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Comment by cwhiz | Hacker News Reader

Shouting people down in public and on the internet doesn’t change opinions. People just talk more quietly or take more care with whom they share their thoughts and opinions.

Cancel culture, outrage culture, and the general “social justice” movement is not much more than a wide scale attempt to silence dissenting thought. Build your own bubble, and shout down anyone who thinks or speaks differently. Yell and call it “offensive.” The genius of it is you get to decide what’s offensive, and move the goalposts as you see it. Brilliant!

Once you’ve successfully filled your world with only viewpoints that you don’t find problematic, you can be shocked when a man like Donald Trump wins the Presidency.

People in the United States need to thicken up. Learn to hear a thought different from your own. Stop retreating into a stupid safe bubble where your thoughts and ideas don’t have to be challenged. Grow up.

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I don't find it to be controversial that questioning someone's humanity or personhood isn't simply "offensive." I find it very surprising that people chanting anti-Semitic nonsense continue to find acceptance and defenders in the United States.

To have a tolerant and open society you need to be intolerant to those who are intolerant. Why is this new or subject to debate?

I agree with you and right now antifa and BLM are the ones preaching intolerant rhetoric. They can’t for the life of them figure out that we just need to put the past behind us and see that we really have it good right now. They don’t see how much toleration they get despite their intolerance of American Principles, the founders of America, and capitalism. I even heard recently from Larry Elder’s interview on Great American Thinkers (I think that’s what it was called.) that BLM is anti Israel which shows that they are anti Semitic themselves. BLM would have every white man or woman acknowledge the sins of their forefathers as if they were their own.

Although sometimes I like playing the keyboard warrior as I did just here in my previous comment. I also feel there are good people that are in the movement of BLM. I sympathize and empathize with those that are hurting right now. I also believe BLM is not fully responsible for the rioting really I don’t know who to blame for that but regardless lawlessness is not cool. I believe in BLM the concept but not the movement. BLM the concept to me is that BLM because some black people feel and at times, if not very often are discriminated against who get nasty looks anything really. I don’t back down with what I said though. Just as there are people in BLM that do the following there are also people in ALM that are being intolerant, anti Semitic possibly racist and the like. I think they too should be treated with intolerance to an extent. They should not feel welcome making those comments, because they should make a change. I still agree that we should defend The right to free speech that we disagree with, but that just means to me that the government shouldn’t infringe on those rights. We have the freedom to speak our words from possible government intervention, but not a freedom to choose the social consequences. I think people forget that part of the Republican platform in America is standing for individual liberty. As I’ve been told recently if we are color blind that may be bad if we are unaware of our own personal things that make us an individual that’s also bad. Individual liberty to me means standing up for everyone including the little guy but you can’t stand up for the little guy at large expense of the group just as you can’t stand up for the group at the large expense of the minority. That principle I learned from the book Economics in One Lesson and also Our Republican Constitution. If BLM the organization donation’s list goes through ActBlue can you really say it’s a bipartisan movement? I believe the Republican Party still aligns with the principle of BLM the concept but the organization and it’s movement seems to me to drift to partisan politics.

More about ActBlue:

> Powering Democratic candidates, committees, parties, organizations, and c4s around the country.

[1]: https://secure.actblue.com/ [2]: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019

> I also feel there are good people that are in the movement of BLM.

There are good people in any movement, especially if it is sufficiently large enough. And you will certainly find much virtue even in people advancing vile causes if you take stock of their character apart from advancing the vile cause.

Social justice itself is a pile of toxic thought patterns trying to fight for goals that are by and large good. They just do it twelve different kinds of wrong. If a person doesn't think there are good people protesting on the streets and in the movement just because they genuinely care and want to see things better, I'd posit they should go get some new eyes. They just have a nasty brain virus infection.

If you want free speech you have to accept the bad with the good. And if you don’t, well, just go back to your safe bubble.

> To have a tolerant and open society you need to be intolerant to those who are intolerant

Do you have any proof of that? From what I can see, the US has been, for the past 200 years, the most tolerant to intolerance, and also (one of) the most tolerant. Weimar Republic (pre-Nazi Germany), had prohibitions on anti-Semitism, yet it didn't help. I'm sure there are also counterexamples, but regardless your claim doesn't exactly follow.

Is this ignoring that we not only had a Nazi movement back before the war but also the fact that we put Asian Americans into camps, had a long period of treating Irish Americans as 2nd class citizens? This is without going into the big issues of slavery much of which still show signs today in how our police system treats black Americans.

What part of all of that makes us the most tolerant exactly?

Compared to other countries during the same historic periods. E.g. not many other countries went to war to stop slavery. Maybe the UK? Not many.

> To have a tolerant and open society you need to be intolerant to those who are intolerant. Why is this new or subject to debate?

It's a somewhat gross simplification of Popper's original:

"Less well known [than other paradoxes Popper discusses] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

—In this formulation, 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 most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."

- Karl Popper, "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (1945)

Doesn't the social justice movement nowadays look rather much like Popper's second paragraph?

Unfortunately, too many people tend towards binary thinking. "Either you're with us to the last detail, or you're the enemy and we'll do everything to destroy you." All attempts at nuanced dialogue are thus drowned out by the extremists. This is not a healthy dynamic for social peace.

No doubt. My comment that says “You have to accept the bad with the good” is at -2. People don’t actually want free speech, they want people to speak the way they want.

This is an excellent summary of what's going on.

Firing, cancelling, and silencing anyone with a 'bad' opinion doesn't convert them to a 'good' one. Instead it makes them more hostile and causes them to double down. I'm pretty confused how America keeps going down this path even after an actual 50% of the entire population revolted against the 'good' ideologies and voted in Trump with religious fervour.

Pretending that people with different views don't exist, or that their views don't matter, doesn't make those views go away. Marginalising and attacking people for views they hold just hardens their resolve.

    > Firing, cancelling, and silencing anyone with a 
    > 'bad' opinion doesn't convert them to a 'good' one.

However it can prevent people with "different views" from evangelizing effectively. Look at the anti-vaxers, "chem trails", or 5G conspiracy theorists: the majority of these paranoiacs didn't independently arrive at these theories.

> However it can prevent people with "different views" from evangelizing effectively

How'd that work out with the Trump election and the massive resurgence of outright racism and sexism? How far does one's subjective view of the world around them have to diverge from reality before they stop and think, huh, maybe this doesn't work at all. Silencing dissenting views has never worked in history. Not once. It just increases internal societal pressure until it reaches a critical point and boils over, usually in a physically violent upturn.

    > Silencing dissenting views has never worked in history

There may be a grain of truth to that, but I don't think a historian, even one who agreed with its thrust, would feel comfortable with it as a blanket statement.

I don't really want to have this sort of heated debate this evening. Sorry.

It's simple. Name one historical example where this strategy of systemic censorship of an ideology worked and didn't blow back.

You can't. There aren't any. It always blows back. America is just failing to learn from a lesson that's been taught to various empires for millennia.

You got me! Enjoy your evening :)

> It's simple. Name one historical example where this strategy of systemic censorship of an ideology worked and didn't blow back.

It worked majority of the time. It typically stopped to work only when power to be ceased to have power.

Both nazism and communism were extremely successful in this. The monarchies did this successfully for very very long time. It ceased to work only when their lost power for unrelated reasons. Saudi Arabia is going strong.

The suppression of nazi ideology post WWII did not lead to blow back either.

> It worked majority of the time. It typically stopped to work only when power to be ceased to have power.

Which is to say it has never worked. Because all power structures eventually collapse and yet the ideologies they tried to suppress remain and rise again. And sometimes, it's actually the resurgence of those suppressed ideologies that destroys the established power structures. As is the case in the USA right now.

> The suppression of nazi ideology post WWII did not lead to blow back either.

You can't be serious.

https://www.ft.com/content/dcd4aee8-936f-11e9-aea1-2b1d33ac3...

By that measure, nothing works ever, because every system dies one day regardless of what they suspend. Such standard is completely useless. Also, "ceased to have power" typically means failure to suppress.

That being said, Nazi Germany did not lost because of internally suppressed people raising, they lost because foreign forces won on battle field. They were quite successful in keeping control.

> You can't be serious.

I am serious. There is nothing to suggest that contemporary German issues have anything to do with post WWII suppression of Nazism. They don't.

Mainland China.

I’m still convinced that it will eventually implode. But it hasn’t yet, and I may well be wrong.

> However it can prevent people with "different views" from evangelizing effectively. Look at the anti-vaxers, "chem trails", or 5G conspiracy theorists: the majority of these paranoiacs didn't independently arrive at these theories.

That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If everytime someone tries to blow the whistle on something, they are called a conspiracy theorist and allowed to be censored, you are basically giving the people in charge infinite power and zero accountability.

> However it can prevent people with "different views" from evangelizing effectively.

I really don't think it does, it just drives them to spaces where you don't personally see them and these spaces typically reinforce and strengthen their beliefs because they go unchallenged there. It also makes it easier to suck in others because those beliefs aren't being discovered in an open forum where they can be challenged. There's also a lot of cross pollination, the 5g nutters for instance have been driven from (or never part of) mainstream circles, so now their discussing things in their own spaces with other craziness thrown in, it will get mixed in with other craziness like being a jewish conspiracy to take over the world or some rubbish.

The internet gave us a brief period where every groups craziness was open for everyone else to see, now we're reverting to make things were like before the internet.

If anything censoring them makes their opinions more credible.

Is it really a case of wanting to silence those views? To me it looks more like PR. "We don't associate with people with bad opinions, so we're good".

I would even go so far as to say that "companies" don't really care. The reason being is that for firing someone, you must have hired them first. But they consider there's something to gain, image-wise, by taking this kind of stand. This, they hope, can be transfered to dollars, so it looks like a good strategy.

Exactly. I think seeing people being attacked is also causing others to double down. I don't know what to expect, but I wouldn't be surprised based on my conversations with conservatives who have been mostly silent if it backfires again and Trump wins in a landslide.

>I'm pretty confused how America keeps going down this path even after an actual 50% of the entire population revolted against the 'good' ideologies and voted in Trump with religious fervour.

About 60% [0,1] of "the entire population" voted at all, and out of that population, votes for Trump and Clinton were split almost evenly, with Clinton still getting a slight majority of (a couple of million) votes, which isn't actually relevant due to the electoral college. At the end, the margin that decided the election was about 80,000 people[2].

I'm assuming good faith on your part, but the premise that half the country revolted against political correctness by voting in Trump and handing him a mandate is a populist myth. Trump is the result of having gamed the system slightly better than his opponent and nothing more, with far less than half of the population voting for him, and many doing so because he was the only option their party provided.

[0]http://www.electproject.org/2016g

[1]https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/10/13587462/...

[2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...

I am just going to assume the GP already knew everything you just said and reply that you are missing the point.

Change 50% to 30% and his point does not change. There are large number of American who voted for Donald Trump with religious fervor, and unless you are planning to do a Thanos, you will have to come to term with them.

You're splitting hairs. Fine, it's not 50%. It's 48% or 45%, of the voting population. What does it matter? The point stands that a statistically significant number of people hold a set of ideologies and views that has been marginalised.

Before the 2016 election I would never believe that someone like Trump could win, because the media and prevailing signalling from America was that Trump-esque beliefs were a tiny minority. Clearly that turned out to not be the case. And that's the lesson from marginalising and suppressing 'undesirable' views. It doesn't make them go away. Here they are, dominating America. Deplatforming those people, depriving them of public voice, censoring their views, all that did was harden their resolve and create a massive blowback effect that shifted people on the moderate side of the spectrum towards radical.

You can argue about fine detail stats all you want, but America is currently being run by Trump and all the so-called undesirables have risen to mainstream status. Which is what my comment was all about. I'm sure you'll agree that if winning the presidency merely takes a 'slight' advantage in gaming the system, then the vote was already split on a knife's edge.

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