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Over my decades, I have seen numerous ideas go from socially intolerable & indefensible, to practically obligatory & untouchable (or vice versa). Seriously, there are things today that can't be opposed in the slightest without threatening one's standing or career, which not long ago were universally anathema that couldn't be defended.

Incredibly, a primary such idea was censorship itself: those groups who partially defined themselves as absolutely opposed to banning socially intolerable ideas, are now the very same groups calling for vindictive suppression of socially intolerable ideas. Those who celebrated "banned books" are now demanding shutdown of websites (and sometimes even holding book burnings).

I absolutely hold that the Internet should be treated as "common carrier": IP registrars & networking should not address content, leaving those ideas & expressions to survive or dissolve on their own merit. Anything downright criminal should be addressed as criminal, with police handling the matter. Anglin is despicable; let us exercise our right to not associate with him, rather than deny him his right to freedom of the press (so long as he uses his own press).

I'm not debating the merit of any content, only that there is a right to express it (via your own "press") and to associate (or not) with those expressing it.

"First they came for the _____, but I was not a _____ ..."

"I do not support your opinion, but will defend to the death the right to express it."

Incredibly, a primary such idea was censorship itself: those groups who partially defined themselves as absolutely opposed to banning socially intolerable ideas, are now the very same groups calling for vindictive suppression of socially intolerable ideas.

I wonder which groups you're talking about. I remember the ACLU and its civil libertarian supporters being pretty lonely forty years ago when they fought for the right of neo Nazis to march and it seems to work the same way today. Maybe I'm missing something but, apart from the technical aspects, this feels like a pretty old debate.

> Incredibly, a primary such idea was censorship itself: those groups who partially defined themselves as absolutely opposed to banning socially intolerable ideas, are now the very same groups calling for vindictive suppression of socially intolerable ideas.

What's incredible about that? One tends to find that people advance the arguments which serve their turn, and arguments of value in obtaining power tend rarely to be also of value in retaining it. Complaining that there's something hypocritical in this may satisfy in some fashion I don't really understand, but it doesn't strike me as being an especially effective or worthwhile fashion in which to spend one's time.

(And is there really any hypocrisy here? I don't see it - as far as I can tell, the groups of which you speak defined themselves not as opposed to banning socially intolerable ideas period, but rather as opposed to banning those socially intolerable ideas to which they happened to adhere. Anglin's ideas, if we dignify them by that name, don't seem to fall within that range, and so I have a difficult time understanding how I'm meant to take this issue as one of failure to live up to one's claimed principles.)

No, those groups of which I speak did define themselves as opposed to banning socially intolerable ideas period. They were quite clear about all having the right of expression.

First they came for the Nazis, but I was actually OK with that, because otherwise the Nazis would have come for me.

At the far end of free speech really is the potential for incitement of mass murder. Westerners are perhaps not familiar with the modern, post-Nazi example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...

Several leaders of the pro-genocide radio station were eventually convicted of crimes against humanity.

"Over my decades, I have seen numerous ideas go from socially intolerable & indefensible, to practically obligatory & untouchable (or vice versa). Seriously, there are things today that can't be opposed in the slightest without threatening one's standing or career, which not long ago were universally anathema that couldn't be defended."

Which things, out of curiosity?

The only speech that needs protection is the icky speech. Absolutely no one cares to suppress palatable, well meaning, everyone agrees to it speech.

"We are the folk song army.

Everyone of us cares.

We all hate poverty, war, and injustice,

Unlike the rest of you squares."

- Tom Lehrer, The Folk Song Army Lyrics

Absolutely no one cares to suppress palatable, well meaning, everyone agrees to it speech.

One of the demonstrators from the Bret Weinstein debacle at Evergreen can be seen and heard on the Vice video saying, "...F### your Free Speech!" That is pretty much what the demonstrators and those aligned with them did to Bret Weinstein -- all just for saying, Maybe there's a problem when you demand that certain ethnic groups "absent" themselves? Why would anyone who stands against racism ask that of a Jewish man?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ys2ihv_wSs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cMYfxOFBBM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fEAPcgxnyY&t=327

It's possible to fail "palatable, well meaning, everyone agrees to it", without also meeting or even approaching the nonpareil standard of general worthlessness to which Anglin seems at such pains to hold himself.

The matter is in any case also, I think primarily, one of pragmatism. Even the most hard-line free speech absolutist can't defend Anglin without being made radioactive by mere association; thus, by his actions, he forces everyone around him to choose between principle and livelihood. It seems to me little wonder that everyone of import chooses the latter.

"Even the most hard-line free speech absolutist can't defend Anglin without being made radioactive by mere association"

If only our education system would manage to teach logic. Instead we have generations of people who can't understand how anyone can argue in defense of one part without being part of the whole thing.

It's as if "evil people drink water and you drink water, so you're evil" is an actual argument these days and no one sees why that is fallacious and stupid.

> It seems to me little wonder that everyone of import chooses the latter.

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a Socialist" and so forth. And no, the irony is not lost on me.

Systems-minded people not blinded by ideology have natural sympathies to those causes, because the same mechanisms used to justify punching Nazis and kicking fascists off the internet can just as easily be turned against things that we care about.

Absolutism has the virtue of simplicity, to be sure. The human world, in my experience, has not.

Absolutism has the virtue of simplicity, to be sure. The human world, in my experience, has not.

The judicial system is pragmatically absolutist in its operation. It's quite complicated, it's not perfect, but it does work. The system of rights it's constructed on is necessary to prevent tyranny. Look up and read the history around the Magna Carta and the founding of the United States.

What does your systems-mind propose? Nationalizing all companies providing web infrastructure, so that they can be complelled to host curb stompings and child pornography?

> Is it not clear that free speech as a practical tactic, not only as an abstract principle, demands defense of the rights of all who are attacked in order to obtain the rights of any?

I don't see why it should be a matter of controversy to state that Anglin is to the cause of free speech advocacy as NAMBLA was to the early gay movement - only much more so, and deliberately besides.

Of course, the early gay movement eventually had the good sense to jettison the pedophilia advocates who attempted to ride its coattails into public legitimacy.

This is a lazy statement. In reality it appears to depend on who "everyone" is. For example, "everyone's" "reasonable" photo of a mother breastfeeding is somebody's cause for banning.

One wonders what he hopes to accomplish

If you can't imagine what someone hopes to accomplish by doing that -- then after awhile you should try the hypothesis of that being the goal. (This is a Jordan B. Peterson-ism)

by making himself a stench in the nostrils of civilization he only adds strength to the argument that the very concept of freedom of speech is one which has outlived its usefulness and merits deprecation in favor of a restricted realm

If you go far enough to the right or the left politically, both extremes explicitly announce they want a complete overturn of the current social order. So if Mr. Anglin's actions are going to foster the creation of a free speech destroying banhammer, perhaps that's what he wants. If you study what happened in the rise of Fascism in the Weimar Republic, you'll find that it was the left leaning Weimar Republic that put into place the legal framework for Nazi totalitarianism. In almost every law that had to do with human rights, the Weimar Republic put in a "unless necessary for the public good" or "unless a law is passed to the contrary" clause.

A system of Individual Human Rights is what separates any democracy from becoming the Weimar Republic -- which is to say, a mere incubator for authoritarianism. Lose the structural protection for Individual Human Rights, and the you've lost the safeguard against tyranny. That is precisely what those rights were designed to do!

A good overview of the ideological underpinnings of the Weimar Republic can be found here: (Warning, the cover has a picture of the Hitler salute, but it's squarely anti-Fascist.) http://a.co/5yg6TEC

So why are you paying attention to him?

Trump and Obama got elected because they knew how to get peoples attention. Anglin is playing the same game. He is not a constitutional scholar or a regulatory expert but he gets propped by the attention economy. The attention economy validates his message nothings else. The route in the attention economy to get propped up is to give people what they want to hear. Obama, Trump, the Kardashians, Games of Thrones or Star Wars its all a mordern day version of what religion did back in the day - an opium for the masses. As Tim Wu the coiner of Net Neutrality in his new book the Attention Merchants says - you can slow the spread of the message, you can remove the monetary incentive of the new class opium sellers(who take adv of the speed and scale of social media) or you can dismantle the attention economy, cause its just going to keep propping the best panderers up.

Some more context: Andrew Anglin is the editor of The Daily Stormer neo-nazi web site.

I re-watched American History X last night and I greatly recommend it to anyone who wants a little (dramatic) insight into modern American white supremacy motivations. In particular, the main character, Derek, gives a speech to a group of skinheads which is disturbingly similar to some of Trump's campaign speeches (though more eloquent).

Also, I recommend that any concerned intellectual read this book:

http://a.co/bAOViyI

(Warning, the cover has a picture of the Hitler salute, but it's squarely anti-Fascist.)

It details the ideological underpinnings of the above. They say explicitly that they want to replace the current social order. The erosion of human rights is one of the explicit ideological goals of the leadership of both the far extreme right and the far extreme left.