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Removing Holocaust Denial Content

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Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#581

Post by will4274 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #573
will4274 wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech includes hate speech. > since there are laws against hate speech Not in the United States. See e.g. this unanimous high court decision https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... I understand not everybody is fully supportive of liberal ideas like free speech. But there shouldn't be any confusion about what it means. Telling somebody that the Holocaust didn't happen is indubitably an e…

> I understand not everybody is fully supportive of liberal ideas like free speech. But there shouldn't be any confusion about what it means. Telling somebody that the Holocaust didn't happen is indubitably an example of free speech. One of the disputes that exist within the group supporting the liberal idea of free speech is it's boundary; there is general agreement that some range of speech that is both false and h…

This may feel like a no true scotsman, but it really isn't - those that oppose free speech are not true liberals. The heart of liberalism is individual freedom, responsibility, and culpability. True liberals believe that speech that does not directly evoke violence (such as Holocaust denial) is not violent. If somebody hears that speech and decides to become violent, that's on them.

Believing that we need to restrict what is said in the town square because people will get bad ideas, believing that people are not free but just a confluence of the ideas around them, believing that people need to be led by an authority - these are the classic arguments against liberalism.

You're trying to say that liberals are reciting anti-liberal talking points within their community regarding whether this kind of free speech is good. I think it's far more likely that these people are not really liberals, and just consider themselves to be liberals because it's the most popular political ideology of the day. We should not call those that recite anti-liberal talking points "liberals" - to do so is to rob the word of any meaning at all.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#583

Post by openasocket »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #424
openasocket wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be honest I don't understand your usage of the term "free speech" here. The way I define that term is that it's a political concept expressing the desire for people to be allowed to express themselves however they want to the largest extent possible/ethical. An example of law embodying free speech would be the 1st amendment of the US Constitution. Based on context, I think you are using free speech to mean "spee…

No worries. The 1st amendment is a legal right and protection from violation by the government. Free speech ideals go further and are generally the belief that problems are best overcome by more speech--if someone has an abhorrent idea, let them express it so others can refute it and let the audience make up its own mind. Free speech proponents would argue that censoring the idea will look bad to those in the audienc…

OK, I think I'm following. Your notion of free speech ideals isn't bound to a specific law like the 1st amendment and is more abstract. (I'll note that it sounds like your notion of free speech here actually seems to cover less speech than the 1st amendment, since you're explicitly excluding harassment and threats which the 1st amendment may cover. Of course, that's determining what is legal and illegal while free speech ideals are more abstract, so that's kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison). And you object to Counter Culture, which you're defining as coercive actions against those who hold abhorrent or objectionable views. And you propose an alternative, which we could call Refutation Culture, where you instead seek to open up a sort of dialogue to prove those views wrong or immoral.

I have a couple of follow-ups. You reject using Cancel Culture to silence those expressing abhorrent ideas. But what if someone isn't expressing a political view or ideology, but is instead performing bad actions? Like using racial slurs and insulting minorities, or shouting sexual harassment at women walking down the street? As you mentioned, threats and harassment aren't protected under the banner of free speech ideals. And, depending on the circumstances, those actions may be protected under the 1st Amendment, so are not illegal. Do you object to using Cancel Culture against those who are performing threats and harassment? If not, do you have an alternative recommendation? Because I'm not sure how Refutation Culture would apply in such a situation, there's no idea being put forward to argue against. As a follow up, what about abhorrent views being put into practice, such as the CEO of a company instituting racial segregation in their stores?

Secondly, where do you draw the line between Cancel Culture and general acts of protest? If someone in a position of power publicly expresses abhorrent views, and under Refutation Culture we should voice an alternative viewpoint, can that take the form of a protest? If we march around that person's office holding picket signs refuting their viewpoint, would that be considered coercive?

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#584

Post by hobofan »

nostromo wrote: post #491
ephimetheus wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holocaust denial is banned in Germany (same as swastikas by the way). It works really well. The only people complaining are literally people trying to twist perception of the arguably worst crime in the history of humanity, to make Germany look like a victim. FB is clearly doing the right thing here. Free speech has limits.

> It works really well. Because it's banned, it's impossible to know how well it works. I'm reminded of Iran's leader claiming they have no gay people. Of course he would think that, because if they were openly gay they would be jailed.

It take "It works really well" as a response to the parents claim:

> Some scholars get labeled denialists because they have different estimates for the number of Jews killed in concentration camps.

I am not aware of any case where a legitimate scholar was convicted as a holocaust denier, so there is a proven track record that renders that point mostly moot.

> I'm reminded of Iran's leader claiming they have no gay people. Of course he would think that, because if they were openly gay they would be jailed.

Sure, it forces the people that deny holocausts into hiding instead of eliminating their belief, but that's also not the intention of those measures. The goal is that they can not openly spread those beliefs and create more holocaust deniers in an uncontrollable fashion.

Iran's leader has the same idea regarding gay people, just that it's a stupid idea, because contrary to holocaust denial, being gay is not a chosen belief (though in their mind they might think it is).

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#585

Post by throwaway894345 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #543
remarkEon wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Well they probably did something to deserve getting fired" is certainly a take. I'd ask though, would these companies still fire you if there wasn't a mob, social media or otherwise, causing a ruckus?

That's a little irrelevant; if someone wasn't complaining, it's likely one's boss wouldn't know. But that doesn't imply it's the mob's fault; it's up to the person who said the things to not say things their employer would fire them for.

The point is the employer wouldn't fire them apart from the mob's pressure. Moreover, mobs are famously fickle and they're happy to descend upon anyone, guilty or not (even irrespective of whether or not today's target was part of the mob yesterday). I really hope we can agree that mob rule is strictly worse than rule of law.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#586

Post by spike021 »

AHappyCamper wrote: post #510

My grandparent's families were mostly wiped out. We lost over 300 on my Dad's side, and there's no number for how many we lost on my Mom's side - everyone was killed. I grew up listening to my Grandmother screaming when she had panic attacks and night terrors, and the stories we heard were horrific. I'm so so glad that Facebook has done this. Maybe it hurts freedom of speech, and maybe it's overreach - I don't know -…

Same here. My Jewish German grandfather's father was taken by the Nazis and beaten. Somehow he managed to escape.

They lost the family bakery on Kristellnacht.

His synagogue was burnt down that night as well.

My grandfather routinely got beaten up at/after school by Hitler Youth.

Not to mention many other things.

After immigrating to the US he was drafted at 16 to fight in WWII and landed in Normandy on D-Day, where he almost drowned because his landing vessel opened too far from shore and he didn't know how to swim. And his unit was also captured later and he could understand the soldiers who'd captured them debating in German whether to kill them or not.

Crazy stories.

I know some people are desensitized to it by now, but whenever classmates in school would throw up the Nazi salute at me because they knew I was Jewish or make other anti-Semitic comments/jokes "in jest" always made my blood boil.

I still feel this way and don't think I'll ever be desensitized.

Even in middle school two decades ago I understood there was a huge lack of Holocaust education.

I hope someday that changes.

I'm just glad my grandfather is still alive for now and that he was able to share his family's story in a Shoah Foundation interview (I recommend anyone curious to look them up [0]); Shoah Foundation was able to gather a plethora of interviews of Holocaust survivors specifically for this reason of educating about what happened.

[0] https://sfi.usc.edu/ (USC Shoah Foundation)

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#587

Post by luckylion »

fortran77 wrote: post #415

One issue I find is often the people who promote this sort of content don’t sit in their private groups and discuss it among themselves, but go out and actively court confrontations by posting to forums of Jews and others directly victimized by the actions of the Germany in World War II. I see it all the time on Twitter —- and on Hacker News.

You see literal holocaust denial on Hacker News all the time? Is dang cleaning up that quickly or are you exaggerating a lot?

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#588

Post by Barrin92 »

will4274 wrote: post #564
Barrin92 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol do you think the criminalisation of holocaust denial is a new invention that somehow needs to be studied by future historians? Most democratic countries on this earth, except for the US , not only ban holocaust denial on private platforms, which is insidious historical revisionism, but punishes it by law. I have absolutely no idea how someone can be so childish as to not see that rights have their limitations to…

> Most democratic countries on this earth, except for the US, not only ban holocaust denial on private platforms, which is insidious historical revisionism, but punishes it by law. Pretty much only Germany and bordering countries actually. Democracies outside of Europe pretty uniformly do not ban Holocaust denial. See e.g. India.

India flat out has laws that prohibit hate speech and creation of racial disharmony of all sorts. I'm not sure if an Indian court has ever dealt with holocaust denial in particular, probably because there's barely any Jews in India at this point, but Indian limitations on speech go far beyond the genocide-speech laws that exist in Europe. Same of course is also true for Singapore and most other Asian countries.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#589

Post by shadowgovt »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #580
shadowgovt wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do cancel-culture proponents really want to cement the precedent that employment is just an ordinary association, and that anyone's employment (and thus livelihood and health insurance) can be terminated on the whims of their employer? If we're talking about the US, that's already extremely firmly cemented outside of specific union protections (I haven't heard about unions going to bat for employees getting called…

> If we're talking about the US, that's already extremely firmly cemented outside of specific union protections (I haven't heard about unions going to bat for employees getting called out; I'd be interested to see if it's happening). It's not firmly cemented, it's a common law, but it's well within the realm of possibility that Congress would pass a bill that strengthens employment protections. This is something the…

> I'm guessing you would argue that this is immoral and harmful behavior

I do not. I argue that the public putting pressure on individuals who spread bad ideas to stop doing that---up to and including looping their employer in, up to and including the employer terminating that employment relationship---is part of the healthy public immune system to bad ideas and antisocial behavior. "We live in a society" and all that. The government is constrained from doing it because the machinery of government can be co-opted by tyrants, so people need the right to call tyrants what they are. Not because it's the obligation of every individual to feed those who seek their destruction.

In US history, unpopular politicians used to have their houses torn down brick by brick by an angry mob and tossed in a river. We've come quite a long way in expressing disagreement in a civilized way, but there's no expectation that someone should keep paying you money (or, in the concrete case of Facebook and what content they host, giving you an open "billboard along the highway" of their community communication service) so you can spend it on denying their history or their right to exist (or the history and right to exist of their customers).

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#590

Post by jovial_cavalier »

ephimetheus wrote: post #444
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #114

How are they going to determine what is HD? Some scholars get labeled denialists because they have different estimates for the number of Jews killed in concentration camps. Seems worrying to have FB moderators determining what's acceptable historical debate and what is wrongthink.

Holocaust denial is banned in Germany (same as swastikas by the way). It works really well. The only people complaining are literally people trying to twist perception of the arguably worst crime in the history of humanity, to make Germany look like a victim. FB is clearly doing the right thing here. Free speech has limits.

>Holocaust denial is banned in Germany (same as swastikas by the way). It works really well

In what way does it "work"? What do you actually gain by silencing those people? It seems like you're lending them credibility. As in "these things that I'm saying are so dangerous that the government wants to shut me up!" You can't control what people actually believe, you can only control whether or not you hear about it. Using the state to do this for you instead of a block button is dangerous and inefficient.

>Free speech has limits.

No it doesn't. Free speech with limits isn't free speech. The simple expression of an idea w/o the intent to cause harm to another party, and the sole intention of discourse should be protected no matter what. No matter how distasteful it is, holocaust denial falls into this category.

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