[jkelsey]

Here we go with another nazi attempt to lecture us on civil liberties. If they had more political power (and I shudder at the notion), they would be the first ones to clamp down on speech and free expression (it's kinda their thing).

We have more pressing free speech matters at hand right now with authoritarian states and corporate monopolies. Nazis don't get a free ride on the hard work being done just so they can turn the gun around on us when they have power. We recognize racism and sexism for what it is, and don't let it distract us from building a better society for us all.

Do we have to reference the xkcd comic again?

[stcredzero]

Please don't. I think Monroe has fallen down as a speaker of truth. If Free Speech is suppressed through societal pressure, it's just as bad as the government doing it. The mechanisms Monroe trumpets were once used to suppress LGBT people, Jewish people, and Black people. The kind of society he wants is just as authoritarian and socially stifling as Victorian society -- it just fits his particular tastes. XKCD of all people should know better.

[jkelsey]

> If Free Speech is suppressed through societal pressure, it's just as bad as the government doing it.

You're confusing the market of free ideas with speech. Governments have militaries and police forces. Societies have public opinion. Are you suggesting that societies shouldn't have the ability to guide themselves by rejecting speech that is harmful to itself (i.e. racist/sexist dogma perpetuated by a majority that wants to get rid of its minorities)?

Honestly, this all sounds like nihilism which I know is all the currently all the rage to wealthy and white Silicon Valley, but I'm sure your perspective will be altered if you should ever be unfortunate to have nazis start targeting you.

[stcredzero]

You're confusing the market of free ideas with speech...Are you suggesting that societies shouldn't have the ability to guide themselves by rejecting speech that is harmful to itself

I have seen many things which are touted as part of "the marketplace of ideas" that are really attempts to skew speech in civil society through non-governmental bureaucratic power. This is dishonest. It's not a real "marketplace of ideas" when certain things are placed in an inaccessible part of the store. We've seen this "technically not censorship" thing before. Noam Chomsky helped bring it to the world's attention.

http://a.co/658KATJ

Honestly, this all sounds like nihilism which I know is all the currently all the rage to wealthy and white Silicon Valley, but I'm sure your perspective will be altered if you should ever be unfortunate to have nazis start targeting you.

I have been racially targeted by groups of poor whites. My perspective changed when extreme elements on the left started behaving in much the same way. When your "activism" starts depending on the magnitude of horribleness of the enemy for its justification, this is a historical sign that something is out of kilter. No one who says they can do anything, because they're less horrible than some bad guys, gets to wield the special liminal power of activism in my name. Groupthink is groupthink. It feels much the same way, no matter where it is based on the political spectrum. The justified hate of White Supremacists is much the same as hateful ideologues of a different stripe.

I abhor the nihilism of Silicon Valley, however, it's not a white phenomenon, nor is it particular to one ethnic group. Shortly after I moved to the Bay Area, I got to see a drunken self-styled startup nerd spill beer all over the laptop of a cancer-patient female techie who was trying to get her life together, then try to pretend he had nothing to do with it. (Pre-Obamacare, so her life seemed pretty precarious. He thought it was a good idea to dive into his bunk at the hacker hostel I was staying at.) He was proof by counterexample that being white is not at all necessary for entitlement.

The nihilism of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area is mostly derived from the nihilism of the Postmodernist left. We have as much to fear from the radicalism of the left as the radicalism of the extreme Fascist right. Both of those groups have in common collectivist and nihilistic ideologies that reject logic and rationality. You only have to read the writings of the esoteric thought leaders of both groups to see this. Therein lies the real danger. The left-right spectrum is only incidental.

[jkelsey]

Perhaps nihilism was too strong a accusation, but I still fear your position is leaving a loop hole open for nazis. Your case for logic and rationality reads like the status quo should be left alone, which in our current circumstances, tends to benefit whites (thus my remark). Groupthink may be groupthink, but you know how we combat that – we fund public education. We don't need to let nazis to empower themselves to guard against groupthink.

I must comment on this:

> When your "activism" starts depending on the magnitude of horribleness of the enemy for its justification, this is a historical sign that something is out of kilter.

To what activism are you referring to? My activism would be related to moving closer to a society where the starting floor hasn't fallen out for others based on class, race, and gender. Nazism, you know, kinda gets in the way of that.

[stcredzero]

I still fear your position is leaving a loop hole open for nazis.

The free speech loophole has to be left open for everybody. The moment we let someone arbitrate speech, we no longer have free speech.

We don't need to let nazis to empower themselves to guard against groupthink.

A right for everyone has to be a right for everyone. If you study what happened in the rise of Fascism in the Weimar Republic, you'll find that it was the left leaning Weimar Republic that put into place the legal framework for Nazi totalitarianism. In almost every law that had to do with human rights, the Weimar Republic put in a "unless necessary for the public good" or "unless a law is passed to the contrary" clause. All the Nazis had to do was to use those clauses.

Free Speech protects society as a whole against groupthink. Any minority, no matter how small or unpopular, is protected. The moment you introduce Weimar Republic style exceptions to those rights, you lose a society that is protected against authoritarianism. Instead, you get a society that's just an incubator for totalitarianism.

My activism would be related to moving closer to a society where the starting floor hasn't fallen out for others based on class, race, and gender. Nazism, you know, kinda gets in the way of that.

Study the Weimar Republic. Explicit activism of the type you mention above (following an ethos of "By Any Means Necessary") was precisely the kind that set the stage for Nazis to come to power. Also, you should note that the "floor" in the US, even for "groups disadvantaged by class, race, and gender" is quite high in absolute terms. As Dinesh D'Souza's friend once observed, "I want to come to a country where the poor people are fat and own VCRs." There are people whose "floors have fallen out," but I don't think the existence of Neo-Nazis has had much affect on them. Can you give me an example where people demonstrating have made poor neighborhoods poorer? I can give you examples where riots have done that, but those were not sparked by Neo-Nazis.

Groupthink may be groupthink, but you know how we combat that – we fund public education.

The way to combat groupthink in the long term is to advance groups. One interesting thing that Thomas Sowell brings up in his book Race and Culture, is that Russians, Poles, and Italians started out having IQ score disparities as large as those of US black communities, but caught up over the time span of the 1st half of the 20th century. By 1950, the scores had basically equalized. He also notes a study of black children of GIs growing up in Germany, who showed comparable IQs to other children growing up there. Yes, there is clearly systemic racism in the US. It can be seen in the rising crime rates and decay of communities. (As a black man who was born in North Carolina and went to school in Harlem, Thomas Sowell has an interesting personal take on this.) I think it takes the form of incentives that encourage broken homes and abet poverty. (This can be seen in an increase in the IQs of black children in the early 20th century, which ended and reversed after the introduction of perverse incentives in the 1960's and 70's.) I think it takes the form of politics which protects public schools and keeps market buying power out of the hands of parents who want to help their children to advance. If one studies immigrant groups, one finds a pattern of groups that advance themselves in spite of overt oppression codified into law and sometimes enacted as violence. One also finds a pattern of groups, whose leaders keep their people in cultural isolation in order to maintain their power. Such patterns are found all over the world, and repeat themselves across cultures and in different times. I think it should now be obvious such patterns are at play in the US.

[hankhill]

Says a lot about the general state of things when people on HN who speaks out against nazis now get downvoted into oblivion... sad world we live in.

[0xBA5ED]

Do you suppose "speaking out against the bad guys" excuses one from all other considerations?

[hankhill]

You know what, you're right. We should look at ourselves first and learn to respect those in power before questioning their motives.