Might be useful to think of Extremist views and conspiracy theories as Mind Viruses. Currently we have no way to fight the disease or inoculate people against them other than preventing the ideas getting into their heads in the first place.
You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
311–320 of 863 posts
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#312The censorship we are talking about is not censorship: it's moderation.
Every forum worth using has moderation. The problem today is that most people aren't using user-moderated forums. Instead, they are using corporate-moderated social networks.
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#313>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 ag…
> 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.
How does this do anything but support the OP's argument? OP argues that hate speech laws are futile because those in power get to decide what is hate speech and how it is enforced and it is always possible for the wrong people to be in power. Has-Geog Maassen and the overall failure you highlighted seems like a perfect example of this seeming inevitability in practice.
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#314Earlier 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…
[flagged]
> Racial discrimination: Now here is a real long stretch... You might be thinking about discrimination against white people
It's not racial discrimination unless it's grown on the Right; otherwise, it's just "sparkling discrimination on the basis of race".
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Has any rigorous study shown that blacks are more likely to die in police encounters after adjusting for income level and crime rate of where the encounter takes place?
If so please provide a cite or link.
Although out of thousands of cops in the USA I am sure there are some genuine racists the notion that in 2020 cops would be killing blacks intentionally at a higher rate seems ridiculous. 99.999% of cops want to have an easy shift, get a donut or two, write a couple tickets, watch the years go by, retire early and collect a pension. Plenty of poor and middle class whites have been killed by abusive individual cops over the years and yet the reaction is not tribalism, rioting or generalising the actions of few bad cops to the police force as a whole. I agree America has massive problem with overly militarised police but this is not a racial issue. It stems from the drug war and the ease with which criminals can get high powered weapons in America. See North Hollywood Shootout.
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Today they complain about others who were silenced before they themselves are silenced. FTFY! Which ironically runs right into the famous poem: >First they came for the Communists >And I did not speak out >Because I was not a Communist >Then they came for the Socialists >And I did not speak out >Because I was not a Socialist >Then they came for the trade unionists >And I did not speak out >Because I was not a trade…
I am not sure what you opinion is. The poem you quoted is aimed at true, real, historically existing Nazis. So it is less applicable at people with somewhat similar views complaining about being called out. Calling them out and confronting them is exactly what the poem advocates for. The same goes for your post about tolerance towards intolerance. And then you complain about anti-white racism, which is not a thing. C…
The right are not the ones cancelling people. It's better to have everyone fighting like hell than one side censored into oblivion.
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#317One side of extremism want to kill people the other doesn’t this is pretty simple
Unironically, which one is that then? Because as far as I can tell, both are armed and battering each other.
> right-wing extremists have killed 329 victims in the last 25 years, while antifa members haven't killed any
https://www.businessinsider.com/right-wing-extremists-kill-3...
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And of the two sides, only one is actively trying to restrict the freedom of people based on skin, religion and sex. Only one side is arguing for violence against weaker people, like fugitives and migrants. I sincerely don't think either of the two sides is advocating for those things (ignoring a very few extremists - on both sides - with malicious intent, who don't represent the majority). I do see those issues me…
The AfD called to shoot migrants at the EU border. They retreated to the "only one person's personal opinion" after a harsh backlash. QAnon representatives are calling for the murder of Democrats. The same group advocates for brutal treatment of migrants, restrictions of freedom of choice for women, direct violence against muslims. I don't see any of this on the left side of the political spectrum. Also, when someone…
[flagged]
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the other way around: these phrases are neutral observations and reasonable opinions, perhaps reasonable reactions to insanity of well-known political slogans - importantly, it's something a random person can come up independently, without reading the exact words first. But at some point, these phrases rapidly become politicized, and this catches a lot of people off guard. You voice your thoughts, fully expectin…
There was no "all lives matter" until there was "black lives matter" and people wanted to say they don't like the message. It is quite dishonest to claim that this phrase is neutral and not a political slogan.
I think you are forgetting what it was like when the "black lives matter" slogan was first becoming popular. If hadn't already been exposed to it, it was very easy to respond "incorrectly".
For example, here's a case of a Democratic governor, running for president, getting caught by this:
https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/18/politics/martin-omalley-all-l...
And here is Hillary Clinton, falling into the same trap:
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/24/41711...
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#320Ctrl+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 * ...…
Is there any actual evidence that the paradox of tolerance is correct? I suspect people stopped taking it seriously (and mentioning it in discussions on speech) because it’s advocates always seem to expect everyone to take it on faith, instead of providing a real argument to support their claims.