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Comment by metabagel | Hacker News Reader

The key question is whether you think Nazis have the right to express their views freely. It used to be that everyone agreed this to be the case, but we are in the process of learning a very hard lesson that allowing Nazis the right to express their views freely only gives them power to restrict our speech later on.

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On the contrary. I'm not afraid of Nazis, I'm afraid of those who would restrict speech for Nazis. Because once you break the seal, it's simply a matter of time until it's another unpopular thing which gets silenced... and another, and another, until we don't have freedom of speech any more. The road to hell is very much paved with good intentions.

Certainly, you express what used to be (and probably still is?) conventional wisdom. But, some of us have changed our opinions on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Me personally? I am pretty afraid of nazis, that's their whole deal, violence on people, that was kind of the whole big problem with them initially and what led to a world war and genocide. A nazi isn't just someone with different viewpoints from my own, it's people who based their whole ideology on violence, against me, my wife, my children, my friends, my coworkers.

> it's simply a matter of time

How much time? Because the way free speech absolutists talk about these ideas always seem to imply that we are mere moments from a country like Germany collapsing into authoritarianism. What evidence do we have that the US's level of free speech is truly better than a country like Germany which does specifically restrict the speech of Nazis?

I used to believe this vehemently. It has become clear that that’s a notion from a bygone age.

The internet has created a global town square where the loudest voices are the ones that catch people’s attention, regardless of the veracity of their claims. There is no truth any more, only the cult of personality.

Tomorrow the US installs a racist, rapist, treasonous kleptocrat as president because the majority of people are unable to think objectively and swallow his promises at face value, despite every indication that life will be immeasurably worse if you’re not a billionaire oligarch.

Can you point to a single time that banning the speech of Nazis has led down a vast slippery slope of further speech bans, particularly in a vaguely democratic country?

Russia is allegedly attacking Ukraine due to Nazis there. The issue with these things is that you can easily motivate horrible things with the "but we are attacking nazis!" argument, that is why people hate it when you say that.

And Russia is transparently lying. “But you call everyone a Nazi” isn’t particularly persuasive - it’s just Republican agitprop.

i do not agree that this is the key question nor do i find Nazis so compelling that i have to avert my eyes from their speech for risk of becoming convinced myself

The problem isn't that they're scary or compelling but that they bring discourse down to its basest level once they comprise a certain proportion of the environment. Imagine if 90% of HN threads were mostly just discussion about if the author of a submission or comment is Jewish, what their ulterior Jewish motives are, and what repercussions they should face in an ideal world. Many clusters of Twitter are now that.*

A lot of people see the culture shift and start posting less or leave, and then the ratio gets worse and worse. Freedom from government restriction of speech is a good thing, but I disagree that this new era calls for throwing out norms of discussion platforms curating their communities' cultures.

I fully acknowledge there are valid, interesting philosophical reasons to host a site like Twitter or 8chan where "if it's legal it's allowed", but on net I think the benefits do not outweigh the costs.

*(Even many 4chan boards are less obnoxious. In part due to its linear format.)

You’re speaking for yourself now. Millions of [mostly russian but not only] people today are convinced that the extermination of millions of Ukrainians is the morally righteous course of action.

Populations being persuaded into harbouring extremely bad ideas is a thing.

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