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Removing Holocaust Denial Content

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Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#701

Post by rbanffy »

names_are_hard wrote: post #644
rbanffy wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't prove God didn't create the world in 7 days any more than you can't prove the Flying Spaghetti Monster did that 15 minutes ago. That the Earth is not flat is easily and conclusively provable.

What is the standard of proof here? I'd that the standard seven day creation story is about as outlandish as the narrative that the holocaust is a big hoax. Is it technically possible to explain away all the evidence with sufficient effort? I suppose. But occams razor tells us that yes, the holocaust happened, and no, three days did not pass before the sun was created. My point is that we generally don't expect mathe…

In their shoes I'd draw the line at "advocates for killing people". Seems reasonable enough.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#702

Post by bjourne »

one2know wrote: post #566
bjourne wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slope is incredibly slippery. It starts with Holocaust denial, then pedophilia advocacy, then saying blacks are racially inferior to whites, then to plain old anti-Semitism, then to saying men have higher iq than women, then to militant vegans ("meat is murder you say, incitement!"), then to people wishing that Trump will die in Covid, then to people arguing that U.S. soldiers should be drone-striked. Two weeks a…

We are already well down the slope moving at warp speed. Facebook is obviously selectively choosing what is hate speech according to their leftist political stance. They don't remove hate speech that is anti-police and inciting violence against police (BLM) despite dozens of police having been attacked and maybe half a dozen killings.

Facebook has already shutdown numerous left-wing groups. https://theintercept.com/2020/08/20/facebook-bans-antifascis...

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#703

Post by UncleMeat »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #689
UncleMeat wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still regularly encounter educated people who can't tell the difference between free speech and threats, harassment, etc. That's not what is happening. What is happening is that you and that person disagree on what a threat is.

If cancel culture doesn’t depend on implicit threats of career repercussions, then no one should object when we pass laws to protect employees from this kind of mob-based termination. Of course, in this substantial thread, I don’t think anyone has disputed that CC is about threats and harassment and at least one CC proponent has advocated against employment protections. This is consistent with my observations in othe…

I'd love it if free speech advocates were uniform in their attack on "cancel culture".

I have two friends, each faculty members at top schools, who have been personally attacked on Fox News and called enemies of America. This has led to hundreds of people sending them death threats via email and constant calls to their department chairs demanding their firing. Not a peep from organizations like FIRE.

And why is sending an email to somebody's boss saying that they are an asshole and should be fired fundamentally worse than posting on social media about how so-and-so is a secret jew who works for the new world order and literally sacrifices babies to satan?

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#704

Post by ephimetheus »

jovial_cavalier wrote: post #590
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.

>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. Us…

The problem is that you can’t realistically fight Holocaust denial and the idea behind it with arguments at some point. In the interest of “proving” Germany wasn’t the bad guys after all, these people won’t stop sowing doubt that it occurred, and that’s exactly how you would allow it to happen again.

The German democracy is designed to defend itself, and this is one of its tools.

Interestingly, the American sort of overzealous defense of freedom of speech no matter what misunderstands how freedoms need to work. Every freedom has its limits (you don’t have the freedom to kill someone for example), but they need to be well defined. That’s all.

> 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.

Right, but the thing is that simply voicing this supposed opinion does harm by invalidating the crime against millions of people. That’s the whole point.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#705

Post by saas_sam »

ephimetheus wrote: post #698
saas_sam wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is strange... 1. ephimetheus: The only people who have a problem with these laws are bad people with evil intent 2. me: I just looked and there are a lot of people voicing problems with these laws who are good and have noble intent 3. you: But are they prioritizing the issue enough or are they just saying stuff? ...Uh, what is the argument you're trying to make here? That if people aren't making enough o…

Not sure what you dug up, but I’m not aware of anyone with an interest other than proving “see, we weren’t the bad guys”. Since the Holocaust is a historical fact, historians without revisionist goals have no reason to debate its existence. Research into the extent and details of the Holocaust are perfectly acceptable. Side not, the absolute vast majority of German society is on board with this limit of freedom of sp…

There are several examples under "Commentary" section on the Wikipedia article. This isn't hard, I don't see how you can dig your heels in on this. You really CANNOT fathom how someone would be against strict speech laws for good reasons? Outside your imagination entirely? Come on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#706

Post by whoisburbansky »

watwut wrote: post #626
nostromo wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is how people work, as evidenced over and over again by a widening view of compassion for others. Just look at the past 20 years and the success of the gay rights movement. Views changed because of millions of one-on-one conversations between people who disagreed on gay marriage. No censorship was required for progress. In fact, censorship would have been counterproductive, as I believe it is here. It's no coincid…

> Views changed because of millions of one-on-one conversations between people who disagreed on gay marriage. That is not actually how it happened.

What is your alternative hypothesis for how it happened?

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#707

Post by rightbyte »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #450
konjin wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is a typical slight of hand in these discussions. We are talking about deeply intolerant, bad faith actors, and you substitute this with "censoring opinions outside the mainstream". NO U. That aught to be enough for the argument to be closed, but since we like to pretend we're better than that: how can you tell that someone holds bad faith views? I do not have a machine to peer into the soul of man, neither do…

There is a a very very close to zero percent chance that somebody that is denying one of the most heavily documented genocides in history is acting in good faith.

Holocaust denier is often used as a straw man of someone that estimate the exact figure to something lower than consensus. In Austria and France etc. the state throw people in jail for that. Like a Tiananmen Square policy in reverse.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#708

Post by watwut »

whoisburbansky wrote: post #706
watwut wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Views changed because of millions of one-on-one conversations between people who disagreed on gay marriage. That is not actually how it happened.

What is your alternative hypothesis for how it happened?

There was actual activism and political organizing that took place. Conscious and thought out attempts to change laws and society generally. It was not "one-on-one conversations" and much less millions of them. To large extend, issue was legal and it took Supreme Court decision. Those are not won by personal conversations, those require legal strategy, selection of the right case, right Supreme Court composition (e.g. picking right time) and so on.

The individual gay were not about to go out of closet unless it was safe to do or unless they had strong motivation to risk.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#709

Post by ephimetheus »

saas_sam wrote: post #705
ephimetheus wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you dug up, but I’m not aware of anyone with an interest other than proving “see, we weren’t the bad guys”. Since the Holocaust is a historical fact, historians without revisionist goals have no reason to debate its existence. Research into the extent and details of the Holocaust are perfectly acceptable. Side not, the absolute vast majority of German society is on board with this limit of freedom of sp…

There are several examples under "Commentary" section on the Wikipedia article. This isn't hard, I don't see how you can dig your heels in on this. You really CANNOT fathom how someone would be against strict speech laws for good reasons? Outside your imagination entirely? Come on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial

I should have added “in Germany”. Of course it’s not outside my imagination, but I think the idea that freedoms without limits should exist is super misguided and one of the central flaws of American democracy.

It’s like allowing someone to claim something that is an absolute fact like the existence of the sun was a lie. But that’s ok because it doesn’t invalidate the unspeakable suffering of millions at the hands of industrialized slaughterers.

That’s also why the slippery slope doesn’t apply. The line is clear as can be.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#710

Post by tomp »

UncleMeat wrote: post #674
tomp wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but surely you can be a fascist without also being violent? I mean surely you can be a communist without supporting violent revolutions...

I don't believe that you can. The core belief system of modern neonazis is the protection of the white race by excluding non-whites. It takes violence to remove non-whites from their nations. And then, because of the one-drop rule, the ratio of white people will always drop across time. This necessitates violent responses. All neonazis agree on the goal and there is just one means to possibly achieve that goal: ethni…

You’re pretending that all political goals can only be achieved through violence.
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