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You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

freddiedeboer.substack.com

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Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#51

Post by tshaddox »

bopbeepboop wrote: post #9
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #4

Like most of these rants against "censorship" they skip over people's rights to restrict speech as a form of speech itself: there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond. If there is some notion…

“Free speech” in the moral sense is exactly that people who operate civil infrastructure shouldn’t use their privilege for censorship. So... people who believe in “free speech” as a moral value will disagree with your first paragraph — and hence, your entire post. You assume your conclusion, so your argument fails to be persuasive. “I disagree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death to defend your right to say…

Note how “to defend your right to say it” actually makes sense in its normal context of positive and negative rights. One can in theory fight to defend every person’s right to say what they want to say, because saying something generally does not preclude anyone else from also saying something.

However, these modifications doesn’t work the same way: “to defend your right to be trending on Twitter” or “to defend your right to be on CNN tonight.” These things are still forms of speech, of course, and yet their exercise does in fact preclude others from likewise exercising. It doesn’t make sense do defend every person’s right to be trending on Twitter.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#52

Post by a_bonobo »

>Federal prosecutors and the Ministry of the Interior regularly move against organizations deemed far-right or hate groups.

On the contrary, the Verfassungschutz and other federal organisations built to work against enemies of the state support the enemies of the state! And that is where the 'vast and varied far-right network' comes from, it's supported by tax money.

The Verfassungsschutz is a special intelligence agency observing enemies of democray, which includes neonazis and the like. This agency uses 'V-Maenner', which is a network of paid informers within these structures.

In 2013, every fourth criminally active neonazi V-mann was receiving state payments: https://web.archive.org/web/20130405050440/http://www.tagess...

When the NSU murdered people in Germany, V-mann informants used the money paid for them by the state to support the group (https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2018-02/nsu-a... ).

Early 2000 Germany tried to outlaw the NPD, the then-biggest far-right political party. The outlaw process failed because the Verfassungschutz had too many of its members in the party's rank, so the judges could not say which party activities were anti-democratic, or what was the government's own doing ('fehlende Staatsferne' - not enough distance from the state).

Because the state taxes itself a measly 10% on these payments we have a rough idea on how much they pay - Tino Brandt, one of the NPD's party functionaries in Thuringia, received 200,000 DM over 6 years until 2001. In the same state alone (remember, Germany has 16 states) in the same time the government paid out 1.5 million DM.

The last head of the agency, Hans-Georg Maassen, is now retired after it became apparent that he was ignoring evidence. He has since opened a Twitter account where he's spouting Fox News-level far right nonsense. This was the head of the agency 2012 to 2018.

The OP's whole argument falls down if you consider that the German state is saying they're fighting Nazis but then they go and fund them very well with tax-money. It would be much easier to fight Nazis if they wouldn't get millions in funding.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#53

Post by runarberg »

runarberg wrote: post #36
clusterfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the extremes, both left and right, have realized that their greatest enemy is not the other extreme, but the masses in between. A group that has the numbers, with mild views that can dilute your message with reasonable doubt, challenge certain aspects of your extreme yet be broadly acceptable to a much wider audience including those tending towards your side – that's poision for an extremist. Therefore, their…

this might be false equivalence. People far on the left (except from some nas-bols; which I’ve never encountered in the wild) call them selfs anti-facists. It is clear who their greatest enemy is. In fact far left groups (like food not bombs, etc.) often engage in social programs called mutual aid where the goal is to spread propaganda through helping the masses.

At the risk of entertaining the no true Scotsman:

A leftist that doesn’t empathize with the masses, is not a true leftist.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#54

Post by justbored123 »

According to the authors logic, we should stop censoring child grooming, fraud, false advertisement, defamation, doxxing, false testimony, etc. because "it doesn't work" and "erodes free speech". This is clearly nonsense. It works, and it should be done, the only question as with all laws is were the line should be.

We restrict freedom in general when it hurts other people (slavery, rape, killing, trespassing,etc) and we don't go around crying about slippery slopes and lack of freedom for it.

Clear examples of good censoring of free speech are the courts decision in the Alex Jones - Sandy Hook case and the Washington Post paying reparations to Nathan Phillips (the child mocking the native American). In both cases their "free speech" caused damage to people and the court decided that they weren't protect under the free speech laws.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#55

Post by square_usual »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #4

Like most of these rants against "censorship" they skip over people's rights to restrict speech as a form of speech itself: there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond. If there is some notion…

> Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others, the problem there lies in the market power of the monopolies, not their speech.

This doesn't work if every platform - whether they have market power or not - are compelled to censor by mobs. Most recently, Glenn Greenwald wrote about journalists trying to get Substack to censor its authors [1]. Well before, Signal employees tried to make their company have an anti-extremism policy [2].

The fact of the matter is, most people don't know enough about censorship to fight against it, and so small groups of dedicated people can create enough of an uproar in their circles about something to make it untenable for any major platform to speak about it, simply because those platforms now have to contend with a vocal minority pushing a narrative. This has been a very common tactic in India, where I'm from: interest groups will object to a movie or a book loudly enough to de-facto, and even sometimes, de-jure censor it. Most recently, a Netflix series lead to a controversy as it dared to show teenagers doing drugs. This lead to Netflix being notified buy the Indian equivalent of the CPS, and was directly caused by people complaining about the show on Twitter. [3]

There is a pardadox of tolerance with respect to free speech. We cannot expect to maintain freedom of expression if we treat everyone who actually expresses themselves as a sinner.

1: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-start-demanding...

2: https://www.theverge.com/22249391/signal-app-abuse-messaging...

3: https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2021/mar/11/netflix-...

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#58

Post by [deleted] »

cheschire wrote: post #39
ericd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast, vast majority of people who disagree with the left are not fascists. The urge to label them fascists and make them seem monstrous and unworthy of engagement is the impulse leads to civil war.

I agree, but I would suggest you use the same logic about labelling anyone in any part of the political spectrum then. Using terms such as "the left" might seem less antagonistic than calling someone a "fascist" yet come across just as harshly when read / heard by someone who hears "the left" preached in the 2 minutes hate of their preferred news source.

[deleted]

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#60

Post by FeepingCreature »

runarberg wrote: post #36
clusterfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the extremes, both left and right, have realized that their greatest enemy is not the other extreme, but the masses in between. A group that has the numbers, with mild views that can dilute your message with reasonable doubt, challenge certain aspects of your extreme yet be broadly acceptable to a much wider audience including those tending towards your side – that's poision for an extremist. Therefore, their…

this might be false equivalence. People far on the left (except from some nas-bols; which I’ve never encountered in the wild) call them selfs anti-facists. It is clear who their greatest enemy is. In fact far left groups (like food not bombs, etc.) often engage in social programs called mutual aid where the goal is to spread propaganda through helping the masses.

Calling yourself anti-fascist does not make you immune to totalitarianism, tribalism and othering any more than, to borrow an analogy, writing "cool" on a box makes it a freezer.

edit: Oy! The downvote is not for disagreeing!

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