a genocide victim
I believe this is an example of a “straw man” argument.
First you mischaracterize OP’s claim – basically “tolerance of the intolerant leads to the intolerant gaining power and not being tolerant” becomes “murder all who disagree”. Then you use sarcasm to knock down the straw man you built (because of course murdering all who disagree is bad).
If people vote for their own chains in a free and democratic society, they deserve to get what they want. Now whether we still have such a society is debatable. But I still fundamentally believe that any and all forms of censorship are the wrong way to go and will only accelerate the decline into totalitarianism.
So, how about we agree to disagree, mate? ; )
I weirdly agree as much as I hate racist wannabe genociders. I think freedom of speech is important even if it is hateful speech that I don’t agree with. I don’t think it should be up to the legal system to decide what’s okay to say and what isn’t. That’s a slippery slope that can quickly go badly with the wrong people in power.
That being said, I am most definitely going to look the other way if I see a person getting stomped out for being racist. I would personally make them feel unwelcome in anyway I could. I think it should be left up to the people to make it known that intolerant assholes get intolerant treatment, I guess is what I am getting at.
If people vote for their own chains in a free and democratic society, they deserve to get what they want.
They aren’t only voting for their own fate but for the fate of everyone else. So 51% can doom everyone. That hardly seems fair.
But I still fundamentally believe that any and all forms of censorship are the wrong way to go and will only accelerate the decline into totalitarianism.
This always ignores how very dangerous uncensored words can be. Hitler is famous for his speeches and not for his military brilliance! So is Mussolini. They both abused lenient and weak democratic systems to talk their way into power resulting in the literal Holocaust and one of the most devestating war the world has ever seen.
So what exactly is the alternative? Pass hate speech laws? Because that is ripe for abuse.
abuse by governemnt, neglect by government. The problems can happen either way but with a change in law at least there is attempt to make it better.
You realize such laws have existed in most countries for a very long time, right?
Hate speech is illegal in most of the modern world, and has been for quite some time.
Yeah, they used to be called Blasphemy laws. Still doesn’t make it excusable.
I have no idea what you are talking about, to be honest. Never heard of those.
But Blasphemy is extremely different from Hate. Canada, for example, goes into explicit legal detail on what counts as Hate and constitutes a Hate Crime.
And Blasphemy has nothing to do with that discussion, nor have I ever heard of this concept, so either you are talking about something else entirely, or perhaps you have to link to what you are talking about?
When I look the term “Blasphemy Laws” up, it brings up something that has nothing to do with Hate Crimes. Did you perhaps use the wrong term?
The US had similar hate-speech rules to that of the rest of Europe, until the US civil rights era presented the court the opportunity to decide whether Martin Luther King’s anti-racism speech was, as charged, “hate speech”.
Long story short, the court decided that it couldn’t define what ‘hate speech’ was and so decided that it shouldn’t be against the law (or that the First should protect it). That’s why Nazis are allowed to march and have their rallies protected by the First Amendment, all because southern US states wanted to charge the speakers of anti-white-supremacy with ‘hate speech’ and that was a quick-and-dirty way to disarm them.
Some countries already have hate speech laws that are limited to inciting violence and they aren’t being abused.
I said ripe for abuse, not that they will be abused. In any case, I haven’t heard of country with hate speech laws that hasn’t been abused in some form. Even in America, we don’t have those laws, but that hasn’t stopped the government from trying.
The United States. Speech that is used to incite violence, commit fraud, or is perceived to be a true threat are not protected under the first amendment.
Punch Nazis is a good start.
And by that I mean be socially intolerant of intolerance. Personal morals and actions don’t need to and shouldn’t be held to the same standard as the US Federal government.
Individuals do have more freedom to discriminate and show “social intolerance”, but that obviously doesn’t extend to punching people they disagree with. Or violent responses in general.
I’m not morally obligated to debate someone arguing in favor of genocide, for instance. Is it legally assault to punch them, sure. Would I want the government to come in and boot stomp them, probably not. Is punching them morally wrong, nope.
Consider… what went wrong is that no one pushed back on Panel Two using the very same free marketplace of ideas.
Panel One: Fighting for everyone’s right to express themselves is fine. Good as it is.
Panel Two: Destroy the bigot’s arguments and describe to the public what society will be like if the bigot gets their way. Is that tolerating intolerance?
Exactly. That’s how we were able to nip the whole global warming thing in the bud. Thank god rational arguments always prevail.
Calling people out on their BS is the right line to draw for me personally, but I still want that person to have the right to express their opinion. We just need to teach people that it’s ok to be wrong as long as you can admit it and learn from it. No idea gets processed until pushed from an opposing party.
Sitting back and doing nothing teaches nothing. Calling it appalling and informing the person why they’re wrong is the right step toward change. But if you can’t say it in a way that makes them hear you, then you’re doomed to have the argument all over again.
The past twenty years have demonstrated handily that logical debate simply does not work. What’s needed is the emotive/motivational form of argumentation that puts the speaker’s thoughts, beliefs, and intent at center stage and actually does work. Bonus points is that it works regardless of how well educated whoever you’re speaking to is so there’s no longer the educational barrier in place allowing meaningful conversation.
Panel Two: Destroy the bigot’s arguments and describe to the public what society will be like if the bigot gets their way. Is that tolerating intolerance?
I can’t believe no one thought of this. And here planned parenthood and the grieving families at funerals of vets have just been sitting by listening to the noise.