So wait, when someone says "kill all Jews" that's an idea to be discussed, but when someone says "let's censor people who call for that" that's somehow worse, and not simply also speech you can also discuss?
By not letting people fucking recruit en masse, that's how.
> as someone who had multiple family members killed during the holocaust
Did you yourself ever try to actually discuss with actual Nazis, yes or no?
> Saying that the person who had to delete their response because of what "Nazis" said to them is even worse.
What? Where did I say that? I said they deleted their comment, probably because they realized they could be identified. Here's two bits of their comment (I wanted to reply to it that's why I had it open in another tab)
> when you try to discuss with Nazis, they will jump you and beat your ass and give the old college try to killing you if they are given a chance.
Then they describe how they actually had Nazis try that on them, and finally
> That's why I'm entirely and unflinchingly okay with being loud and eating the downvotes and the flags (oh no, downvotes and flags) when these people pop their heads up here. They can't try to kill me here. But they would if they could. Caping up for a societal autoimmune disease, the kind that infects your structures and subverts them so that they can kill you, is profoundly, profoundly unwise.
Your "ancestors" don't give you the right to just go on about how someone is a wuss about "sharing an unpopular opinion" by virtue of making up shit nobody said. And I'm also not trying to "shame" anyone into anything, you're projecting. I'm asking you, did you actually try what you suggest on the real deal, because so far the one person who isn't a virgin agrees with my opinion about sex, so to speak.
That's what I thought.
> Der wahre Grund für die unabwendbare, prinzipielle Überlegenheit aller totalitären Propaganda über die Propaganda aller anderen Parteien oder Regierungen ist, daß ihr Inhalt - jedenfalls für die Mitglieder der Bewegung und die Bevölkerung eines totalitären Landes - nichts mehr mit Meinungen zu tun hat, über die man streiten könnte, sondern zu einem ebenso unangreifbar realen Element ihres täglichen Lebens geworden ist, wie daß zwei mal zwei vier ist. Die Vorteile einer Propaganda, die sich niemals nur auf sich selbst und ihre Argumente verläßt, sondern zu der von vornherein "die Gewalt der Organisation hinzutritt", in der sie durch Gewalt ständig und unmittelbar verwirklicht, was sie sagt, sind so außerordentlich, daß es fast schon eine gefährliche Unterschätzung ihrer Möglichkeiten ist, sie noch mit dem Namen Propaganda zu belegen. Alle bloßen Argumente gegen sie, die ja aus einer Wirklichkeit stammen, welche die Bewegung ohnehin zu ändern verspricht, sind bereits im vorhinein dadurch disqualifiziert, daß die Massen die wirkliche Welt weder akzeptieren können noch akzeptieren wollen. Totalitäre Propaganda ist keine Propaganda im üblichen Sinn und kann daher nicht durch Gegenpropaganda widerlegt oder bekämpft werden. Sie ist Teil der totalitären Welt und wird nur mit ihr zusammen vernichtet.
-- Hannah Arendt, "Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft", page 537
I'm dog tired, but here's my attempt:
> The real reason for the unavoidable superiority in principle of all totalitarian propaganda against the propaganda of all other parties or governments is, that its content - at least for the members of the movement and the population of a totalitarian country - has nothing to do with opinions about which one could argue, but have become an equally invincible real element of their daily life, just like two and two making four. The advantage of a propaganda which never depends on itself and its arguments, but is ab initio "joined by the violence [or power] of the organization", in which it manifests through violence continually and directly what it claims, are so extraordinary, that it is nearly a dangerous underestimation of its possibilities to still call it propaganda. All mere arguments against it, which stem from a reality which the movement promises to change anyway, are already disqualified because the masses can't and don't want to accept the real world. Totalitarian propaganda isn't propaganda in the usual sense and therefore can't be fought or refuted with counter propaganda. It is part of the totalitarian world and gets destroyed only together with it.
I'm not saying she would support anything else I said, but she did write the above, in a book that should be mandatory reading but is not. Those who have ears and all that. Good night and good luck.
Has anyone here ever actually been near a group of, say, more than two actual nazi skinheads? Would you discuss their ideas in their basement?
I'm not for censorship either, but I know what would be needed to confront such people -- namely, going past their "ideas" and to the root, their fucked up, impotent personality -- isn't even allowed on HN. If you get personal here, you're gone. So that's laughable from the get go in a way.
Yet if you discuss "ideas" with a Nazi, you're just in endless quick sand. I tried discussing with Nazis, and I'm still up for it (I even tried discussing with pedophiles, but I totally noped out of there because it also achieved nothing and it was even more depressing than the Nazis). But I know the murderous cold that lingers there, and how no Nazi stands on their own. If you win the argument, you get a cold smile saying "just you wait", and that's it. Then you're back to square one. But if you didn't even try that you simply don't know what you're even talking about.
edit: take the guy who murdered one person and wounded 19 severely by driving with their car into protesters. His father died early and his mother didn't know what he was up to. I'll just say, this family could used help 10-15 years ago. I don't know how or by whom, but in a magical fantasy world, that would have been the correct solution -- now you can do nothing, just look at the spilled blood. If you want to prevent more of that, look at the people who are growing up with pain today... but by the time their fist is clenched beyond a point, it will take something special or very big to change them, and otherwise they will just hate or even kill, just dwindle mentally or even suicide. Hitler wasn't random, he's the prototype. Stalin wasn't random, he's the prototype. Mental issues are the problem, fucked up childhoods are the problem, not "ideas". Don't assume everybody is that far gone, but also don't delude yourself thinking this is about ideas. And frankly, too many people here aren't even on to themselves enough to meaningfully look at anyone else's personality, and should deal with their own obedience and hiding behind abstractions first.
They care about power, and they're fueled by hate. Their genius is their ability to use words as weapons, to strike at the weaknesses of a civilization as they are doing now in this free speech 'debate'. They'll use truth, or lies, as needed to get what they want. They're not bound by the usual rules framing debate.
During the Charlottesville attack this weekend, these assholes were all over the internet claiming that the attacker was actually an antifa socialist, doxxing an innocent person in the process. After that turned out to be of course false, did they express shame or regret at their lies? Of course not. They went onto the next justification, claiming that the driver had been 'provoked' into driving into the crowd. Now they have the fringe Alex Jones element claiming that the Nazis at this rally were Jewish actors.
That's what we're dealing with here. People need to get that through their heads and stop thinking that fascists can be reasonable. They're inherently unreasonable and they use that to their every advantage. They're not ashamed of lies, and they will tell different lies and different truths to different people to sow chaos, confusion and inaction amongst those who speak against them.
After they've won, let's see exactly how much they hold up their reverence for free speech as they're claiming to do now. They don't care about free speech. In fact I wouldn't even say they're necessarily against free speech. They don't care about ideas - they'll just kill anyone who gets in their way. They're using our reverence for free speech against us.
In some twisted way you could almost say they really are more evolved. Just as we are able to control animals in large groups by understanding their behavior and manipulating it, fascists dedicate their energies to manipulating human emotions and behaviors, both at the micro and macro level. By driving out all compassion from themselves, they open themselves up to actions and manipulations that most people would be prevented from doing by their human shame.
- Jean Paul-Sartre, Anti-Semite and the Jew