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Comment by llcoolv | Hacker News Reader

Apologies, but this sounds like it came straight from underneath a tin-foil hat.

And to be honest, racism and <insert-color> supermacy are the most primitive & superficial form of collectivism and thus disgusting, but...

If the idiots on left are going for affirmative action, which is basically discrimination based on superficial qualities such as gender, race & religion, why the idiots on the right should not be allowed to do the same?

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It may not be the goal of Donald Trump specifically - I think he's just having a bit of a hissy fit TBH. But I absolutely do think it's the goal of many self-described "free speech" advocates on the internet, and Trump's worldview seems to be informed by their zeitgeist, so he's serving their purposes.

It's pretty obvious that people who have their own speech being suppressed would be advocating for freedom of speech. That's almost tautological, and not a particularly interesting argument.

They're not advocating for freedom of speech, they're advocating for the tolerance of racist speech under a politically correct banner. Most of them wouldn't bat an eye at the suppression of speech they disagree with, which is evident in how often their attempts at general argument devolve into rants against "the left", SJWs, feminists, etc.

As I said, it doesn't really matter, if they defend a good argument for the wrong reasons.

It's quite possible that some people who want free speech now might be against free speech for others, but that's hardly an argument against having free speech in the first place.

It's an interesting thought experiment: under free speech you should be free to advocate for a restriction of free speech.

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