Not tolerating the intolerant makes you an intolerant too.
I could give you the canonical example of why that's the case, but I'd trip the Godwin wire.
Instead of debating this slippery slogan, better to ask people to clarify what they want to do.
Today it's 'mildly sceptical over mass immigration'. Tomorrow it's 'not advocating for free healthcare'.
Every slope is slippery.
/Godwin
If you refer to peaceful methods, then look no further than Ghandi and MLK. Protest peacefully. Make them raise their fist. And record it, tell the stories, reduce their mandate.
If you come from Malcolm X's or IRA's point of view: assassinations, military-like strikes, and generally war.
I reserve judgement on which way is better.
Gandhi was most effective when the Indian armed forces rebelled.
MLK had Malcom X.
You need a good cop and a bad cop.
If you can see some compassion or love in your enemy's eyes, then every time they hold up their fist to beat you you should hold up a mirror.
Of course, we're assuming asymmetric warfare here. No-one honestly believes FDR was wrong to declare war on Japan.
"Where is the line" for how much we should "tolerate intolerance" is a very easy question to answer.
The line is at current, US law. Break the law with your intolerance, via engaging in violent assault, and you should go to jail.
That being said, I personally lean towards allowing free speech without restrictions (with exceptions for things like extortion). I just wanted to remind us about the context in which the parent comment was written.
> Today it's 'mildly sceptical over mass immigration'. Tomorrow it's 'not advocating for free healthcare'.
"Neo-Nazi" is not anywhere close to the same category as "skeptical on mass immigration".
Skeptical on mass immigration represents a reasonable political position that is commonly accepted (as shown by how many Republicans with that position as part of their platform in the US).
Neo-Nazi represents a fetishism for Nazism, Fascism, and the idea that mass murder might be acceptable.
Ben Shapiro has been called a Nazi.
Do you have any proof their proclamation they are neo nazis is a lie?
You are aware it is literally named after a Nazi tabloid:
The Daily Stormer is named for the Nazi tabloid Der Stürmer, known for its antisemitic caricatures. This 1934 billboard for Der Stürmer reads "With Der Stürmer against Judea. The Jews are our misfortune".
Yes?
Including Ben Shapiro, who is a guy that "wears a funny hat".
The 2 cases you picked are poor, because in each case, there's evidence that people can use to make up their minds.
Everything after a statement like that can be safely dismissed as pure bull.
From an utilitarist point of view, this isn't even a question: intolerant behavior leads to less people being happy (not even talking about hypotethical fights resulting of intolerance, just people feeling excluded), therefore it should be banned.
1) Intolerance of intolerance is tolerance.
2) Every modern philosopher agrees with #1.
Both a false statements, as far as I can see.
As for "Intolerant behavior", it's a completely subjective concept that is orthogonal to morality. In most places in Saui Arabia it's not tolerated for a woman to not appear wrapped in a bag, and considered immoral too, but I consider that kind of treatment of women completely intolerant and immoral in itself.
HS: The main issue with that, a sentence that resume an "essai" (don't have a clue about the english translation), is that people that do not know what philosophy really is. Let's be honest, if it is taught as well in the world than in France, almost nobody knows. So most people misunderstand what it really means, while some of the other use this knowledge to put people down. Even writing this, i'm pedantic, and i really don't want to be, so imagine someone who like feeling full of himself? And that way, more and ore people hate philosophy and philosopher, and get disinterested. (i wrote like a hundred lines about philosophers in French media, but i'm sure no one care so i will refrain...)
I'd also recommend Carl Schmitt [1]
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/#ConPolCriLib
That said we shouldn’t deny them services like hosting, because maintaing a neutral hosting stance is what allows for a firm argument that protects imprortant discourse like legitimate political dissent. Once you allow for a line to be drawn, suddenly bickering over that line becomes a an endless problem that might stifle any idea.
It doesn't say that members of civil society must tolerate any and all speech without consequence or pushback.
And yes, yes that includes speech from hateful Nazis.
Please keep in mind that Nazis would absolutely harm me, if given the chance to do so. I'm quite distinctly not white.
But, the goal should be allowing even the deplorable to make use of their basic human rights. The Constitution says what the government cannot do. It should also serve as a baseline as to how we should model our society.
We should facilitate free speech, freedom of and from religion, security of our papers, innocence as the assumption, etc... Well, we should if we care about fostering a society where people can enjoy their liberties. Rights shouldn't just be allowed for those we approve of. If they are not allowed for everyone, they are privileges and not rights.
That's just shamelessly trying to get something in through the back door when it won't fit in through the front door. "Oh, the _government_ isn't oppressing you but they'll just look the other way while businesses and vigilantes do it to you instead. nudge, nudge, wink, wink"
And what will you do when the day comes that your political opponents come to power (elections haven't been that favorable to the left recently, in case you hadn't noticed) and find you've left them this nice, neat, and completely "legal" mechanism to wreck your lives?
The government's job is to enforce laws that are on the books. If someone commits a crime, whether they are a business or a vigilante group, they will be persecuted.
Attacking cops and breaking store windows are crimes.
Running over counter-protestors is a crime.
Firing people because of their religion or skin color is a crime.
Banning users for breaking your terms of service is NOT a crime. The reason is simple: no one owes you a platform from which you can express your opinions, regardless of what those opinions are.
If whether they're getting arrested is your concern, there's no need to worry. Simply being a white supremacist doesn't get you arrested. Though it looks to me like the thread started over the question of what sort of non-government concession a tolerant society owes to white supremacists and the like.
I find that assessment difficult to swallow and was asking for a citation or example of when this happened.
I also find that idea dangerous, because in the US political power changes every 4-12 years and ideas you might hold dear may be deemed distasteful. Of course, I'm willing to discuss the merits of that idea rather than just banning it.
The point is to get everyone talking about the meme until it becomes a legitimate "side". To in introduce humans to a radical idea that is far outside what they would normally consider acceptable, you have to reframe the idea and/or their beliefs. The easiest way to do that - which marketing departments have known for a long time ("branding") - is by repeated exposure. If enough people talk about e.g. ethnic cleansing in a way that gets you to repeated argue back about how they are "obviously wrong", you will eventually believe it's a legitimate political point of view that people might have.
Look, one of the people you replied to was talking about branding and all that. The second you go on a crusade and talking about banning people with ideas, the stronger their brand becomes.
I haven't thought about Neo Nazis in 20+ years, that is until everyone started talking about banning their sites. It's not the people who tolerate their speech and ignore it that gives these people's ideas weight, it's the people who demand a moral crusade by silencing them that do.
It's true irony that in the effort to silence distasteful ideas, people are giving those ideas much more relevance than if they had done what we always do. Allow people to say stupid things, ignore them, then wave as they scurry off under the rock of which they came.
Then may I suggest doing some research on what they have been doing in the last two decades? In particular the current tactics[1] they are using?
> banning their sites
A private business refusing service is very different from a government ban. I agree that the extreme centralization of the internet has put a troubling amount of power in the hands of very few businesses. However, this is orthogonal to the fact that neo-Nazi groups have took advantage of a lot of people ignoring them for 20+ years.
> It's not the people who tolerate their speech and ignore it that gives these people's ideas weight
If everyone was actually ignoring the neo-Nazis, we wouldn't have a problem. Instead, we have people tolerating their speech and arguing against it in the neo-Nazi framing. They have been very successful at constructing a framing with blurring language and rhetoric constructed specifically to sound reasonable. So now we have people unintentionally defending fascist ideas that has been carefully camouflaged as "distasteful idea".
[1] https://twitter.com/ContraPoints/status/896823834338263041
It happened in post-WW1 Germany. Nazis were originally a fringe movement. Even though they weren't particularly competent, they were able to gain power and influence due to the ambivalence and apathy of (and tolerance by) the masses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power...
Yes, this is the only example I could really think of, but it isn't a good, concrete example by the simple facts that Hitler was never elected as chancellor and the Nazi party never held a majority in the Reichstag. In other words, tolerance didn't give them power, the took power. They also did a lot of things other than propose ideas to get into power.
I don't want the idea of allowing people to present and hold distasteful thoughts confused with being allowed commit crimes (including but not limited to assault, murder, carrying an illegal firearm, inciting a riot, etc).
You can still have free speech in the constitution while society as a whole is intolerant towards those ideas.
I've come to the (current) belief that these idiots have the right to free speech even if I hate it. Outlawing it won't stop their bigotry, just take it underground and give them another thing to blame on the "bad" people.
I also think although they should be able to have their rallies and websites, we also have free speech to identify and make public their identities and call their families and employers and ask them if they support these ideas too. Some people at Charlottesville were dumb founded when they got fired. I think this approach does a better job of saying this line of thinking is not accepted here but maintaining people's right to free speech. I also personally believe you aren't going hate by yelling at people that they are dumb. Cliche but you only stop hate with love and familiarity.
I also think there is a topic in this discussion that doesn't get enough mention. I personally feel this issue is as much an economic one as ideological. People don't have jobs and Trump's platform gives them someone to blame. It is the immigrants who stole your jobs and we are going to bring all the jobs back to the US. We need a wall to keep out all these "bad" people. We are going to do everything America first. This rhetoric give people a pass. People who feel they have nothing left to lose are dangerous. Even more so when someone else is giving them a target to blame.
RE legality though: meth and tabacco are basically the same level of addictiveness, but tabacco is more preponderant because it's legal.
Not to say that we should "make illegal speech" to deal with this problem, but no-platforming racists (as private citizens) likely helps fight against racism.
It's not ideologically inconsistent to be for free speech but not let klansmen into your home. And there are more than enough service providers for these people, you don't have to serve them. They found a replacement for Cloudflare quickly in this example.
The US has extremely strong protections for "intolerant" and "unpopular" beliefs. And it works out fine for us.
Freedom of speech, and tolerating everyone, including the intolerant, has worked out pretty well for us.
I'm not sure how anyone can look at the fucking mess the US is currently in and say that.
Personally I like this page's description of the word tolerance, which solves this word game: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...
You're attempting to rationalize intolerance on a linguistic loophole (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance). I know that cartoons for late-adolescents have popularized this in mass media over the past decade (ahem, South Park), but it's still childish and distracts from the legitimate concerns over the free expression of ideas in our society and world.
Yeah, sure, you have a right to engage in the expression of childish thoughts, but you should be aware you're not as clever as you think you are.