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Comment by hackinthebochs | Hacker News Reader

>Platforms to speech is what gives these people power

This just isn't true: these people already have power. When bad ideas already have a following, attempting to silence them isn't denying them power but reenforcing it as silencing becomes a rallying cry.

Bad ideas fall to reasoned debate. Bad ideas thrive when they inherently have a subconscious or emotional appeal and are allowed to spread in isolated communities and are never challenged in open forums. Denying them platforms isn't going to stop the spread of these ideas (the internet is still a thing). It just passes up on another opportunity to challenge those ideas head on and gives the charlatans another instance of suppression to use as a rallying cry.

Perhaps what students should insist on is instead of giving them an open platform to speak, invite them to a debate. Force them to defend their ideas under harsh scrutiny.

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> Bad ideas fall to reasoned debate.

No, they don't. For that to work, this requires the proponents of bad ideas to respond to logic, and for the acolytes of reprehensible ideas to be ashamed of what they are doing.

The skinhead shouting "Hitler did nothing wrong" isn't going to back down when you call him out for what he is, and he isn't going to be convinced by logic, facts, or rationality.

If he were, the second world war would have been called "World Rational Debate Competition, Part II."

Likewise, the religious fundamentalist isn't going to back down, or stop preaching hate, just because you point out the absurdities and inconsistencies in his holy book, or the hypocrisy in his prattle.

For some reason, though, liberals are falling head-over-heels to defend the right of the former to amplify his message.

Freedom of political discourse is not fundamentally incompatible with zero tolerance of fascism - just like freedom of religion is not fundamentally incompatible with zero tolerance of violent fanaticism.

What is fundamentally incompatible in a tolerant society, is toleration of intolerance.

> For some reason, though, liberals are falling head-over-heels to defend the right of the former to amplify his message.

I think this has to be the most galling thing to see among so many of my liberal (of course white) friends and family: coming out strongly to support Milo's right to speak at a college campus.

A lot of them were pretty quiet too during BLM protests but they felt it was their civic duty to say everyone should have a right to speak their view. I know those people too, and they view themselves as very progressive, but when you decide to most vociferously defend the free speech of Nazi's over minority voices, what the hell have you become?

They probably didn't really like the BLM message (The parts that makes a lot of people feel deeply uncomfortable.)

They almost certainly don't like Milo's message either, but, as the saying goes, "He isn't the one calling us a basket of deplorables."

His advocacy will make problems for other people.

>No, they don't. For that to work, this requires the proponents of bad ideas to respond to logic

You're missing what's at stake here. It is emphatically not to convince the speaker he is wrong. Often times they have ulterior motives at play that prevent them from recognizing or acknowledging that they were wrong. The point is to convince those who are on the fence or otherwise could be persuaded by the bad ideas. Seeing someone like Milo get pummeled in a debate does incredible damage to his brand and his ideas. It may do absolutely nothing to convince Milo he's wrong, but the ideas he's espousing now have resistance in the minds of potential followers.

Give potential followers the mental tools to resist the appeal of these messages, and the ideas die out with the hardliners.

"Seeing someone like Milo get pummeled in a debate does incredible damage to his brand and his ideas."

Internet trolls are not visiting universities to engage in vigorous intellectual debate in good faith. They're on campus to raise their profile and gain a patina of respectability. They are entitled to their free speech. They are not entitled to get access to large platforms to spread their message of hate.

> Seeing someone like Milo get pummeled in a debate

Milo doesn't host events so that he can be debated. He hosts these events so he can preach to the choir.

It's not like he showed up to a meeting of the debate club - he's holding what is, essentially, a political rally.

I repeat - they are not debates. They are lectures, speeches, whatever the hell you want to call them - but no part of them leave open the possibility that Milo will be proven wrong.

You can't openly engage with someone who is not willing to listen to reason - or someone who is not willing to listen, at all. He doesn't care to stand up to public scrutiny, or discourse - only to have a megaphone.

"What is fundamentally incompatible in a tolerant society, is toleration of intolerance."

This. My love of free speech and a free exchange of ideas is entirely compatible with my refusal to allow my platform to amplify messages of hatred that I find repugnant.

But the university isn't "your" platform. It's "our" platform. Why would exactly you get to choose what ideas to present (and amplify)?

I'm of course not literally calling it "my" platform. I'm pointing out that the student body and faculty of the university (or the TV show host, or the convention organizer or what have you), they are the owners of the respective platforms. And they get to choose who to allow and who not to allow to attach themselves with their brand name.

In case there are any illusions, the hate-mongering trolls are not there to engage in intellectually vigorous debate. They are there to buy themselves a patina of respectability by attaching themselves to these respectable brand names. These institutions would be fools to allow themselves to be used that way.

I disagree. I think it is in the benefit of the platforms themselves (e.g. Twitter) to promote equality, tolerance (to different points of view) and freedom of speech, especially to those they disagree with (e.g. Milo). IME it's the "tolerant liberals" that don't even try to engage in intellectually vigorous debate (they'd rather protest, ban, shout, fire their oponents, or call them "hate-mongering trolls").

History has taught "tolerant liberals" to be vigilant of the fascists when they try to take advantage of machinery of a liberal democracy to further their intolerant agendas. We've decided not to fall for it one more time, no matter how much the would-be fascist supporters try to harangue us with that "tolerant liberal" line.

Surprisingly, though, history hasn't taught "liberals" that supression of the freedom of speech and thought control are predominantly fascist (well, totalitarian really - communists used them as well) tactics.

History also hasn't taught "liberals" that words loose meaning if you overuse them. If every man is a "rapist", every comedian is a "racist" and everyone who oposes illegal immigration is a "fascist", those words lose all meaning.

"Bad ideas fall to reasoned debate"

Clearly not. Haven't we learnt anything from the recent victory of bad, horrible hateful ideas on the platform of media manipulation and louder-than-thou debating techniques?

But what's the mechanism that allows bad ideas to spread? It's not that they're winning the debate, it's that they're avoiding the debate altogether. The mediums that spread these bad ideas tend to be bad at debate but good at spreading ideas with an inherently viral quality.

Exactly. They're not on campus (or a CPAC meeting, or a TV show or whatever) for "reasoned debate". They're there to raise their profile and signal to others like them that these ideas are now acceptable to air in respectable forums. It's foolish for any of these organizations to be used in this manner.

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