Hacker News Reader

Comment by drlobster | Hacker News Reader

I had to read the paragraph a few times, but I think what is being said is that "Joe has hosted self proclaimed neo-Nazis'.

View on HN

Which is completely acceptable. Everyone deserves the chance to talk. You don’t have listen.

Everyone does not deserve the chance to talk. Pick up a history book, I think you will find some good examples for why Nazis do not deserve a platform or space to talk about their political views in society.

No, it’s not. Everyone deserves the chance to talk, but everyone does not deserve to be broadcast to an audience of millions.

But they'll find a way to talk to like minded people; and then you'll be surprised how many of them there are.

BTW, who are those millions you want to protect? Are you afraid otherwise sensible people will be infected by some opinions expressed on media? Isn't this a bit paternalistic?

It's better to fight the enemy in the open field; let's have people talk and show who they are and what they actually mean by what they say. Let's criticize what is wrong with what they say and not just said by somebody that got lumped together in the same camp. Let's have an open a tolerant society, in which intolerance itself is exposed for what it is openly and not given ammunition by being intolerant of any people.

It has been shown over [1] and over [2] and over [3] again that deplatforming is effective. So yes, they'll still find a way to talk to like-minded people, but you're incorrect if you think there will be nearly as many.

You're coming at this based on the idea that everyone is rational and sensible and (re)evaluates their views based on logic. Our brains don't work like that; literally all it takes for someone to warm up to an idea is being repeatedly exposed to it [4], and that's before you even get into things like confirmation bias/pleas to emotion/peer pressure/etc.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-contro...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/alex-jones-inf...

[3] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-ba...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect

Using this reason to censor ideas that you disagree with _will_ lead to censoring ideas that you do agree with. Power corrupts, and if people have the power to censor certain ideologies, that will be corrupted and exploited.

I’m not advocating for de jure censorship of Nazism. But a “power corrupts” hypothetical about stigmatization makes no sense — society writ large has always had that power and will always have that power.

And yeah, it sucks that people on the margins of that such as sex workers get hurt, which is why we need to push to change those stigmas. But the alternative is letting open pedophiles teach your kids, or asking Jews to defeat their genocide-preaching Nazi coworkers in the “marketplace of ideas”. So all things considered it’s a fair trade.

If sensible people are immune to racial and ethnic hatred, then why have we seen it all over the place throughout history. People should have seen right through Blood Libel and not massacred all those innocent jewish people, right?

Of course not. Media and narratives matter. Fascism has succeeded in the past at murdering millions of people. There is no fundamental reason why it couldn't happen again.

Of course media narrative matters! especially if you control what can be said and only say that one thing. And people go used to this and assume that if all official media is singing the same tune there is something fishy. I'm arguing that total deplatforming (not just effective criticism, I'm talking about total deplatforming) backfires.

Letting people talking about things even if we don't like them, doesn't mean suddenly you have to bend to their narrative and make them control all of the media. But you should return the favour and not fully control the media too.

> I'm arguing that total deplatforming (not just effective criticism, I'm talking about total deplatforming) backfires.

And I'm saying you should speak to some historians about this claim.

Where are your sources?

>>>Media and narratives matter. Fascism has succeeded in the past at murdering millions of people. There is no fundamental reason why it couldn't happen again.

Always interesting that stifling the fascists and Nazis is so popular* but no one ever mentions the ongoing need to silence the communists, who are in the same "ideology with a 7-figure body count" category. Why is that?

*Also in thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24515338

Yes, I mentioned the campaign against communism as an example of successful censorship that no one seems to question for some reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24513075

oh sorry I totally misparsed the sentence

Reply on news.ycombinator.com