Although I sympathise with that view too, it's unclear to me whether this tactic actually works against the feared outcome, which is Nazis gaining political power. Let's say we do keep an eye on them, and we see something we really don't like. What do we do then? Just keep on keeping an eye on them?
It's also unclear what 'underground' means here. Most communication (and particularly political organizing) happens over the Internet, and people regularly gain access to ideologically-bent forums. Was Parler 'underground'? Is a closed Facebook group 'underground'? At first glance, it seems that such groups being 'underground' is actually what we want to happen. More caution to conceal their activities and spread of information would limit the number of people getting into such a movement.
If the ideas are out in the open, we have to accept that there will be points at which rhetoric wins out over 'ideas', and that even if the marketplace of ideas produces correct results in the long run, we're still left dealing with incorrect results in the short run. Maybe that's a reasonable judgement for a libertarian point of view, but it's equally reasonable and understandable that someone may not want to make that concession at all.
We had a lot of Nazis right out in the open here in the US in the 1930's. And I don't mean what they call "Nazis" today, I mean 100% legit Nazis. And a lot of them. This idea that if Nazi's are allowed to spread their message openly they will inevitably take over is nonsense and propaganda to get people to support censorship.
> This idea that if Nazi's are allowed to spread their message openly they will inevitably take over
This isn't the claim; the claim is more moderate: Nazis gaining political power, and not necessarily inevitably doing so. Nazis are only an example here; you can substitute any 'wrong' idea to see the analogies, from climate change denial to anti-vaxx to flat earth theories. Further, political power is only the end goal. I think most people would agree that a society where a large percentage of the population consists of (Nazis/anti-vaxxers/climate deniers) who don't vote in themselves would have negative discursive effects socially or politically on those who do vote. The state has power, but it does not have absolute power, and that's a good thing.
Yes but I would say censorship has a greater negative effect. I would be willing to support censorship if it was guaranteed to prevent an inevitable nazi takeover. I do not support censorship against "negative discursive effects."
That's understandable, so we're back to the point I made at the end of my original comment, which is that while we may accept that the best ideas do not triumph in the short run, it's reasonable to think the cost is worth bearing, and it's also reasonable to think the cost isn't worth bearing. I think there are convincing arguments to be made from both points of view. I think it's also worth bringing other democratic ideals into the picture, such as democratic equality, and questioning why (or why not) freedom of speech should always be selected over those other ideals.
For many, some more balancing between the ideals of speech autonomy and democratic equality is strongly justified - see some regulation in Europe for example.
Free speech and democratic equality go together. Censorship means that there is a select group of powerful people that get to decide what ideas are allowed.
They can go together, but they can also conflict. There's lots of argumentation on how hate speech and pornography can undermine democratic equality for minority groups and women respectively. See the SEP article on freedom of speech[0].
I get what the article is saying, but I feel like they are playing word games. Hate speech laws are not increasing freedom, they are trading off freedom for social cohesion, which all societies do to some extent, just not necessarily with censorship.
Both hate speech laws and groups like Antifa were present and used against NSDAP in the Weimar Germany. What is clear is that tactics like censoring them do not work. You cannot just beat ideas out of peoples' heads, whether it's nazis, BLM, communists or whoever really. This as well has been tried countless times throughout the history and it never did any good.
> “And so, I established in 1919 a programme and tendency that was a conscious slap in the face of the democratic-pacifist world. [We knew] it might take five or ten or twenty years, yet gradually an authoritarian state arose within the democratic state, and a nucleus of fanatical devotion and ruthless determination formed in a wretched world that lacked basic convictions.
> Only one danger could have jeopardised this development — if our adversaries had understood its principle, established a clear understanding of our ideas, and not offered any resistance. Or, alternatively, if they had from the first day annihilated with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.
> Neither was done. The times were such that our adversaries were no longer capable of accomplishing our annihilation, nor did they have the nerve. Arguably, they furthermore lacked the understanding to assume a wholly appropriate attitude. Instead, they began to tyrannise our young movement by bourgeois means, and, by doing so, they assisted the process of natural selection in a very fortunate manner. From there on, it was only a question of time until the leadership of the nation would fall to our hardened human material.
>You cannot just beat ideas out of peoples' heads, whether it's nazis, BLM, communists or whoever really.
This isn't the goal of such laws; the goal is to hobble the spread and reach of those ideas, not to change individual peoples' minds. It's forward-looking, not present-looking. It is also a show of the state's policy towards a particular ideology, and it carries the state's discursive authority with it. In a similar way, the point of laws against child pornography isn't to change the mind of the child pornographer, it's to slow and aim to stop the spread of the material, while attaching the state's authority to the idea that child abuse and its recording and distribution is wrong.
As a counterexample, it's documented that segregation laws had two effects; the first is keeping blacks and whites separate, the second is the authority of the law, as crafted by the sovereign body of the country, enshrined the inferiority of blacks, which reflected in the attitudes of whites and the psychology of blacks at the time. Something being legally enshrined has a very similar effect to how taxes discourage the goods they are levied on in the marketplace.
There were times when if you said something critical about the establishment, you were simply disappeared, never to be seen again. And it still didn't stop the ideas from spreading, it only gained you sympathy from the population and converted more people to your side. You can say that the goal is this or that, but it doesn't change the fact that 64% of Republicans said that they are extremely/very concerned about the censorship[1]. Which sort of confirms what I am saying, people will be more sympathetic to you if you got censored. If you're a serious political activist, I'd expect you to perceive the censorship not as a disaster, but just another opportunity to further your political goals. Which doesn't mean that it's dishonest, censorship is bullshit and they're right to feel that way, but politics is still politics.
I also like this, because it forces us to know what is going to hit us in the future (terrorist attacks?(
Like we want to know who is planning to blow up someo building. Why wouldnt we want to know?
But the pirate bay co-founder Anakata says in this interview below that he defends the rights of pedos to have a website about their views (i think he clarifies at he doesnt allow pedo material but only a webiste about their "political" views), and that he is fighting for that right. To have their views in the open. So my question is, do you "progre" also agree with Anakata that aside Neonazis the Pedo politicians should also have their say in public view? And if you believe yes they should, can you elaborate why?
