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Comment by KGIII | Hacker News Reader

This comment might help:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15566320

Right now, they have Voat. But, the recent trend has been more and more aggressive censorship - including from sites that used to tolerate the truly deplorable.

It is a worrying trend. Homosexuality was once deplorable. Transfolk were once deplorable. Atheism was once deplorable. In some parts of the world, they still are. To some people, in your own country, they still are.

Cheer on.

I am not afraid of the deplorable on Voat. You know what does scare me? Children with access to real military weapons, not their daddy's AR. A keyboard warrior with bad grammar and a Nazi flag is a pretty horrible person. I've seen worse.

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You're not scared. That's fine. For all I know, you have no reason to be scared of white nationalists, because to them, you're not the threat. That doesn't make it any safer for a large portion of the United States or other Western countries where these sentiments are popping back up.

We know Africa and South America and Southeast Asia are still relatively dangerous. That doesn't excuse the sentiments that are building here in the US whatsoever. It actually doesn't factor at all into this discussion because they are totally off the radar for people who should be provided the liberty of living without constant breathing down their neck and "go home" and "jews will not replace us." Where does the liberty from harassment and execution factor into your liberty ethics?

The issue is also not what happens right this moment, but what happens in 10 years' time when people have been surrounding themselves and their family and friends with this rhetoric. The history of the Nazi party following the fall of the Weimar republic doesn't span months, it spans a decade or more. What reason is there to deny some people the "right" to demonize and alienate minorities solely on the basis of inaccurate judgments when things could get a lot worse down the road? The slippery slope, after all, has two faces. We can just as easily say that granting some liberties now causes a lot of hurt down the road as removing them.

I'm not white. I'm quite distinctly not white. They would harm me, if they had the courage and means.

You would deprive them of their liberties without due process and you would do so out of fear. You justify it and call it rational.

That is how I see you. That is what I see when I read what you write.

I don't expect to change your views. I will point out that that sort of thinking is how the US ended up with things like the PATRIOT Act and FISA courts. Fearful people are not rational people, they are rationalizing people.

In ten years, do you want to live in some authoritarian society where every thought and expression must be approved by the public? Where no dangerous thought must be expressed? Where those declared deplorable must be silenced and shunned? Where there exist an oppressed class for their very thoughts, without acting on them?

I do not. I am not afraid. I am more afraid of ceding my liberties and my empathy. I am more afraid of a day when you are not allowed to speak out against Nazis.

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