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Comment by ErikHuisman | Hacker News Reader

You think suppressing speech is a great way to combat "fascism"? The irony.

It's not ironic, it is the Paradox of tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

"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 unwise." - Karl Popper

Great in theory, in practice, channels like infowars are using irrational arguments and keep using them; you'll never see the rational counter arguments in their broadcasts.

I mean to bring up facism again, there were valid rational counter-arguments to the nazi's arguments, but because they owned the media nobody saw them and those that published them were squashed.

Same thing is still happening all over the place.

Ignoring the fact that the paradox of intolerance is the mother of all slippery slope arguments, letting a fascist speak is not the same as "being tolerant without limit". If your people are turning fascist, it's not because of a clown on itunes, it's because you've failed to provide sufficient education and opportunity to self-actualize to your population. Fascism doesn't grow where fascists speak, it grows where people are hateful and disenfranchised. That's not to say I want Alex to stay. Good riddance. I just don't like the paradox of intolerance.

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