Or, just a different sort of integrity than you had in mind.
People who are intolerant only to the intolerant are intolerant, period. And if they consider themselves tolerant, they are also a hypocrites.
Because popular opinion in the 1940s (even after France's collapse into pro-German "Vichy France") was "Stay neutral and don't join the war". That is to say, we were "tolerating" the events and trying to keep our hands clean of it, and we ultimately only joined after Pearl Harbor forced our hand.
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Its not hypothetical. There were other groups who "tolerated" the Nazis. IIRC, its a common criticism of the Catholic church for not going more anti-Nazi than they did (they were more neutral as well). Hard to criticize them IMO when the US tried to be neutral for so long though!
Eventually, there's a line that is crossed and we must become "intolerant" of other people's actions. Nazi Germany is perhaps the last example where the country truly unified itself against that threat, but... even as late as 1941 (well after the fall of France), USA was nominally neutral in the conflict. Was that the correct move? Should we have "Become intolerant" of the Nazis sooner?
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Don't believe me? Look up Charles Lindberg (yes, "Spirit of St. Louis" pilot for the first Trans-Atlantic flight). Look up the speeches he gave for the "American First Committee", a popular antiwar group in 1940 and 1941. USA was 100% willing to give up on France and Britain back then, and it was incredibly popular despite the atrocities that continued in Europe.
It all of course changed when Japan made a strategic blunder on December 7th, 1941. But remember: USA was largely reacting to Hitler's rise with a big "should we even care" ?? If it weren't for Japan, I don't think we would have joined the war in earnest.
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"Tolerance", keeping neutral, etc. etc. is the wrong answer sometimes. I think we can all look back with shame upon the US's reluctance to kick Hitler's ass. Like, we Americans make fun of Chamberlain's appeasement, but its not like our country did much about the situation until a few years later.
12/07/41: Pearl Harbor
12/08/41: US declares war on Japan
12/11/41: Germany declares war on USOf course, politics overrides contracts. Hitler wanted close relations with Japan, and gave them his word that Germany had Japan's back on Dec. 4th. So Japan used that to attack the USA (knowing Germany would help). Germany, much like Japan, underestimated the strength of the USA and didn't expect them to be a big deal.
But WW2 could have just had US vs Japan, but kept "neutrality" vs Germany ... if circumstances lined up just right. Apparently there were many German advisors who were trying to push for this scenario, and didn't think Germany had anything to gain for keeping its verbal agreement with Japan. We can imagine an interesting parallel-world where maybe some Advisor managed to convince Hitler of this plan and Germany going down this path instead.
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USA wouldn't get first-hand witness accounts / pictures of the Holocaust for years. The Holocaust was happening, but US citizens wouldn't know about it. (The first whispers of the Holocaust were given to the US State department in 1942, but were written off/ignored)
New York Times had the Holocaust discussed on its 10th page in December 1942. (Not even front-page material). So once again, news of this genocide was largely met with a shrug. War-plans to bomb concentration camps were discussed, but pushed out as a low-priority. Some rescues happened, but it was clearly not a focus of the war effort.
I think people greatly underestimate the USA's capability to be isolationist. Yeah, we play the world's policemen at times, but we also don't like doing it.
In any case, by the time our soldiers found the concentration camps and gave first-hand accounts of them... the Holocaust was largely accepted as fact. But we weren't exactly proactive at stopping it.
Except that in this case we're seeing people who feel entitled to everyone else's support demanding it under the guise of tolerance.
Think about it. We're talking about a federated self-hosting social networking service, and how a group renowned for a political leaning that lies somewhere between authoritarian and full-blown fascist, not to mention the significant amount of racism, is not benefiting from being able to freely connect to each and any node made available by anyone in the world. It's not tolerance that's being expected, but benefiting from having free access to everyone else's services.
One side says not using someone's preferred pronouns is intolerant to their gender identity. The other side says being forced to use them is intolerant to their religious beliefs. Now what? Tie goes to the one with the most guns?
If you don't allow censorship, nobody gets censored. If you do allow censorship, there will always be somebody who wants to censor you.
Proselytizing religions have no moral leg to stand on from an imposition point of view.
Plus, let's be honest here, your example is just people being jerks with each other. The real debates are about physical harm, economic harm, etc., in which case it's far less fuzzy figuring out who's wrong.
In which case the party trying to impose censorship always loses.
> The real debates are about physical harm, economic harm, etc., in which case it's far less fuzzy figuring out who's wrong.
Nobody is talking about laws against violence or monopolization. Charging someone with a crime for beating you with a billy club is not censorship.
For the preferred pronoun question, which one is more imposing? Getting other people to call you by your preferred pronoun, or refusing to call people by their preferred pronoun? You can make plausible arguments for either side.
Except the paradox of tolerance clearly states that simple disagreement isn't intolerance, nor does it prefer censorship in all cases of disagreement, so your scenario isn't a refutation of it:
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.
I never made or implied any such claim, you're not arguing in good faith here.
You claimed the paradox of tolerance allowed no principled way to draw the line between what should and shouldn't be censored, I quoted the principle as stated verbatim. And rather than make an argument against the paradox of tolerance as written, you decided to switch to ad hominem.
If you want to actually convince anyone of anything, you're going to need to argue against what people actually say and believe, rather than strawmen.
In this case the line is pretty clear, and very crisp.
You're talking about a political group that advocates overthrowing the results of free and fair elections aimed at subverting a democratic regime by installing a dictatorship whose supporters are very adamant in their embracing of racist world views.
As for your claims about dictatorships, racist world views, and so on - all of these are vague attacks that generalize an entire half of the country. There’s little evidence to support such claims.
It's one thing to clench your teeth and complain a bit and an entirely different thing to try to overthrow the democratic system in place.
And keep in mind that except for 2004, the popular vote went the other way so for sure there were enough people to send marching on the Capitol.
Oh, and if you will claim that speech insites actions, i ask you one thing: who determines what hate is? In Russia, talking about corruption and opposing Putin is extremism and hate speech.
If you want to argue that some spoken words can be prosecuted in some jurisdictions, chose another opponent. I state my personal opinion that anything spoken should be protected under free speech rights, and even the death threats. Yes, because words do not kill. Killing requires action, and actions must be stopped, not screaming.
Thus, sane people MUST fight against criminalising any kind of speech, because speech is not a crime. Just like sane people fought against slavery, segregation and Holocaust, all of which were legal.
A reasonable position. And one I, for the most part, support.
However, the other side of that coin is that private actors (i.e., not the government, at least in the US) have free speech rights too. And that includes the right not to allow or support speech on their private property.
As such, if you attempt to force private actors to host/support speech they do no wish to host/support, then you are violating the principles you espouse.
I can perfectly tolerate those people - as long as they do not come to my village to tell me what to do, but stay among themself.
It is called live and let live.
If your intolerance is in your own tightly sealed sandbox that doesn't impact me, sure, knock yourself out.
Even though there exist no tightly sealed boxes and everything is connected to everything in the long run - I do not want to impose my ideology on others, I can tolerate people I despise, as long as they leave me in peace. And my experience is, that they often think like that, too. Except for the fanatics with world conquering motives, sure. But planning for a coup d'etat is no longer free speech btw., but preparation of a crime.
In this scenario Democrats will claim Republicans are being intolerant and vice versa.
The laws shouldn't be different for sites like Gab than they are for sites like Twitter. But in communities based on free association, it's praiseworthy not to associate with Gab.
This whole thing about who draws the lines as to what's acceptable speech is like saying "who decides what a legitimate political party is?" It's a good question. But regardless of the answer to it, we can all agree that the American Nazi Party is not a legitimate political party (or, if it is, we need to change our definition of "legitimacy").
As a reasonable person, I think that overt racism, opposition to public health measures, attacks on voting and democracy and unwillingness to accept responsibility for damage to the environment we all share are simply not reasonable points of view. I think the consensus for what is unreasonable is actually quite a bit narrower than that (no one has ever been deplatformed for climate denial). A lot of pro-Trump forums have devolved into exhortations to violence that lead to a deadly insurrection. No digital platform out there wants to be responsible for something like that and it's not just because of politics.
Look, the alt-right has a right to spew their bullshit on the internet. I really believe this, and it’s important we protect this right. Now, if we find a case where they coordinated something like the Jan 6 capitol riots, then we also expect places like Gab and Truth to cooperate with authorities.
I’m not sure what the big deal is here. I’m never going there, and I actually never go to 4chan either. If we come to a situation where sites like these don’t cooperate with the law, we’ll handle that. But, give them a chance to exist at least.
Incoming pretentiousness:
I know human beings a little bit. They are bored, and love gossip, and shit talking, and lamenting about something. Every subgroup, subculture, this kind of thing is a cheap escape that many many people enjoy. My own mother (getting super anecdotal now) can’t stop gossiping, her friends can’t, they looove to talk shit about this and that and who.
The alt-right, like the woke-left, love this fight, like a terrible couple that has great sex. And that’s all it is mostly, a bunch of shit talkers.
————-
The vigilance necessary is to see that it doesn’t spill into the streets. I know what I’m advocating for is the precursor to such an event, but I really hope it’s just plain old human nature at work here. A bunch of bored assholes, on both sides, picking on each other in a digital mma fight. Neither can exist without the other. The woke-left needs this Truth app to exist.
That's a reasonable position to take, IMHO.
However, that position is irrelevant to the law in the US. In the US, the government (except in very narrow circumstances[0]) may not censor or restrict speech.
However, private actors are not restricted from censoring or restricting speech on their private property.
That's how the law in the US works. If someone doesn't like it, they can try to get the law changed. For those who advocate that, good luck -- you're gonna need it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
The operative term there is "should." I don't agree (and not for the reasons you probably think), but if you think that's how it should be, I respect that.
But that's not the law here in the US. As I said, [i]f someone doesn't like it, they can try to get the law changed. For those who advocate that, good luck -- you're gonna need it.
Edit: Clarified my thoughts about current law and the likelihood of changing it.
One of these things is extraordinarily not like the others.
You don’t think it’s reason to have debate about public health measures.
That is definitely something I strongly disagree with. Now look, I’m double mRNA vaccinated against COVID19, and I gently advocate for others to do so.
Do I think governments should mandate COVID19 vaccination? Absolutely not, and there’s a massive amount of health debate to back up my, what I consider, reasonable position.
I’m Australian, so found this podcast between Canadian psychologist Jordan B. Peterson and former Australian Deputy Prime Minister from 1999 to 2005 John Anderson, intellectual heavyweights railing against mandatory vaccination and lockdowns particularly relevant
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-...
Your proposition is that I shouldn’t be able to listen to two people have such a conversation. My government should ban this sort of dialogue?
That is an absurd position.
Since then it has been proved over and over again that masks, even when misused, stop the spreading of the virus.
So I absolutely agree with you. We should be able to question them.
It should be self evident governments should be very conservative in mandating medical treatment, and for very obvious historical reasons.
I don't agree that you shouldn't be able to have that conversation but I don't think its a hard argument that people ought to have been forced to vaccinate. People would have freaked out and still be bitching today but they would be alive.
Nothing good can ultimately come from that sort of scenario.
What it directly results in is a massive mistrust of government authority.
Make the vaccine available at no cost to the individual, and it’s effectiveness data available for scrutiny. That’s the only justifiable course in my opinion.
This more forceful approach has considerable long term negative consequences on trust in government authority that will most certainly have arse-biting consequences for those who wield this power.
It’s an idiotic way to wield power and trust.
Stupidity.
If 74% are over 18 the most we could reasonably hope for is around 53% of the population vaccinated despite the data being overwhelmingly in favor of vaccination. If we make it challenging to work or go to school we might hope for 80-90% ultimately based on only 9% being dead set against vaccination no matter what according to pew.
In such an environment my family will be vastly safer. When your health choices aren't a reasoned choice but an expression of political fealty I give it less weight.
And Jordan Peterson is a professional snowflake who makes fragile white males feel good about themselves. He is supposedly trained in psychology and has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to epidemiology but is unencumbered by his lack of expertise due to his monumental ego.
You’re misrepresenting my argument.
I’m not arguing an anti-vaccine stance.
I’m arguing that forcible mandates (get it or lose your job) is a preposterous method to convince an already doubting person. Note, I’m not the person that needs convincing, I’ve already had two doses and am now actively asking when I can have a third.
They seem to tolerate some specific kinds of intolerance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-tr...
2. being a hypocrite is bad, sure, but I don't see how it's a "get out of jail free card" when it comes to having integrity. If your principle is "always tell the truth", and you encounter a pathological liar that calls other people out for lying, does that mean you can suddenly start lying to the guy and still claim you're a man of integrity?
It's a proto-fascist/full-blown fascist political movement that advocates the subversion of free and democratic elections to install a dictatorship, not to mention the prevalence of racism in their views and policies.
Also, I feel that labeling this particular political movement as merely "right-wing" is a blatant attempt to white-wash extremist views and push for a "us-vs-them" mentality. What this particular political group advocates has absolutely nothing to do with the typical right-wing political tropes of fiscal conservatism, small government, individual freedom. In fact, some of the policies they advocate goes completely against some of these core right-wing values.
That doesn't answer the question. Even they're both doing the same unsavory things, it doesn't follow that you can accuse one of them of being a hypocrite because the other is a hypocrite.
>Also, I feel that labeling this particular political movement as merely "right-wing" is a blatant attempt to white-wash extremist views and push for a "us-vs-them" mentality.
I feel like this violates the HN guidelines:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
For the record, I went with the generic "right wing" label because I wasn't sure whether a more precise label (eg. alt-right) would apply to both. A quick skim of wikipedia confirms this. The page for gab straight up says it's far-right/alt-right, but the page for truth social only has a passing mention of it being "alt-tech" in the reception section.
You're trying way too hard to ascribe malice where there isn't any.
You're being disingenuous if you're trying to pretend that Gab and Truth Social's targeted userbase, and the political movement driving their adoption, is not the same.
Just to make it very clear, Gab was the social networking service initially adopted by this proto-fascist/fascist political movement to serve as a stopgap solution to being kicked out of Twitter due to their prevalence of hatespeech and disinformation, as well as supporting a coup to overthrow a democratically elected government to install a dictatorship.
The same political movement is now organizing themselves to adopt their leader's Mastodon-based social networking service, Truth Social, as the official social networking service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_use_by_Donald_Tru...
> I feel like this violates the HN guidelines:
Care to point out which guidelines?
> For the record, I went with the generic "right wing" label because I wasn't sure whether a more precise label
It's not a matter of precision, it's a matter of trying to whitewhash extremist political movements by bundling them with mainstream innocuous political groups, particularly when they have barely any ideological common ground.
I am? What makes you think that?
>The same political movement is now organizing themselves to adopt their leader's Mastodon-based social networking service, Truth Social, as the official social networking service.
Okay, but what does that have to do with accusations of hypocrisy? If marxist group #1 is complaining about getting deplatformed/supressed, and why does marxist group #2's moderation policies invalidate their concern?
>Care to point out which guidelines?
I literally quoted them.
>It's not a matter of precision, it's a matter of trying to whitewhash extremist political movements by bundling them with mainstream innocuous political groups, particularly when they have barely any ideological common ground.
Again, you're ascribing malicious intent where there isn't any. Not every commenter who mislabels that political movement is doing so as part of a conscious effort to "whitewash extremism".
> What does gab have to do with "truth social"? From a skim of the article it doesn't look like they're related, aside from them both being right wing social media apps.
They were both formed as a response to prominent users being kicked off of other platforms, they both forked Mastodon, and they're both having bumpy launches for similar reasons. Regardless of what argument you're making, it seems perfectly reasonable to bring up Gab as part of the conversation. If we were talking about Rivian trucks, I don't think it would be off topic to mention Tesla.
[originally replied to the wrong comment; reposted here]
It is? I took the comment to argue something along the lines of "well they're hypocrites, therefore it's totally okay to censor them in return". For that to work, you'd need them to be the same entity. Having two sites that operate independently, and having separate policies doesn't seem hypocritical to me. In that context, bringing up gab is a total red herring.
> Gab also used Mastodon but they don't anymore anymore. They did run as a Mastodon instance[1], but after being blocked from most instances and even at the software level by most Mastodon apps, they stopped using Mastodon and wrote their own new backend that does not federate.
...which seems like a pretty plain statement of facts? Is there some encoded animosity there I'm missing? The comment you replied to was a link to a Rolling Stone article that also doesn't mention Gab. (As an aside, I think Rolling Stone is a terrible source of news or information).
>Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values.
It's hard to say you're consistent and uncompromising, if you make exceptions and compromise when it's convenient/beneficial for you.
"strong" is a modifier for "moral and ethical principles and values", not for "consistent and uncompromising adherence". If you swore to support and defend the constitution, and then subsequently violated it to torture terrorists, I doubt you'd be called a man of integrity. This applies even if your other "strong ethical values" is "protecting the american people", or that you think that "terrorists are really bad people so they totally deserve it".
>One of my strong ethical values is that neo-nazis and fascists should be deplatformed to the greatest extent possible.
I have a feeling that's not the ethical value that OP was talking about, nor was it the ethical value f-droid founders had in mind when creating it.