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. 
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
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?
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.
A distinction which seems artificial. In one case, you call speech simply speech and in another you call speech action.
Then you are not advocating free speech, you are advocating speech restricted to what a speaker “honestly believes to be true”.
Right away that seems to produce a practical problem : A neo-nazi is speaking on a soapbox denying the holocaust. How do you know if he honestly believes that the holocaust didn’t happen or if he is outright lying? You are basically required to let him talk. If you take him to court then you have to prove that he knew that he was lying. That’s probably difficult and probably also a waste of time and money.
Therefore, people will be able to lie and get away with it.
If you had a law which made holocaust denial illegal, then you would be able to stop him. The assumption is that the evidence is so overwhelming that no rational person could honestly believe that it did not happen so if he is saying it, then he is intentionally lying.
That’s not the issue. They gathered the evidence, found it to be true and then made denial illegal.
And even after it was made illegal, people still have access to the evidence and they can confirm the truth of the matter.
It’s possible to enact laws which make the discussion itself illegal and then it wouldn’t be possible to determine the truth. That’s a question of which laws ought to be enacted.
No it’s not impossible. But there are areas of research which are off-limits in universities. That’s a separate issue because it goes beyond speech.
One of the ironic things about free speech is that it can be used to silence people more effectively than laws restricting free speech.
For example, there is no law in the US or Canada which makes discussion of men’s rights illegal. Yet, when people try to speak about men’s rights, the politically correct mobs come out to shout it down and denounce the speakers with all sorts of misinformation, lies and innuendos. And it’s effective.
It’s not artificial. Most everything I say is an opinion or published fact and there is no action associated with it because all I’m doing is engaging in conversation or I’m on a soapbox broadcasting speech, but if I say you bake babies in the basement, now I’ve done something since I’m not just speaking, but trying to physically hurt you by causing real-world damage to your reputation. Or if I follow you around hounding you with words, that’s action. I can’t scream in your ear and claim free speech.
If someone says something they honestly believe is false, it is more than just speech. The speech part of it is fine, but the action part of it is not.
If I say you bake babies, you suffer damages. If I say dogfood X has drugs, they suffer damages. If a nazi denies the holocaust, who suffers damages? Can the holocaust sue the nazi? The only ones who can suffer are the ones capitalizing off of it. Furthermore, denying the holocaust is just an opinion. To really be slander the nazi would have to falsify evidence against someone. Like, for instance, the claim that the chimney at Auschwitz was constructed by the Russians specifically for propaganda purposes. That seems like slander, if it’s false. If it’s not false, then perhaps the slander IS the chimney since the construction of it could have been “action” against the nazis to help demonize them.
Why would you want to stop him? Why not make moonlanding-denial illegal too? Or round-earth-denial?
Yeah that’s the assumption. Some people say the fine-tuning evidence is so overwhelming that no rational person could believe that god doesn’t exist and for a long time it was illegal to question god’s existence. Cholesterol, sat fat, carbon dioxide, the evidence is all so overwhelming that we may as well assume it’s true.
Who are they? How can they find anything to be true? Who made them an authority on truth? Free inspection is the only thing that can establish truth; not dictations by a supposed authority.
What if someone looks at the evidence and discovers a bunch of holes?
Well if the inevitable conclusion of the discussion denies the holocaust, then it instantly becomes illegal.
If I say something here and no one challenges it, then someone else can conclude that, within a free market of ideas, no one has found fault in what I said so far and therefore what I said might be true. It’s the openness to inspection that bestows the property of truth to statements made.
What about men’s rights? Where is that happening? Surely not here