It's a strange world when the "antifascists" want control of speech.
It's a strange world when the "antifascists" want control of speech.
Free-to-speak is one thing; free to distribute hate speech by electronic means to billions of people in seconds is another.
Its a game these days, to pretend one thing is the same as another even though they are massively different.
Used to be conspiracy theory, now actual basis for action of an actual political force.
Sad times.
Speaking freely in your home, or a public place, or even on a TV station, are so different from spreading fake news via internet bots etc as to be different things. Its about the coefficient of 'being heard' which has an infinite set of values between 0 (aren't heard) and 1 (the whole world sees it in seconds).
The coefficient gets too large, and drastic changes in group behavior can occur. Undesirable changes.
We can study these things with science, and understand where the coefficients should lie, without shouting 'freedom of speech!' into the wind to shut down conversation.
Facts are not negotiable, but unless you're omniscient, you have effectively no way to know whether or not someone else's claims are factual, especially when you're confronted with contradictory data sources, unless you happen to have the ability to validate or invalidate those data sources. Maybe instead of attacking the victims of incorrect data sources (thus driving them even further into the wrong by polarizing them against you), you might want to consider attacking the incorrect data sources themselves (and perhaps even their sources). Meanwhile, help those incorrect and duped people find the tools and resources to validate or invalidate those misguided beliefs.
People that hold these views are ignorant. It's like claiming you can seat down and speak someone like Drumpf (a person that never read a history book) out of his stupidity.
I would have said racist or antisemitic, but when talking about Americans (if we're talking specifically about Americans), I really think it's pure ignorance.
European fascism and antisemitism is historic and profound, almost biological (read Pinsker's Autoemancipation! (1882), for example).
I think presently, many American neo-nazis (so called "alt-right), are tapping into it out of profound ignorance.
It's enough to hear conservatives (and neo-nazis) call liberal ideas Stalinistic, Nazi and communist (same breath) to figure out it's really just ignorance. Many don't know anything about either.
So who do you want to enter into a dialogue with?