Well it actually is something that people have to be aware of.
There’s a reason for the “ah you see, the cops have to follow the rules taps forehead” trope.
It’s genuinely hard to maintain a truly tolerant liberal democracy in the face of determined adversaries that can skillfully use the system against itself.
Now, that is no reason to take sloppy shortcuts like saying this or that opinion should be banned, but it is absolutely worth keeping in mind.
When you see someone walking towards you with a knife and he says "I am going to stab you", you don't wait for him for to make physical contact before you decide to draw your gun.
The Nazi party was in power for over a decade before the first gas chamber was built. If they had been stopped at the broadcasting hate propaganda stage millions of lives would have been saved, and a war requiring the collective military capacity of the rest of the hemisphere wouldn't have been necessary.
Perhaps the most important lesson of the 20th century is that the broadcasting of the right words for long enough and to enough people can cause destruction and death orders of magnitude greater than any single weapon of war.
There’s a reason for the “ah you see, the cops have to follow the rules taps forehead” trope.
It’s genuinely hard to maintain a truly tolerant liberal democracy in the face of determined adversaries that can skillfully use the system against itself.
Now, that is no reason to take sloppy shortcuts like saying this or that opinion should be banned, but it is absolutely worth keeping in mind.