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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

The effect your are talking about seems legit. The flip side about that is if you force these groups out of the public and then into the shadows, that's only proving the paranoia. Does that radicalize things even more? The same kind of viewpoints existed in the mid 90s, underground, and that lead to OKC which was one of the worst terrorist incidents in US history.

Is it better or worse that this is happening in public?

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It is worse.

Before it took a bit of effort to work in the shadows, but technology has facilitated a disproportionatly loud 'voice' with little effort.

It would be considered crazy to even have this conversation a decade ago.

That's because a decade ago we pretended that it did not exist by trying to muzzle them. In the absence of the avenues for us to see those nutcases the so called "educated population" believed it was a totally fringe group as no traces of them were visible in the liberal coastal towns not because 10% of their neighbors were not barbarians but because NYT acted as a gate keeper preventing barbarians at the gate from entering. So the population did not realize there were barbarians at the gate. 10 years later, NYT failed as a gatekeeper and there they were, pillaging.

Now instead of saying "Ok, there are barbarians here, we should deal with it reality" we say "Hey, we have a new set of gatekeepers - put on these glasses and you won't see the barbarians raping and pillaging"

I'm really torn on this. On the one hand, these are humans, not monsters; their views can be changed, perhaps, but not if we force them into hiding and radicalize them. On the other hand, giving them power and influence in public spaces, the ability to disrupt other people's discourse and lives at will, is not okay.

I'm not sure there is one best solution. We need to give bigots a chance to change their views, and we also need to protect their victims and potential victims, and those things are sometimes mutually exclusive.

> these are humans, not monsters

Humans can become monsters.

Nazism and fascism metastasize in open societies. If they have a forum, if they're allowed to congregate online or in real life, they self-radicalize.

I'm extremely pro-free-speech, often to a fault -- but that doesn't apply to actual Nazis or other people who promote hate and violence.

This is really toxic shit and can be impossible to control once it gets going.

> I'm extremely pro-free-speech, often to a fault -- but that doesn't apply to actual Nazis or other people who promote hate and violence.

So you're an hypocrite.

Nazis seek to silence others through violence or threats of violence.

If you believe in freedom.of speech you should seek to protect these minority voices that are being silenced by violence, you shouldn't be protecting people making death threats.

They are not the only ones.

But the problem is saying that Nazis, without violence and threats of violence can silenced. And if you silenced people even before the threats, how can you say you're for the freedom of speech?

Thought experiment: Replace pro-racism with pro-anorexia. Do you feel the same way? Do you think there are positive results of public, easily accessible communities which advocate and provide support for people to further their eating disorders?

Forcing them into hiding isn't what radicalizes them. We dealt with hidden KKK groups in a pretty stable manner for 70+ years. Maybe it made the worst of them even more extreme in their views due to the persecution. But it kept their numbers limited and their opinions from becoming mainstream.

It's giving them an easily accessible echo chamber that radicalizes them and allows them to recruit. The internet has changed everything.

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