Comment by lordleft | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lordleft | Hacker News Reader

A powerful and provocative article. I love the quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes: "The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."

I am a bit of a libertarian when it comes to civil liberties -- I flinch at any circumscription of speech, even when it is noxious. Still, for a very long time I was troubled by my readings of the rise of Nazism in Weimar Germany. Weimar was a liberal democracy, albeit a very weak one, and efforts to repress the Nazis on the basis of their ideas were rejected as a infringement of their civil liberties. There is a part of me that is afraid of a patently false but persuasive idea gaining currency in a liberal democracy, when it ought to have been quelled in the cradle somehow. But maybe the lesson to be taken from the rise of Nazism is that it was not merely the ideas promulgated by the Nazis that propelled Hitler to power, but the cunning and brutal employment of paramilitary force -- that it was not just tracts, but truncheons that made Nazi Germany a real force.

You're describing Karl Popper's "paradox of tolerance": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

For me, the clearest way out of the paradox of tolerance is the dictum that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...). The price of admission to the sphere of tolerance established by the Constitution is (or ought to be, anyway) the willingness to extend the same tolerance to others. If your goal is to overthrow the Constitutional order and replace it with a dictatorship, a theocracy, an ethno-state, etc. etc. etc., you forfeit the right to shield yourself behind the document you're trying to tear up.

> forfeit the right to shield yourself behind the document you're trying to tear up.

The Supreme Court disagrees with you. They have taken on cases like this, many times. And they have ruled that one does not forfeit their rights, even if the person does not believe in those rights.

> . If your goal is to overthrow the Constitutional order and replace it with a dictatorship, a theocracy, an ethno-state, etc. etc. etc., you forfeit the right to shield yourself behind the document you're trying to tear up.

No more free speech for communists?

This was the exact legal rationale accepted between Schenck v. United States and Brandenburg v. Ohio that allowed the imprisonment of people for advocating draft resistance and organizing communist parties.

Be aware that Popper stepped away from many of his earlier positions.

He particularly reminded people that there is a conflict between freedom and equality after he became wiser and that could be quite an interesting topic in todays time.

Without a doubt he would be opposed to those using this particularly paradox to curteil free speech. He probably would hand out spankings left and right just for that.

When you consider how the common man behaved during the rise of Nazism, and even during the height of its power, you have to conclude that the truncheon really wasn't necessary.

As hard as it may be for us to accept today, there were normal, regular women who would swear out completely false statements against some poor woman down the street to get that woman a free trip to a camp. Normal, regular, everyday guys swearing out statements against a small business rival across town.

As horrible as it may sound, the system was convenient. If you wanted a woman gone, there was a surefire method by which you could do away with her. We have the archives. (The ones that weren't burned that is.) We know the names of both victim and accuser. And it all paints a picture of a people that were not physically beaten into submission. They weren't shamed into Nazism. In all honesty, they weren't even terribly political. The picture the archives paint are of a populace that was, in modern day terms, simply "petty". I think that's probably just human nature.

I still support letting people say whatever they please though. If a population mired in pettiness becomes enamored with Nazism? Well, their punishment will be that they have to live under Nazism. Just wish them good luck with that.

> If a population mired in pettiness becomes enamored with Nazism? Well, their punishment will be that they have to live under Nazism. Just wish them good luck with that.

The problem is that Nazism tends to hurt people beyond just those who chose to live with it.

Can you please point me to the references(books/online archives) please.

I see this happening in a few places in the world and have trouble getting people to understand that someone like a Hitler/Nazism doesn't rise unless the people are complicit in it.

"The people get a leader in their own reflection."

The Nazis got away with going around beating up opponents with truncheons.

The authorities turning a blind eye to that stuff was not an upholding of anyone's civil liberties, it was being complicit in shutting down other's free expression.

It's a complete falsehood to claim that German politics were peaceful, liberal, and democratic prior to the rise of the Nazis. Street violence between Communists, Freikorps, Stalhelm, and Iron Front factions were constant until the rise of the Nazis.

> There is a part of me that is afraid of a patently false but persuasive idea gaining currency in a liberal democracy, when it ought to have been quelled in the cradle somehow.

Anti-vaxxers come to mind from some points of view, although on the face of it it's not as odious as something like actual Nazis.

Anti-vaxxers are terrible though... they pile on social media to drown out opposing points of view. There is a local representative here in Oregon who was involved with a bill that said you had to have vaccinations to send your kids to public schools, and any time she posts anything online, dozens of those people come out of the woodwork to shriek at her and post their garbage science.

Anti-vaxxers are stupid but declaring them to be a large problem comes close. Some will always resist reason and sense, you will never be able to solve that. Instead of pointing fingers to satisfy yourself, you are free to advocate the advantages of vaccination.

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