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So you basically have no idea what you’re talking about but want to talk about giving a wider platform to nazis?

I said "I'm not arguing that they have any good points or that we should give them a platform."

Also, admitting ignorance doesn't mean I have "no idea". I've read a bit of psychology on this topic, and feelings of being rejected by society are very powerful motivators.

Just for the record here: I think it's a good thing when people are willing to admit they're ignorant about certain things. It shows that they are willing to learn and change their minds based on new information.

Germany tried that in the 1930s. The de-platforming required later was historic.

I agree! Anyone who talks about “White Privelege” as if they are a uniform group below contempt is just as wrong as Nazis of old railing about “Jewish Conspiracy!” We should not be giving these radical racists a platform! These evil people want to disarm the populace, suppress dissenting speech, and engage in social engineering! We must stop them!

See how that works?

You want to know how to turn someone? Show love, not hate. Daryl Davis has shown just how well that works.

Actually Germany had strict hate speech laws and worked hard to prevent the Nazis from rising to power.

From this article: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...

Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews. In the words of a present-day civil-rights campaigner, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with some vigor. As history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it.

So it is not quite as you have claimed.

> the Christchurch one is illegal for me to read

Could you elaborate on this? It sounds awful to me - someone could tell you anything they want about the manifesto and the shooter's motivations, and it would be illegal for you to check if they are lying or not.

I assume he means he is from NZ and the government has made downloading/sharing the shooter's manifesto illegal.[1]

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/new-zea...

yes, this

> What if it turns out that white supremacists primary wish is to have their arguments heard by society, but society has instead cast them out and refuses to let them post elsewhere so they can only post on 8chan, and that some of them, mentally unstable, react to being outcast in extreme ways?

The thing is, their argument is often not coherent or unfunded and once public, will be shown wrong pretty quickly (sadly not always with the right words or the right ways) and they'll feel attacked because of that.

On theses platforms, that doesn't happen, people are cheering them, they feel right, they feel it's the correct way of thinking. Thus they go there instead because it feel good.

The best example is r/the_donald banning any opposite way of thinking.

They are also slowly self-justifying isolating themselve from others, accusing others of manipulations, of fake news, using conspiration theories to ignore facts, accusing people of "concern trolling", etc...

That's sadly quite hard to fix and you'll need quite a b it of motivation and original thinking to be able to go beyond all theses walls they build arround themselves to protect their hatred and their little communities.

I absolutely agree.

I think if they self-select to group with their own kind they radicalize each other. But there is not much we can do about that because no matter how many forums get shut down another one will pop up. The community itself doesn't go away just because a platform goes away, that just aggravates them.

The best opportunity we have to help normalize them is while they are on public platforms like twitter, youtube and facebook. Unfortunately those platforms have chosen to ban accounts rather than just censor and throttle content (for reasons that make perfect commercial sense). And good-faith statements of bad ideas are not being engaged with because they get censored as well (obviously bad faith trolling and memes don't invite engagement).

IMHO the best response is to engage where engagement is invited (everyone is edified by such discussions), censor where it isn't invited and where it is otherwise necessary to censor, throttle the ability of repeat offenders to post... but never perma-ban accounts.

In summary I guess my point is this: We can't stop them from choosing to go into a dark corner, but we can stop pushing them there.

The solution to ideologues who murder is not to listen to them more carefully.

No one seriously suggests we need to be more respectful of the beliefs of ISIS.

“It's right to learn, even from the enemy.” - Ovid.

If you do not learn what motivates an extremist you will not be able to prevent other extremists from committing similar acts.

I think we are all well aware of what motivates these killers by now. Giving them more of a platform and audience won’t reduce their murders - it will bring them more followers.

Are we? Because articles such as this seem to blame 8chan and 4chan (they never mention the rest of the site which has stuff from /g which is GNU stuff and the transexual and gay communities on there). Back in the 90s they blamed Doom, Heavy metal and Rap music. In the 1950s and 60s they blamed horror / slasher comics.

As for giving them a platform and an audience bringing more followers, firstly this is terminology used for justify soft censorship. Secondly in the UK back in 2010 Nick Griffin (a notorious anti-semite/racist and leader of the BNP) was allowed to speak on Question Time (a very popular show on the BBC). Afterwards we didn't hear from the BNP again because the ideas were exposed for what they were. The BNP party is effectively dead in the UK.

Almost every-time one of these racists are actually spoken to the vast majority of the population reject their message. Every-time it is repressed these ideas resurface because these people create their own echo-chambers and makes these ideas sexy as they are considered taboo.

>Almost every-time one of these racists are actually spoken to the vast majority of the population reject their message.

Deplatforming is the population rejecting their message.

Deplatforming looks a lot like an authoritarian quarantine of a message that is on the verge of spreading. It lends credibility that isn't deserved.

Nope it isn't.

De-platforming happens to more politically moderate such as libertarians and conservatives.

It is normally done by a small number of people with a harassment campaign.

Any sort of soft censorship occurs it gives people an excuse to whine saying they are censored.

Nick Griffin's electoral success was not killed by his appearance on Question Time. In fact, a bunch of minority political positions have had a good deal of political oxygen from BBC appearances: I'm thinking mostly of Farage in the dog days of UKIP's popularity and also the Spiked!/Institute of Ideas collective.

Griffin lost largely because there was factional instability in the BNP and then the rise of UKIP stole the non-fascist right-wing to far-right vote.

He got absolutely mullered on Question time so I find that hard to believe.

Even so, it's very difficult to kill a political movement by logical debate (or even by making them look silly). I had the misfortune to know Mark Collett (another one of the BNPers) at Leeds University. We managed to stop him making much headway in recruitment etc., but he lived for the publicity. Even when he got thrashed at Union AGMs and the like he'd be busy pitching to his potential support in the audience. Didn't work on most (he lost his votes by a landslide) but he wasn't actually trying to win. And I suspect getting his arguments attacked by a bunch of lefties and Jews didn't harm him much in his constituency, either. After all, it's all a conspiracy to stop him talking, isn't it?

Well with someone such as that you aren't trying to convince him you are trying to convince the audience of your position.

We have a good idea what motivates them. Here's some quotes from professionals:

From Katherine Newman, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University: "In general their social experience is not one of easy incorporation, ...Rather than wanting to be alone, many mass shooters have a history of struggling to connect. They experience rejection by their peers or they draw back from potential friendships, assuming they'll be rejected if they try. They believe they're perceived as insigificant."

And from Dr James Knoll, forensic psychiatrist with expertise in mass murders:

"The mass murderer is an injustice collector who spends a great deal of time feeling resentful about real or imagined rejections and ruminating on past humiliations. He has a paranoid worldview with chronic feelings of social persecution, envy, and grudge-holding. He is tormented by beliefs that privileged others are enjoying life’s all-you-can-eat buffet, while he must peer through the window, an outside loner always looking in.

"Aggrieved and entitled, he longs for power and revenge to obliterate what he cannot have. Since satisfaction is unobtainable lawfully and realistically, the mass murderer is reduced to violent fantasy and pseudo-power. He creates and enacts an odious screenplay of grandiose and public retribution. Like the child who upends the checkerboard when he does not like the way the game is going, he seeks to destroy others for apparent failures to recognize and meet his needs. Fury, deep despair, and callous selfishness eventually crystalize into fantasies of violent revenge on a scale that will draw attention. The mass murderer typically expects to die and frequently does in what amounts to a mass homicide-personal suicide. He may kill himself or script matters so that he will be killed by the police."

Has anyone with an audience actually performed a mass shooting? I thought all of them were basically nobodies, not even their troll forum friends seems to care about them.

>we are all well aware of what motivates these killers by now

The memes we tell eachother about who they are and their motivations are do not match what people who actually try to study it have found.

There seems to be a misunderstanding that I want to give them a platform. That is not the case. I said "I'm not arguing that they have any good points or that we should give them a platform." All I want is to understand their motivations so that we can have a better chance at stopping the next shooting.