Comment by itsgrimetime | Hacker News Reader

Comment by itsgrimetime | Hacker News Reader

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> Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say?

You're wrong about this. If you think that the best ideas naturally win out you're either ignorant (think of how fast bad ideas can spread), or purposefully pushing this "both sides"/horseshoe theory/false equivalence to further impede those who are actually trying to stop fascism.

The "deplatformers" you're referencing here wield entirely different magnitudes of power:

Erdogan: literally an authoritarian dictator

Carlos Maza: journalist who brought attention to the fact that hateful speech has real violent effects on people (it's important that Crowder's videos were only demonetized, not removed, or his channel suspended, and that this action was taken by Youtube).

Antifa: organization with no leadership structure, composed of citizens who are dedicated to preventing fascism from spreading, using means that are historically proven to work.

Carlos Maza is not a journalist. He's an activist posing as a journalist who advocates deplatforming people, covers for antifa, and is ok with violence being used to silence people.

Antifa is a group who thinks it is OK to use violence against people they disagree with. They end up actually being a fascist organization.

You misunderstand what fascism is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

> If you think that the best ideas naturally win out you're either ignorant

So who gets to decide which ideas are the ones that deserve to win and which ones get snuffed out?

See, you're overcomplicating things. If you just had the correct opinions to begin with, you wouldn't have to bother with wondering whether other people might know something that you didn't, or that you might be wrong. You would just realize that, by having the right opinions in the first place, you were totally in the right to violently suppress anyone who might disagree with you.

> Antifa: organization with no leadership structure, composed of citizens who are dedicated to preventing fascism from spreading, using means that are historically proven to work.

"Historically proven to work"? Since when have leftist street gangs ever stopped a fascist movement from rising to power? It was the fear of leftist street violence that won whatever small degree of public support the SA had, bolstered the official narrative about the Reichstag fire that led to the passage of the Enabling Act, and the Nazi anthem "Horst Wessel Song" capitalized on the killing of the aforementioned Horst Wessel by the "antifa" of the day.

Setting that aside, what the fuck is the point of making excuses for political street violence anyway? "Sure, we act like a bunch of brownshirts, but at least we're not fascists!"

The "43 Group" comes to mind. https://vimeo.com/64299989

...so postwar Britain was at serious risk of being taken over by fascists? Probably something more like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw

Immediately after WW2 all fascists worldwide disappeared in a poof of smoke. Also their rise to power has always been abrupt and without warning via an on/off switch.

Wow, you really think British fascism was a serious political threat after six years of war against various fascist powers. That’s a truly McCarthyesque level of paranoia.

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