[peoplewindow]

So, seeing as you brought them up. Nazis.

You realise - I hope! - that seeing large populations of other people as weak, inferior, morally defective, mentally limited and generally in need of being controlled or removed from public life is exactly the attitude that led to the Nazi horrors, don't you? It wasn't an excess of free speech that led to the concentration camps, which were secret inside Germany and their existence did not leak to the allies until troops actually found them. It was a set of beliefs that de-humanized entire chunks of the population. Those considered immoral or stupid by the Nazis were sent to the gas chambers ... but only after years of much lighter harassment and suppression.

Especially note that a key part of Hitler's rise was the belief that Germany's defeat in WW1 was somehow partly the result of some sort of conspiracy by people with Jewish beliefs.

So now what do we see? A strong conviction by some parts of society that other parts are mentally weak, that their belief systems are morally defective, yet that people with these beliefs are organised and dangerous and thus they must be suppressed.

The risk here is NOT coming from "free speech absolutists", as you put it, but rather people like yourself who look around and see a world full of people who cannot ever be persuaded or redeemed because they're just too stupid or evil, and thus must be prevented from organising. In the exceptionally rare case that genuine, actual Nazis do "raise their fists" the solution is the same as when anyone does: arrest them and send them to trial.

[hsod]

Wow. So you're comparing the OP of this subthread to the Nazis because they think the electorate is susceptible to manipulation. That's some shameful sophistry.

[peoplewindow]

Sigh, no. Look. I don't think bringing up "but Nazis" is really helpful to any debate but Frondo did so. His position is - quite literally - I'd love to support free speech but I can't because of Nazis. Also he thinks I lack perspective and am some sort of fetishist, which isn't very nice, but I can put that to one side.

It's impossible to respond to such a rebuttal without using the N-word and I specifically said at the start I was doing so only because of that argument.

I understand why people bring up Hitler in discussions about free speech. Some people do believe that Nazis are some sort of harmful side effect of free speech and if only people with views tending in that direction are prevented from speaking, there will never be a re-occurrence. That's a reasonable view to hold, but one that many people believe to be wrong (I didn't see Congress delete the first amendment post-WW2 after all).

Now if someone is going to take a position of "I'd love to support X but it leads to Hitler", a rebuttal of the form "actually it's not X that led to these bad things, it's the opposite of X" is a completely reasonable response. If you really believe that's sophistry I'd be interested to know how you'd argue that free speech is the solution to and not the cause of Nazi evil, if you genuinely did believe that, without it being sophistry?

[hsod]

The sophistry is in the un-earned reversal.

OP: People are susceptible to manipulation. We should think carefully about the ways our institutions allow violent and intolerant ideologies to spread.

You: You know who else thought people were susceptible to manipulation? The Nazis.

A hypothetical non-sophist: Our institutions are indeed helping to spread violent and intolerant ideologies, but any attempt to prevent their spread will only make things worse, because #{reasons}.