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You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

freddiedeboer.substack.com

291–300 of 863 posts

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

#291

Ctrl+F "Popper" - zero results found. If you don't provide a cogent counterargument to Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance, I can't take an essay like this seriously. Simply throwing up your hands and saying, "hate exists, let it rain free on the marketplace of ideas" is ... well, not worth a lot. Also, I love the absence of evidence = evidence of absence argument: * Germans have stringent anti-hate speech laws * ...…

The Popper part is easy: In the 1970s, during the student revolts, many right leaning people (who would be called fascists these days) got platforms on talk shows and politely debated their left wing counterparts.

It did not lead to the Fourth Reich, on the contrary, public opinion has shifted to the left in and after the 70s.

The right wing backlash you see now is a direct result of the insanity and totalitarianism of today's "left", which is really a smoke screen for the corporate-directed suppression of the middle classes (both black and white).

This Popper statement, made in a completely different era, is overused to shut down opponents and justify censorship.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're the same racists on the left and the right extremes. It's just, we had decades of wars and (justified) propaganda that thoroughly discredited fascism and their style of racism so it's easy to see how the right extremes is bad. What the extreme left is doing on the other hand is a more modern variation of racism and totalitarianism. It's ostensibly driven by noble concepts like social justice but in reality de…

Yup. Try saying, with genuine honest neutrality, “all lives matter”, “it’s ok to be white”, or “capitalism doesn’t care about race/gender” and see what happens.

"All lives matter" is a totally meaningless phrase outside the context of "black lives matter".

The only reason to say "all lives matter" is to trivialize the phrase "black lives matter". It may appeal to neutrality, but the context is far from neutral.

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

#293
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I don't watch this channel, can't vouch for other vids. The youtube algorithm suggested this to me the other day, posting it here because it's pretty relevant. When Wokes and Racists actually agree on everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg

Maybe you should sample some of the other content to get a feel of who this guy is before promoting his work based solely on the fact that you agree with an opinion you have. Because if someone has mostly bad opinions, you have to wonder if he managed to have just one good one or if this is a bad opinion too.

I've watched a lot of his stuff and even seen him perform stand up. He has made a career in calling out the hypocrisies of the left, usually in an absurd way. Behind the ridiculous presentations are usually fairly well thought out points.

Occasionally he takes on the far right as well. The problem being that it's just too easy and boring to do that.

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

#294
Gate speech laws are kinda like vaccines. They don’t stop it but they sure do keep it from spreading to everyone. End of the day A Nazi doesn’t have anything to say and doesn’t deserve the protections to be able to say it. They fact that we can decent this is what makes us humans or else it’s just computers applying filters

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

#295

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…

Not only would they disagree with you, but their strategy actually works. Leftists, "wokeness", and social justice wouldn't be the hot topics they've been if the strategy of leftists weren't effective.

In terms of "adults", they are few and far between. There will always be biological adults, but so many adults are emotionally stunted that it's difficult for me to give them the title. Just as domestically raised cats are more child-like than cats that have spent their lives on the streets, the average life of an adult in the west is replete with comfort and novelty so as to keep them from building maturity and character. This makes them incredibly easy to be shamed into doing whatever is considered acceptable by the society they're in.

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

#297
post #200

If you cannot censor away opinions, if suppression of ideas doesn't work then why in exactly these kinds of articles do people bemoan it as dangerous? I may agree that most censorship is wrong but it does work. It worked for centuries to help maintain systems of inequality. It worked for centuries to maintain familial control and enforce sexual monoculture in many countries. Information control works so well, it prev…

>If you cannot censor away opinions, if suppression of ideas doesn't work then why in exactly these kinds of articles do people bemoan it as dangerous? I've read a screenshot of some anonymous post that goes like: "There's a general phenomenon I've noticed on the internet. Any forum with free speech and little to no moderation becomes right wing. Leftist ideas cannot exist without censorship and moderation." Which I…

> "There's a general phenomenon I've noticed on the internet. Any forum with free speech and little to no moderation becomes right wing. Leftist ideas cannot exist without censorship and moderation."

I suspect that "right wing" here is euphemism for more of sexism and racism. Because I can tell you that moderate conservative, economic conservative and for that matter libertarian forums all have moderation too. They cant exist without moderation and censorship either.

What happens however is that without moderation people will use harassment, trolling, both including massive sexist and racist statements to push away people who disagree with them. And people who dont want to be subjects of those leave. So you end up with people who are fine with trolling, racism and sexism and the end result is biased toward right wing. You know who will be harassed the most? Anyone perceived as feminist or sjw.

The actual extreme left, which I guess would be defined more as a marxism or communists, is relatively small in numbers. They are also pretty often sexists and racists too, so I dunno how it crosses with that.

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

#299
post #263

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…

Every society exerts social pressure in the form of norms and shaming. People are only sensitive to the shaming they won't accept, which always seems to come from the people they disagree with, and they are completely blind to the shaming that goes on in their in-group.

Yea, a recent example of environmental shaming that worked was the reduction of littering from cars. Roadside cleanup helped, but tossing stuff out of car windows used to be significantly more common.

What’s notable is no organization benefited from littering so there is little pushback on the subject, just millions of people behaving slightly differently.

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

#300

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…

Do you know the history of jaywalking? Shaming works.

But telling people they shouldn’t insult and denigrate people for immutable physical characteristics is not shaming them, but if it is that’s a weird aspect of the interaction to focus on.

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