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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

So, what next, the communists or Marxists because the ideology they espouse caused even more deaths?

I agree they are a hateful group. An odious group of people possibly only superseded in their vileness by extremist religious fanatics who won't hesitate to kill, but we're not shutting their speech down, are we?

In my view, this is one of those things that is binary. Either you have free speech, or you don't. There is no in between, finessing it. You end up with lese majeste and other nonsense bullshit.

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This post is wrong on so many levels.

Those ideologies did not have the hatred and violence at their core that Nazism did. That's why there is no "Godwins Law" when it comes to Marxism. That's my point: This is the most reviled philosophy that currently exists, and people are complaining about "free speech" when previously they would shriek "Godwins Law" whenever comparisons are made. That's how far we've fallen.

Saying that free speech is binary is incredibly misguided and a root cause of the problem. It's overly simplistic and absolutist and quite frankly, is complete and total nonsense. At some point something will be uttered that you or some other "free speech absolutist" will object to.

Are you kidding? Have you not read up on what they did during the Great Leap Forward? Innocent people, their own people, were pulled out of their dwellings charges made up on the spot and killed in the squares. What Stalin did in Ukraine was pretty much pure hate for them.

Yes, I object because your cause will be coopted to further a specific ideology at the expense of all others.

I did. I also read up on the use of racial slavery and genocide of native Americans as the basis of Americas rise to power.

Unlike you though I am able to understand that one of them(Nazism) has racial superiority and oppression as a core feature of their ideology while the others do not.

Again, there is no "Godwins Law" for Marxism/American Capitalism. I wonder why that is???

They probably do in places which suffered from it (Ukraine).

America was not the first or last European colony. Mexico was a colony, Brazil was a colony with even worse racism -bad things happened and continue to happen everywhere. Slave trade continues in the middle east. Today. Read up on what Latin American colonies did to the native populations. It's not different. They didn't have confederates.

I don't see how any of that should subjugate free speech.

Murderers have free speech --I'll wager more than a few victim's families wish they did not. I believe they should still have that right.

Should we go to Japan and also try to shut down the speech of those still in support of the imperial campaign in China, one of the most atrocious incidents of all of WWii?

You are right about the countries that suffered from Communism. East European countries, or Poland at least treat Nazism and communism as equally evil. There even is a passage in Polish Constitution (Article 13) that makes both Nazism and Communism exceptions from the free speech rule.

I think you are putting far too much into this "Godwins Law" thing. Just because Hitler is viewed as one of the worst people in history, doesn't mean he was the worst. Attila the Hun or Nero would have a good chance at the title if they were more recent.

But at the core of this argument is who has the right to decide what beliefs are allowed and what ones are not? For example I'm against ISIS, but think I have no right to suppress their speech. But I'll happily try to convince someone that the ISIS ideology is evil.

> as a core feature of their ideology while the others do not.

They seem to be exceptional, but if we curtail their speech that means it leaves other, undoubtedly less offensive, speech to be up for negotiation. For instance I'd be pleased to see some of your authoritarianism curtailed if it wasn't for ideals of freedom of speech.

Actually, racial and moral superiority were a big factor in the ideology for enslaving and killing native americans.

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