1. In what way does it make it worse?
2. Do you have some common examples of left wing extremism that are rampant and unchecked? I have many examples in my personal Facebook feed of right wing extremism, but few or perhaps no left wing extremism, despite many of my right wing friends voicing a similar complaint.
Are you kidding?
CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle.
Portland occupation.
The various summer 2020 riots.
Numerous conservative speakers over the years being blocked from speaking on college campuses...
The answer you'll almost certainly get in rebuttal is, oh, that's not extremism. And that brings us back to this cental question of who decides. I feel like a large percentage of people with strong opinions about censorship in this long posting/thread have a very limited historical memory / education. They want to mash on the Ban button without really understanding the implications for all of us who are not extremists.
I have to swallow the fact that any reply means downvotes in this Silicon Valley community, but:
1. Because you're not actually removing right-wing extremism (which would be nice), you're pushing people into the corner. You can't legally or morally prevent people from having extremist views among themselves, having conversations, and in an Internet age you're going to play wack-a-mole if you try to chase after things, monitor and shut things down. Not to mention the overreach inherent in a real crackdown. By punishing them publicly, you feed into conspiracy theories, you feed into the idea that they are victimized, you feed into the idea of bias, and in the end you make people, more, not less radicalized.
edit: two more (I think) good arguments. One, the U.S. has less extremism than Germany or France, with regards to right-wing extremism, and yet those countries have hate speech laws and ban books and fine people with extremist views. Yet, the FN in France and the AFD in Germany have power locally and possibly nationally. Two, people will use innuendo and implication and code. Thus, you have to ban the code and innuendo. Is that the path you want to go down, banning and evaluating interpretations of speech that is constantly changing as one thing gets banned and a new one sprouts?
This is not new, and we already know this, and we know this from over a century of extremist views. It's not in 2015 that magically extremism started to exist.
The correct way to combat right-wing extremism is to let people be lunatics, make it obvious that they are lunatics, reply to the lunatics with logic and reason, and don't infantalize viewers are being influenced by bad views.
The "megaphone" theory being espoused by mainstream pro-censorship tech people is a cover for the underlying assumption: I know what's good for you, and I feel if I hide content from you, then I can prevent you from being influenced, in short, I, tech censor, protect you from yourself.
I cannot get behind that, and I hope the question that should be on everyone's mind is, who decides what's extremism.
2. Absolutely. Where do you want to start. I could go to Twitter and spend a few minutes to find some, but that would be awkward and appear like cherry picking. There were and still are many posts asking for abolishing of government, of authorities, of institutions. That's been extremist since the 19th century. With regards to racist speech, I offer to you Sarah Jeong (editor from the NYT) tweets which were deleted and apologized (ish) for, but had the editorial board stand behind her and no warnings from Twitter itself.
How exactly do we have more right wing extremists in Germany in France? Because if you apply the same poitical standards, the FN and AfD are more like center GOP.
I never advoated banning the AfD or the FN, did I? If they are overstepping, like AfD politicians like to do in terms of Volksverhetzung, they get investigated. And if they vilated the law, the go on trial and ma get convicted. Sounds reasonable to me.
And yes, according to European standards, people like Ted Cruz are found in the AfD and FN. If you disagree, please share examples where AfD / FN positions differ from the GOP, meanin where these two parties are farther right then the GOP.
