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.
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.
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.
Also, speech repression or silencing others is like every civilization since the beginning of time revolving around those with power for enforcement.
“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.
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 think that you have something completely different in mind.
If speech is “absolute free” or “free without limit” then it must be legal to tell lies. If it is illegal to lie then “holocaust denial” would be illegal.
I don’t think you’re seeing the differentiation between speech and the action that is slander. Yes all speech is free without limit, but not all action is free.
It’s ok to tell lies so long as you do not know they are lies. If you know they are lies and tell them anyway, then you are putting into action a plan to harm someone or something where no retribution is warranted except out of personal vendetta.
For instance if you say brand X dogfood contains euthanasia drugs and your claim is knowingly false, then all you’ve done is hurt society by damaging the reputation of a legitimate dogfood manufacturer that was otherwise performing a valuable service. But if your claim is true, then you’ve performed a valuable service to the community. Both are actions, but one is good and the other is bad just like helping old ladies across the street is good, but pushing them into oncoming traffic is bad.
But that presumes the holocaust is true and how are we to determine that if discussion of it is illegal? The only possible answer is “Because they said it’s true and I believe them.” Well, that’s appeal to authority. How can you take anyone’s word for anything without verifying the reasoning yourself?
Open inspection is the only mechanism we have to establish truth. The moment something is illegal to discuss, it becomes impossible to establish it’s truthfulness.
