[mlillie]

This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement.

"Where does it stop?" is the same slippery slope garbage peddled by #HimToo and #BlueLivesMatter acolytes. But even engaging with the question at face value, the answer is very simple, and the author of this piece didn't try very hard if he couldn't find someone who is able to answer it. In fact, the best answer was given by Karl Popper in 1945.

> In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.

That's it. Platforms like Gab are themselves intolerant, and we must continue to be intolerant of them.

[stcredzero]

This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement.

The whole point of Free Speech is to enable all sides of any issue to have their say. That is a fundamental mechanism against totalitarianism.

In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.

Sorry, but Karl Popper's idea is just Orwellian nightmare fuel. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

Tolerance is to live and let live. Oppressing those you disagree with is the very opposite of tolerance. (Even if they are truly horrible people.) If Silicon Valley were tolerant, they'd let Gab live and possibly be a cesspit of horribleness. A society that de-platforms and un-persons everyone and every idea it doesn't like isn't a free society. That's not a free market of ideas. That's totalitarianism through economic hegemony.

[Natsu]

The irony here is that the 'intolerance' Popper was worried about was people using 'fists or pistols' and the whole thing was premised on the right of self-defense. Times have changed and that Overton window has shifted quite a bit, to the point where people use Popper to prop up the idea that they have a right to use their fists to silence people they hate based on a theory of future harm if those people were permitted to speak.

Having completely lost the idea that the right of self-defense is the right to use reasonable force to protect oneself from immanent violence and it doesn't apply when you start the fight. [1]

[1] https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=864 gives a nice, simple overview of how it works.

[archagon]

Totalitarianism is gaining power right now through bad actors operating under the cloak of free speech. The bigger their communities get, the more they infect the communities around them with their hatred and lies. This should be blindingly obvious if you’ve been online for more than a couple of years.

Your mechanism against totalitarianism will lead you straight into a dictatorship.

[BurningFrog]

This is the "fascism is infectious" theory, under which we are all potential fascists if we just get exposed to the "infection".

By this theory fascism is somehow so inherently attractive that is has to be regulated similar to an addictive drug.

[archagon]

People are surprisingly easy to reprogram. You can read countless stories of once-liberal parents turning into hateful conspiracy nuts in their old age out of prolonged exposure to right-wing media.

If you see people around you saying “white males are undergoing a genocide” or “brown people are criminals” every day, chances are you’ll eventually start to internalize some of those talking points. Without tremendous effort, we’re nothing more than a rough aggregation of the opinions we surround ourselves with.

[BurningFrog]

People adapt to their surroundings, and try to fit in, of course.

But that's not unique to fascism. By this argument you'd have to ban all ideologies.

[philwelch]

> People are surprisingly easy to reprogram.

Not you, though. No way could YOU be under the influence of a totalitarian ideology despite the fact that you are openly advocating restricting basic human rights.

[archagon]

I am advocating the right for private organizations to ban fucked-up ideologies from their services. That this is being framed as some sort of totalitarian assault on free speech shows just how far the right-wing rot has gotten.

The balance fallacy will be the death of democracy in America.

[toasterlovin]

> People are surprisingly easy to reprogram. You can read countless stories of once-liberal parents turning into hateful conspiracy nuts in their old age out of prolonged exposure to right-wing media.

You should be more skeptical of your intuitions about which way the arrow of causality points.

[archagon]

These are people who now believe that Jewish cabals run the world and that the dead kids at our schools are crisis actors. Don’t you bullshit me.

[philwelch]

> Totalitarianism is gaining power right now through bad actors operating under the cloak of free speech. The bigger their communities get, the more they infect the communities around them.... Your mechanism against totalitarianism will lead you straight into a dictatorship.

Those might have been the exact words of a 1950's McCarthyite. How can you be so sure that you're just just as wrong as they were?

[archagon]

Trump proudly came out as a nationalist a few weeks ago and is visibly salivating at the prospect of pitting thousands of troops against a migrant caravan. Unlike the Communists, these people are already in positions of power and are fighting to gain legitimacy by any means necessary.

[jesssse]

> Totalitarianism is gaining power right now through bad actors operating under the cloak of free speech.

I do not understand this assertion.

The way I see it, Free Speech is an antidote against totalitarianism, in contrast to Censorship, which is a tool of totalitarianism.

[8note]

ah, so that's how Hitler was beaten? everyone just started talking and the NAZIs just dissapeared?

[claudiawerner]

>Tolerance is to live and let live.

This is one reading of tolerance, but there are multiple (as expounded by Popper and Marcuse too, for instance). I don't think considering an idea badly because it's used as fuel is a good thing. A quick counterexample to the idea that tolerance means to allow anything and everything is that if I were to tell you I tolerate your presence, but you begin to make annoying sounds continuously, my tolerance would quickly change to intolerance.

Tolerance is a democratic principle, since it relies on the idea that nobody has an absolute claim on the truth, but as critical theorists as early as the 60s pointed out, this democratic idea depends on an informed populace to distinguish ideas as they are - to that end, in society we don't tolerate some views, such as the teaching of creationism in schools.

A good essay on this is Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance". Regarding your mention of Orwell, Marcuse made another interesting point; nowadays, the contradiction is hidden within the noun itself, rather than "war is peace", the word "freedom" itself, understood in the context of its ideological use by various proponents (particularly on the libertarian right, I've noticed) already contains the contradiction; the idea it represents is contradictory. Similarly with misleading names and terms.

I do not want to live in a society in which tolerance is absolute, and I doubt many people would.

[stcredzero]

I don't think considering an idea badly because it's used as fuel is a good thing.

An idea that demolishes a foundation idea by melding it with its opposite is a very insidiously bad thing.

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

[claudiawerner]

Nobody is claiming that tolerance is equal to intolerance, that would be silly; the claim is that intolerance [of an instance] may be required for tolerance [in society at large], to prosper. What is being tolerated and what is not being tolerated are difference, hence the "contradiction" isn't a contradiction at all. Nothing is melded. The core idea of indiscriminate tolerance (the issues with which I mentioned you haven't seemed to address) is not altered by this new principle; it's entirely possible to be tolerant of everything.

What do you say to the claim that laws (restrictions on absolute freedom) may be required to guarantee freedom? Does this claim demolish the foundation of freedom by melding it with its direct opposite? From this example, your abstract point is pretty poor; this issue with freedom has been picked up since the time of the earliest philosophers, and they really do seem paradoxical.

That's not to say your concrete (specific) point on intolerance is wrong, but your abstract point about melding an idea with its opposite is poorly founded, and doesn't hold up to a dialectical analysis in place of considering the ideas as binary opposites.

[ubernostrum]

The whole point of Free Speech is to enable all sides of any issue to have their say

And that freedom includes the freedom to say "I don't want to be associated with you".

Any "anti-deplatforming" is, of necessity, forced unwilling speech. Which is sort of the opposite of what "free speech" people should be standing up for. If someone doesn't want to lend you their soapbox, the solution is not to put a gun to their head and order them to hand it over; it's to go build your own soapbox. And if enough people are unwilling to associate with you that it's becoming burdensome to maintain your soapbox (difficulty getting materials, etc.), perhaps that's a sign from the marketplace of ideas that your ideas aren't very good.

[stcredzero]

Any "anti-deplatforming" is, of necessity, forced unwilling speech. Which is sort of the opposite of what "free speech" people should be standing up for.

No, the "relaying" or "transmission" argument is just a dishonest gambit in 2018. Only idiots believe YouTube thinks everything some YouTuber might say on their own channel. Should AT&T have had the right to cut off phone calls containing speech they didn't like? There were party lines where entire groups of people could hear the same person speak, so it wasn't just one on one communication. Should AT&T have had the right to cut those off because of AT&T's "free speech" rights?

Sorry, but the effect of such a position is to allow large companies to regulate the speech of the general public. Their inability to censor the general public doesn't somehow mean that they lose any ability to express their views to the public. It only curtails their ability to squelch the expression of others.

[ubernostrum]

If a baker has deeply-held religious beliefs, can they refuse to bake cakes for people with different religious beliefs? If not, why can't online platforms decide not to do business with people whose beliefs or actions they find distasteful? If so, can you articulate a meaningful difference between the two cases?

And that's without getting into the issue where you've just effectively rolled back CDA 230. Why shouldn't sites be able to make and enforce rules for the use of their platforms? And how small can a platform be and still have you put the government's gun to its head and force them to act the way you want? If I run a web site where people can discuss things, are you going to send a SWAT team to my house and have them shoot me unless I stop kicking out Nazis?

For all the hand-wringing you want to do over what is, in the end, an exercise of the right of free association (which includes the right not to associate), you seem completely unconcerned with the kinds of horrific consequences that would come from forcing everyone to provide a platform to the whole world. So maybe first you should practice what you preach -- start tithing in support of causes you hate, listening to lectures in support of those causes, and going out in public carrying signs and banners for those causes. After all, by not doing that, you're already censoring them, and that's horrible!

[8note]

YouTube is a publisher, and acts with editorial control.

Right now, they're emphasizing Indian content. it's they're freedom to downplay Western content to get broader appeal to an Indian audience

[slededit]

They explicitly claim the opposite when taking their DMCA safe harbor provision.

[dvtrn]

This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement

It's funny you take this view, as fatigued as I imagine you probably feel about, as you're calling it "both-sides-ism"-I like to imagine there are probably other people out there just as fatigued with watching "both sides" act like neither has some kind of fringe-manifested baggage or serious, fundamental issues that need to be brought to the table and reconciled.

Hate to break this to you: there's some ugly problems with how we're talking about issues coming from all over the place. No one is coming to the table here with clean hands, as far as I'm concerned.

Some ugly words and tactics being hurled like hand grenades. They're probably not the same, they probably don't exist for the same reasons, nor have the same motivating factors behind them, but there has got to be some kind of decongestant for this idea that polarizing and hurtful speech only comes from one ideological hemisphere. I don't know what it is, but I hope we find one.

[8note]

I for one, only see one side shooting up synagogues, and locking children in cages

[dvtrn]

My entire point, laid bare, QED.

[roenxi]

There is a pretty simple resolution to the Paradox of Tolerance - some philosophies can't build communities (eg, a powerful society of anarchists would be overwhelmed by the first organised internal faction to form). Tolerance is one such philosophy - as pointed out by Popper that means tolerating agents trying to undermine core values.

My resolution is that people are experiencing cloudy thinking, and using the word 'tolerance' when they mean 'humility'. To have humility is to seriously admit that, while you are ejecting someone from your community, that you might possibly be wrong to do so. A positive community founded on humility would naturally lead to tolerance anyway, because intolerance starts in a firm belief in your own views of the world being correct.

[tunesmith]

Define intolerance. That's the whole problem. So being "intolerant of intolerance" is meaningless except as something that signals a different meaning - different lines, different behavior, different standards - to every listener.

[JoshTriplett]

> Define intolerance

That thing everyone except the intolerant seem to understand remarkably well, and the intolerant spend a lot of time quibbling over the definition of in a desperate attempt to derail their inclusion in it.

Or, more seriously: treating other people as unwelcome or hated or less than human, for reasons other than being hateful and intolerant.

[wycs]

Yes. It is all very obvious. For example, suppose a marginalized group uses the hashtag #killallwhitemen to express the disempowerment they feel from the historical weight of white privilege. This, I think we can all agree, is an expression of righteous outrage through hyperbole, not intolerance. In fact, "white men" in this context does not refer to any person or group of people, rather a self-reenforcing system of oppression and privilege. In this way, we see "#killallwhitemen" is tool of enforcing tolerance in an intolerant society.

Now suppose someone were to make an argument like this:

"We observe sexual dimorphism to some degree in most animals. Thus our prior should be that it is unlikely that women and men are 100% psychologically identical even when controlling for environment. Because of this it would be epistemically incorrect to assume differences in representation in engineering firms can be explained entirely by discrimination."

This argument is clearly reactionary and must be censored, for we know 100% that any difference in preferences, abilities and outcomes between men and women must be explained by environmental effects. To think otherwise would be exclusionary and thus an example of intolerance we must be intolerant of, even in our own thoughts.

The person making this argument should be shunned. Even raising the argument should result in immediate deplatforming and perhaps loss of employability.

Even this notion of a prior in which you allow yourself to assign a probability to reactionary thoughts must fought, for even a very low prior can be overcome with enough sensory experience.

[mlillie]

> can be explained entirely by discrimination

I understand this is hyperbole, but this is the perfect case of how legitimate grievances are derailed by bad actors. Emphasis on the word "entirely".

We don't and can't think in absolutes as a society. Everyone and everything is imperfect to some degree. Women sometimes falsely accuse men of sexual assault. Police officers sometimes kill unarmed black men for good reason. The problem is that these sorts of arguments strip context entirely away—"sometimes" in each case is well under 10%. No one was talking about "entirely" in the first place, so this just morphs a discussion about equality into a much less serious one about human fallibility.

So, sure, those are issues, but let's focus on the 90% of the actual problem at hand. No one is saying sexism and racism are absolutely 100% responsible for everything. But they are extremely significant factors and, more importantly, factors entirely within our control and of our own making.

[stcredzero]

this is the perfect case of how legitimate grievances are derailed by bad actors... The problem is that these sorts of arguments strip context entirely away

If you want to figure out the villains, look for the side that is trying to strip the context away and screeching while holding to absolutes. Beware: villains often use the language of the noblest causes, and sometimes people become villains in the pursuit of noble causes.

[dvtrn]

And sometimes the very people saying we have to get rid of one awful system are the ones sitting behind the controls of another one.

-poorly paraphrased Chomsky

[stcredzero]

Yes. It is all very obvious. For example, suppose a marginalized group uses the hashtag #killallwhitemen to express the disempowerment they feel from the historical weight of white privilege. This, I think we can all agree, is an expression of righteous outrage through hyperbole, not intolerance.

No. MLK's movement wouldn't have willingly allowed something like that. Nor would Gandhi's. Justice is a universal compass, applying to all people, not the convenient and emotionally satisfying direction of the moment. Hate has no place in a true movement of justice. Those who would tell you otherwise are bad actors using the movement for their own ends, usually power.

[tenaciousDaniel]

It will never cease to amaze me that none of that is hyperbole. I've run into so many people who argue those exact two points, without a shred of self-awareness.

[JoshTriplett]

(In case it doesn't go without saying, lest silence be interpreted as agreeing with this response: no, both of these parody arguments are completely ridiculous. Both of these have superficial similarity to useful discussions, but have intentionally turned them into absurdist parody in order to mock actual notions of tolerance.)

[mooseburger]

They both happened. It's an accurate description of the state of discourse.

[skedaddle]

No they didn't. In the two situations he is clearly alluding to

1) the person admitted it was hurtful and unacceptable and that they should not have said it, and the mainstream publisher said they would not have hired her without this understanding

2) the argument the person made before being fired was not simply that there is a non-zero amount of sexual dimorphism in humans, it was concretely that womens' neuroticism, agreeableness, and other feeling-sy tendencies may explain why they are on average worse leaders, underrepresented, underpaid, etc.

[defen]

> That thing everyone except the intolerant seem to understand remarkably well

I'm not sure I agree with that, since the definition of intolerance is obviously rooted in societal norms. In 1950 the statement "two men should not be allowed to marry each other" would not have been seen as intolerant by almost anyone, regardless of political affiliation or sexuality. It would have been considered practically a tautology - so obviously true that no one even spent any time thinking about it. Today, many people in the USA would consider the statement intolerant. So I think your definition just kicks the can down the road to "how do we define who is tolerant?"

[manfredo]

In my experience, introspective people that constantly doubt and rethink their perception of intolerance are the most tolerant people I've met. Those that have strong conviction in their ideas of intolerance and assume that their said ideas about it are universal tend to be the opposite. And plenty of people quibble over what it means to be "intolerant" not to avoid their own inclusion in the term, but to expand the term to include their own political opponents under the umbrella of intolerance.

[JoshTriplett]

> In my experience, introspective people that constantly doubt and rethink their perception of intolerance are the most tolerant people I've met.

I've found this to be true of many different areas. The more certain you are, the less you're open to continuous learning. Have a well-calibrated idea of your own understanding, and scale your confidence accordingly.

In general, the concept of tolerance and intolerance should be fairly universal; the implementation of tolerance relies on a substantial and growing amount of working social knowledge.

[tunesmith]

Since I don't understand it remarkably well, I must be intolerant? Nice.

[tenaciousDaniel]

The real issue with the parent comment is that it's not sustainable in the end. When they say "everyone but (x) understands this", they are alluding to a sense of shared understanding.

That, to a certain extent, is a culture. In a society with several cultures, alluding to a sense of shared understanding is virtually impossible, because the interpretation is at root a cultural one. There's simply no way to guarantee that what they mean by "intolerant" is exactly what everyone else means.

[msla]

> That thing everyone except the intolerant seem to understand remarkably well

Another example of trying to shut down discussion.

For example, a substantial number of people around the world understand 'tolerance' to mean 'nobody insults my religion' which, of course, means 'nobody depicts homosexual relationships'. Therefore, depicting homosexuality is intolerant, hein?

[JoshTriplett]

> Another example of trying to shut down discussion.

If I were attempting to shut down discussion, I wouldn't have included a more serious version of the definition, in addition to the observation that it's remarkable how often people who want to play rules-lawyer with terms like "intolerant" or "bigot" or "racist" or "sexist" seem primarily interested in carefully excluding their own behavior, or that of groups they consider themselves affiliated with, or in general how often they're speaking from a position as a member of a privileged group.

> For example, a substantial number of people around the world understand 'tolerance' to mean 'nobody insults my religion' which, of course, means 'nobody depicts homosexual relationships'.

Hence tolerating everyone except the intolerant. Membership in one marginalized group does not provide a free pass for intolerance against another, nor does it entitle you to attack another or make another feel unwelcome. You deserve to not be discriminated against or excluded on the basis of your religious beliefs, but not if you're using them to attack other people or deny their rights based on (for instance) gender or orientation. Likewise for cis women intolerant of transwomen, white women intolerant of people of color, LG in LGBTQ+ intolerant of the B and T, and so on.

[msla]

So, if you have Group A and Group B, each claiming the other is doing horrible, offensive things, which group gets deplatformed?

Since I can't legitimately reply yet, consider this a reply:

> any group not specifically defined by their intolerance.

So, would that be Hezbollah or Shas?

[JoshTriplett]

The subset of both groups actually doing the horrible, offensive things. Treating entire groups as a unit rather than as individuals is part of the problem, at least for any group not specifically defined by their intolerance.

[happilycentrist]

What's worse, is that the people howling about "intolerance" are engaged in a purity spiral, and demand we be a part of it. It's a circular firing squad, which demands more and more extreme signals of virtue by the day - and those people found insufficiently faithful will be the next week's witches to burn.

It's an ideological death-cult that won't stop eating itself until there are literally only two of them left, facing one another, pointing, and screaming "HERETIC" at the tops of their lungs.

[emerged]

It's a recurring weakness of societies throughout history. There does seem to be strong social push back against it which hopefully implies we are collectively building immunity.

[newsbinator]

> "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobellis_v._Ohio

[woodruffw]

Any system of principles that, left unchecked, would threaten the set of establishing (or meta) principles that allow it to exist.

For example: (neo-)Nazism is an intolerant ideology because, left unchecked, it would seek to destroy the systems (broadly liberal democracies) that allow people to discuss it.

[travisoneill1]

How is a platform that let's you say anything uncensored intolerant? If your definition of "tolerance" is forced censorship, then I don't think you would do so well in Karl Popper's proposed society.

[tptacek]

In actuality, Gab bans users for the same reason Twitter does. For instance, when Paul Nehlen tried to organize harassment of another white nationalist figure, Gab banned him. Part of Gab's sales pitch is that it's a refuge for people whose thoughts are somehow too dangerous for Twitter. But contrary to what Gab wants you to believe, Twitter doesn't ban white nationalists. Richard Spencer has a Twitter account. So does Faith Goldy. For that matter, so does Gab, which has posted openly anti-Semitic comments in the past, and still has a verified checkmark!

[djsumdog]

Gab also banned people who posted anime porn, sending them in flocks to ActivityPub instances.

[claudiawerner]

The users Gab banned were already on such instances by and large, in particular smuglo.li and pawoo.net.

[pppaul]

Faith Goldy is not a white nationalist

[kasey_junk]

Faith Goldy literally said the 14 words and claimed they weren't controversial in a recording.

If we aren't putting her in the white nationalist classification I'm not sure who does end up there.

[charlesism]

     How is a platform that let's you say anything uncensored intolerant? 

That's another way to say "a platform that tolerates the intolerant" which could hardly be a better example of what Popper is talking about.

That said, the OP is also not right to suggest that intolerance is simple to identify. Like the other comments here say, it's subjective.

Then again, most things in life are subjective. Society has to be pragmatic sometimes and ignore that. Otherwise everything, eg: the legal system, falls apart.

[Natsu]

When Popper described intolerance, he spoke of people using 'fists or pistols' to shut down the tolerant and he predicated the very idea on the right to self defense.

The right of self defense is and long has been defense against immanent physical harm, for the one who does not start the fight.

[nine_k]

N. Taleb, "The most intolerant wins": https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Looks oddly relevant.

[stcredzero]

If you're looking for the most intolerant, then look to the side that makes the accusations, does the screeching, does the un-personing and de-platforming, and either calls for violence against its enemies, enacts it, or tacitly accepts it.

If you want to find the tolerant, find those who advocate for free speech and those who want to engage and make their arguments. That's the side which has learned the value of tolerance, because they're on their back foot.

[nine_k]

Exactly.

[froasty]

For anyone wanting the full quote from Popper's The Open Society:

"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Another of the less well-known paradoxes is the paradox of democracy, or more precisely, of majority-rule; i.e. the possibility that the majority may decide that a tyrant should rule. That Plato’s criticism of democracy can be interpreted in the way sketched here, and that the principle of majority-rule may lead to self-contradictions, was first suggested, as far as I know, by Leonard Nelson (cp. note 25 (2) to this chapter).

I do not think, however, that Nelson, who, in spite of his passionate humanitarianism and his ardent fight for freedom, adopted much of Plato’s political theory, and especially Plato’s principle of leadership, was aware of the fact that analogous arguments can be raised against all the different particular forms of the theory of sovereignty.

All these paradoxes can easily be avoided if we frame our political demands in the way suggested in section ii of this chapter, or perhaps in some such manner as this. We demand a government that rules according to the principles of equalitarianism and protectionism; that tolerates all who are prepared to reciprocate, i.e. who are tolerant; that is controlled by, and accountable to, the public. And we may add that some form of majority vote, together with institutions for keeping the public well informed, is the best, though not infallible, means of controlling such a government. (No infallible means exist.)"

[claudiawerner]

As much as Popper and Sartre (and the other left intellectuals) were diametrically opposed, they seemed to have found some agreement on this issue; here's a nice quote, using Sartre's example of anti-semitism:

>“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

[froasty]

And once again, the quote in broader context:

"How can one choose to reason falsely? It is because of a longing for impenetrability. The rational man groans as he gropes for the truth; he knows that his reasoning is no more than tentative, that other considerations may supervene to cast doubt on it. He never sees very clearly where he is going; he is "open"; he may even appear to be hesitant. But there are people who are attracted by the durability of a stone. They wish to be massive and impenetrable; they wish not to change. Where, indeed, would change take them? We have here a basic fear of oneself and of truth. What frightens them is not the content of truth, of which they have no conception, but the form itself of truth, that thing of indefinite approximation. It is as if their own existence were in continual suspension.

But they wish to exist all at once and right away. They do not want any acquired opinions; they want them to be innate. Since they are afraid of reasoning, they wish to want the kind of life wherein reasoning and research play only a subordinate role, wherein one seeks only what be has already found, wherein one becomes only what he already was. This is nothing but passion. Only a strong emotional bias can give a lightning‐like certainty; it alone can hold reason in leash; it alone can remain impervious to experience and last for a whole lifetime.

The anti‐Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has placed himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. I mentioned awhile back some remarks by anti‐Semites, all of them absurd: "I hate Jews because they make servants insubordinate, because a Jewish furrier robbed me, etc."

Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since theyseek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.

If then, as we have been able to observe, the anti‐Semite is impervious to reason and to experience, it is not because his conviction is strong. Rather his conviction is strong because he has chosen first of all to be impervious. He has chosen also to be terrifying. People are afraid of irritating him. No one knows to what lengths the aberrations of his passion will carry him — but be knows, for this passion is not provoked by something external. He has it well in hand; it is obedient to his will: now he lets goof the reins and now he pulls back on them. He is not afraid of himself, but he sees in the eyes of others a disquieting image‐his own‐and he makes his words and gestures conform to it. Having this external model, he is under no necessity to look for his personality within himself. He has chosen to find his being entirely outside himself, never to look within, to be nothing save the fear he inspires in others."

The issue is that by utilizing partial quotes from Popper and Sartre in order to justify presumptive bad-faith censorship, proponents are literally "loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past" solely through an argument from authority.

If I said, without citation, that "Our opponents can only argue in bad faith. Our self-righteousness is infallible because we're sincere and they are not. Never challenge their arguments or sincerity directly, because they will use your generosity against you without ever changing their minds." but without citation of a famous name, how would people evaluate this position?

Outside of who said it, I'd wager that most people would say that it presumes bad-faith and can only serve to ratchet-up and escalate any division already present. If any genuine attempt to understand or be understood was present, the proponent has shut it down from the outset.

Now when you attach a name to it, suddenly that same argument, given different verbiage, suddenly garners either knowing nods of self-righteousness or visceral renunciation, despite the content being quite identical.

Compare your selective Sartre quote with the following:

"The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn't help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they immediately related to entirely different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what you were talking about. Whenever you tried to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he couldn't help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. The [category] had not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off his same old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, affected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing, except that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day." -- [famous person]

Ignoring if people recognized the actual provenance, if I put anti-Semite and Sartre, it'd be upvoted, and if I put Jew / Hitler, it'd be flagged within minutes, yet it says exactly the same thing. And leads to exactly the same dehumanizing attitudes towards living, breathing, fallible human beings.

[claudiawerner]

I'm not too concerned with who said a particular thing (nor am I concerned with whether or not you'd be voted one way or the other), other than context in which it was said; you can only make this comparison work if you fail to recognise that not only are Jews and anti-semites qualitatively different, they aren't even of the same category. One is a religious group, the other are proponents of a hateful ideology which could not possibly find justification in free society. The fact that Hitler, for instance, could use the logic to one end does not mean that the logic is invalid, only that this application of the logic is invalid.

Nowhere did I argue for the rule to be applied regardless of qualitative differences in who it is applied to, just as justice would take consideration of the individual characteristics of the parties in various circumstances, so does my argument for censorship.

You asserted I'm trying to justify bad-faith censorship. I view the censorship I'm advocating for, the toleration of the ideas of the left but complete intolerance for those of the right, as protective of democratic society, not liberal capitalist democratic society, but peoples' democracy, and this democratic function having been destroyed through misinformation in mass media, taking advantage of the democratic principle that nobody has a claim on the truth.

Since we're in the business of quotes now, here's one from Marcuse, and when you look up the wider context to try and catch me out I hope you'll be as enlightened as I was when you read it:

>Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc. Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions which, by their very methods and concepts, serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behavior--thereby precluding a priori a rational evaluation of the alternatives.

[froasty]

If you're not willing or able to see parallels between Judaism and Nazism or any other ethnically separatist ideology that are quasi-religious in nature, then there's no point in continuing any discussion because you've already drawn a line that doesn't include some humans.

As a parting, however, you've not only proven my point, but re-iterated it by repeating another appeal to authority by citing Marcuse, which is literally advocating for tyranny of the majority (which, ironically, is yet another expression of the reactive ur-fascism that this brand of censorship is a symptom of).

[zacherates]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

[manfredo]

There is no paradox of tolerance if we're exclusive talking about the tolerance of speech. Even the most abhorrent words are still just words and do not inherently exclude those that disagree with them. /pol/ and Gab are filled with right wing extremists, but the platforms do tolerate left wing extremists as well.

The paradox of tolerance only applies when talking about actions. A group that is actively excluding others through discrimination or force may need to be removed to preserve tolerance. Speech does not exclude anyone - if the listener chooses to leave because of it then that is the listener's prerogative (as opposed to, say, being subjected to violence or discrimination).

[jakelazaroff]

I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but it bears repeating here: there is plenty of speech (such as advocacy of violence) that, if we tolerate it, has a net negative impact on speech.

Put another way: why would I paint a target on my back by trying to debate people who actively advocate for my murder? I'm much more likely to shut up and stay safe.

[manfredo]

Making credible and specific calls for violece (e.g. "actively advocating for your murder" as you put it) is punisheable by law. There does exist a mechanism to punish people actively working towards causing harm, rather than spreading ideas. Of course, many would try to claim that whole ideas should be off limits - but that's essentially a concession that they're advocating using censorship (whether through government or corporate action) to manipulate which ideas can be disseminated through societies.

[jakelazaroff]

The problem is that, although plenty of speech that is not a call for violence still causes harm, many free speech zealots (and hateful people, in bad faith) refuse to recognize it as such and consider it "spreading ideas".

Consider: "blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us" aren't credible and specific calls for violence, but if I encounter an angry group of people chanting them I'm going to feel unsafe, and I'm certainly not going to do or say anything that makes me read as Jewish. This is literally the conduct on Gab that people are defending!

Unfortunately, hate speech creates a zero-sum situation: you have to choose whether to suppress the hate speech, or the people it targets. There's no way to choose both, and supporting Gab here just tells me that my speech doesn't matter. The law defines this narrowly because law must be black and white, but there's no reason we as a society can't see the (really, really, really dark) shades of gray here.

[dragonwriter]

> Unfortunately, hate speech creates a zero-sum situation: you have to choose whether to suppress the hate speech, or the people it targets. There's no way to choose both

No, you can choose both (suppress both Nazis and Jews), just not neither.

[watwut]

I think that people in these debates are less interested in whether "words" are ugly and more in political projects pushed by those words.

When a guy in synagogue is shooting people, because he happen to believe that they are organizing immigrants to genocide whites, competitive left wing group trying to convince other guys does not make people in synagogue wake up from death. It does not cancel out.

You can be simultanously for free speech while accept the reality that words have consequences and words are often said in order to cause those consequences. To make people afraid and dangerous and ready for violence.

[manfredo]

The point is not that the extremism on one end cancels out extremism on the other. The point is, it is possible to tolerate both - there is no paradox of tolerance with respect to speech.

As to your second point, the suppression of speech also has dangerous consequences. Plenty of anti-Semitic thought is rooted in the belief of Jewish control of the media. Suppressing speech probably only serves to reinforce this view.

The reality is that intolerance of hateful speech rarely makes hate go away. Remember, high ranking Nazi leaders were imprisoned, and Völkischer Beobachter (a prominent Nazi publication) was repeatedly banned and had it's offices raided. It didn't stop the spread of Nationalist Socialism. Some historians believe this suppression only accelerated it's rise. It's like the Streisand effect on a political scale.

Aside from instances where the suppression of speech is nearly certain to avoid negative consequences (like specific threats, conspiracy to commit crimes, divulging official secrets or classified information) it is not wise to suppress it. And this doesn't even touch on people attempting to use accusations of hate speech as a political tool (e.g. the "blue lives matter" laws not-so-subtly aimed at suppression of BLM).

[claudiawerner]

>The reality is that intolerance of hateful speech rarely makes hate go away.

Is there any evidence either way? I don't have the source at hand, but I believe there was some study done that found that Reddit, after removing communities which spread hate, turned out significantly better for it, with less vitriol all round. The hate literally went away.

>Remember, high ranking Nazi leaders were imprisoned

Here is a quote from Hitler opposing what you are saying:

"Only one thing could have broken our movement — if the adversary had understood its principle and from the first day had smashed, with the most extreme brutality, the nucleus of our new movement."

You say,

>Aside from instances where the suppression of speech is nearly certain to avoid negative consequences

But isn't the distance between speech and action shorter now than it ever was? Here is a quote from 1965; do you think, with the most recent flash riots organised over the Internet in which people have literally been killed, these words are more relevant than ever?

"The traditional criterion of clear and present danger seems no longer adequate to a stage where the whole society is in the situation of the theater audience when somebody cries: 'fire'. It is a situation in which the total catastrophe could be triggered off any moment, not only by a technical error, but also by a rational miscalculation of risks, or by a rash speech of one of the leaders. In past and different circumstances, the speeches of the Fascist and Nazi leaders were the immediate prologue to the massacre. The distance between the propaganda and the action, between the organization and its release on the people had become too short."

[hexane360]

A good recent example of this is Reddit banning /r/GreatAwakening. There was a migration over to Voat and a couple other forums, but total searches for Q and total influence went way down.

[watwut]

You can tolerate both, unless you are killed or injured by someone convinced on those words. Or, less dramatically, unless your salary is lower, because words convinced them that your kind is to be treated with more suspicion. You can tolerate extremism as long as you are not the target of said extremism. When you are the target, you have no choice.

The believe in Jewish control of media is reinforced by people who push for that theory. Whether there is suppression of speech or not in addition to that is not all that much relevant. Given that those very same groups are the ones that historically did suppressed a lot of speech and their fans did not minded that, I don't think the point stands.

Nazi also got comparably lower sentences then radical communists or left wing for same offenses. Right wing in Germany was treated with more lenience then left wing in Germany during that period. Hitler could be sent to jail for long, till forgotten, but was not. He could be kept there and his jail could be less of holiday then it actually was. Nazi got plenty of support and benefit of doubt on all kinds of levels which along with fear of communism and wish to build a military imperium again played more role then office sacking. It is not like only Nazi were censored at the time or that specially strict rules were applied to them.

More like the opposite - they were seen as patriots that went just a bit too far.

Somehow, nazi openly trying to silence Jews (even before they got power) or democratic politicians did not caused Streissand effect making Jews or democrats more heard. I also remember that their opposition was targeted by Nazi strongly and successfully.

[manfredo]

The point in making is, the injuries you listed are the result of actions, not words. Trying to equate words with actions of a few people that act on them is a very dangerous line of thinking. It's the same logic behind people that wanted to ban Muslims from entering the country after 9/11. After all, if 11 people shot dead is sufficient to warrant suppression of speech, then surely 3 thousand does as well. And for what it's worth, many of the groups to which I belong have been and continue to be targeted by extremists. Your claim that, "When you are the target, you have no choice" is factually incorrect.

And whether or not the NSDAP would have still siezed power if the crackdown had been more onerous is speculation. Perhaps it would have further incensed the party and only made it stronger.

[froasty]

> Nazi also got comparably lower sentences then radical communists or left wing for same offenses. Right wing in Germany was treated with more lenience then left wing in Germany during that period. Hitler could be sent to jail for long, till forgotten, but was not. He could be kept there and his jail could be less of holiday then it actually was. Nazi got plenty of support and benefit of doubt on all kinds of levels which along with fear of communism and wish to build a military imperium again played more role then office sacking. It is not like only Nazi were censored at the time or that specially strict rules were applied to them.

The precipitating issue in Weimar Germany was that a very clear social and cultural divide existed between those engaged in culture production and those involved in maintaining law and order. The former, generally, were the cosmopolitan worldly types and the latter, generally, were the Prussian law and order types.

I would say, like today in America, that there was not a homogenous treatment by society at large. I would argue instead that there was a layering of reactions by different parts of society, each of which had different reactions and frames of reference. You can make sweeping assertions about what "the media" or "the police" said, did, or thought in Weimar Germany, but that's already reducing extremely diverse portions of society to nothing more than singular unthinking mobs.

Yes, Freikorps members and National Socialists frequently received more lenient sentences in the Weimar Republic. This was because of a panoply of factors, not the least of which was that the accused were almost universally veterans of the war. Combined with the aforementioned Prussian law-and-order types that were democratized unwillingly, it's almost a guarantee that, on the whole, judges would view militant reactionaryism as less severe a crime (if a crime at all) than further perceived attempts to Sovietize the Weimar Republic. Conversely, the media tended to excoriate the judicial sectors for being too lenient against reactionaries and too harsh on communists for similar but opposite reasons.

> Somehow, nazi openly trying to silence Jews (even before they got power) or democratic politicians did not caused Streissand effect making Jews or democrats more heard. I also remember that their opposition was targeted by Nazi strongly and successfully.

The Streisand effect is when an already ubiquitous public figure accidentally enlarges the scope of a minority issue by publicizing it. The Nazis could not have created a Streisand effect when they were a disempowered minority party in the same way that the KPD couldn't have created a Streisand effect pre-1933. However, the Weimar authorities and media did create Streisand effects constantly for both the KPD and the NSDAP during the Weimar Republic by patrolling and outlawing various activities of both parties, which definitely contributed to their overall growth and popularity.

[philwelch]

Actually, platforms that de-platform tolerant platforms like Gab are the real intolerant ones.

I'm being (slightly) facetious, but the point is that Popper's argument, or at least this naive interpretation of it, can be used to justify any intolerance. There's no obvious reason you can't use Popper's argument to justify McCarthyism or the Muslim ban or even Japanese internment on the grounds of the alleged intolerance of their intended targets, or the existential threat they posed to liberalized society. In fact, most actual justifications of those things are based on Popper's argument; it's of the same species as "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" or "are you going to convict Jack Bauer?". This is literally how people tried to justify every violation of civil liberties in American history.

US judicial precedent around the First Amendment has varied over time. The hoary cliche that "you can't shout fire in a crowded theater" comes from a Supreme Court ruling in 1919, Schenck v. United States, that the First Amendment did not protect advocacy of draft resistance. That ruling was overruled, and the standard set by the court in 1969, in Brandenberg v. Ohio, was "imminent lawless action". And I think that standard meets Popper's bar without the risk of it devolving into totalitarianism for the sake of protecting us from totalitarianism. Which, incidentally, has been the sales pitch of every totalitarian regime ever. The next batch of Nazis are going to get power by telling us they need it to protect us from the Nazis.

[msla]

> But even engaging with the question at face value, the answer is very simple

If you think that, you're not engaging with the complexity of the problem, and, instead, trying to shut down discussion.

This problem is one philosophers and legal scholars have struggled over for millennia, all around the world. If you think you have a simple answer, you're lying, you're unbelievably arrogant, or you don't understand the problem.

[int_19h]

The "paradox" of tolerance is trivially resolved. As stated, it is misleading, because it conflates two very different thing.

A tolerant society, to defend itself, only needs to be intolerant of actions of intolerance - e.g. physical assault motivated by some prejudice. It does not need to be intolerant of intolerant speech, however.

[djsumdog]

> #HimToo

I haven't heard of this specifically, but the #MeToo movement bothers me greatly, because it implies that we suddenly learned you needed consent for sex; like it was some new revelation.

If you look at CDC numbers, just as many men are assaulted sexually as women, but yet the #MeToo movement felt very one directional and didn't talk about assault inclusively of all people.

The #BelieveWomen campaign actually goes directly against one of the principal tenants of progressive ideology: Innocent until proven guilty (a tenant of #BlackLivesMatter).

The point is these issues are COMPLEX! They are not simple. And when they're not simple, you need to be able to discuss them openly, and frankly. Deplatforming totally fucks that up. People who have never been on to Gab assume it's all hate speech and right-wring religious stuff (I mean .. it is .. or was, but most people didn't actually see it for themselves...they just heard about it and hated).

A good counter example: the documentary The Red Pill, where a feminist interviews several people in the Men's Rights movement and learns it was nothing like how it was portrayed as. She had an entirely incorrect view of what they themselves stood for because of all those people yelling at their platform.

De-platforming increases polarization. I know it's a meme, but we do live in a society. We need to be able to discuss our differences and find a synthesis between the thesis/anthesis to move forward in a way that's as fair as we can be to everyone.

When you push people off platforms, there is no longer speech and discussion. There is only "for us or against us." If you are a feminist in every way, but think trans-women should still be men on their birth certificates, then suddenly you're an anti-Trans, TERF, Fascist, Nazi and nothing you said should be listened to because you're wrong.

That's the direction we're heading, and that is sad and terrible. Most humans do act in good faith, and are reasonable, and we need to learn to listen again.

[tptacek]

Did you read much about the production of that documentary, or any of the reviews? It is not well-regarded, its creator isn't a journalist, and it was funded (on Kickstarter) in large part by MRA activists.

From the Village Voice review (which is not charitable), and remember the context that her doc opens with an exploration of "rape culture":

I feel comfortable calling her “propagandist” because of my own “research” (ie. “reading the top search results”). Here’s something Elam wrote on A Voice for Men in 2010: “Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.” What excuse would any serious documentarian have for not asking Elam to explain that?

[8note]

> I haven't heard of this specifically, but the #MeToo movement bothers me greatly, because it implies that we suddenly learned you needed consent for sex; like it was some new revelation

it's true though; it's largely in response to somebody bragging about not getting consent being elected to the highest office of the US.

Without it, Hollywood would still be thinking sexual assault is just the norm, and women have to accept it if they want to move their carear forward

[djsumdog]

> response to somebody bragging about not getting consent being elected to the highest office of the US.

Wait, when did Trump ever brag about not getting consent? If this is the famous "grab her by the pussy" video, you should really watch the whole thing. He talked about how usually rich men can get women without any work, but this one particular woman wouldn't take his advances, and how he didn't have sex with her.

I don't like Trump at all (I didn't like Hillary either; they're both psychos), but I hate how this clips was taken out of context.