When people communicate on a public platform unself consciously, they reveal themselves openly and freely. There is no greater protection to vulnerable populations than transparency. Freedom of speech is a gift and a valuable tool.This move is dumb beyond words.
This is somewhat true, but your argument has a pretty big flaw.
> When people communicate on a public platform unself consciously, they reveal themselves openly and freely
This simply isn't true. You aren't revealing that you read this content. THe authors aren't always revealing themselves. Those who don't really do themselves any harm because they tend to be well established as white supremacists already.
Richard Spencer doesn't care if someone calls him racist and evil.
This is why people take photos and plaster them online when white supremacists march. People get recognized, that's the point where they can be called out.
> Freedom of speech is a gift and a valuable tool.
These people are radicalizing young men into committing violent acts. They should be banned the same way terrorist content has been removed from other platforms.
This is really a failure of state to install controls and protections from out of control elements. This is a breakdown of state measures to deter/punish unlawful acts and failure to protect WHEN actions occur rather than breakdown of society.
One cannot make an entire society conform. To me, that’s terrorism too.
You could say that Facebook has effectively privatized prior restraint, given the "town square" arguments made elsewhere in the thread. Great when we happen to agree with the views being restrained, I suppose.
and I need to kill the <undesirable group> isn't sincerely held?
I think you have to believe pretty sincerely to be radicalized to the point of committing murder.
> Regardless of how we feel about it, everyone has the right to feel love or hate or superiority.
Why? I was perfectly happy living in a society where that was not the case. Where freedom of expression is guaranteed, rather than absolute freedom of speech. It's not flawless, but it's better than nazis murdering people all the damn time.
If anything..driving free speech..however hateful..to dark recesses with only a willing or curious audience ...and without the judge mental and opposite view in the public..will only make the situation worse. Nasties multiply faster when they are not witnessed.
On a simple level, think of an ocd monologue about whether your malaise is flu...vs checking with a doctor and he declares you ill(or well). Being witnessed is a huge deal. It affects people’s opinion of themselves.
It is well known that we behave better when we know we are being watched.
And Salafi Jihadism isn't? I have some Saudis and Pakistanis I should introduce you to...
I've found it interesting that the supposed "bad guys" are willing to openly espouse their views while the opposing side frequently utilizes masks to hide their identity.
Friend, if you aren't willing to condemn the white supremacists as the bad guys I seriously question your decision making.
There is zero value in maintaining this veneer of both sides being in any way the same.
I've also seen the violence from the masked, hard-left types while never any initiated from the other side. At least in some parts of the US. I can't speak for what occurs in Europe.
In Europe and the US the main sources of terrorism are i) the far right, ii) Islamic extremists, and then a long way behind iii) animal rights and environmental extremists.
If you haven't seen far-right violence it's because you're not looking. It's pervasive.
The entire motivation for this change at Facebook is because someone just finished killing 50 people in the name of white supremacists and streamed it. You would have to bury your head pretty deep to not have heard anything about this.
Given multiple, recent mass killings (as well as additional disrupted plots) with explicit far-right motivation that have gotten widespread, in some cases global, news coverage, it is more than just something that vaguely exists.
> But most of the videos I have seen online show antifa initiating violence.
That really says a lot more about your selection of information sources than ground truth.
> Are we just more willing to accept their behavior because they are fighting for the "correct" side?
I think we're more willing to accept their behavior because there aren't bodies being piled up in job lots due to antifa-initiated or -motivated violence.
We have been hating on others not like ourselves since the caveman days. I honestly can’t think of any time in history when we haven’t been doing horrible things to each other. It’s like cancer. We are able to diagnose it and hear more about it now.
It’s like saying ...we are going to install a ban on sharing that you have cancer. “If we don’t know about it, we don’t have to acknowledge that there is a terminal illness amongst some of us. And all will be fine and dandy.”
Rather than gagging certain people, anti-racism and CVE focuses on raising the cost of certain kinds of speech acts, specifically ones that are less about intellectual inquiry than about intimidation and coercion, which behavior may endorse or actually escalate into violent physical acts.
Despite the aphorism 'sticks and stones may break by bones but words can never hurt me', hate speech imposes a significant burden on the unwilling recipient from general anxiety up to full-on fight or flight reactions, and the infliction of this burden is deliberate and strategic. It seems entirely reasonable to me that the people who want to engage in such speech should experience for themselves how their speech acts feel for the recipients.
I can walk away!! That is an enormous relief and I am in control. I got a cue..information and I am free to act upon it.
If I don’t have cues, I will walk INTO unknown circumstances and be clueless with those who don’t want me in their midst.
True story: the most vicious racism I have experienced is the covert passive aggressive kind in the heart of liberal Berkeley. And I have lived in the south. Yes. The South. Some were absolutely lovely and others..they don’t want you eating corn and grits with them at their Waffle House. And that’s fine. Because I knew to stay out of certain waffle houses.
But Berkeley tho’...I needed therapy. It was serious mindfuck.
And yet quite a lot of people get beaten up or murdered by racists, why didn't they just walk away? Because, in many cases, they didn't have the option. Some racists just sit there and say hateful things, others are more active. I'm guessing you do not have much experience dealing with the latter variety.
That is not going to stop people from acting in reprehensible and violent ways.
It's going to make it harder for them to get the audience they desire, and harder to recruit, radicalize, and organize. Contrary to the 'lone wolf' trope, violent actors almost always have identifiable and often leaky support networks.
Transparency is helpful. And non transparency hinders detection and pursuit.
There is a lot more damage prevention and damage control you can do if everything is above board.
Here's a decent and current introductory article on the topic: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-11-link-terrorism-mental...
I'm not part of the group who says the tail wags the dog here. I don't think mental illness leads to violence, but that violent people may be more likely to have certain kinds of mental illness.
I mean, a pacifist could argue that choosing to join the military or obey orders that might result int eh deaths of civilians is pathological, or that states themselves suffer a sort of institutional pathology. But if one accepts a casus belli as a valid premise for military action, such questions are immediately collapsible into a cost-benefit analysis - which is, to some extent, how military forces actually operate.