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YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

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Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#551

Post by pjc50 »

empath75 wrote: post #523
skinkestek wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a win for the far-right to have y'all here on HN "disagree with them but still believe they should be here and not on the fringe". Just FTR we are pretty far from accepting the far right here on HN: tptacek shared some interesting research he'd done a couple of hours ago and it might be of interest to everyone here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681929

People reliably will come out to defend white nationalists in every topic it comes up here. And people denouncing white nationalists will be voted down.

Not exactly .. people will come out to defend "free speech". But somehow the cause in question is nearly always far right.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#552

Post by lliamander »

save_ferris wrote: post #502
lliamander wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, my father also taught me to be careful with this pushing of the fringe. It is a delicate balance of liberty with liberty-destroying ideology. The paradox of tolerance, etc. It should be very closely watched. Sounds like your father was an honorable man. Honest question: when does pushing the fringe go too far? Is it appropriate for banks to deny their business? Grocery stores?

Most banks and grocery stores are private businesses and being openly racist isn’t a protected class, so it should be up to them, no?

I wasn't asking a question on the legal theory, but a clarification on the OP's own statement that one should be "careful with this pushing of the fringe", which is presumably a moral or pragmatic one.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#553

Post by [deleted] »

cjslep wrote: post #254

When I, a white young boy, grew up in The South and saw the Klan, my father taught me to never do business with them, never enable their behavior, never let their organization rent rooms from venues I may own, and to decline all of their business even if they were paying extra to be your customer. For as long as he could remember, and his father before him, the Klan and other fringe organizations would always cry and…

[deleted]

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#554

Post by vkou »

vageli wrote: post #281
vkou wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communism, as a political movement, was largely extinguished in the US during the 20th century through purges and deplatforming. How many communist organizations do you see, these days? How much reach do they have, compared to the 30s? How much political power do they have, compared to the alt-right, today? Extinguishing that idea into the fringe seems to have worked rather well. As did de-nazification, post WWII. It…

Well, given that Communism was outlawed in the US [0], it seems sensible that the membership numbers would decline. Do you think it is sound policy to outlaw ideologies? I don't think that making something illegal is akin to deplatforming. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954

Given that the act was, as said in the article you cited, never enforced by the government, the deplatforming through ideological purges, 'cancel culture', and media suppression is what actually killed the movement.

So, yes, this actually proves my point. Buring ideas, and canceling the people espousing them does, in fact, kill political movements.

If your goal is to drive a political movement into the fringe, deplatforming works. If your goal is to have an utterly tolerant climate for political movements, regardless of how abhorrent they are, then, well, we're all observing how it's working out right now. Not very well, I must say, but there's always time for things to get worse.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#555

Post by Karunamon »

iron0013 wrote: post #507
tathougies wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, we need to rethink this. For example, I 'own' my sidewalk, but anyone can protest there. A lot of public space is privately owned, but can still be used for protest. The internet is the new public square. It can be privately owned, but still forced to recognize the rights of the public.

If by “it” you mean privately-owned websites, then no, it cannot be forced to do so. That would be a violation of the websites’ owners own freedom of speech. Not to mention their property rights! I thought the right to absolutely control one’s own private property was the most sacrosanct of conservative values?

"Private" property becomes morally murky when you extend an invitation to the general public to use that space. Doubly so when a small handful of these privately-owned websites are responsible for carrying a the vast majority of the of the discourse on the internet.

As it stands, Google+Youtube, Facebook, and Reddit (1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th most popular websites in the country) currently have the power to ban, or worse, guide, all discussion of any topic they wish, with no accountability whatsoever. That is a frightening amount of power to have, and one that I don't believe the free market is equipped to deal with its abuses.

This latter problem is something I'm legitimately surprised more people are not concerned about. Just because they're using this power to target something you don't like doesn't mean it won't be used for more nefarious purposes in the future.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#556

Post by CWuestefeld »

api wrote: post #339
disposekinetics wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How many people have revolutionary Marxists murdered in the USA in the last 25-50 years? I'm sure if you dig you could find one, maybe two. If you dig into far right ideologues involved in murders and shootings you will find hundreds and hundreds. I am not a fan of revolutionary Marxism, but in terms of actual danger to people I don't see them as nearly as much of a risk. They also have far less funding than the extr…

Why limit this to the USA and 25-50 years?

If we can look globally, even within 50 years, Marxists (e.g., Khmer Rouge, and Mao's Cultural Revolution) have killed many orders of magnitude more people than have racial separatists or supremacists.

If we look back further, you at least pick up the Nazis on the racial supremacist side, but that still doesn't get you within an order of magnitude of Mao, Stalin, and friends.

Within the USA, the Constitution has protected us, but we can still see pernicious effects of Marxism. It's harder to quantify this, but I don't think there's a clear case that either side is "winning".

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#557

Post by mchusma »

epc wrote: post #345
lowmemcpu wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that makes the jump from employment/labor law to speech/politics policies. Strawman: If I were a politician campaigning and were to say something like, "Veterans do not deserve benefits and I don't think we should fund veteran benefits" or "Veterans do not deserve our blind respect", am I now discriminating and will get banned from the platform?

My understanding dates to the 1990s but a covered company does not get to pick and choose what areas a protected class may be discriminated against. So, if a class is considered protected from labor discrimination you cannot discriminate against that class in any of your business areas (based on membership in that class. Basically: if someone is a member of a protected class, you cannot discriminate against them, you…

Thanks. I suspect there may be no actual cases of YT actually banning videos for anti-veteran speech, but it is on their list because it is on a list of protected classes.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#558

Post by spoopyskelly »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #440
disposekinetics wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead is dead, it doesn't matter if it's the klan's racial hatred, or if the eye of the party has randomly decided you are the kulak today.

[flagged]

> You seem to not know about what marxism's goal is

Is it to oppress everyone equally?

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#559

Post by skinkestek »

Ghjklov wrote: post #534
empath75 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People reliably will come out to defend white nationalists in every topic it comes up here. And people denouncing white nationalists will be voted down.

Somehow we have the opposite experience. One day, I'll see people claim HN is a safespace for socialists/communist lefties and another day it's a white nationalist haven. Which is it? :P

dang has commented on this a lot lately and he says it is because we see the other side much easier than our own side.

I agree with him to a large degree:

I personally see mostly problematic content from the left[0] but I guess that is partly my bias.

[0]: for example this comment earlier today that I thought[1] was absolutely crazy "I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe" - just try to turn that phrase around to "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe" and see if it wouldn't be flagged to death immediately by everyone including me.)

[1]: someone had to tell me that this is basically an euphemism for nazi, to which I had to reply that I would prefer if we just said nazi then because then I could join in despising it.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#560

Post by jahaja »

john-shaffer wrote: post #228
sweetheart wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is they are not approaching the left's extremists with the same fervor This is a false equivalence. The worst of the alt-right are far, far worse than the worst of the extreme left (antifa, maybe? Though there is no alt-left). Good riddance to them, I say. If you want to lead the KKK, and advocate for a white ethnostate, I won't lose any sleep when you can't post videos trying to convince others of the s…

> The worst of the alt-right are far, far worse than the worst of the extreme left (antifa, maybe? Though there is no alt-left). There are people that support Stalin and Mao, which is just bad as supporting Hitler.

They are called Tankies by leftist for a reason. They're cultist dogmatist and shunned by all but their peers.
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