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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

#681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't read a single thing I said. This has nothing to do with the first amendment. The first amendment does not grant you the right to a platform. It simply doesn't. If you want to grab a megaphone and spew white-supremacist garbage from your drive way then feel free, the government cannot, and should not, stop you. However, if your neighbors refuse to interact with you, that's your own fault. The megaphone sell…

> The first amendment does not grant you the right to a platform. It simply doesn't. This feels a little hand-wavy: in the past there have been "designated free speech zones" that are of course critized organizations like the ACLU as a form of censorship and denying free speech. I don't think it's too crazy to say that speech without a platform isn't speech at all. I'm not saying we should force sites to accept conte…

I agree that we will have to address the privatization of speech at some point. Ultimately I'm not sure where my opinions lie on that spectrum.

However, I find it challenging to have to continuously fight white supremacist ideas on platforms, especially considering the --vast-- amount of violence and brutality inflicted on the oppressed for hundreds of years.

Should we have a debate at some point about whether the privatization of platforms has become a bad thing? Sure. Should we do it -now-, while white supremacists actively use their platforms to incite hate and violence against black and brown people? No. We are losing the forest for the trees. Lives are lost every day because white supremacy continues to be pervasive in America. Allowing white supremacists a platform while not solving that problem is saying that the oppressed's right to live is less important than the white supremacist's right to speech. I simply don't agree with that.

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

#682
post #551

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.

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

I did some very small experiments on such a thing a while ago. One was an example of someone being unjustly detained in violation of their rights [1] and another was an actual example of government censorship [2]. The first one was flagged and killed immediately, the second received zero response.

On HN, all of the 'free speech' stories I see always pertain to the far-right and/or incredibly vitriolic individuals getting removed from platforms. They receive massive amounts of votes and spur on large flamewars. HackerNews unfortunately is just as prone to falling into certain narrative traps as other websites and one of them that seems to come up more and more frequently is free speech and individual rights but only as it pertains to the far-right.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20504332

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19976398

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

#683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed. Of course I don't want to be in a space where they are safe. People say white nationalist instead of Nazi because white nationalists will always deny being Nazis. Someone being nationalist for a race should immediately bring up red flags. There are also small differences. For example some white nationalists are not necessarily antisemitic, which is a characteri…

"Someone being nationalist for a race"

This makes literally no sense.

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

#684
post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RICO exists. If the criminal activities were systematically prompted by a group, they can be sued and all their members may be prosecuted for these crimes, especially their leaders. So no, this is entirely incorrect.

RICO is a pretty narrow tool, as it should be. It also isn’t based on group membership, it’s based on involvement in the planning / sponsorship of illegal activities. It wouldn’t matter how many Hackernews members started coordinating bank robberies; RICO wouldn’t magically allow for the rest of the Hackernews user base to be prosecuted.

Sure. But if Hackernews had a hierarchy and a membership system in which lower-ranking members would do criminal acts organized by their ranking superiors, the organization could be sued under civil and criminal RICO, and then dismantled. While not all members would be prosecuted, a very large amount could be, and the subsequent criminal investigation would make it possible to indict a good proportion of the rest. It would also mean that even lower members could have been prosecuted based on their assistance to various criminal acts.

It is indeed a narrow tool, and yet can be applied to organizations such as the KKK.

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

#685
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…

I've never seen them IRL. I wonder how prevalent the Klan actually is.

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

#686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't supposed to be a "gotcha" at all. Any reasonable person would have agreed that silence isn't an expression of complicity with white supremacy, or of sexual consent, or a love of progressive metal. However, since you insist upon evading the obvious logical conclusion that your own freely-offered premises suggest, there is no turning anything around. This thread is over.

> Any reasonable person would have agreed that silence isn't an expression of complicity with white supremacy I'll repeat. Silence -is- complicity. Now, the thread is over.

Do you mind explaining that statement, as I’m sure you can understand that at face value it sounds pretty extreme. Actions in silence are more impactful than being loud but doing nothing.

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

#687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed. Of course I don't want to be in a space where they are safe. People say white nationalist instead of Nazi because white nationalists will always deny being Nazis. Someone being nationalist for a race should immediately bring up red flags. There are also small differences. For example some white nationalists are not necessarily antisemitic, which is a characteri…

> Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed. Where do you get that religious thing from? Because for all their faults all major variants of the mainstream religion in US and Europe is pretty clear about not supporting that -to the point that a number of clergy got in real trouble with nazi Germany.

I'm taking the religious part from the OP.

Also yes, while a lot of religious people are very good, the religious people that also happen to be white nationalists tend to be even worse than the garden variety white nationalist.

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

#688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Based on that last observation I think most of us can agree, can't we? HN is in a weird place today, very similar to where the Slate Star Codex guy was a few years ago. That is, racist Whites seem to feel safe commenting here (with appropriate dog whistles and what not), but you wonder how long that can last… In the end, the SSC guy banned more and more commenters but it wasn't sufficient to save him and he ended u…

> In the end, the SSC guy banned more and more commenters but it wasn't sufficient to save him and he ended up deleting his blog when the world turned its eyes to the kinds of discussions he allowed. That isn't why he deleted it. He deleted it because the NYT was threatening to publish his real name in a way that would make it untenable for him to continue to practice psychiatry. > [1] This is from an hour ago: https…

> To reduce criticism of SPLC to "racism" isn't helping the health of discourse here.

"The SPLC is a hate group" is considered healthy, valid criticism to you, coming from an account which then said that "hate speech against white people has been normalized in our society for some time now" and linked to The Bell Curve as proof for the superiority of the white race, but referring to them as "racist-adjacent" is unacceptably reductionist?

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

#689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The rule basically says that you can't be racist towards white people.

[flagged]

In promoting racial discrimination against white people, you’re also displaying a bigoted and reductive view of Africa. The African peoples are more than the slave trade, more than colonialism. Africa is a remarkably diverse and populous continent with a history that exist beyond the impact of whiteness. It saddens me that your reducing to victimhood the whole of African identity is what passes for anti racism.

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

#690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed. Of course I don't want to be in a space where they are safe. People say white nationalist instead of Nazi because white nationalists will always deny being Nazis. Someone being nationalist for a race should immediately bring up red flags. There are also small differences. For example some white nationalists are not necessarily antisemitic, which is a characteri…

> Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed. Where do you get that religious thing from? Because for all their faults all major variants of the mainstream religion in US and Europe is pretty clear about not supporting that -to the point that a number of clergy got in real trouble with nazi Germany.

[flagged]
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