| >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." |