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.