The Seductive Appeal of the “Nazi Exception”
popehat.com
popehat.com
Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
Speaking of worst possible interpretations, the author of the article makes the worst possible interpretation of hate speech law. It sounds so disingenuous I can't decide if it's infantile or some kind of NRAesque hysterical scare position.
Anyway, thanks for the clarification. I didn't ask my original question for it to turn into nitpicking on sentence structure. Political theory/ideology is a former field of mine, and at least in the context of American political discourse, there's a very regrettable lack of differentiation recognized by the general populace between communists and fascists--people often use them interchangeably, and will often try layering them as insults against a specific person they don't like[0]. Since you're a random stranger on the internet, I had no way of knowing aside from politely inquiring if you meant what you wrote as it was written, or if something was missing.
[0]: For a ridiculously amusing example in meme form, see: http://fascist.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/0904...
Legally, we should vociferously oppose any restrictions on speech, including hateful speech. This is a pretty banal point; most people not to the far left or right can agree on it.
Socially, I think it's pretty clear that we need not tolerate a lot of speech that should be legal. Milo Yiannopolous is free to spew his garbage, but we have no obligation to hear him out, or let him speak at our schools or events. Freedom of speech does not mean we have an obligation to let people who mean harm speak unencumbered. We should protest and block them however we can.
I would much rather have a system where even the most offensive people are encouraged to speak, and there can be a debate over their bad ideas. Right now, speakers who have already been invited are being shut down with violent protests which are met with little to no disciplinary action from the school.
Why on earth should we bother to entertain clearly bad ideas? If you're espousing white nationalism or transphobia or something, I don't want you speaking anywhere near anyone you might convince. End of story.
"But who says what ideas are clearly bad?" We all do! Neil Gaiman has a great essay called "Why Defend Freedom of Icky Speech?"[1] in which he says:
> The Law is a blunt instrument. It's not a scalpel. It's a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible.
The difference here is that my opinion is a scalpel. Everyone's is! There's no obligation for me to treat Milo Yiannopolous and Geraldo Rivera the same, even though they both have political opinions that fall far to the right of mine. One of them is indefensible, and it's not at all hypocritical or unrealistic for me (and millions of other people) to try to take only that one out.
[1] http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-...
The problem is not entertaining the bad ideas, but failing to continue to defend the good ones, once the bad ideas have been forced out of the realm of public debate. You entertain bad ideas for the same reason the body entertains disease and inoculation - to build up and maintain immunity.
>If you're espousing white nationalism or transphobia or something, I don't want you speaking anywhere near anyone you might convince. End of story.
And guess what? While you feel safe and secure that white nationalists and transphobes can't speak openly, they'll not only continue to speak covertly, and continue to convince people of their beliefs, but will do so where you cannot see them and despite your refusal to publicly rebuke them. And the fact that the "system" denies them the freedom to express their beliefs only convinces them that those beliefs are true, and gives them a common bond and identity, and turns them into a culture.
We fought an entire war against Nazis and white supremacists - literally threw millions of bullets at them and burned their cities to the ground. It stopped the Nazi armies and the Nazi state, but the Nazi ideas came back after a few generations, if one can even say they ever left.
Society can't assume that subsequent generations will hold the axioms of the past to be true - they must be reproved, over and over.
That's the problem - there isn't an objective definition of what counts as a "bad idea". The patriot, rebel, atheist, religious fundamentalist, Marxist, market fundamentalist, civil rights activist, and white nationalist each have very different ideas about which ideas are "bad".
> I don't want you speaking anywhere near anyone you might convince.
I'm sure the religious fundamentalist has a similar opinion about any rhetoric that advocates for legal abortions, teaching evolution, or separation of church and state. Should they be allowed to suppress speakers that advocate "clearly bad ideas"?
> One of them is indefensible
Without a clear and narrow definition - "I know it when I see it" doesn't count - of the types of speech that are "indefensible", that's just an opinion.
No, absolutely not. That is a sword better left in its sheath. Any bad behavior you legitimize becomes equally legitimate to use against you and your causes as well when the tide of public opinion swings against you. And public opinion is on a swing toward the right currently, as you may have noticed.
What will you do when your opponents do the same because in their view, people holding your viewpoint are "people who mean harm" (your own words)? Will you be fair-minded enough to acknowledge their behavior is legitimate based on your very own reasoning?
You might not have invited him to speak, some one did, he did not show up in your bedroom and started preaching.
He was invited to a public forum at a university, meaning that at least someone wanted to listen to him spew his garbage.
So yes you have every obligation to let him speak you don't just don't need to listen.
That's to say, at least in academia, there is more allowance and forgiveness if you agree with Che vs agreeing with Pinochet (and other things).
If you allow one, you allow all.
Sometimes a person will wrap uncomfortable truths in provocative language simply to draw attention to those truths. We shouldn't mistake this tactic for malice.
I am! And so are you! We're literally talking about social pressure here; everyone is the arbiter of what behavior is acceptable, and in aggregate that has a lot of coercive power.
> Sometimes a person will wrap uncomfortable truths in provocative language simply to draw attention to those truths. We shouldn't mistake this tactic for malice.
Sometimes. Re: Milo Yiannopolous (and Richard Spencer, and Steve Bannon, and Alex Jones, etc) specifically, what he's wrapping are not truths, and the motivation is malicious.
I'm particularly interested in the events surrounding Richard Spencer's speech last night at Auburn University. This was a case where, after having set up an event, Spencer had been disinvited by the university due to concerns about "safety."
A federal judge found that this was not a legitimate reason to shut down the event and demanded that Auburn dedicate police resources to protecting the speaker and attendees:
- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/opinion/richard-spencers-...
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/1...
Regardless of the content of Spencer's speech, this was absolutely the right course of action. It was found that the threats to physical safety were not coming from the white-nationalist side, but from black-bloc anti-fa types protesting and disrupting the event.
This is the concept of the "heckler's veto": Group A has a speech/rally at Location X, but Group B disrupts using threats/violence. When Group A attempts to have a speech at Location Y, Group B uses threats of violence to shut down the event because Location Y doesn't want to deal with the possibility of violence. In effect, one group is able to be shut down due to the threats of an opposing group.
In such a case, it's important for the health of free speech in general that such precedents are not allowed to continue. Here, a public university was (rightfully, IMHO) compelled to host an event despite threats coming from the event's opponents because to give in would be to legitimize those threatening shut-down tactics to the detriment of everyone's free speech.
Now I'm sure the specifics of this case also rested on the fact that Auburn is a public university and thus has more responsibilities to serve as a platform for speech than a private institution would. But it's good to see the delegitimization of street-brawl tactics that the court decision represents. I'm worried about a future in which leftists and rightists physically fighting or threatening to do so becomes the new normal.
To be clear: any sort of physical violence, threats, or anything like that are not acceptable responses to speech. (I agree with everything you said after the first paragraph).
Nonviolent means of blocking, though — boycotting, (peaceful) protesting, writing letters, making calls — are totally legitimate means to block people from speaking at a certain venue.
Freedom of speech means that the government can't try to prevent you from saying anything. It doesn't grant you a time, place or means to say anything. Richard Spencer will find a place to speak. But it's in our best collective interest to all push him as far away from our own venues as we can.
> Freedom of speech is the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction.
We all know that this isn't true in almost any country with the resources for mass surveillance. People get put on watch lists and interrogated at airports for years because of their beliefs or circumstances.
What people often seem to mean is speech free of social consequences. For example, I should be able to say that your wife is ugly, and then be outraged (and tout myself as a victim) when your drink is in my face.
This is simply childish entitlement.
That's assault. One could quite easily say that demanding the ability to hit people with something because you don't like what they say is "childish entitlement." There's a reason why public protests are governed around "touching/hitting an opponent" as the line to not be crossed, and why pepper-spraying someone is for self-defense and not for disagreement.
"Social consequences" should mean disassociation or loss of reputation -- not physical attack. It's a dangerous precedent to allow the state to lose that monopoly on the use of physical violence; that way lies lynch mobs.
As to your point about surveillance states and ideological watchlists, I agree with you that those are often violations of the principle of free speech. I'd rather argue against those rather than use them as precedent to throw the whole thing away.
Chris Hedges was shoutted down for opposing the Iraq war, and Phil Donahue push out of mainstream media.
It's one of the great things about the USA that they at least have a determined effort to try to live up to embracing free speech. That's very difficult in practice
Hate speech laws are a separate issue, and no, they are not the end of the world. There are many countries with hate speech laws, some reasonable, others extremest.
The author makes many assumptions and selective interpretations. Punching a nazi in the face is a crime of passion I deeply sympathize with. I don't think it should be legal, but confronted by nazi salute I'm not sure I wouldn't do the same.
https://twitter.com/BakedNorwegian/status/854271948523810817
Certainly communists objectively killed more people than nazis in the last 100 years.
In all seriousness though, there seems to be no attempt whatsoever at restricting "dangerous" speech coming from leftists by these people, so that alone ought to make it clear they aren't making a logical argument. It's emotions and regurgitation. Basically the same thing as the worst of the alt-right.
A good example of how absurd their criteria is too: At Norte Dame they're attempting to prevent the Vice President from speaking at their commencement because they claim he makes them feel unsafe.
This is a man who passed a law forcing women in Indiana hold funerals for their miscarriages.
Edit: didn't realize they didn't have to attend and pay for the funerals themselves (addressed below; comment left in its original state for context).
> The law, which was passed by the Republican-heavy state legislature, does require that aborted or miscarried fetuses be buried or cremated. It also requires that women involved in these cases be given the chance to decide how this is carried out.
> However, it did not require the women involved to be present during — or to pay for — the disposal of the material. Instead, that fell to the facility in which the miscarriage or abortion took place:
It's also worth noting that the law was struck down by a judge before it could take effect, lest anyone think this law was a reasonable or even legal.