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Comment by quotemstr | Hacker News Reader

Mere opinions do not cause harm. The idea that mere ideas can be literally harmful --- that speech is violence --- is at the root of much of the social acrimony of the past few years. Long experience shows that attempting to police thought and speech generally backfires, and dressing up the idea of censorship with avoiding "harm" doesn't obviate these lessons. Every censor everywhere has done the job in the name of the good: that doesn't make the action beneficial.

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Sure - but this has long surpassed 'ideas and opinions'. Oppression of gay people, minorities, and other marginalized groups is not founded in 'opinion' - it's a fact and representation of life. Gay people are currently in a situation where someone is trying to actively oppress them. When you donate to anti-gay causes, you're directly enabling harm.

This doesn't have anything to do with censorship - it has to do with letting people know that taking an active participatory position in oppression is not acceptable.

> This doesn't have anything to do with censorship - it has to do with letting people know that taking an active participatory position in oppression is not acceptable.

Censoring and oppressing is literally what you are advocating. You have become the monster you hate.

There is no room for hate speech and bigotry in tech. They cause harm now, and promote harm in the future. You're using censorship as an attempt to wring a personal grievance on the behalf of people who would hide behind their hate speech as ideological differences and not what it really is: the verbal expression of actions they're already taking.

Bigots, sexists, racists, and hate groups of all stripes use free speech and the idea of censorship as a way to distract from the fact that they're putting into action what they pretend to only debate.

> Bigots, sexists, racists, and hate groups of all stripes use free speech and the idea of censorship as a way to distract from the fact that they're putting into action what they pretend to only debate.

This action/position thing is really tired by now. It was all the rage when Eich was being lynched. I was there, I remember. It wasn't logical then, and it isn't logical now. You would deny your political opponents the ability to effectively participate in the political process. That's undemocratic.

> There is no room for hate speech and bigotry in tech

By that logic, there's no room for you in tech. You should really do some serious reflection.

That's the thing though, you're calling someone being forced out because they hold a bigoted position 'lynching'. You're equivocating what has historically been an act of racially provoked murder with the removal of a bigot - there's no justice to be found there.

Political opponents ought to (and are, in most cases) barred from effectively participating in the political process when they hold oppressive and bigoted view points.

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