Same for 2nd amendment freaks. It does not give anyone the right to own a rocket launcher or a nuclear bomb. It is not an absolute right. We regulate “arms” all the time. We have the right to bear some of those arms but not all. Anyone not respecting common sense about such things is up to something else: probably rationalizing why nobody will have sex with them. When a man grumbles about “feminism” my immediate assumption is a few women haven’t given him what he wanted. I make this assumption because of men I’ve know. where this has been true. I don’t make things up to fit my world view. Grow up, ya morons.
Sartre nailed this nearly a century ago, in “Anti-Semite and Jew”:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse, for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”
I don't argue with fascists about other people's right to exist; primarily because that is the debate they want to have.
I argue with fascists that the concepts they espouse about themselves are not only fantasies, but are dangerous to themselves personally. A fascist/wingnut is at the center an egotist; who believes herself inherently superior and, if allowed to operate unchecked, will dominate over not only her perceived "enemies" but inevitably come out on top over her "allies" (bc she sees them, openly or secretly, as rivals). This of course is garbage; and they hate nothing more bitterly than someone they cannot easily "Other" away pointing that out. All the arguments and debates a fascist wants to have are strategic; so naturally they want to control the debate to only their topics. Repeatedly confronting and subverting their attempts at controlling debate does real damage to their attempts to persuade and intimidate others into alliance or compliance with their aims and their actions.
Another great article Shane. You might be interested in "The Case Against Free Speech" by by P.E Moskowitz. https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Free-Speech-Amendment/dp/156858864X. Not nearly as entertaining as your work but it's analysis of how this issue relates to debates on American college campus's is quite interesting.
"Because if we can’t decide this right now, if we cannot bring ourselves as a society to say that genocides, holocausts, and systematic human extermination are wrong, if that’s still on the debate table then I’m sorry, guys, but what we need isn’t a debate, it’s a comet." YES.
What an excellent analysis. I totally agree with the Hamish McKenzie quote you made, but at the same time, I'm torn. Everyone should have the right to express their views, and censoring them takes away that right. However, negative or harmful views have a stronger emotional effect than positive views. Everyone also knows that harmful views travel faster, just like fake news. Even if those who have these harmful views are in the minority, harmful views are so powerful that this minority can pollute the whole discussion.
This is where we become economists. We have to weigh the benefits of giving everyone unbridled freedom of speech against the cost of moderating or censoring those whose views can lead to a deterioration of the civic space. This is one way to look at it.
You mentioned Nazis and neo-Nazis in your article. We all have to remember that the Nazis started out as a minority group. They were just a few people making their Nazi noise. Look how that ended.
My dad used to give me a silly example when I was a kid. Here it goes; if you bring a very big bowl of the cleanest water you can find, and then you get a tiny piece of feces and put it in the bowl, what happens to the water?
I guess I wrote all this to say well done Peter, I enjoyed your piece.
I agree that it is worse than pointless to engage a Nazi in debate.
I propose, however, that the core argument behind true free speech absolutism is the proposition that to debate Nazism with the general public is a positive good. Proponents of Nazism lose debates where people who are decent and sensible are the judges.
The real danger of unmoderated content is the potential for people to get lured into hateful patterns of thought through algorithms that accelerate the propaganda into their feeds.
Maybe "good speech" is an insufficient defense against this phenomenon. I am certainly not arguing against it as an important tool.
I merely suggest that discussion of what "debate" does or ought to look like keep in mind the true auduence.
For legal reasons, I'm stating up front that no one should be violent ever. Never do a violence, kids. Speaking purely (purely!) academically, the force that stops Nazism is violence. Not appeasement, not debating, not ignoring, not ridiculing, not politely requesting. No. Violence solves the problem of Nazis. Academically and historically speaking, I mean.
So far this group (at least from what I can surmise on Substack) has not garnered much support nor had any real effect on either the population at large or in numbers that might be influential. What you are saying seems to be that this group is a special case, but I don’t see anything special.
It seems that the biggest point of contention is that either the group or individuals within the group are willing to say that they are Nazis. I suppose they could be, but I doubt they have anything more than superficial similarities to the Nazis of old.
More importantly, I think if you want them to be kicked off of a platform then a better case has to be made than self-identifying as Nazis. And certainly a much better case has to made to call for a preemptive strike against ordinary protections regarding free speech.
I think you’re really clever and while I do take your point about the futility of debate and the real bite of deplatforming; I think the real concern for most free speech folks is the slippery slope. You say X is a Nazi but Y says he isn’t a Nazi who decides? Is there some clear unequivocal definition we are all using and agree upon? Probably not, so like cancel culture it becomes censorship by unpopularity of ideas.
I don’t know any Nazis nor have I thought even a single moment about Nazis having any power in this country until 2020 when I started to see how easy it is for censorship creep to turn into political action and then to lives of whole groups of people being ruined: fair or not.
I don’t care about this latest Nazi frenzy on Substack. The truth is I would never have known there was a “Nazi problem” if it weren’t for critics of these people demanding Substack kick them out. So perhaps the anecdote to the Nazis of the world isn’t debate, but indifference.
I disagree. Indifference takes away the free publicity which encourage casual onlookers. Indifference also mitigates the “everyone is against us” vitriol that usually appeals to younger people and makes groups like Nazis less appealing to people who are naturally contrarian and want to be different mostly just to be different. In short, Indifference demonstrates how insignificant they are in the big scheme of things.
Why the worry about the money? So what. Is it your money? I mean really of all the shady underhanded and dangerous people who are able to solicit money (or investors); these guys get your attention, time and energy?
absolutely agree with S Peter Davis's essay. It's the same issue with holocaust deniers - they are not amenable to reason and you can tell their real motives are whitewashing by asking "but what if...?" that is, their subtext/ meaning is always "But if the Holocaust HAD happened, that wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing....". One way of testing appropriate free speech is by considering human rights in balance - the right to speak as against the right to be free from discriminatory or outright incitement-to-violence speech. Speech is an action, speech does harm. The calls to violence regularly made by Trump and Musk are truly dangerous.
“Debating is a method of shaping thought.” Damn, I would have sworn I read some research that showed when someone debates from a position, any position, they become more affixed to that position. I guess I was wrong as usual.
I've said for years that nobody can "argue" with a neo-Nazi, because that's what they live for.
They spout their cliches and ad hominem attacks in the hope that the anti-Nazi will attack them physically, and then they can play the martyred victim, defending free speech and Der Fuehrer.
Of course, if the Nazis were to take power, as they did back in 1933, they would deny free speech to their opponents, through "extreme prejudice."
I've had to face neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers on the Internet, of course. They showed up on the History Channel's website when they had discussion forums. While they deny the Holocaust, they are actually fascinated by it, and study it in detail.
The reality is that these human failures in their mother's basements are into neo-Nazism because it makes them think they are actually part of a world-historical advancing force, and will arise from the basement, don that black uniform, and become local SS Hauptsturmfuehrer. Furthermore, they are fascinated by how it was done because they want to do it themselves. They dream of running their own little Dachau, full of Jews straight out of their racist cartoons, and, of course, people against whom they bear grudges.
They also think the Holocaust history is accurate, but told wrong...they want it to exalt the murderers, sociopaths, and kleptomaniacs who carried it out...turning them into Aryan heroes who rid the world of a sub-human bacillus. They know it happened. In every detail.
You can't argue with them...they just hurl cliches and ad hominem attacks.
So I just do the three R's: Ridicule, Report, and Reject. After I ridicule them (usually with some of the material above, but often I include lines from "The Producers"), and ridicule Hitler ("If he's such a great military leader, how come he lost World War II to a bunch of Jewish gangsters, Bolsheviks, and capitalists? Even though he had cool tanks, Stukas, jet aircraft, and V-2 rockets? He was the greatest general of all time! He said so!"), I report the Nazi to the website's proprietor (which does little good, usually), and then block him.
What an excellent analysis. I totally agree with the Hamish McKenzie quote you made, but at the same time, I'm torn. Everyone should have the right to express their views, and censoring them takes away that right. However, negative or harmful views have a stronger emotional effect than positive views. Everyone also knows that harmful views travel faster, just like fake news. Even if those who have these harmful views are in the minority, harmful views are so powerful that this minority can pollute the whole discussion.
This is where we become economists. We have to weigh the benefits of giving everyone unbridled freedom of speech against the cost of moderating or censoring those whose views can lead to a deterioration of the civic space. This is one way to look at it.
You mentioned Nazis and neo-Nazis in your article. We all have to remember that the Nazis started out as a minority group. They were just a few people making their Nazi noise. Look how that ended.
My dad used to give me a silly example when I was a kid. Here it goes; if you bring a very big bowl of the cleanest water you can find, and then you get a tiny piece of feces and put it in the bowl, what happens to the water?
I guess I wrote all this to say well done Peter, I enjoyed your piece.
Except it isn’t debating. If you think you need t debate and defeat Nazis you’ve missed the point. Daryl Davis didn’t debate. He humanized and engaged. The man who pulled Megan Phelps Roper out didn’t debate, he engaged.
Same for 2nd amendment freaks. It does not give anyone the right to own a rocket launcher or a nuclear bomb. It is not an absolute right. We regulate “arms” all the time. We have the right to bear some of those arms but not all. Anyone not respecting common sense about such things is up to something else: probably rationalizing why nobody will have sex with them. When a man grumbles about “feminism” my immediate assumption is a few women haven’t given him what he wanted. I make this assumption because of men I’ve know. where this has been true. I don’t make things up to fit my world view. Grow up, ya morons.
Known - edit
Sartre nailed this nearly a century ago, in “Anti-Semite and Jew”:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse, for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”
I don't argue with fascists about other people's right to exist; primarily because that is the debate they want to have.
I argue with fascists that the concepts they espouse about themselves are not only fantasies, but are dangerous to themselves personally. A fascist/wingnut is at the center an egotist; who believes herself inherently superior and, if allowed to operate unchecked, will dominate over not only her perceived "enemies" but inevitably come out on top over her "allies" (bc she sees them, openly or secretly, as rivals). This of course is garbage; and they hate nothing more bitterly than someone they cannot easily "Other" away pointing that out. All the arguments and debates a fascist wants to have are strategic; so naturally they want to control the debate to only their topics. Repeatedly confronting and subverting their attempts at controlling debate does real damage to their attempts to persuade and intimidate others into alliance or compliance with their aims and their actions.
Another great article Shane. You might be interested in "The Case Against Free Speech" by by P.E Moskowitz. https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Free-Speech-Amendment/dp/156858864X. Not nearly as entertaining as your work but it's analysis of how this issue relates to debates on American college campus's is quite interesting.
Thanks mate I might just check that out
Logan Libraries has a copy if your looking to save yourself some cash.
"Because if we can’t decide this right now, if we cannot bring ourselves as a society to say that genocides, holocausts, and systematic human extermination are wrong, if that’s still on the debate table then I’m sorry, guys, but what we need isn’t a debate, it’s a comet." YES.
What an excellent analysis. I totally agree with the Hamish McKenzie quote you made, but at the same time, I'm torn. Everyone should have the right to express their views, and censoring them takes away that right. However, negative or harmful views have a stronger emotional effect than positive views. Everyone also knows that harmful views travel faster, just like fake news. Even if those who have these harmful views are in the minority, harmful views are so powerful that this minority can pollute the whole discussion.
This is where we become economists. We have to weigh the benefits of giving everyone unbridled freedom of speech against the cost of moderating or censoring those whose views can lead to a deterioration of the civic space. This is one way to look at it.
You mentioned Nazis and neo-Nazis in your article. We all have to remember that the Nazis started out as a minority group. They were just a few people making their Nazi noise. Look how that ended.
My dad used to give me a silly example when I was a kid. Here it goes; if you bring a very big bowl of the cleanest water you can find, and then you get a tiny piece of feces and put it in the bowl, what happens to the water?
I guess I wrote all this to say well done Peter, I enjoyed your piece.
https://purplemessenger.substack.com/
american politics gives me butt huit
I agree that it is worse than pointless to engage a Nazi in debate.
I propose, however, that the core argument behind true free speech absolutism is the proposition that to debate Nazism with the general public is a positive good. Proponents of Nazism lose debates where people who are decent and sensible are the judges.
The real danger of unmoderated content is the potential for people to get lured into hateful patterns of thought through algorithms that accelerate the propaganda into their feeds.
Maybe "good speech" is an insufficient defense against this phenomenon. I am certainly not arguing against it as an important tool.
I merely suggest that discussion of what "debate" does or ought to look like keep in mind the true auduence.
I don't debate Fake Christians Nazis.
Whenever I read out of the Holy Bible, word for word, Fake Christians Nazis call me a “liar”.
For legal reasons, I'm stating up front that no one should be violent ever. Never do a violence, kids. Speaking purely (purely!) academically, the force that stops Nazism is violence. Not appeasement, not debating, not ignoring, not ridiculing, not politely requesting. No. Violence solves the problem of Nazis. Academically and historically speaking, I mean.
Really? What makes you think that?
So far this group (at least from what I can surmise on Substack) has not garnered much support nor had any real effect on either the population at large or in numbers that might be influential. What you are saying seems to be that this group is a special case, but I don’t see anything special.
It seems that the biggest point of contention is that either the group or individuals within the group are willing to say that they are Nazis. I suppose they could be, but I doubt they have anything more than superficial similarities to the Nazis of old.
More importantly, I think if you want them to be kicked off of a platform then a better case has to be made than self-identifying as Nazis. And certainly a much better case has to made to call for a preemptive strike against ordinary protections regarding free speech.
I think you’re really clever and while I do take your point about the futility of debate and the real bite of deplatforming; I think the real concern for most free speech folks is the slippery slope. You say X is a Nazi but Y says he isn’t a Nazi who decides? Is there some clear unequivocal definition we are all using and agree upon? Probably not, so like cancel culture it becomes censorship by unpopularity of ideas.
I don’t know any Nazis nor have I thought even a single moment about Nazis having any power in this country until 2020 when I started to see how easy it is for censorship creep to turn into political action and then to lives of whole groups of people being ruined: fair or not.
I don’t care about this latest Nazi frenzy on Substack. The truth is I would never have known there was a “Nazi problem” if it weren’t for critics of these people demanding Substack kick them out. So perhaps the anecdote to the Nazis of the world isn’t debate, but indifference.
I disagree. Indifference takes away the free publicity which encourage casual onlookers. Indifference also mitigates the “everyone is against us” vitriol that usually appeals to younger people and makes groups like Nazis less appealing to people who are naturally contrarian and want to be different mostly just to be different. In short, Indifference demonstrates how insignificant they are in the big scheme of things.
Why the worry about the money? So what. Is it your money? I mean really of all the shady underhanded and dangerous people who are able to solicit money (or investors); these guys get your attention, time and energy?
In short, I am not helping them: you are.
absolutely agree with S Peter Davis's essay. It's the same issue with holocaust deniers - they are not amenable to reason and you can tell their real motives are whitewashing by asking "but what if...?" that is, their subtext/ meaning is always "But if the Holocaust HAD happened, that wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing....". One way of testing appropriate free speech is by considering human rights in balance - the right to speak as against the right to be free from discriminatory or outright incitement-to-violence speech. Speech is an action, speech does harm. The calls to violence regularly made by Trump and Musk are truly dangerous.
“Debating is a method of shaping thought.” Damn, I would have sworn I read some research that showed when someone debates from a position, any position, they become more affixed to that position. I guess I was wrong as usual.
I've said for years that nobody can "argue" with a neo-Nazi, because that's what they live for.
They spout their cliches and ad hominem attacks in the hope that the anti-Nazi will attack them physically, and then they can play the martyred victim, defending free speech and Der Fuehrer.
Of course, if the Nazis were to take power, as they did back in 1933, they would deny free speech to their opponents, through "extreme prejudice."
I've had to face neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers on the Internet, of course. They showed up on the History Channel's website when they had discussion forums. While they deny the Holocaust, they are actually fascinated by it, and study it in detail.
The reality is that these human failures in their mother's basements are into neo-Nazism because it makes them think they are actually part of a world-historical advancing force, and will arise from the basement, don that black uniform, and become local SS Hauptsturmfuehrer. Furthermore, they are fascinated by how it was done because they want to do it themselves. They dream of running their own little Dachau, full of Jews straight out of their racist cartoons, and, of course, people against whom they bear grudges.
They also think the Holocaust history is accurate, but told wrong...they want it to exalt the murderers, sociopaths, and kleptomaniacs who carried it out...turning them into Aryan heroes who rid the world of a sub-human bacillus. They know it happened. In every detail.
You can't argue with them...they just hurl cliches and ad hominem attacks.
So I just do the three R's: Ridicule, Report, and Reject. After I ridicule them (usually with some of the material above, but often I include lines from "The Producers"), and ridicule Hitler ("If he's such a great military leader, how come he lost World War II to a bunch of Jewish gangsters, Bolsheviks, and capitalists? Even though he had cool tanks, Stukas, jet aircraft, and V-2 rockets? He was the greatest general of all time! He said so!"), I report the Nazi to the website's proprietor (which does little good, usually), and then block him.
What an excellent analysis. I totally agree with the Hamish McKenzie quote you made, but at the same time, I'm torn. Everyone should have the right to express their views, and censoring them takes away that right. However, negative or harmful views have a stronger emotional effect than positive views. Everyone also knows that harmful views travel faster, just like fake news. Even if those who have these harmful views are in the minority, harmful views are so powerful that this minority can pollute the whole discussion.
This is where we become economists. We have to weigh the benefits of giving everyone unbridled freedom of speech against the cost of moderating or censoring those whose views can lead to a deterioration of the civic space. This is one way to look at it.
You mentioned Nazis and neo-Nazis in your article. We all have to remember that the Nazis started out as a minority group. They were just a few people making their Nazi noise. Look how that ended.
My dad used to give me a silly example when I was a kid. Here it goes; if you bring a very big bowl of the cleanest water you can find, and then you get a tiny piece of feces and put it in the bowl, what happens to the water?
I guess I wrote all this to say well done Peter, I enjoyed your piece.
https://purplemessenger.substack.com/
Except it isn’t debating. If you think you need t debate and defeat Nazis you’ve missed the point. Daryl Davis didn’t debate. He humanized and engaged. The man who pulled Megan Phelps Roper out didn’t debate, he engaged.
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes