[UncleMeat]

If sensible people are immune to racial and ethnic hatred, then why have we seen it all over the place throughout history. People should have seen right through Blood Libel and not massacred all those innocent jewish people, right?

Of course not. Media and narratives matter. Fascism has succeeded in the past at murdering millions of people. There is no fundamental reason why it couldn't happen again.

[ithkuil]

Of course media narrative matters! especially if you control what can be said and only say that one thing. And people go used to this and assume that if all official media is singing the same tune there is something fishy. I'm arguing that total deplatforming (not just effective criticism, I'm talking about total deplatforming) backfires.

Letting people talking about things even if we don't like them, doesn't mean suddenly you have to bend to their narrative and make them control all of the media. But you should return the favour and not fully control the media too.

[UncleMeat]

> I'm arguing that total deplatforming (not just effective criticism, I'm talking about total deplatforming) backfires.

And I'm saying you should speak to some historians about this claim.

[oefnak]

Where are your sources?

[CapricornNoble]

>>>Media and narratives matter. Fascism has succeeded in the past at murdering millions of people. There is no fundamental reason why it couldn't happen again.

Always interesting that stifling the fascists and Nazis is so popular* but no one ever mentions the ongoing need to silence the communists, who are in the same "ideology with a 7-figure body count" category. Why is that?

*Also in thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24515338

[jakelazaroff]

Yes, I mentioned the campaign against communism as an example of successful censorship that no one seems to question for some reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24513075