[sanityUnbounded]

I'd say it's more sad than terrifying. Terror implies immediate danger, most people will not feel the danger that shutting down of a Nazi website should entail. Most people are not Nazis.

The value of an online community exists within participation from those that visit the website. Anyone that visits can explore the ideology from the perspective of those that believe in it, which is an invaluable tool for education.

What happened in Charlottesville was a moment in american history, no matter which side you fall on. What google, godaddy, and cloudflare are doing is (understandably) limiting community engagement on extremist websites. However by doing that it is also restricting those that want to understand who-what-where-when-why-how from accessing the conversations that occurred, and obviously, they did indeed occur. Now, anybody that wants to explore both sides of the event has to do so by navigating a barrage of news articles which loosely throws around the term "nazi", and a smaller subset of opinion articles which view it as a censorship issue.

It makes the stance of anti-censorship & anti-nazi an impossibly difficult stance to take because these two issues are being viewed as two sides of the same issue. This is not conducive to a proactive internet culture. For the first time in history we have the opportunity to explore opposing political/race ideologies from inception to protest, and instead of using it to learn about human nature and group think, companies are hitting a mute button to win a popularity contest with investors.

[AstralStorm]

Here's a parable: They came for the anarchists. I am not an anarchist, so I didn't care. Then they came for the communists, neither am I. Then they came for the Muslims. Then they came for debtors and child pornographers. Then they came for me.

Or in other words, for every man there is a paragraph (in criminal law). If not, one will be invented.

[Ntrails]

Here is a parable: They came for the murderers and put them in prison. They didn't come for me because I'm not a murderer, and we're broadly ok with seeing murderers as being bad for society.

I'm not saying that your quote doesn't have power - it does. But the important aspect of it is that the targets were people the subject knows were being unfairly treated. So yes, if they start locking up homosexuals or Muslims or jews I'll refer to that parable and think "shit - I'd best do something".

As things stand I'm not getting out of bed to help a nazi.

[zzzcpan]

You are equating a real victimized crime, like murder, with a thought crime, like following a nazi ideology.

[Pharylon]

The Nazi ideology is to commit genocide. There's an argument to be made that being a Nazi is the equivalent of planning a murder.

Let's not kid ourselves. If these guys took over, they'd kill people, and they're not shy about admitting it.

[colordrops]

The problem is that the white power groups are not monolithic, and there are subgroups that do not promote genocide, and actually don't even promote violence. Invariably though they all get grouped under the moniker "Nazi". Now mind you, I still find racist ideologies abhorrent, but in the end, they are constitutionally protected speech, "He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security", "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", and "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"

It's really a bad slippery slope to start finding new exceptions where censorship is ok. It just shows that you don't understand how free speech works. Until crimes are committed, I don't care if your ideology is universal destruction. You should be left alone.

[Pharylon]

First, we're not talking about any random group of white supremacists. We're talking about literal Nazis.

Second, the slippery slope is a fallacy. Literally. The "slippery slope fallacy" is a textbook fallacy. In this instance, many countries make it illegal to espouse Nazi ideology today, yet Germany and France haven't become dystopian dictatorships.

"If we outlaw gun ownership for the mentally ill, that's a slippery slope to outlawing all firearms."

"If we outlaw same sex marriage, that's a slippery slope to outlawing all marriage."

"If we outlaw cocaine, that's a slippery slope to outlawing beer."

All of those make just as much sense as a slippery slope of outlawing Nazis.

[chc]

I am having a hard time figuring out if this is a strange joke I'm failing to get or if you actually mean to suggest that Nazism is victimless.

[bduerst]

Isn't consuming child porn just a thought crime? I think you may be splitting hairs when the ideology promotes hate crime & harm to others.

[Zuider]

Believing NAMBLA'a propaganda is a thought crime. By contrast, actually viewing indecent images of children involves participating in a crime committed by the creator of those images. Similarly, the demented ravings of The Daily Stormer are thought crime. Racially motivated abuse and violence are actual crimes.

[bduerst]

You just reiterated my point:

Thought crimes can involve participating in, or contributing to, crimes committed by other people (as you just elaborated).

That's why as a society we ban consumption of child pornography and other types of thought crimes - because they involve harming others.

[lordCarbonFiber]

Worth noting no one is going to jail for being a Nazi (except the ones that are actually killing people). Private companies are just choosing not to do business with them; because, turns out associating with people that think killing minorities for the glory of the master race is a good idea tends to be bad for business. Who could have guessed?

[musage]

There is no Nazi "ideology" without victims. That is, there is no ideology that can't shift on a penny, but there's always resentment and powerlessness (as well as the megalomania that accompanies them) projected on those to be made victims. In a way, that's way older and way broader than actual Nazism, but the historic Nazis showed the horrible depths of it.

Nazis aren't about a specific set of "enemies", with Nazism becoming peaceful as soon as those are exterminated, it's more about constantly inventing enemies and sub-distinctions. It's flight from self, nihilism made movement. And even if everybody makes the Hitler salute, you can always rank them by enthusiasm and kill the least enthusiastic 5%. A boot (not a human foot) on a human face, forever, an endlessly restricting noose of hatred, and endless rush of power that doesn't fulfill or give happiness but does destroy and cause anguish. That's (one way to describe) Nazism. That's why you treat even one grain of it very seriously.

And while there is abuse of the word "Nazi" or even "Neo-Nazi", and we could argue a lot about what should be called what, just look at all the possible meanings of common words like "get", and notice how we don't get confused about that most of the time. Worrying more about what something is called than what something is much more constructive.

Though I'm not saying this as an argument to censor anyone.. not because I'm necessarily against it in all cases, but because I don't like the framing of that. When societies breed alienation and isolation, where so many kids are left to their own devices (I didn't aim for that pun but I'll keep it) in an onslaught of vapid or even cynical pandering and product shoveling, Neo-Nazis are just one of the predictable results of that, it's one of the ways a human can break.

It's like Mikado sticks (fasces?), when you let go of a bundle, I can't tell you which one will fall to the top right, but I can pretty much assume some will fall there. And the discussion is kind of futile when it starts history with the still image of a distribution of sticks, and kind of nauseating when it comes with too much self-righteousness. Are we to be applauded for not being Neo-Nazis, or should we be grateful we didn't have such a bad childhood or other reasons to be susceptible to it?

We tend to leave people by the wayside until they're old enough to run amok or join a cult or whatever. By that time it's kind of too late for good results, at that point it's like war with no winners. Of course, that's out of scope for "do I host this or don't I?", but I have to get it off my chest (every time this subject comes up).

While I'm rambling, how about freaky third answers, like host it under the condition they have to have an externally hosted comment system for every article, moderated by the UN? Don't shut them up, but don't allow them to shut up discussion about their "ideas" either. I'm not sure about actual Nazis, but for all sorts of grey areas, that's at least a thought?

[anigbrowl]

It's really the post above that which does so, by putting child abuse and political affiliation on the same plane.

Now when it comes to political ideologies, the difference between thought crimes and real-world actions is not so clear. Someone might believe in nazi ideology, vote accordingly, discriminate in their personal or professional lives based on that, but not be any sort of public activist - that's what I'd call a 'thought crime.' It's their right to hold such a position no matter how repulsive I find it.

There is a qualitative difference when someone steps into actively promoting such ideologies (eg waving nazi flags or participating in marches). The thing about nazi ideology is that it's explicitly grounded in the elimination of some people and the subjugation of the rest, and rejection of the democratic principle in favor of leadership from above.

When you get to people who express support for specific policies like genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc. and who organize in pursuit of that objective, it seems to me that they've passed out of the realms of 'thought crime' and into actively threatening demographic groups and their members.

[AgentME]

There's a tremendous and insensitive irony in using that parable to describe the persecution of Nazis when it was originally about the Nazi's persecution and genocide of groups.

[codeisawesome]

Perhaps "terrifying" is just an adjective that gets more clicks and people to read what's so terrifying. The marketing of fear - on a site and an article purportedly trying to counter the marketing of fear (Nazi & hate ideologies are broadly about fearing the "other").

[craftyguy]

In other words, the title is very clickbaity.

[lordCarbonFiber]

That's great until the mob with torches are outside your door calling for your blood. Intolerance will always win if you insist on every issue being a "both sides" debate. It's the same as trying to argue with a creationist, antivaxer or flat earther; there cannot be a reasonable discussion if one or more sides have no facts to stand on (master race bollux was bad science back in the 1920s and hasn't gotten better).

No one is loosely throwing around the term Nazi, these groups self identify as American nazis, carry fucking nazi flags, are on video chanting "jews will not replace us". Also these groups aren't new; they've been around for years technology has just amplified their voice. You don't need The Daily Stormer and its ilk to come to an informed decision on "are Nazis bad" just open a history book.

There's a valuable discussion to be had about whether it makes sense for the internet to not be a public run utility (and thus subject to full 1st amendment protections). But so long as we're leaning on the free market to sort things out, you're on the wrong side of history if Nazis are the cause you want to defend.

[ineptech]

Sounds like you're okay with society censoring the websites of Nazis, yes? Care to clarify who gets to decide who is and isn't a Nazi?

This is not rhetorical. In my experience, a lot of people agree with "It's okay to censor Nazis" but virtually no one agrees with "It's okay to censor people that ____ disapproves of", regardless of what fills the blank.

I guess I'd say I'm against censorship not because there's no speech bad enough to censor, but because there's no one trustworthy enough to do the censoring.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Care to clarify who gets to decide who is and isn't a Nazi?

Given the strict definition of "waving swastikas and advocating for violence against Jews" works in the scenario at hand, I'm not yet terrifically concerned about over-reach.

[ineptech]

> waving swastikas

The only reason people wear swastikas in America is because of the strong free-speech protection that this thread is discussing the erosion of. If we banned swastikas (like Germany) then people would stop wearing them (like Germany), but we'd still have the same hate speech you're discussing censoring.

> advocating for violence against Jews

That's a pretty broad standard. If a politician supports evicting Israelis from disputed settlements in the West Bank, is that "advocating violence against Jews?" The answer "Yes according to some people, No according to others." So again, I ask: who are you trusting to decide? President Trump? Congress? You personally? To be clear, the offer currently on the table is "some middle-managers at Cloudfare, as directed by the fickle hand of social media."

[JumpCrisscross]

> If a politician supports evicting Israelis from disputed settlements in the West Bank, is that "advocating violence against Jews?"

Someone chanting "death to Jews" and waving Nazi flags leaves little unambiguous. I'm usually a slippery slope fanatic when it comes to free speech, and I still am as it relates to First Amendment concerns, but private companies choosing not to do business with people who self identify as Nazis, wave Nazi flags and chant "death to Jews" while saying that employees of said companies are also Nazis is pretty clearly their right. Courts aren't computers and the law isn't code; judges can understand "they are Nazis."

[ineptech]

You're answering the question "Is it okay to censor stuff that's super-duper bad", which no one is asking. The question at hand is who gets to distinguish bad-enough-to-ban from the not-bad-enough-to-ban. That you've replied twice without answering suggests, I think, that there's not an easy answer. Not that there's any shame in that! The founders couldn't come up with a good answer either. The first amendment essentially says, "Restricting speech is so difficult to get right that we don't trust Congress to do it."

Meanwhile, the point this article is making is that (in practice, if not in law) the current answer to the question of who decides what to censor is "middle managers at network infrastructure companies, based on what their social media departments suspect might hurt their brand." If you think that's an acceptable answer, great, but I don't think you can go on thinking of yourself as a "slippery slope fanatic when it comes to free speech" in that case.

[talmand]

Given the current political climate of people being labeled as Nazis simply because they disagree, I would suggest some level of worry.

[lordCarbonFiber]

These people are nazis. They're not being labeled, they showed up and said "yes we're nazis look at this flag". Like the false equivalence between crazies saying every political figure is nazis and people that are calling themselves nazis with pride is ridiculous.

We're not operating in a grey area, one group is waving nazi flags, chanting blood and soil, and killing people; the other isn't. Pretty open and shut.

---- spot the grey area http://a.abcnews.com/images/International/nazi-flag-charlott...

[talmand]

I'm not speaking of the people who show up in public wearing Nazi paraphernalia and carrying Nazi flags. That's so easy any idiot can correctly identify them as that is exactly how they wish to be identified. I'm speaking of the people who show up in public with signs supporting free speech, unity, and love for all people that are then screamed at by idiots in masks labeling them as Nazis. Before they are beaten while police stand by and watch.

Simply because they have a different point of view.

Or any politician that openly disagree with certain politicians that have been in office for quite some time. It's a known tactic that has been in effect for a long time now. If you find yourself losing a debate, compare your opponent to Hitler.

[lordCarbonFiber]

Fortunately we don't need to decide "who is and isn't a nazi". They literally say so. They're proud of it, they've got the flags, and the arm bands.

I love how to the "free speech advocates" genocide is something that you just "disapprove" of. Im pretty sure, baring literally nazis, you can get just about every person on board with "It's ok to censor people that want genocide".

Maybe you're one of the exceptions. But if so, I'd so some introspection about why "we should indiscriminately kill people" deserves the same consideration as "we shouldn't indiscriminately kill people"; because that's the debate.

[ineptech]

> Im pretty sure, baring literally nazis, you can get just about every person on board with "It's ok to censor people that want genocide".

Well gosh, that sounds simple! Who could possibly argue with that! And of course, quite a large number of Americans believe that legalizing abortion was genocide. So we're all on board with shutting down plannedparenthood.com then, right?

And to think, I thought censorship was a complex issue.

[anigbrowl]

This really seems like a red herring considering the grandparent post addresses the question of those who self-identify as nazis and are willing to publicly incite genocide.

[sanityUnbounded]

I think you are misunderstanding me. I agree there is no debate that those claiming they are Nazis are Nazis.

It is important to understand why people feel compelled to identify with Nazism. If we don't understand why something happened, there is nothing we can take away to prevent it in the future. What we have with Daily Stormer is a quite literal database of interactions of people who self identify as Nazis... I'd say deleting it is not the most productive thing we could do with such information.

[anigbrowl]

But this isn't a new problem, is it? We have a plethora of books, essays, documentaries, and museums examining that very subject. For that matter, many modern nazis are not shy about articulating their reasons - desire for collective identity, desire for power, difficulty with women.

If you'd like some reading material:

The Rise and Faull of the Third Reich by William L Shirer - the single best historical overview

Anti-Semite and Jew - by Jean-Paul Sartre - an examination of the fundamental dynamic of nazi ideology

The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Koonz - examines the nazi worldview in detail

Kill All Normies by Angela Nagel - examining the intersection of chan culture and far-right ideology

* What we have with Daily Stormer is a quite literal database of interactions of people who self identify as Nazis... I'd say deleting it is not the most productive thing we could do with such information.*

True, but it's not some petri dish that you can keep isolated in a lab, is it? You have to balance the benefit of what you might learn against the costs that their organizing activity imposes on other people.

[weberc2]

I don't want to defend Nazis, but I don't trust our society to accurately identify Nazis. We already see people who question political orthodoxy getting fired for "being intolerant", and there are a lot of people (even in my workplace) who sincerely believe that anyone who voted for Trump (close to 50% of our country) is a closet Nazi. Some people even question whether free-speech advocates are Nazis ("Why else would someone defend the speech rights of Nazis?"). The reason the left took an absolutist position on free speech in previous decades is because there isn't a good test for identifying deplorable speech--maybe today censorship sounds appealing to you, but consider the precedent you're proposing for the next cultural administration (if you indeed believe the country is 50% Nazi, you should be very concerned about weakening free speech).

EDIT: One other important point--who's to say that censoring Nazis is even an effective way to limit the spread of the ideology? It could well galvanize Nazis or push those on the fence over to the wrong side. What are our motives? Are we more interested in limiting the spread of intolerance, or do we want to make sure there are plenty of Nazis to punch?

[cr0sh]

> close to 50% of our country

You mean close to 50% of registered voters. Which are less than 40% of the population who are eligible voters. And that number is probably off too, thanks to voter suppression, disenfranchisement, and gerrymandering of voting districts.

Furthermore, it was the electoral college who decided who the president should be, in many cases going against the popular vote within their state. When you understand how the electoral votes are decided upon, the number of voters who voted for our current president grows even smaller.

In short, it's a relative minority who actually voted for Trump, and all the voters together are in the minority of all eligible citizens who can vote. Why those others didn't vote is up for debate, but I've already mentioned three potential reasons (not counting apathy).

So that other portion of the population that didn't vote - we have no idea how they stand ideologically on political and social issues. But we can certainly say there's a percentage of them who would have voted for Trump, and the ideology that supports him.

Greater than 50% of the population? Not likely. But it isn't a small percentage, either (in fact, it is probably somewhere close to his polling numbers - around 30%).

[weberc2]

How is this relevant? My 50% figure is a rough estimate based on the voting population as a sample of the overall population. Even if the actual number is closer to 30%, my point stands--any one who believes that 1 in 3 people in the U.S. is a Nazi are deluding themselves (or more likely, they've broadened the definition of 'Nazi' to include more people who disagree with them politically so they can feel morally superior).

[gozur88]

>That's great until the mob with torches are outside your door calling for your blood.

I hope you realize that's exactly what you're doing.

>No one is loosely throwing around the term Nazi, these groups self identify as American nazis, carry fucking nazi flags, are on video chanting "jews will not replace us".

Yes, there were a handful of those. And there were a whole bunch of other people who're simply tired of being the only ethnic group that's not allowed to advocate for its own interests.