It wasn't really a problem for the Nazis though. Hannah Arendt explained how in a way defying reality is a badge of honor for members (of one of the onion layers of) totalitarian movements.
This is 100% off-topic and just about WP, but something just occured to me: I wish Wikipedia had a way to make new articles as stubs and mark them as such, so they don't show up on the main page, unless people are logged in and want that. Kinda like "showdead" on HN. Even better, make links to stub articles in other articles not be links either. I can't count the times I wanted to add something, but either didn't know enough about the subject or was too lazy to submit enough on the first try. I don't mean to sound entitled, but lowering the bar for "casuals" would be great, if it could be done in a way to not diminish quality (i.e. it would still have to be stubs about something that belongs in WP according to the rules, but not necessarily stubs of good quality). It's a bit disheartening to be shot down by deletionists who aren't even willing to give it some time.. if it can dishearten stubborn me I'm sure it disheartened a lot of people over the years, and who knows what articles could have been grown from tiny kernels by now.
Hah — when I read "This is 100% off-topic" I assumed you were making a completely absurd 100% wrong point about "this" being the AGF link from the parent comment. But you meant "This [following stuff I'm writing about]…"
It is SO easy to misread things, which is one of many reasons that AGF is so important a principle.
Since you are new to Hacker News, I suggest you read the HN Guideline before you take on any further historical book [1].
Furthermore, your response doesn't support anything at all but only steer conversation off to a different course.
As you can rewind, I was merely responding to previous post not to equal Nazism with violence, just like you can't equal Muslim religion with violence. In that context, I couldn't care less about some historical book. I assume in your country you have access to Amazon, so go ahead dive in their books section. You welcome!
> All political ideologues think their opposition wants to take away their freedoms. If you make the rule that people who want to remove freedoms don't get them
Analogous would be "if you make the rule that people who you think want to remove freedoms but actually don't" -- instead you're switching goal posts mid-sentence.
Who gets to determine that? The abortion debate is essentially about both sides claiming the other is taking away a persons rights. On one side it's bodily autonomy on the other right to life (and maybe some religious freeeddom too).
Why does this story about CF dropping the Daily Stormer have not simply one comment saying "Good."? Why is there even a discussion? No one is defending it explicitly, but many do implicitly.
Because you can't operate systems as big as the internet on a case by case basis. People are concerned that this action could lead to other, more noble, speech being suppressed by corporations like cloudflare.
I'm happy they're offline for the moment, but I wish it was because of a court order focused on specific actions (eg incitement of specific violence) rather than a single person's disapproval of their (really quite terrible) message.
> I'm happy they're offline for the moment, but I wish it was because of a court order focused on specific actions
but
> you can't operate systems as big as the internet on a case by case basis.
So - you want such pages to be impossible to persecute for illegal activities in practice?
Anyway - having a website on a particular server is not a human right. If I come to your newspaper and demand you put my stuff in there - you can say "no" and don't have to explain yourself, and it's not a violation of free speech.
The violation of a free speech would be if somebody forbid you to print your newspaper at all. It's not the case - daily stormer can put servers in basement and publish their propaganda from there. So - free speech is irrelevant to this case.
It's simply about people refusing to do business with assholes, and I am quite confused why would anybody oppose that attitude.
Private internet companies should operate with scalable, predictable rules. They should be required to operate without discrimination against legally protected classes, but otherwise are free to deny service to anyone.
Courts should punish people and organizations that produce violence, discrimination against protected classes, and/or libel. This production may be direct or indirect; Judges draw the line. When those people/organizations are punished, all their outlets should be effected.
Mostly I just want these actions to be super credible and super effective. The fascists are crying unjust censorship left and right... I want social decency enforced in a way that undermines that argument.
For example, I wish the Charlottesville counter protest was 10,000 people standing together, in silence, holding signs saying "SHAME" and "Liberty and Justice for ALL." Then the Nazis would have no grounds to claim their speech was suppressed, and also no grounds to claim that they represent anything but an angry, alienated minority.
I decided to never even attempt to enter the US somewhere after 2001. Not until a bunch of things change (well, they did change; for the worse). What's the use of flying across the big pond if you can get turned away that nilly willy?
> How were they not fascists, for all practical purposes?
What does fascists even mean these days?
Real fascists wounded my grandfather and he pushed them back all the way to Berlin. My teacher wintessed German soldiers raping and dismembering their childhood friend.
It seems these days I see a lot of "everyone I don't like is a fascist". Trump is a fascist, the barista this morning who made me a late instead of a cappuccino is a fascist, etc. Pol Pot committed terrible attrocities that doesn't make him a fascist, he was Communist.
How about literal neonazis waving swastikas, calling for violence to exterminate Jews and blacks? Ones literally identify with Nazi facists.
Do you not accept a line where free speech threatening violence harms other free individuals? This isn't a thought excercise, the Daily Stormer is a group calling for the extermination of people based on race and religion.
"Do you not accept a line where free speech threatening violence harms other free individuals? "
I don't.
I rather have people saying out loud, that they want to kill me, than saying it it in private and then just doing it ... so I - and others (like police) know whats going on, and can prepare for them.
If you forbid things to be said out loud, they will just boil hiddenly, until they explode.
I'm pretty OK with saying the marketplace of ideas has evaluated the ideals of Nazism and found no need remaining to preserve or protect them. We have, after all, tried the experiment of negotiating with Nazis, appeasing Nazis, and seeking peaceful coëxistence with Nazis, and we've learned what the resulting body count is.
People like to say "never again", but it's important to actually mean it.
The marketplace of ideas evaluated the ideals of Nazism, and rejected them by itself the first time. The fact we even call them Nazis is testament to that - it's an insulting reference to the fact National Socialists were uneducated country bumpkins. In battles of wits and words, Nazis lost every single time. So the idea we need to violate our ideals about freedom of speech, to defeat an enemy who never did stand a chance against us in that way, makes no sense. Do you really think our society's beliefs are truly so weak? That we are truly that vulnerable to pernicious memes?
Now, if you want to talk "never again" - it is not words that should frighten us, but violence. It was the brown shirts working the streets and savaging anyone who dared speak contrary to the Nazis that allowed them to obtain real power in the elections. It was the night of the long knives that saw the Nazi's staunchest critics in the Reichstag assassinated, and Hitler's control finally secured. It was the night of broken glass that normalized widespread violence against Jews, and set the stage for what was to come. It was violence that gave strength to Nazism, that let it rise to prominence, that let it overcome the Prussian elite who despised it and let it seize control of the country.
Nazism only succeeds by first putting its boot to the throat of the public, and threatening to crush the windpipe of any critic. Without that, it is just incoherent, anti-intellectual gibberish concocted by brutish thugs - and is torn apart in the market of ideas as a result. I fear a non-violent Nazi about as much as I fear a toothless wolf.
I fear a non-violent Nazi about as much as I fear a toothless wolf.
Once you tolerate the "non-violent" Nazi, the violent ones won't be far behind. Nazism has proven that it cannot be tolerated, period. Not a little bit here and there. Not for a short time while we try to reason with them. Not anywhere, not ever, not in any way. If an amendment to the US Constitution came up to exempt Nazis from first-amendment protection I'd be for it in a heartbeat, because there is no longer any need to be hemming and hawing and talking about how on principle we need to let them have their little march and their website and... no. There is no such thing as a "safe" amount of Nazism.
The problem is not them beeing clearly nazis, its there opponents never stopping with the censor-ship and persecution once they get going.
Having a professor who finds intellectual differences by race in his social studys? Definatly a nazi.
Not even worth studying, to search for a remedy, better to ignore a problem forever.
And this goes on and and on and on.
So we concluded, that if your limitation tendencies of free speach are unlimited, they must be limited at the root.
Thus the speech is free. They are not free to act. They are not free to maim, free to violate others rights.
One is free to ignore them- (as large parts of the country have) until the sjw circus visited theire town and gave them attention and manpiulated a large neutral crowd into supporting them with the usual passiv-agressive discourse controll speach.
I understand how hard it is not to be overcome by annoyance right now, but regardless of wrong other people are, would you please not post things like this subthread here? It really just makes things worse.
For those who downvote me: so you're actually believing I call "anyone I don't like" a Nazi? How fucking pathetic is that? And no I don't care about the votes, I just want you to stop and realize how incredibly dumb that is. This is a kindergarten level of discourse on a subject that ranks amongst the most important that even exist.
To be fair to the GP, I've, for example, seen/heard my friends and acquaintances call people Nazis for condemning vigilante violence (e.g. "punching Nazis"), the Berkeley riots, and Antifa protests.
I think the sentiment GP is trying to communicate is that many seem to throw the label out there without any further investigation as to whether its justified.
As for the downvotes, it might be because your comment came across very hostile.
Also, I agree that it's easy to see that the Daily Stormer is neo-Nazi type stuff.
> I think the sentiment GP is trying to communicate is that many seem to throw the label out there without any further investigation as to whether its justified.
That's great, but totally irrelevant here, in response to me, in this context. When I call a dog a dog, I don't care that sometimes, somewhere, other people call a vase a dog. And it's incredibly rich in the context of "free speech" and whatnot: what use is my right to free speech, when people then also have the "right" to just replace what I say with some other anecdote in their mind? What use is being allowed to ask a question when people then just talk to each other about anything but the question? The protection of free speech arose in contexts where people suppressed speech because they otherwise would have to face it. If people don't face it anyway, there's no need to suppress any of it. And congratulations, too.
Flamewars like this get accounts penalized and banned on HN, regardless of how correct your underlying views may be. Plenty of other users are able to express similar views without stooping to personal attacks and other abuse. Please follow their example and don't do this again.
This isn't mere hate, and I'm not "mandating tolerance" either. I'm mandating you at least read people like Hannah Arendt and Sebastian Haffner instead of you projecting your naivety on me.
I didn't think we're debating? I'm just expressing my views within the HN bubble.
Anyway, I agree with you that the current legal framework allows private companies to discriminate. Ideally, government regulation will fix this; otherwise, as soon as the pendulum swings, I'm sure you'd be displeased with progressive websites being dumped off of internet infrastructure by corporations run or owned by those with conservative leanings.
Maybe, but there is a clear difference in magnitude between the celebration of murder to quash speech and the historical debate about the direction of this country.
Very few folks are confused when they see a group of white men fly Nazi flags, then murder and maim, then cheer it on as an act of heroism.
Which is probably why your "Free speech actually means freedom from any and all consequences" is going over here like a lead balloon.
> I'm just expressing my views within the HN bubble.
And for the most part being treated civily, even though you seem to be trying your best to defend the cause of literal fascists and their literal endorsement of spontaneous and fatal violence.
I'm surprised an advocate of "free" speech devoid of consequence can tolerate and support those who engage in violence against that very principle.
