Whenever people complain about “free speech” they go to complaints about famous people who get to speak at conventions, who have large followings on the internet. That is, people who are obviously free to speak and who have their voices consistently heard. If you are getting asked to come on major television news shows to express your personal views, your free speech is hardly in jeopardy. Might as well complain that Bill Gates is going hungry when he runs out of truffles.
Not really. People actually study how messages get repeated and strengthened. If you sit down at a table like CNN did to have a discussion about whether people of Jewish faith or heritage are human beings you are not supporting the idea that they are people, even when everyone agrees. You are supporting the idea that this is a thing worth considering. There’s no debate to be had. Humans are humans regardless of what they believe and regardless of how they were raised. This is similar to how we strengthen fake news stories by refuting them because simply repeating the claim strengthens it.
The idea that the person who says “shut up” is losing the debate is a corrosive idea that originates from schoolyard bullying. The person who become emotional loses. No rational person would ever believe that one side is correct because the person arguing for it is able to stay more calm - how calm someone is able to stay has nothing to do with the logical strength of their position. And people who make decisions largely irrationally are largely going to agree when someone tells a nazi to shut the fuck up (except for the ones who already really wanted to hear what the nazi had to say). Either way, telling a nazi to shut up should have no impact on whether anyone believes the nazi.
The idea that the losing side says, “shut up” is based on the idea that people get upset when they feel they are losing arguments. Certainly some people feel that way, but a lot of people don’t. A lot of people get upset when someone is rambling on about bullshit. A lot of people get upset when someone says they don’t have the right to exist.
I personally get upset when they see people co-opting the idea of being rational to project their feelings of being upset when losing arguments onto everyone else. That doesn’t give any legitimacy to emotional projection.
When people believe that the side that gets angry loses, they practice an argument style that is about getting other people angry instead of about taking coherent positions (or, better yet, trying to actually understand what the other person is saying). You can see the results of that in toxic subreddits. From a logical point of view this is like trying to win a game of one-on-one by having such terrible body odour that the other person quits.
