New-ish "free speech" app, Parler

Politics & Elections
61

I’m at three with this.

On the one hand, I’d personally volunteer to duct tape Alex Jones’s pie hole. On the second hand, there are people who’d surely want to do the same to Rachel Maddow (not saying they are two sides of the same coin) if this election had gone the other way, and I’d certainly want them to not do so for the same reasons I won’t stifle AJ. On the third hand, I have zero reason to think MAGATS would give me the same consideration if they did win.

That is where I find myself in difficulty with MEBuckner. I want to agree with him that freedom for fascists to express their fascists ideas is a necessary part of freedom of speech in a free democratic society. But this necessarily grants fascists the benefit of the doubt that they too support a free democratic society. History tells us they do not. Recently history tells us that there is precious little daylight between fascists and MAGATS.

62

That’s the thing with fascists. They will lock up people up even if they haven’t violated the law. The only reason Trump hadn’t had Hillary Clinton, Obama, Biden, Rachel Maddow, etc. locked away is because his underlings have so far refused his orders to do so. Had he won the election this year those underlings would have likely been purged by 2024 and replaced by people more loyal to Trump than the United States. At that point the laws on the books won’t matter, and neither will the constitution, which after all is just a piece of paper.

IMHO the best way to avoid this to not allow fascism to spread via news that actually is fake. There’s another thread where I state my belief that there is no fixing someone who has already been brainwashed. That’s why I’ve come to the conclusion that the best option is to go after those who are doing the brainwashing.

63

@MEBuckner:

The problem I ahve with your posts is that you saw a poster saying that censoring Nazis is a good thing, and that reflexively got you upset. You were so upset that you ignored the context of that quote being about free online platforms, and not governments.

Then the argument you make is bad. The “first they came for” quote is a slippery slope fallacy. It is not accurate. Banning or censoring one group does not inevitably lead to banning or censoring the other group. Sites (including this very board) ban Nazi crap without banning all that other crap all the time. And there are even countries like Germany that ban Nazi speech in many contexts, and they’ve not descended into going after all the others. So there remains no argument it is anything but the logical fallacy of the slippery slope.

Any platform with user content tries to have a balance between allowing freedom of speech and policing content. Go too far one way, and you get an echo chamber. But go too far the other way, and you get the Nazis which chase everyone else away. And then, once there are only Nazis there, you wind up with what happened to 8chan: violent rhetoric continues until one person says they’ll do it in real life and is egged on by the rest, with no one to tell them no.

This gets them shut down, because whoever chooses to host them no longer wants to be associated with them. No one wants to be possibly on the hook for the violence that inevitably occurs.

The same thing happens in misogynist forums, too, BTW. Incels also wind up becoming violent, which is why they find it hard to find a platform. Hence why MrDibble included them in his list.

Nazism has no place in civil discussion. Nazism ultimately results in violence against others. It is verifiably evil, and that’s never going to change. There is no reason for anyone to feel a need to give Nazism a platform. There’s no need for any sort of debate about whether Nazism is correct.

So it makes no sense for your reflexive response to “censoring Nazis” to be about the censoring. It makes no sense for you to bring up other non-violent ideologies which, even when left in echo chambers, don’t wind up killing people.

Sure, you can argue they have the First Amendment right to their ideas, but that does not mean any of us have to make it any easier for those ideas to spread. Remember, platforms are run by people.

64

The problem is, I saw the word “censorship” and took that to mean “suppression of speech by the government”–but MrDibble did NOT immediately say “Oh, well of course I didn’t mean suppression of speech by the government, I meant ______”. (I don’t know what PZ Myers meant. AFAIK he doesn’t post here.) To the contrary, MrDibble seemed to sort of double-down on the idea, talking–with apparent relish–about “murderers” being “suppressed” by “the police”. Even now, it seems like, yes, he does want suppression of speech by the government, although he intermittently also says he doesn’t want to talk about that.

And the slippery slope is really not a fallacy when the person I’m talking to goes straight from “ban Nazi calls for genocide” to “ban misogyny, too” to “ban Nazism and misogyny, and also fascism, Leninism and religious fundamentalism!” (and continues to be very unclear about whether or not “ban” means “private social media platforms adopt policies against” or “the state puts people in prison”).

65

If you’re going to reply to me, please actually use the reply button so I get a notification. I know the software deleting quotes encourages this sort of thing, but it’s not good.

MrDibble did tell you he was only talking about online platforms as soon as it became clear that this was what you misunderstood. You were making the exact same arguments that the alt-right loves to make about why platforms shouldn’t be allowed to censor them. Including the “First they came for” quote.

It’s not his fault that you jumped to the illogical conclusion that “censorship” meant government censorship. If anything, it suggests you hang out in places where people deliberately blur the line between the two. You should be wary of those places.

It is also not a slippery slope to group together actually similar things. The slippery slope is when you try to use that as evidence that non-similar things will be treated the same way. Including other forms of bigotry is not a slippery slope. There are all things that are wrong, and have been found to, when left in echo chambers, to incite violence. I mentioned this in my post.

And he did not say “religious fundamentalism.” He specifically restricted himself to those calling for violence or oppression towards women. So just misogynists.

66

He did no such thing.

The only places I hang out on the Internet are here, TVTropes, and Wikipedia.

67

Timing is everything. My wife just told me that someone on her message board was just sitting at her doctor’s office waiting for the doctor to come in. She overheard a PA in the next room telling another patient, “Don’t listen to Fauci, he’s kind of sketchy.”

So this is where we are now. Medical professionals are actively spreading disinformation to their patients.

68

I’m all too familiar with that. Some of my colleagues have expressed similar sentiments. Having medical training is apparently not enough to avoid falling victim to propaganda.

69

That quote is extraordinarily poor reasoning. And ironic, since the author is protected by freedom of speech to post dumb, anti-liberty arguments.

70

And this sort of ridiculous hyperbole is far too common on this board and absolutely untrue. I know many many Trump supporters and not one of them is a fascist.

71

You know what you call someone who supports a fascist?

I’ll certainly grant that some Trump supporters don’t understand what they’re doing, either due to ignorance, delusion, misinformation, or general inability to understand things.

72

“Giving Nazis a platform is pro-Nazi.” is poor reasoning, how?

much anti-liberty, so irony…

73

I’m not sure your statements and comics are congruent. Freedom of the press, which the comic is, in no way deprives someone else freedom of press or speech. It’s almost as if what is in essence infinite media isn’t somehow eradicated if competing views, regardless of the view, are presented.

74

The comic is just ridiculing the idea that deplatforming Nazis is somehow anti-liberty. Being unapologetically anti-Nazi in every way possible used to be the very epitome of being pro-liberty.

Well, I guess Liberty ain’t what she used to be.

75

What is acceptable during a war between nations is different than what is acceptable within a nation with functioning police, courts, and other institutions. The issue with using violence to suppress speech, which that comic is not about btw, is that anyone can label and silence anyone and all that matters is who can rally the largest and most violent mob. Or the state with the army can suppress any and everyone. Arguing against the power of the state makes one an enemy of the state to be suppressed. We see that across the world in countries ruled by totalitarians and the outcome is far worse than allowing a few silly fools wearing silly costumes to speak.

76

I’m in favor of deplatforming Nazis. Actually, scratch that - I’m in favor of killing Nazis. Every single last one of them. I have absolutely no moral qualms in this regard.

What I’m not in favor is allowing the U.S. government to deplatform Nazis. I can assure you that if Donald Trump had the power to deplatform Nazis, he would find a way to use it to deplatform everyone except Nazis.

77

Any other abhorrent ideologies you think people should be able to eradicate the adherents of?

78

No, just Nazis.

79

That’s fine, since we’re just discussing what social media platforms should do, here.

80

You realize other ideologies are responsible for even more death and destruction?