Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

Yep, and at that point the only recourse you would have would be the government, right?

> Your freedom to support censorship doesn't mean that you are free from consequences! ;)

Your smugness suggests that you think this is surprising to me, rather than being my entire point. Businesses will do whatever they want, in their own self-interest. If we want them to do something else because we as a society value something like free speech, your options are to ignore it or to pass a law. If you're concerned about CloudFlare's ability to censor the internet, take it up with the government, because CloudFlare's commitment to free speech is good only as long as it makes business sense for them.

The government must permit free speech because we cannot improve a system we cannot criticize. But this is not a sufficient condition to give new and radical ideas a chance. Citizens must believe in the principle, too. Just like all the anti-discrimination restrictions on government offer little protection to the marginalized when any business can do it, a guarantee that the government will not throw you in jail for your speech means little when no one will host your website, no one will print your book, no one will hire you, and campaigns of bullying and harassment are fair game.

It is easy to feel that might makes right when you are on the side of the majority, but looking back in history, it is not always obvious what is right. For example, we often imagine that the historical opposition to interracial marriage proceeded from base hatred, but this wasn't so. The science of the time showed clearly and repeatedly that the races had vastly differing intelligences and that intelligence was heritable. We know now that this research was flawed, but at the time, it was well established scientific opinion. The concern was that by mixing the races, we would drop the intelligence of humanity down to the mean, and deprive ourselves of great thinkers, and bring about the doom of humanity in an idiocracy. It was argued that those who supported interracial marriage were blinded by compassion and would cause the downfall of civilization.

This was a very popular, very intellectually credible view, held by good and responsible upstanding citizens who were willing to work hard and fight hard to protect civilization.

Sure, they were able to pass laws based on their views. That's right and proper. But should they have been allowed to suppress dissent? Should the scientific community have rejected research that would lead to the doom of human civilization? Should people be fired for supporting it? Demonstraters identified, shamed, and harrassed? Print shops refuse to print their literature?

The world is a weird place. Speech which we consider dangerous abnd abhorrent usually is. But sometimes? Sometimes it's right, either in part or in whole. Sometimes what you think is right, based on what you think you know, turns out to be wrong.

The reason it is critical to let Nazis speak, the reason it is critical to oppose arguments with arguments alone and never with any measure of force, is that this is the only system under which views which are true and right have a chance of winning.

Whatever you want the rule to be, however you want to treat the Nazis, remember that not that long ago, their ideas were the ones that were obviously popular and right, that all the well-informed and powerful and good people subscribed to.

The price of free speech is that there are always crazies. People starting cults of ignorance and hate, drawing the desperate and the damaged into them and threatening the very foundations of society. These ideas need to be fought, but it is crucial that they be fought WITH. WORDS. If we resort to collaborative blows, we will miss it when the crazies are right about something important.

The forum that's specifically about hatred doesn't add anything to the dialog.

What we want in order to avoid a repeat of Hitler's rise is for people looking for a place to vent and talk about real economic problems to find places to do so constructively, not places that say that the answer is "burn the n-----s!".

What an awful example and has nothing, what so ever to do with the laws against being a Nazi. Do you honestly believe the US has never avoided reporting something for fear of being labeled? Really?

The other example you gave was covered by others in the thread. Spoiler: it's a lie.