[Meekro]

Since several people are asking why the ACLU isn't what it once was, let me answer that.

In 1978, the ACLU successfully defended the right of neo-Nazis to march in the predominantly Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois. This action reflected their commitment to free speech, regardless of how offensive the speech might be. The movie "Skokie" and documentary "Mighty Ira" are based on this event-- I highly recommend them because this is an important piece of U.S. history.

In contrast, the modern ACLU has backed away from this stance. A leaked ACLU memo[1] says that before they take a free speech case, they will consider the "context of the proposed speech; the potential effect on marginalized communities; the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values; and the structural and power inequalities in the community in which the speech will occur."

[1] https://reason.com/2018/06/21/aclu-leaked-memo-free-speech/

[ASalazarMX]

Freedom of speech is such a bizarre thing in USA.

I understand citizens need the right to voice their opinion without fear of government repression; but citizens shouldn't believe they have the right to insult and behave antisocially to other citizens.

Any kind of white supremacist behavior is not something to be treasured as freedom, because that enables their harmful behavior against other citizens.

[thegrimmest]

It's only freedom of speech if it protects speech which is actually controversial. This isn't high school. People should have the right to give offense and behave antisocially, if for no other reason than because there is no one who can be trusted with the power to determine what falls into these extremely arbitrary and subjective categories.

Yes we should tolerate the speech of white supremacists and other hateful characters, because the alternative is to see reasonable statements lumped in with them. Where we should draw a clear and sharp line is at violence.

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." - William Blackstone

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall

[8note]

The question is, what do you do when they gain power?

[AnthonyMouse]

You prevent them from gaining power by winning debates against them and demonstrating to everyone why they're wrong.

I mean have you actually seen the "science" used to claim even the existence of different races? It's all misleading statistics and pseudoscience. You group a bunch of people together based on geographical origin and then observe some differences in the averages between the two groups, ignoring that the differences within each "race" are larger than the differences between "races," and that the lines are being drawn arbitrarily, and that even the measured averages could be different as a result of environment or culture rather than genetics.

There is no way for a Nazi to win that on the facts because the facts are against them. Which is why they have so little actual support. There are probably more trolls pretending to be Nazis than there are actual Nazis.

They're used as the boogeyman specifically because there is such widespread agreement that they're wrong.

[DeathArrow]

Individuals who dared to make anthropological, social and genetic studies on ethnic groups were retaliating upon with great anger and were banished from academic life even if the scientific methodology was sound.

No one dares to do such studies anymore so we can conclude that the "good" has won.

[Hallucinaut]

Unless I'm misinterpreting your angle, this sounds like a blatant, hysteric mistruth. Nearly every day I see studies where social and ethnic groups are used to partition and understand the population, particularly with COVID.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7015e2.htm

So it depends what you mean. If you mean there are no studies done with such partitioning aimed towards the benefit of those groups, I call that bunkum.

If you mean studies are not sponsored where the outcome is of no societal value beyond reinforcing or justifying an established hegemony or excusing discrimination, then perhaps... and good.

[maccard]

> You prevent them from gaining power by winning debates against them and demonstrating to everyone why they're wrong.

"A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots."

It doesn't matter how solid your facts are if people are listening to vox pops of people who back their own internal beliefs.

> There is no way for a Nazi to win that on the facts because the facts are against them. Which is why they have so little actual support.

They don't need support, they just need an echo chamber to be encouraged. Pop onto stormfront and try convince a handful of posters there and see how far you get.

> There are probably more trolls pretending to be Nazis than there are actual Nazis.

If x% (where x is some suitably small number) of a group are the only ones who truly believe it, and the rest are just trolls, then increasing the population size leads to both more trolls and more Nazis. It also doesn't matter to anyone whether the person spewing vitriol is actually a Nazi or a troll when the abuse is directed at them.

[snugghash]

Our tooling for communicating ideas and finding good ones is equivalent to mob rule, same as a hundred years ago, just amplified. More at my older comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29051178

> Pop onto stormfront and try convince a handful of posters there and see how far you get.

I've actually done this - it's far easier than you make it seem. I haven't really started collecting metrics on success, but that's kinda what we're missing - messengers who construct a pyramid of truthy statements and go back up the chain to whoever convinced THEM to a particular viewpoint when they find resistance to change from the opposite side. We're missing tech that incentivizes such behavior.

Of course this requires that everyone has a set for themselves a threshold for when they would change their mind about a topic - which I find is far more prevalent among US conservatives (at least online, as they behave to me), than when you try to establish the same among US liberals. Of course, ignoring the obvious field that doesn't have a threshold by design - supremacist religion.

My working theory is that supremacist religionists who converted out of it simply replaced it with liberal ideas (and were being supremacist about those), while there are both religionists and non-religionists among the conservatives.

[salawat]

This worked so well for everyone involved the first time.

[AnthonyMouse]

The first time the Nazis imposed censorship so that people couldn't do that. We should be wary of following in those footsteps.

[gm3dmo]

>There are probably more trolls pretending to be Nazis than there are actual Nazis.

"We are what we pretend to be." --- Kurt Vonnegut

[AnthonyMouse]

Cute, but trivially falsifiable. Wearing a Freddy Krueger mask on Halloween doesn't make you Freddy Krueger.

And to the extent that it is true, it implies that we should stop using Nazis as the boogeyman. Because trolls are going to use whatever will get a rise out of people. Best not have it be this that they summon up.

[snugghash]

That's better as "the effects of my pretend actions are very real" than anything more subtle

[thegrimmest]

I don't think any quotes are required around the research performed by Rushton & Jensen (2010)[1] and others that they build on. Doesn't it seem perfectly plausible that, much like other physical characteristics (height, body composition, heat tolerance, etc.) the meat in our skulls also varies between ethnic groups? Shouldn't this be researched and investigated like every other observation?

Once you start studying groups by linguistic origin (not "race") things become much clearer since people historically didn't really move around that much, and genetic markers are quite visible (a la 23andMe). I don't think you need to be a Nazi or a troll to be interested in any of this.

1. https://openpsychologyjournal.com/contents/volumes/V3/TOPSYJ...

[AnthonyMouse]

You're talking about the differences in averages. But that's meaningless. If the median Asian man is 5'8" and the median European man is 5'9" (or whatever the numbers are), this tells you nothing about any individual Asian or European males, because like 40% of Asian males will still be above the European median and half of Europeans will be below it.

And it's a completely arbitrary line. If Swedes are on average taller than Austrians, are they different "races" then? It's balderdash. There are genes that affect height and whatever else, but they're widely distributed throughout all "races."

[tekknik]

Counter their arguments better so they don’t.

[snugghash]

The core problem here is that our technology for discourse is basically twitter and "voting with likes". The algorithms are optimized for attention and likes, so the mob wins - not the best argument.

IF we fixed THAT problem (with new technology, an early one is https://www.kialo.com/tour, but it's not good enough), we can have what you want.

Right now, we're effectively the same tech level as the 1900s (perhaps in a more dangerous way) w.r.t finding truth or the "right" arguments

[tekknik]

I’ve never been a fan of voting with likes either. I’d be all in for legislatively banning up and down vote systems. You will get minimal traction here though as the political left use these content voting systems to focus effort and gamify division.

[jdavis703]

As a Black American who has fought against white supremacists in the street I would say the government has no right to prevent their free speech.

At the same time, I’m under no obligation as a private citizen to tolerate their odious speech. This even includes in business settings… At an old company I once asked our CEO to take down “sponsored content” from our home feed that was promoted by a group on the SPLC hate group list (for comparison we also regularly took down ISIS material.)

[dboreham]

Hopefully you meant "fought against".

[strangeattractr]

Maybe try thinking about it for a moment instead of resorting to the boring heuristic of assuming Americans are dumb zealots treasuring rights because they are brainwashed.

People like you need to stop saying things like "I understand citizens need the right to voice their opinion without fear of government repression" because this is exactly the opposite of what you want. You want views that you consider objectionable to be subject to government repression. You don't have to qualify it, just admit it.

The reason people oppose restrictions on freedom of speech are fairly obvious to anyone who has thought about the question for more than 5 minutes. The moment you start deciding which speech is and isn't legal, you have now established a mechanism to censor. Ban 'hate speech', those who define the term now control the boundaries of allowable speech, and you can guarantee bad actors will seek those powers and abuse them.

[DeathArrow]

But proponents of censorship will argue that there is bad censorship and there is good censorship.

[ASalazarMX]

You misunderstood me. The government should not censor speech because governments tend to authoritarianism, but civil organizations also shouldn't support neonazis when they exert their freedom of speech against other citizens.

TL;DR: The government must not censor freedom, and citizens should not support acts of oppressions disguised as civil rights.

[int_19h]

"Shouldn't behave antisocially", as in e.g. that whole asbo thing that the Brits had until very recently? I'm very glad US doesn't have anything like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order

[hkt]

Fun summary:

Civil order that it is a crime to breach. So you could get slapped with one on "balance of probabilities" while becoming criminalised for something fairly arbitrary like entering an area or being drunk. I seem to recall somebody was given an ASBO forbidding them from having noisy sex - which they subsequently did and then faced criminal sanction.

[tomcooks]

If you think opinions should have a limit, I doubt you understand the right to voice one's opinion.

I'm sure you heard about the Golden Rule, as long as you follow it you should be allowed to express yourself.

[DeathArrow]

>Any kind of white supremacist behavior is not something to be treasured as freedom, because that enables their harmful behavior against other citizens.

But inciting on harmful behavior against white people is somehow the right thing to do?

I believe all people should be treated against the same set of rules.

[GhettoComputers]

Can you define what “white supremacist behavior” is? I’ve heard that leveraged against African immigrants due to their meteoric success.