[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.

[JumpCrisscross]

> That you've replied twice without answering suggests, I think, that there's not an easy answer

There isn't. But we don't need an answer, not yet. The justice system is a lazy evaluator. This case has an easy answer--they are Nazis. If someone sued, the ruling would be quick. If the next case is more complex, reality will illuminate the nuances.

Common law systems are complex. They're also de-centralised and empirical. You don't always need a standard ex ante. We have a cultural standard regarding genocide, its advocacy, and Nazis. Existing norms and laws suffice.

(Philosophically, your question is interesting. It's practically irrelevant, though, until a matching case threatens to arise.)

[anigbrowl]

But you're saying that we should just ignore the examples of super-duper-bad speech because of the difficulty of deciding where the line is. And that is a really hard problem, but it doesn't take away from the fact that people are engaging in super-duper bad stuff like calling for genocide and plotting and committing political murders.

[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.