Censoring Nazi speech/images is a bad idea

When you censor something you risk making it stronger, for several reasons. It can seem more interesting and taboo, people wonder what the censors are afraid of (what is the hidden truth they’re so afraid of me knowing?), it becomes a kind of rallying cry to people who are more rebellious in nature, etc. Then there is the Streisand Effect which shows that when you try to hide something it can end up drawing attention to it. Then there is still another reason, that if it’s forbidden to talk about such things it becomes impossible to have discussions and debates that allow you to counter and refute the points of the censored side.

All dialogue in public around a censored topic becomes a shallow virtue signaling fest, which is obvious to anyone with half a functioning brain. It also increases animosity in people who might be leaning somewhat in that censored direction but could be persuaded out of it, except now you can’t actually persuade them because they will never admit their beliefs openly or you don’t allow open honest discussion.

Then there is the still further reason that free speech is a philosophical foundational principle, and should not be violated, ever. We are adult human beings, we should be free and respected and responsible as mature beings held to a high standard of freedom and individuality rather than held to a low standard of mere slaves who may only say what the masters tell us is ok to say.

If a certain kind of speech is otherwise criminal because it causes real harm, for example slander, or fraud, those are already crimes; it isn’t the speech that is the problem, it is the fact that the speech is being used to commit some crime which is already on its own illegal. You should be legally free to say literally anything at all, but of course if you use speech to actually harm someone else and that kind of harm is measurable and illegal then you committed a crime… not a crime of speech, but a crime of harm.

Free speech without limit should be a constitutional right, meaning that no laws and no government imposition should exist telling you what you can and cannot legally say. Again, if you’re committing other crimes such as causing harm, fraud, theft, threat or intimidation of immanent violence, extortion, etc., those are already separate crimes. We don’t need to limit free speech itself on account of things which, if you happen to use speech to commit, are already illegal.

When you make Holocaust denial a crime, or jail people with the wrong opinions, or jail or fine them for having a swastika on their door or whatever, this is very dangerous and very irrational. Plus it’s generally better to know who these people are, either so you can debate them and refute them or you can simply avoid them. But even Nazis have a right to free speech, and if you disagree then you are actually not even against free speech so much as against the idea of free independent thought.

The only way to improve ideas over time is to allow open free discourse, to treat people as free rather than as slaves. If someone uses their free speech to promote slavery/censorship, the answer isn’t to then enslave or censor that person; that would only prove their point that slavery/censorship is ok. Rather the answer is to point out that it is only because of the value of freedom and non-slavery, non-censorship that they’re even able to make their point at all, which actually proves your point and counters theirs.

As a modern day national socialist (we don’t call ourselves nazis as that is a offensive insult) I support this thread. :laughing:

I am a free speech absolutist, but I will play devil’s advocate here.

Making a belief taboo is a feature, not a bug, of speech restriction. While it may cause some people to rankle and push them toward the taboo beliefs, that is more a reaction of a society that has come to expect absolute freedom of speech. Most of the world today, like most humans through history, have significantly less than an absolute right to freedom of speech. And in most of the world, these restrictions do not lead to the negative outcomes you describe. Prohibitions are taken as enforcing common beliefs and values, and so long as a significant majority of the society agrees with those beliefs and values, they will accept the restriction (and even help to enforce it, formally and informally). Speech restriction can help engender unity and social cohesion, reduce wasteful infighting, and generally help society function more efficiently. Rebellious kids who push the taboo are accepted as just that: kids. And like kids who hate school grow into adults that get college degrees and want their doctors to have gone to medical school, so too do kids who push taboos come to embrace them as part of their cultural heritage.

It may be true that these restrictions will reduce some discussions to virtue signaling, but such conversations are shallow virtue signaling even in the absence of laws prohibiting them. In the US, where strong speech protection allow people to deny the holocaust, acknowledging that the holocaust happened is rightly seen as virtue signaling. There is broad consensus that the holocaust happened, so one does not distinguish oneself from the sane masses by acknowledging the holocaust.

And philosophical freedom does not require tolerating the bald rejection of historical facts. We are adults, but as we have an interest in preventing adolescent males from beating each other senseless at the bar because their 1-on-1 conflict has costs on the broader society, so too should we limit what nonsense other adults can insert into the social dialogue.

You might point to certain historical examples of speech restrictions that had negative consequences, e.g. restriction on questioning the Catholic Church. But to base a rejection of all speech restrictions on those bad instances would be as unfounded as to base a rejection of all private property on the basis that at one time the concept included certain human beings. It can be true that some speech restrictions are bad while still being the case that other speech restrictions are well justified and net beneficial for society.

I honestly don’t care if the holocaust did or didn’t happen. It doesn’t change my mind on anything one bit either way. The Jews have committed a Palestinian holocaust since the 1940’s. What about the Jewish Bolshevik holocaust of Ukraine? Jewish intellectuals have been promoting a slow demographic genocide of western civilization since the 1960’s. Their entire cult of victimization and non-criticism is a joke. I do find it interesting however that questioning or criticizing the official narrative of the Jewish holocaust is a punishable offense in many nations where numerous individuals have gone to prison for doing so. That subject should be explored more.

Also, the term nazi literally means in translation backwards country bumpkin. No serious national socialist in past or present refers themselves as such in title.

Nothing but anti-Semitic lies.

Never happened. Pure product of Western imperialist propaganda.

Yeah, the Ukrainian Holodomor never happened. :laughing:

Start a new thread about it. This one’s about speech.

Yeah, that’s what it’s about. I can say anything… unrestricted free speech.

Are you trying to deny me that right?

It’s funny how you can question any other historical, ‘fact’, legally.
You can question the extent of black enslavement, or whether Native Americans were genocided, or Australian Aborigines, Armenians and so on, atrocities communists committed, millions of Christians and others Slaughtered.
Of course we know why we can’t question it, because regardless of whether it happened or not, Jews benefit from it today, they play that card any time any one questions or critiques them or Israel in the slightest, and Jews have a ton of wealth and power in the west, blacks, Amerindians and others do not.
And so it’s more proof of Jewish privilege, many peoples have been oppressed in recent history, including Palestinians today, but Jews are especially protected, because they are rich and exert a tremendous influence on politics and media, and others are not.
You can even openly question the existence of the Palestinian people and be lauded for it by republicans and democrats alike, but try questioning the origins of Ashkenazis, or their right to ‘Israel’, and see what happens, you’ll be called an anti-Semite, even tho Palestinians are Semites.

Exactly.

Why should slander and fraud be illegal?

If I can lie about Jews , which leads to a boycott of their stores and causes them financial harm, then why can’t I lie about Mr. Lipschitz and cause him financial harm? Surely the total harm would be less for him than for an entire group of shopkeepers.

If I can lie about a product in a public setting , then why can’t a company lie about it in advertising? Will false advertising laws be in effect?

Yes, whatever you do don’t question the atrocities, deception, crimes, and straight up lies of God’s special chosen people! They’re an exempt people of all criticisms, consequences, and negativity ordained by God. :laughing:

Also, speech repression or silencing others is like every civilization since the beginning of time revolving around those with power for enforcement.

Please do not break up or encourage the breaking up of my threads without asking me first.

Fuck.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reward good behavior and this is good, imo.

Of course, that itself argues for free speech because how can one play devil’s advocate if it’s illegal? If one of the “two opposed ideas” is illegal, is it not therefore a mandation against first-rate intelligence?

Yes this is a tough one. On one hand Carleas has a point that this thread is about speech, but on the other he stated he’s a free speech absolutist and therefore can’t censor off-topic contributions, but then again, does it really matter? What’s the purpose of adhering to the topic? The purpose of the thread is to inspire discussion and although I’d rather talk about freedom of speech than the Jews and Palestinians, I can easily look over it.

Now if the purpose of the thread were more like Quora where the goal is to categorize questions and specific answers related to those questions in a way that is easy to access for educational purposes, then I’d see it differently I think, but it’s doubtful that anyone would be searching for answers to the censorship question on a forum such as this and then be dismayed by talk of Palestinian holocaust. Idk, it just doesn’t seem that big of a deal.

How do y’all see it?

Why wouldn’t he be free to say it?

I think, in addition to what has already been said about slander and fraud, that there is a clear distinction between speech and behavior (action). Slanderous behavior is an action undertaken wherein the tools of the malicious activity are speech.

Slander should therefore not be thought of as speech, but action.

The activity is exactly the same except that in one case it targets a particular individual and in the other it targets a group. In both cases, there can be measurable damage.

I see no reason to treat them differently.

Good Stuff!

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize” - Voltaire

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_agai … ust_denial

I don’t either, but to be slander the information has to be false and how are we to determine what’s true and false if it’s illegal to talk about it?