Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression
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Well said. I'm glad EFF is not burrying their heads in the sand and hiding behind the "but they're nazis!" Excuse.
"Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected. We do it because we believe that no one—not the government and not private commercial enterprises—should decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t."
2. Does the Constitution apply if the government allows private entities to take over roles of the government? There is the concept of utilities and common carriers that extend upon this logic.
3. Even without the above points, one should still be able to see a double standard being applied to violent/extremist speech. Saying a company can do whatever it wants doesn't explain what the company actually wants. If the company is applying a double standard to what speech it allows, then the true wants of the company is something we need to discuss and decide do we want to tolerate.
John Stuart Mill thought free speech should extend into the private world:
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
Additionally, I view these acts of censorship as a great opportunity for blockchain and other nascent decentralized web technologies to take off. It's a classic case of the innovator's dilemma - when a company or industry seems ascendant, it becomes complacent to new threats, and the seeds of its destruction are sown right underneath it. Sometimes it even assists in the process. (Microsoft's neglect of IE, allowing Mozilla to flourish in the mid-2000s, is one of my favorite examples.) With their suppression of speech, these centralized services are quite possibly hastening their own demise.
You can't invoke it either. It's a statistical observation.
As the length of any internet argument grows, the probability of anything being said would approach 1.
Taken from Wikipedia;
Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes") have been made by American lawyer, journalist and author Glenn Greenwald.
Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust", Godwin has written. In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump.
The problem is that the centralization of these services gives them so much power that it's problematic for free speech that they do it.
The latter is the problem.
And it's not that I don't like Pc speech. I prefer it. But I also don't want it to be the only kind of speech one can use for discussion. Try and have any good philosophical argument without breaking PC boundaries.
It's a scary thing when one group controls the narrative of what is acceptable and unacceptable speech.
In other words, what they advocate is what exists at the bottom of the slope. You know, Godwin's Law and all that?
I agree they are a hateful group. An odious group of people possibly only superseded in their vileness by extremist religious fanatics who won't hesitate to kill, but we're not shutting their speech down, are we?
In my view, this is one of those things that is binary. Either you have free speech, or you don't. There is no in between, finessing it. You end up with lese majeste and other nonsense bullshit.
Those ideologies did not have the hatred and violence at their core that Nazism did. That's why there is no "Godwins Law" when it comes to Marxism. That's my point: This is the most reviled philosophy that currently exists, and people are complaining about "free speech" when previously they would shriek "Godwins Law" whenever comparisons are made. That's how far we've fallen.
Saying that free speech is binary is incredibly misguided and a root cause of the problem. It's overly simplistic and absolutist and quite frankly, is complete and total nonsense. At some point something will be uttered that you or some other "free speech absolutist" will object to.
Yes, I object because your cause will be coopted to further a specific ideology at the expense of all others.
Unlike you though I am able to understand that one of them(Nazism) has racial superiority and oppression as a core feature of their ideology while the others do not.
Again, there is no "Godwins Law" for Marxism/American Capitalism. I wonder why that is???
America was not the first or last European colony. Mexico was a colony, Brazil was a colony with even worse racism -bad things happened and continue to happen everywhere. Slave trade continues in the middle east. Today. Read up on what Latin American colonies did to the native populations. It's not different. They didn't have confederates.
I don't see how any of that should subjugate free speech.
Murderers have free speech --I'll wager more than a few victim's families wish they did not. I believe they should still have that right.
Should we go to Japan and also try to shut down the speech of those still in support of the imperial campaign in China, one of the most atrocious incidents of all of WWii?
But at the core of this argument is who has the right to decide what beliefs are allowed and what ones are not? For example I'm against ISIS, but think I have no right to suppress their speech. But I'll happily try to convince someone that the ISIS ideology is evil.
They seem to be exceptional, but if we curtail their speech that means it leaves other, undoubtedly less offensive, speech to be up for negotiation. For instance I'd be pleased to see some of your authoritarianism curtailed if it wasn't for ideals of freedom of speech.
And what about other ideologies which have had similar results? How many has died under communist? What about religious extremist whose beliefs have led to mass murder?
Are we being consistent with the reasoning? If not, then the reasoning given isn't the actual reasoning, so what is the actual reasoning?
Take for example, a group that wants to remove undesirables from the US (I'll leave which group open for imagination, it doesn't really matter). They advocate non-violent removal through legal means. This sounds nice in practice, but many, especially libertarians, will quickly realize that any police enforcement of such laws would result in threats of violence. Namely, either the group leave willingly or police will begin to physically attack them to arrest them, and any resistance would be met with tasers on a good day or bullets on a bad day.
Even though they advocate non-violent methods, I think it is reasonable to say they are actually advocating violence (unless they can purpose some truly non-violent method that I'm unaware of).
I'd encourage you to check out material from groups like Life after Hate that specialize in deradicalization of former white nationalists to get their first-hand perspective on the psychology of fascism.
I understand the argument that such determinations should be 'left up to the law' but the corollary of that is asserting that regular people should not have any political agency to express their own opposition to movements they find threatening or inimical to their values.
I'm sticking to a very narrow interpretation of what counts as threats/incitement here.
On that same note: Good riddance. Policy and processes are probably in no case ever too slow to take effect. Thanks to Google and GoDaddy for Pavlov'ing me towards reasonable human understanding, and thanks for EFF for making me aware that that there's a problem with "learning" things that way.
They say "we agree with the ban" but then say "it's dangerous!"
of course it's dangerous, and yes, the speech is vile. but freedom of speech doesn't stop when we are insulted.
I think my favourite is Mencken's.
> The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
A close second is Wilde's:
> “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”
One interesting quote in this regard is this:
"Any defense of Germany was impossible, he concluded, ''so long as the chief officer of the German state continues to make speeches worthy of an Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and his followers imitate, plainly with his connivance, the monkey-shines of the American Legion at its worst.''"
Weird to see Hitler, before he became the go-to bad guy, being compared with classic American racism and political violence, with the implication that better is expected of him.
1. A Reasonable Position is expressed, in this case - 'Nazi's are very bad'. The Reasonable Position often involves an Enemy that must be stopped. Most reasonable people will agree with the Reasonable Position.
2. The Reasonable Position becomes the overriding factor in any situation that involves it. All other factors and considerations are dwarfed by it and forgotten.
3. Because the Reasonable Position comes to dominate the thinking of the Extremist - who often means well - they come to believe one can only ever be for or against the Reasonable Position. There is no room for moderate positions that try to balance the Reasonable Position with other important considerations and values - in this case, freedom of speech.
4. In order to show support for the Reasonable Position, third parties are forced to action in accordance with the world view of the Extremist. If they try to balance other considerations against the Reasonable Position, they are seen by the Extremist as sympathizing with the Enemy.
5. The fervor of extremism charges through society, trampling on other values and considerations.
Some historical examples:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
And it seems that the "Freedom of speech" position is the one that has expanded more in context than "Nazis are very bad". Thus far people don't seem to be applying the badness of Nazis to non-Nazis (at least not intentionally), but we do seem to be expanding Freedom of speech slowly beyond government censorship to asking private entities to propagate speech.
Because it's the best (probably only) way to prevent every actual Reasonable Position from overriding every other factor and consideration. If freedom of speech is the default, there's no way an extremist group will stop conversation about any particular issue.
> Thus far people don't seem to be applying the badness of Nazis to non-Nazis (at least not intentionally)
This is Godwin's Law, which is in itself a testament to how common this is.
That seems like an unsubstantiated assertion. As we've discussed here, the extremist view of freedom of speech forces your ideas on me. At the extreme I now have to hire people who believe that I should be tortured because I'm a minority.
Any reasonable position taken to an extreme can result in a bad situation. The fact that it's reasonable in moderation is, as you note, what makes it dangerous. Nothing about freedom of speech seems to make it much different than something like "killing innocent people is bad".
And Goodwin's Law is about non-serious internet rhetoric. Not about actually treating people as Nazi war criminals. And oddly we treat Nazi's really well in the US, despite the Reasonable Position most people have about them.
If you can: https://supporters.eff.org/donate
I had just started donating to them in the last week, too; I felt a bit silly canceling so soon.
Great, 100% agreed with that. Be clear and up front about terms of service, and be clear and open when they are violated.
That said, I'm not 100% agreed that "Whatever you use against Neo-Nazis will be used 'against the ones you love'." That's a slippery slope argument that I personally don't believe. Neo-nazis are such a different class of evil, that it's hard for me to see the same practices being used against someone who is not them.
edit: > That's a slippery slope argument
Its not. These discussions will be taken over by the political establishment and the courts very quickly with very real consequences.
When your in a situation where domain registrars and other core infrastructure are making judgements about what political speech they will allow on the internet then I would imagine your very close to a whole host of issues that cut the core of fundamental rights. That's why CloudFlare is so skittish, they know where this could go.
Eventually this rough shot approach is going to hit someone with the resources to fight back. Lets imagine Breitbart gets nuked what then? It's only a matter of time before there is an incident like that. And when it happens its already to late to turn back.
You could say the same about digital surveillance of potential terrorists.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/24/safe-spaces-un...
The thrust of the Guardian article was that freedom of speech is no longer valued at Universities in the UK, or at least, to no-where near the level it was value in the past.
Specifically, the practices that people are advocating to use against Neo-NAZIs are, right now, being used in Universities in the UK and elsewhere to shut down political dissent.
That's what I meant by 'this is already happening'.
My point is that they used the same tactics (obviously different times/technology/etc) themselves to prevent people from supporting the Jews. So "the same practices being used against someone who is not them" is something that has already happened.
NOTE: My knowledge of history is not great. Let me know if I am incorrect.
Are you so sure the same tactics will not be used against non-literal nazis? Or that non-nazis won't be named as such in order to then use the same practices on them "justifiably"?
If there's one thing we know with absolute confidence, is that if it's "just to protect the children" or "just to use against the nazis", it's really just that the technique/technology is still in beta test, and GA release is coming soon.
Do you remember how Communists were treated during the McCarthy era?
You get to have that opinion. You get to think that the slippery slope argument is bullshit. That is your right. People told me that I was using a slippery slope argument when I said using the wartime powers act against "terrorism" was a quick sink to unjust presidential powers. I stand by my argument then and I stand by my slippery slope argument now.
> People told me that I was using a slippery slope argument when I said using the wartime powers act against "terrorism" was a quick sink to unjust presidential powers.
Is it different to you that the actions here were taken by companies, not by the government? To the best of my knowledge, there was no mandate to take these sites down.
> Be consistent
Sure, this is my original takeaway from the article -- establish clear boundaries, openly follow those rules when someone violates those boundaries. It causes confusion and uncertainty when you don't follow your published rules.
The neo-nazi sites themselves should in general not be interfered with from a governmental level - but there should be limitations of even this restriction, when it comes to the advocacy, planning and execution of violence.
In a more general sense I see the silencing of free-speech on the internet as a call to move to a more decentralised structure - as per what seemed to be the original intent - we generally seem to be moving yet further away from such a structure; although there are a significant number of emerging distributed technologies - as yet they seem to be niche in their utilisation.
(Somewhat tangentally, I see the free speech and public emergence of the now emboldened neo-nazis as somewhat a good thing, they were always there - but now they're in the public eye.)
From Sartre: "The anti-Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has pleased himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side."
It seems that America is going to insist on finding out what fascism is really about the hard way.
I would say that there needs to be evidence. We need to live in a reality-based world, not one that makes decisions based on feelings. If there is evidence of BLM making specific claims that calls for persecution or violence then the people making that speech should be charged under applicable hate speech laws. For example I did think that that "fry cops fry" chant or whatever it was from a couple years ago was an incitement to violence.
But overall: I don't think BLM is a hate movement just because some right-wingers want to say it is. But go off evidence and go case by case like we do in a just society.
Also to add: I see this "where do you draw the line" argument everywhere and it is fallacious. We draw lines all the time in our society. That is literally what law is. We outlaw murder, we outlaw theft, and many other things. And there are ambiguous cases that courts need to decide around all these things. Is assisted suicide murder? Is abortion murder? Is pirating theft? These are big questions that we face all the time as a society and debate and come up with answers for. Hate speech would be no different. We decide as a society what is hateful and it becomes law and then we set precedent through the court system. There are plenty of examples of successful hate speech laws implemented in other western countries to get us off to a great start.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
Here are a few examples:
In Canada, advocating genocide against any "identifiable group" is an indictable offence under the Criminal Code and carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment. There is no minimum sentence.
France prohibits by its penal code and by its press laws public and private communication which incites discrimination, hatred, or violence against a person or a group of persons on account of place of origin, ethnicity or lack thereof, nationality, race, specific religion, sex, sexual orientation, or handicap.
In Germany, Volksverhetzung ("incitement of popular hatred") is a punishable offense under Section 130 of Germany's criminal code and can lead to up to five years imprisonment. Section 130 makes it a crime to publicly incite hatred against parts of the population or to call for violent or arbitrary measures against them or to insult, maliciously slur or defame them in a manner violating their (constitutionally protected) human dignity. On June 30, 2017, Germany approved a bill criminalizing hate speech on social media sites.
In the United Kingdom, several statutes criminalize hate speech against several categories of persons. The statutes forbid communication which is hateful, threatening, or abusive, and which targets a person on account of disability, ethnic or national origin, nationality (including citizenship), race, religion, sexual orientation, or skin colour.
Neat. You're going to need some proof or point to some core tenet of BLM that makes them hate group. Not that hard to do with Nazis.
No one is labeling random groups as being hateful or racist. It's literally in their (Nazi) stated ideology. The EFF should be ashamed of attempting to draw the comparison and bolster what is essentially a conservative narrative. It requires a good amount of willful ignorance or just straight up dishonesty to make it.
"Hitler did nothing wrong" is a joke meme, until it isn't.
If we resolve to silencing and violence without debate how are we better? Have you talked to any Nazi? Are you sure they know history and what Nazi stands for? etc etc etc I personally haven't met one ever but when I do I won't punch them with a fist but punch them with debate.
And what will you do if they respond by punching you with a fist? I have talked to a lot of nazis, and listened to them, and have been doing so a very long time. Individual people can abandon the nazi ideology; according to people in the deradicalization movement, the most likely triggers for doing so are the birth of a child (more so if a daughter), or receiving kindness/compassion from someone who is normally a target of theirs.
But the nazi ideology is explicitly predicated on the idea of violent struggle for dominance rather than peaceful cooperation, in contrast to most others. Those who adhere to that ideology and call for the subjugation of other races, genocide, or war are not engaged in debate; they are issuing threats.
For example, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (not a group with an incentive to deflate numbers), at its peak the National Alliance had 1,200 members. All together, there are a few thousand active Neo-Nazis in the United States.
In contrast, let's take 2 countries where advocating Nazi ideology is illegal: Austria and Germany.
In Austria, the Freedom Party, founded by a former SS officer, has 50,000 members, 13 seats in the Upper House (similar to the Senate in the US) and 38 seats in the lower house as well as 4 in the European Parliament.
In Germany, the NPD received over 600,000 votes in the most recent election and now has a seat in the European Parliament.
A more equivalent comparison is Nazi ideology in Germany/Austria to Klanist ideology in the United States. The list of US politicians with Klan affiliation is long.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan_members_in_United...
Also, The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are 190 active KKK groups with between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members in the U.S. That's a far cry from Austria and Germany.
FWIW, I don't have a particularly strong opinion on whether laws banning Nazi speech have a large impact on the number of people supporting that ideology. I don't think they increase the number of Nazis, and it makes sense to keep them around given the historical context of countries like Austria and Germany even if they don't have an impact on that number.
I do think you're quite far off the mark if you think less than 0.001% of the U.S. population identifies with Nazi ideology, while it's something like 1% for Austria and Germany.
I think that for the same percentage to identify with Nazi ideology it would require millions of people to be so comfortable with it that they would openly give Nazi affiliated parties their support.
I don't think millions of people support Neo-Nazis in the US.
That's the main reason I don't agree with the banning of daily stormer and google banning Gab.ai from the play store. They are only further enforcing these people's beliefs that the powers that be are against them.
No one is saying they can't discuss their beliefs, they just can't do it with the support of certain private companies. In the same way, if I owned a restaurant, I wouldn't allow them to host an informal "Daily Stormer Night" at my restaurant. I shouldn't be forced to having to have them use my restaurant as their unofficial homebase.
A lot of people are saying that.
Here's where it gets interesting. If you leased an apartment, could your landlord evict you for for hosting dinners in support of the KKK? That's more similar to what happened with the hosting and service provider denials.
And I've yet to find someone who has said they can't discuss their beliefs. They just don't get "our" support to do it.
It wouldn't surprise me if all of these services have some verbiage in their TOS or contract that allows them the right to stop service if the content being served is deemed to be inappropriate by them.
https://payments.google.com/payments/apis-secure/get_legal_d...
I wonder which clause they cited to execute the suspension.
Wait, what, they can do this? So if I get Google to host my domain they can just take it at will? Given the value of some domains that's insane. Google must be on shaky legal ground here.
Obvious note: Outsourcing your stuff to a 3rd party like that is risky, and should be considered so
It's more that their internal extremism means they feel justified in doing this sort of thing because they feel 'dangerous' speech must be suppressed.
I am concluding that Google is no longer trustworthy enough to run a search engine.
That is a scary, clever manipulation of language. Inciting violence is an exception to free speech because it is directly linked to a specific violent result.
"Hate" is non-specific, and not an action at all. It often means nothing more than offending someone or violating some political correctness. Hate speech is and should be protected speech.
Now, the minute either group is harassed or arrested by the government over things is when it becomes a problem. That is actual censorship, and should be resisted.
But due to the SIZE of these operations, their actions practically amount to censorship.
Saying that the right of free speech only protects you against the government does not mean much in practice, in these circumstances.
It also means that, for example, they have the freedom to pool funds and buy their own server, and host it in a datacenter that is willing to do business with them, or they can host their shit on ipfs.
It's not like someone like Level 2 is stepping in and saying "We are going to deep inspect all traffic going across our pipe and filter nazi traffic"
It's not going to help them much if they can't get a domain registrar, or effective DDoS protection (rather relevant given their situation).
So they don't get freedom of speech, which is the discussion here. Most people believe freedom of speech is a good thing we want.
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
When Brendan Eich was ousted[1] from Mozilla, I warned that the boycott threat set a bad precedent. The counter argument at the time was that "his donation wasn't free speech" and rights weren't negotiable. In the aftermath of 3 people losing their lives in Charlottesville, supporting the Daily Stormer is clearly Bad for Business™ - even if none of the companies are explicitly stating how commercially toxic DS has become.
1. He was ousted, his resignation was a technicality
I'm not. The moral lukewarmness and willingness to stick to quite literally the HN (obviously comprised of white suburbanites) echo chamber should be quite obvious at this point on the site, to anyone willing to observe such patterns and how political rhetoric on this site is contained. Commenters seem to do damn near anything to not even so much as turn their heads to the left socially. Look at which comments are being downvoted in this thread and objectively ask yourself whether those downvotes have actual merit.
So what is being defended here in reference to the ideal of free speech? Actual Nazis with a known ideology, and known consequences of that ideology, are trying to spread their message. This isn't a matter of some moral ambiguity or merely silencing those we have "disagreements" with. I'd be nice if people in the U.S. would stop feigning ignorance or neutrality all to put up some faux enlightened defense of an abstract ideal. Be practical. It's not going to be a slippery slope. We're not going to turn into 1984. A private company chose to not do business with a group of people hellbent on spreading a totalitarian racist ideology. An ideology that speaks to some pretty primal fears and habits of humans. It's okay to correct for it.
I'll repeat it again, just to end: it's okay and necessary to silence these people. It's not going to open Pandora's box. Not addressing the problem will. I think the EFF's take on this, while noble, is naively idealistic.
Has Google decided they are now the truth police? Is Google taking it upon themselves to be like the Chinese censorship bureaus except for the whole world? I think this shows that the hate speech censorship is a real slippery slope.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/6toeoz/cseti_youtube_...
It seems duplicitous to force someone else to bear the cost of facilitating toxicity.
Google, Cloudflare, etc, not so much.
Should instructions on how to make explosives be accessible and defended?
Like capitalism?
Or free Negroes?
Western Culture?
Like slavery or manifest destiny? both ideas that America as a whole supported at one time, and used ideas like "they are too uneducated" to prop up.
Yes, I mentioned Western Culture, didn't I?
Who decides who is uneducated? Who decides what ideas are so bad they can't read? What's the enforcement mechanism?
What are the parameters for "bad"?
The EFF is confusing a free speech problem with a monopoly problem. One would hope they aren't suggesting that the government be allowed to interfere with Google's speech.
So if they aren't, they are basically saying "bad boy, shame on you" to Google and others. It will have zero impact.
The right way to solve this problem is to name the actual problem and forget about free speech: monopoly. Break up Google and these other companies and problem solved.
> CANTWELL: "a lot more people are gonna die before we're done here" [1]
I'm pretty sure the Daily Stormer said something similar. I don't need that crap in my backyard.
I've sided against Google on numerous causes.
The EFF are wrong. Google is correct.
And yes, the reasons are complicated. But "slippery slope" is a facile fallacy.
Ultimately, society can, does, and must defend itself from attacks. Including attacks on the underprivileged (of whom the Fascists and Nazis at question here are not).
The history of media and new-media utilisation in demagoguery, totalitarianism, mob incitement and rule, and fascism is rich. It should give strong cause to pause to those who've sung (and believed) the narrative of the all-positive, peace-and-harmony bringing Internet. As I long had.
And am now pausing.
Epistemic systems gain significance when they can be abused for personal, political, nationalistic, or fascistic gain. That was the insight of a friend of mine some months back. Call it "the paradox of epistemic systems".
This includes Hacker News itself, which seems to have quite the fascist problem, and an unwillingness, at the moderator level itself, to face that, over concerns of "dignity".
Those concerns are very, very, desperately and sadly misplaced.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_ep...
https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6ufeu1/does_ha...
And here we go.
For all the people who (correctly) wondered "how broad will the definition of 'nazi' get", well, parent just helpfully illustrated it for you. The Hacker News comments section has been declared full of fascist unpersons who must be silenced at all costs.
But remember:
> But "slippery slope" is a facile fallacy.
If we apply those same standards to antifa, they too are a violent, irrational hatemob with blood on their hands. The only difference is they have nice excuses about how it's ok when they do it because of systemic oppression. Even as they wield establishment power against their opponents.
Neonazis are not a significant threat. An abandonment of enlightenment values due to media induced hysteria is. We already saw what passes for unacceptable speech with Damore, even if it's eminently reasonable and moderate. The same people who can whip up a giant shitstorm over nothing are now saying you should trust them in knowing what fascism is.
No thank you. If you justify the means with the ends, you enable people who thrive in such an environment, and they are far more dangerous and insidious than a neonazi clearly advertising being an intolerant twat.