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Comment by vimacs2 | Hacker News Reader

Why do people keep making this same tired, frankly stupid, and entirely ahistorical analysis?

Fascists don't need any "martyr", even leaving aside the fact that nothing being done to Andrew Tate here is worthy of that label, because fascists are perfectly capable of fabricating a strong sense of victimhood in their own heads. The antidote to fascism is overwhelming opposition, not appeasement.

They don't respond to truth, civility, or compromise - though they may on occasion weaponize such ideas when it serves their own ends - because they don't believe in either of those things. This is just liberal brainrot. It didn't work in the Weimar republic and it certainly isn't working in the USA.

In truth, not banning people like this from society just teaches others that their sick ideas must have some sort of validity to them. Otherwise, why would it be on display?

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-> The antidote to fascism is overwhelming opposition, not appeasement.

Where do we draw the line? Using institutions to carry out the project of silencing unwelcome ideas... is to my taste unpalatable.

The line is incredibly simple actually. Ideas that are diametrically opposed to the freedoms of others should not get to spread off the back of the institutions that are supposed to be protecting those freedoms.

A free society isn't something that can magically sustain itself without active effort and intolerance should not be tolerated. Sure, you can paint this as a "paradox" but aside from fascists cry bullying about being oppressed (while actively salivating about acquiring the ability to oppress everyone) and naïve liberals who can't remotely imagine the idea of bad faith actors in politics, I don't think anybody is getting oppressed here.

As far as I know, there is no violation of the First amendment here so even if you think hate speech should be protected free speech (which I don't agree with), nobody's freedoms have been breached here.

And who gets to decide that an idea is "diametrically opposed to the freedoms of others"?

Nobody I'm confident in trusting, for sure.

How about when the idea itself is directly calling for the opposition of the freedom of others? Fascist and racist ideas are not difficult to parse and there is generally little to no ambiguity in their interpretation. If you're not even capable of understanding the surface level reading of a proposition, then I frankly don't really care about who you trust and neither should society at large.

> Fascist and racist ideas are not difficult to parse and there is generally little to no ambiguity in their interpretation.

Interpretation by who? The things I’ve seen labeled as fascist and racist in recent years have led me to believe this is not true. But then again many of the people doing the labeling not only are quick on the trigger to make accusations of fascism and racism, but also seem to see the world in very black and white terms and seem to have little interest in things like nuance or context. I suppose all ideas become easy to parse with no ambiguity in interpretation when you have zero interest in introspection or countenancing views that differ from your own.

You do realize that we are specifically discussing ideas that are so reprehensible as to warrant being kicked off platforms, right?

Also, I'd love to see examples of the things you're talking about that are simultaneously filled with nuance and context, but also elicited an internet death penalty.

There is no line, anyone who thinks this was okay is too far gone.

There is no defense, absolutely none, for allowing companies to just deplatform viewpoints they don't like in a coordinated fashion.

This wasn't a conspiracy theorist or dangerous person like alex jones, this guy was just a jerk with a knack for being rude.

We made a massive jump from banning those dangerous to banning what is unpalatable for most.

Its quite clear that soon we will see more of this and the "correct" opinion will be all thats left.

Authoritarianism often comes slow.

I love how you claim there is no line and then almost immediately afterwards establish that you do in fact have a line - that line being if a person is a conspiracy theorist or dangerous person. Unfortunately for your argument, Andrew Tate is both of those things.

You might also have forgotten about the inconvenient fact that Tate is facing credible accusations of human trafficking which he has so far narrowly avoided facing due to being based in Romania.

The book "The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy" suggests that when what you are arguing for is obviously bad to most people, you end up falling back on 3 main arguments.

This will make the problem worse.

This will not fix the problem.

This will hurt something unrelated.

Basically the same as FUD deployed by incumbent tech giants. You don't need to even try to claim your product is better. People are familiar with your product and know that it's crap. You just have to introduce enough uncertainty into the conversation to slow progress towards other solutions.

>The antidote to fascism is overwhelming opposition, not appeasement.

That can't possibly be right, or the Democrats wouldn't be so focused on "reaching across the isle" /s

People keep saying this because they’ve read up on history and know that never before has banning speech led to any positive outcome.

The resentment builds up over time, the bans add fuel to the fire, and the “ bad speech” only comes back later in greater numbers and even worse forms.

What’s worse is the “bad speech” goes underground and begins communicating in less obvious ways.

You’re looking at this through a 10 year lens thinking “we vanquished Alex Jones, and we will defeat the next one.”

Look at it through a 100 year lens and you might see a different picture.

Bullshit. For one, no speech has been "banned" here. Andrew Tate and others of his ilk are free to preach their hateful message but they're not free to do it off the backs of others.

As for the 100 year view, you don't have to do anything for bigots to "build up resentment" and last time it reached boiling point, we had a civil war where we kicked their ass. The biggest reason why racism prevailed so strongly in the South (and to a lesser extent, the North) had nothing to do with resentments. It was because Lincoln deciding to play the appeasment game and picking a Confederate ex-slave owner as VP who promptly halted and reversed Reconstruction post Lincoln's assassination.

No matter what time scale you view things, reality contradicts your view.

> People keep saying this because they’ve read up on history and know that never before has banning speech led to any positive outcome.

Which manuscripts? Claims of "reading history" are often false. The same people who support Tate also tend to hate academic historians, for example.

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