People are leaving Spotify over decision to host Alex Jones Infowars podcast
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
Seriously, when did people decide to start compromising on foundational principles like this?
And before you say it, yes I know that "Free Speech", vis-a-vis the 1st Amendment, is about what the government can or can't do w/r/t restricting speech. I think it goes without saying that I'm referring to the more general, colloquial usage of the term.
Jones can start his own streaming service to spread his lies and hate if that's what he wants to do.
I adhere to this principle when it comes to governments censoring hateful speech or anything.
But I prefer not to deal with any business that has hateful content, wether it was created by business owner or someone else. I vote with my money and I rather my money go towards businesses that don't benefit from hate.
Businesses have this level of power now.
If it were a monopoly business - say Google, Facebook, the local ISP, or Microsoft in their heyday - you might have more of a point. Few people threaten to quit Google because they may encounter rude assholes on the Internet.
Specifically, the kind of power represented by the monopoly on legitimate use of force, which means their censorship obstructs the marketplace of ideas in which private actors decide which views to express and relay and success is by persuasion that the ideas are valid and should be adopted and relayed by others.
> Businesses have this level of power now.
No, they don't, except insofar as they direct the institutions of government, or act as arms of government in the form of protected monopolies on essential services.
[0] https://qz.com/257839/the-white-houses-roster-is-starting-to...
Online comments are probably the most weak form of protests. Spotify can ignore it or not. They may lose revenue or not. But no one is forcing anyone.
The parallels with certain other principles written for a time of flintlocks that have unintended consequences in an era of assault weapons should not be ignored.
If it really were true that there was some "evil words" that would spread through the whole population like wildfire like some virus, then sure, free speech would be a bad system. You allude to WWII almost as though you're insinuating the root cause of the WWII was insufficient political correctness.
Oh, and speaking of viruses, anti-vaxxers aren’t still a thing there, are they? I’m sure the good speech will have cancelled out the bad on that subject already.
As for WWII, do I think the weaponisation of the first broadcast communication medium had a huge hand in the rise of Fascism in Germany? Yes, I do.
Before 1933, German radio broadcasting was conducted by 10 regional broadcasting monopolies, each with a Weimar representative. Their radio had a distinctly anti-fascist and anti-Nazi slant up to the Nazi victory in 1933. If anything radio hindered the rise of Hitler.
https://www.princeton.edu/csdp/events/Petrova04042013/Petrov...
“This negative effect [of four years of anti-Nazi messages] was fully undone in just one month after Nazis got control over the radio in 1933 and initiated heavy radio propaganda.” (Emphasis added)
And just how did they manage to dismantle the Weimar democracy and take over all forms of mass media so easily? Because for years prior, those in control of the German government had justified every violation of fundamental law, order, and governmental restraint in order to pinion the ability of political enemies to operate freely in the name of democracy and propriety. Yet, it turns out that, as your kind apparently never learns, power changes hands and the tables are turned against you. And yet now you have no tenable defense against being silenced--your opinions are the ones deemed too pernicious to allow to exist in a "free" society (as every society claims to be!). Your protestations are now "fake news" and, all-too-suddenly, you find yourself, your allies, and countless other innocents in a railway car to places like Kolyma or Auschwitz.
"Radio propaganda helped Nazi to enroll new party members and encouraged denunciations of Jews leading to their deportation to concentration camps and caused open expressions of anti-Semitism."
The weaponisation of radio by the Nazis, which naturally had to occur after they took power, is what drove the rise of fascism in Germany. You're really going to struggle to make the case that propaganda in no way supported the Nazi state here.
And I guess the Germans must also be in that group that "never learns", what with their strict controls on Nazi speech. Still, they seem to be doing better at avoiding fascist leadership than the soi disant land of the free.
Are they really? https://newrepublic.com/article/144954/return-fascism-german...
If you've been paying any attention, you'll noticed that Merkel has completely caved to anti-immigrant fears among Germans and backpedaled almost entirely.
But they were only broadcasting on the radio after they had power in 1933. It only helped them amplify their hold after they already had total control of the government, in 1933.
But you know what actually helped the Nazi state form? Banning the NSDAP from 1923-1925. And in 1927, banning Hitler from public speaking. And in the period from 1925 to 1932, using armed fighting squads to try to de-platform him in bars precipitating the existence of the Sturmabteilung (SA). And yes, using radio as a political fulcrum to turn people away from opposition parties.
In 1933, Hitler walked the road paved for him by people like you. First as the farce of Weimar, then as the tragedy of National Socialism. Every action had a precendent. Every action justified first by a moral panic. Moral panic by people that can conceive of no reason not to use their over-weaning self-righteousness as a lever to tell other people what to do, without considering the long-term consequences of such actions, without context, without understanding, blindly obeying emotions generated by other people.
Because clearly, in retrospect, the Crusders' blind self-righteousness was morally wrong and led to horrors, the Inquisition's blind self-righteousness was morally wrong and led to horrors, the Commonwealth's blind self-righteousness was morally wrong and led to horrors, the Bolshevik's blind self-righteousness was morally wrong and led to horrors, the Nazi's blind self-righteousness was morally wrong and led to horrors, and countless other movements unnamed. But your sense of moral self-righteousness is morally right and justified and will lead only to utopia and the land of milk and honey.
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in 't!
Still, we’re getting somewhere amid the bluster. “Of course” radio played the role I said it did, all those screeds ago.
Just like then, we once again have a new mass medium. Just like then it is being weaponised and we’ve not yet adjusted to cope well with it.
Because anyone can publish anything, any uncomfortable truth can be dismissed as “Fake News”.
Because anyone can publish anything, scientific untruths like “vaccines cause autism” are continuing to cause real harm long after truth finally had its boots on.
But we are finally realising it is time for hygiene factors here. That’s what’s happening to Spotify. They can choose to host InfoWars but they will face consequences from their customers for doing so. That’s how it should be.
Could that go the other way? If fascism triumphs again will businesses face outrage for hosting a triggered lib podcast that insists Sandy Hook really happened? Maybe! But by then it will be too late.
The task is to stop fascism getting to that point. And that may call for targeted intolerance, yes. So we’re back to Popper. I don’t think he was writing from a place of moral self-righteousness.
As you stated elsewhere, I'll be quite happy to debate with the "alt-right" and other adults. Sadly, that seems to exclude you, by definition. Keep your Orwellian licensing schemes on Ingsoc Island and leave the rest of us alone.
Busterarm: you were talking about posters with zero empathy who shut down conversation? You might need to widen the scope you think that applies to. The alt-light are just as bad as your progressives.
Speaking of prohibition and the past, let's talk about the Index Librorum Prohibitorum and the Inquisition:
"[...] Subsequent pontiffs continued to exhort the episcopate and the whole body of the faithful to be on their guard against heretical writings, whether old or new; and one of the functions of the Inquisition when it was established was to exercise a rigid censorship over books put in circulation. The majority of the condemnations were at that time of a specially theological character. With the discovery of the art of printing, and the wide and cheap diffusion of all sorts of books which ensued, the need for new precautions against heresy and immorality in literature made itself felt, and more than one pope (Sixtus IV. in 1479 and Alexander VI. in 1501) gave special directions to the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, Trier and Magdeburg regarding the growing abuses of the printing press; in 1515 the Lateran council formulated the decree De Impressione Librorum, which required that no work should be printed without previous examination by the proper ecclesiastical authority, the penalty of unlicensed printing being excommunication of the culprit, and confiscation and destruction of the books. The council of Trent in its fourth session, 8th April 1546, forbade the sale or possession of any anonymous religious book which had not previously been seen and approved by the ordinary; in the same year the university of Louvain, at the command of Charles V., prepared an “Index” of pernicious and forbidden books, a second edition of which appeared in 1550."
It's almost as if the printing press had given anyone with paper access the sort of message amplification that John Wycliffe and Jan Hus could only dream of, and that Catholic society was being damaged by contextless applications of principles intended to protect it.
The parallels with certain other principles written for a time of longbows that have unintended consequences in an era of muskets should not be ignored.
It always astounds me that hysterical moralists today believe that they would be the ones resisting despots and authoritarian regimes, when it's clear that it was precisely those same hysterical moralists in different times wearing different costumes that would, on the drop of a dime, passionately support and install them for the sake of their own naïve sense of moral propriety.
This is clearly us heading to a similar point online. Cowering behind common carrier exemptions and appealing to fundamentalist understandings of “free speech” aren’t going to wash for much longer.
Speech has consequences. It astounds me that it’s so often the supposedly pro-market right who get outraged when market forces sock it to publishers of dross like InfoWars
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Clearly, the long, moral arc of the universe eludes you. Yes, those with power did everything within their power to repress and dispossess those utilizing nascent means of communication to spread free inquiry and discussion outside what "respectable" society desired.
The end result of that attempt at suppression and repression was the Thirty Years War, the Commonwealth of England, more than eight million dead in Europe, and a safeguard so enduring that within a generation of the aftermath, freedom of the press was established in the United Kingdom--as well as the dissemination of certain, how shall we say, liberal philosophies that led to the draconian view that freedom of speech is fundamental to an open society and must be purchased by eternal vigilance against those that would take it away. As previously noted: different times, different costumes.
And, as seems to be eluding you, we're talking about Spotify here. I don't believe Article 19 is intended to cover them. It'd be a - yes! - fundamentalist reading for sure that read "any media" as meaning Spotify had to carry InfoWars.
As for your "eternal vigilance", Popper already has you there. Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. And I'm sure you wouldn't want that. Well, sort-of sure.
And once again, you seem to quote from totems that you've never read and don't actually understand.
To wit, Karl Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies:
"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. "We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
As for Popper, this is getting tedious now. Yes, that's what he said. Yes, I've read it. I agree with him. You've banged on at length that any restriction at all on any publication anywhere is tantamount to the Inquisition.
Popper disagrees with you. Most of Western Europe disagrees with you. Busterarm and the alt-right agree with you. Enjoy debating with them.
Liberal ideology, in the one that designed the Bill of Rights, and such ideas do espouse in the free trade of ideas and thoughts. And generally, this is a great thing to be able to discuss controversial ideas or criticise people in power.
However, other groups figured out that this idea of liberalism has one major flaw - it would fight for the rights of those whom would stifle the very speech they use. in fact, some of these groups would kill dissenters over even so much as minor insults to the head of that state.
It's effectively the single major 'hack' that our system has. And the destructive outcome means the reduction or elimination of the very vehicle they use to spread - our speech, our freedom to petition government for a redress of grievances, our freedom of the press, our freedom of religion.
Edit: to add, the reason people don't take this tactic anymore, is (in my opinion) because they are 1) intellectually lazy, 2) poor debaters and 3) not comfortable with confrontation.
What happens when its a whole bunch of "traditionalists" (read: white supremacists) espousing the following views:
1. Xenophobia
2. Hyper-nationalistic
3. militarism
4. Glorification of violence and readiness to use it
5. Fetishization of masculinity
6. Leader cult
7. Lost-golden-age syndrome
8. Hierarchical party structure and tendency to purge the disloyal
Sometimes, a direct and harsh response is needed to preserve our institutions.
"The concept of popular sovereignty holds simply that in a society organized for political action, the will of the people as a whole is the only right standard of political action"[1]
[1]:https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Massachusetts_Const...
And summoning up the specters of fascism isn't a scare tactic. It's what happened last year in Charlottesville. White supremacists of all types had a big march. Even killed a counter-protester. Maybe you saw it? We even had a neofascist group do a march here in my local city. And right now, there's flyers espousing the "goodness" of fascism.
You can argue all you want from people from 300 years ago. I know if these people get say-so in government, I and my friends will lose rights, become disenfranchised, and possibly murdered. They say precisely that. So yeah, I do have a rather strong claim to not want fascists to take hold.
I do not believe this to be true and representative democracy managed to survive the larger half of a century with opposition from fascism, socialism, communism, autocracy, modern dictatorship and Orwellian totalitarianism. I think this trend will continue but it seems that you do not.
Keep in mind that a full third of the English language comes from German. In the 20s & early 30s, one of the largest and most financially/socially successful groups of immigrants in the US & UK were German. Germany and Fascism were politically very popular here and openly supported until (and on the US side, part-way through) WWII. Even under those circumstances, it was politically untenable. This is even more true now.
There is certainly some overlap there, but the numbers of white supremacists are small and the numbers of people with an affinity for some of those listed is much larger and not exclusively white (or male).
And in the case of most of that list, not even exclusively right-wing.
There's been an effort (online) in the last year to shift the semantics of the term, so that "white supremacists" might refer exclusively to performative white supremacists. That's pretty Orwellian, and there's no evidence it's catching on. I don't see a reason to dignify the effort. The term means what it obviously means.
This far, you might be arguably correct in that prima facie refers, essentially, to a conclusion that is justified by a piece of evidence unless rebutted by some other counterevidence. But the manner you use it here suggests that your intent was to use the sense of ipso facto rather than merely prima facie, and that's clearly not correct: it is quite possible to think that the are on-average ability differences between races with whites being advantaged over blacks (or some other race, or even most advantaged of all races) in one or more dimensions without being a white supremacist.
> that's what the term means.
Even to the extent that your prima facie claim in the foregoing independent clause could be argued to be correct, this little tag is not. “White supremacist” does not mean “person who believes that African Americans are on average less intelligent than ‘white’ people.”
It means [0] ”a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races”.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremaci...
I recognize that there is a trope suggesting you're not a white supremacist unless you want there to be a biologically determined difference. But, no, that just makes you a reluctant white supremacist. Similarly: there are people who believe it can't possibly be white supremacy to simply recognize science that suggests those differences. Nope, that makes you a scientific white supremacist. What if the differences are very minor? Then you're a mild white supremacist. This bothers people, and I guess it's heartening that it does, but I think most of us are aware that the most pernicious and dangerous form of white supremacy isn't the tiki torch army, but rather the subtle biases and self-dealing that work to keep difference "races" locked into different socioeconomic status brackets. The term means what it means. People should stop looking for loopholes.
You either are wrong or are speaking a language in which the phrase “white supremacist” means something different than it does in normal English usage.
> I recognize that there is a trope suggesting you're not a white supremacist unless you want there to be a biologically determined difference.
There might be, but I've never encountered it. And I'm starting to think you are not merely posting from a place using alternate English, but from a complete alternate reality.
Aside from you, I've never encountered anyone who seemed to think that the core of white supremacy was a belief in on-average differences.
White supremacy has two defining features (this is an elaboration of the two-point dictionary definition posted upthread), both of which are required:
(1) The belief that members of the White race, as such, are inherently superior—and this is reslly specifically about moral/value superiority—to those of other races. Universal or on-average biological differences may be pointed to as evidence of this superiority of value, but they are not the central point.
(2) The belief that as well as (and usually because of) point 1, above, members of the White race, as such, should be in a dominant role, and those of others limited to a subordinate role, independent of individual traits aside from race, in society.
Believing that whites have an on-average advantage in one dimension like IQ and neither assigning greater moral value to Whites as a class because of that nor believing that Whites should be favored in society does not make you a white supremacist. It doesn't even make you a pro-White racist, which you can be without being a White supremacists (holding belief 1 without belief 2 would make you a racist, but not a White supremacist.)
> The term means what it means.
Yes, and what the term “white supremacist” means is not “person who believes that whites have a higher average IQ than blacks” or “White Americans have a higher average IQ than African Americans”.
It's true that each of those (quite different, though often conflated) beliefs probably has some correlation with white supremacy, and indeed I'd be surprised to find a white supremacist who disagreed with either. But neither belief, alone, makes you a white supremacists or even a racist.
Just like believing men are on average taller than women doesn't make you a patriarchist, or even a sexist.
It's not a matter of offense, it's just a matter of the (unstated, with parameters only inferrable from your examples) definition you are using being radically at odds with any common use or published definition of “white supremacy” (including, but not limited to, the one I specifically cited upthread, in part in hopes that if you disagreed with it you'd provide an equally specific alternative), and your claims about what other people propose as an alternative to your preferred definition also being similarly disconnected from anything I can find in use anywhere.
I might be offended if you embraced the ideals of (actual) White supremacy. Your embrace of a weird definition of white supremacy that makes it a belief regarding a pure fact question rather than a value system—along with the idea that there is a rogue group pushing an alternate definition which makes it about a different fact-not-value question—is baffling, but not in itself offensive.
If you adopt traditional tribal/nationalist mentalities out of fear of those who already follow them, then you've already lost, while if you make clear what you stand for and live it, you're at least fighting for what you believe in.
And I do tentatively agree with you. However, there's a whole loaded meaning of " If they take to violence".. How much violence? Speech can be violence, no? Screaming "nigger" at black people is in horrible taste, but is questionable if its a crime. Allegedly murdering people, like what was reported to happened the Charlottesville rally - is that violence enough? What happens when their websites state they would demonize, illegalize, and murder people if they got power?
How much violence needs happened before the "arbiters" of liberal democracies stand with their pitchforks?
> If you adopt traditional tribal/nationalist mentalities out of fear of those who already follow them, then you've already lost, while if you make clear what you stand for and live it, you're at least fighting for what you believe in.
I'm for open-ish borders, as long as people are fingerprinted/faceprinted and announce whom they are on coming in. I don't care if you were a criminal in your original country, as it could have been made up for countless reasons. Frankly, I enjoy diversity. I live in a diverse area for the region, and I would like it moreso, but this is what we have now.
My grievances are with people espousing views to harshly remove immigrants, treat them worse than animals, de-humanize them, and go to lengths to actually murder them. You can say I "already lost"... Lost is having that group that would do us innumerable harm in control.
No, I don't believe speech can be violence. Screaming "N____" at black people is a shitty thing to do, but not violence. Murdering people is violence. Stating that you will demonize, illegalize, and murder people if they get power is a good argument to make sure they don't get power, but it is not violence.
There is a fairly clear dividing line between "violence" and "not violence": "Did you directly cause physical harm to another person?" Punch someone? That's violence. Shoot someone? That's violence. Throw someone to the ground? That's violence. Run over someone with a truck? That's violence.
Call someone nasty names? That's a shitty thing to do, but it's not violence even if it hurts emotionally; you are completely in control of your emotions, and you can also choose to disregard anything anyone else says. Say that you will inflict violence on someone in the future? That is also not violence, though it is perhaps a reason to be extra vigilant and take measures to prevent that violence from occurring. Incite other people to violence? They are guilty of violence, but you are not (incitement to violence is its own crime, and one that is intentionally very narrowly defined).
If that is true, then why do people (children) commit suicide over school bullying? Usually no physical abuse is involved, only verbal or online harassment.
You're argument is that a non-zero number of Alex Jones supporters don't support free-speech therefore all private platforms should ban him?
As a moderate liberal, this type of extremism (i.e. seeing Nazis and hate-speech and shootings everywhere, without every checking the numbers) actually pushes me to the right. I know I'm not alone, it's Joe Rogan's whole shtick.
From my observation, it has been because the right well-understood their losses in the last political cycle and learned how to empathize with and embrace their disagreements. The "battle lines" of the traditional right/religious right/(multifaceted-)alt-right (as in there's 10x as much political diversity there) don't line up at all and in some cases seem to be mutually opposed (religious Zionists & Neo Nazis), but they all hear each other and give each other a platform. They also constantly debate their politics. They all manage to find some thing or another in common and work to that goal.
In contrast, us (and I strongly consider myself one) progressives show absolutely zero empathy for people that do not agree with our politics to a tee. We're all about "correct thought", focus sharply on how we are divided and shut down conversation with outsiders. Honestly at this point I'm completely disgusted with the movement and the direction it is going.
Here's a quote from The Coming of the Third Reich by the premier historian of the period, Richard Evans:
"Communist rhetoric had become a good deal more violent since the inauguration of the ‘third period’ by the Comintern leadership in Moscow in 1928. From this point onwards, the party directed its venom principally against the Social Democrats. Every German government in its eyes was ‘fascist’; fascism was the political expression of capitalism; and the Social Democrats were ‘social fascists’ because they were the main supporters of capitalism, taking workers away from revolutionary commitment and reconciling them to Weimar’s ‘fascist’ political system. Anyone in the leadership who tried to question this line was dismissed from his party post. Anything that would help overthrow the ‘fascist’ state and its Social Democratic supporters was welcome."
Let's take a random quote from an article on Jordan Peterson that appeared yesterday. This is a man whose claim to fame is tselling young alienated ripe for alt-right recruitment men that, yes, liberal society has a place for you, but only if you clean your room and buy my books:
"Jordan Peterson's recent speaking engagement in Hamilton prompted Coun. Matthew Green's observation that Peterson is inflammatory and popular with the alt-right. And yet Peterson is frequently lauded as today's most important public intellectual. In fact, Peterson is less an intellectual than he is a gifted motivational speaker for racists and misogynists."
Jordan Peterson is de-radicalizing young men back towards an open and free society and is bringing back the cachet of public intellectuals (which is sad as Noam Chomsky is still alive). For some reason, the inquisitional progressives view this de-radicalization as a bad thing. It's absolutely bonkers.
ahem, "wash your p!"
Free speech =/= guarantee of publicity on a private platform.
You misunderstand the foundational principal; it is your view of private obligation which would (fatally) compromise it.
> And before you say it, yes I know that "Free Speech", vis-a-vis the 1st Amendment, is about what the government can or can't do w/r/t restricting speech.
But you don't seem to understand that that is fundamental to the broader liberal idea of free speech, which has never included an obligation of other private parties to relay your speech. In fact, the central concept of the marketplace of ideas fails if other private actors are obligated to relay your speech rather than needing to be convinced to do so based on its merits.
This happens so often on HN. People understand the superficial concept they gleaned from a class years ago, but since most people went into STEM, they weren't exposed to a liberal arts education that gives the full picture.
So, we're left with people pretending to understand a concept, while simultaneously destroying the principle with their opinion.
They understand definition of tolerance and intolerance but never took any philosophy or history classes and don't understand development of tolerance as a philosophy or movement.
They see everything as binary data types instead of more complex classes.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/17/apple-den...
/s
With more substance I guess we could start looking up FCC standards when it comes to broadcasting lies over the air.
They gave thousands of licenses to iHeartMedia (Clear Channel) in the 90's, which now broadcast Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, so I doubt the FCC really cares. I'm not sure the FCC has the rights to limit free speech as long as the company who owns the license doesn't care.
I believe the relevant legal authority on the question of FCC implementing content based restrictions on speech can be found in U.S. Const. Amendment 1.