Or, if there is, the Nazis are at the bottom of that slope. The sewage flows downhill.
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Re: the Popper graphic.
FYI, while the statements in the graphic capture the essence of Popper’s argument, it is not directly quoting Popper, so don’t use this a source of a Karl Popper “quote”. See Footnote 4 Chapter 7 of Vol 1 of The Open Society and Its Enemies for the whole thing.
First panel: no correspondence to the actual Popper text.
Second panel paraphrases the following:
“If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
Third panel paraphrases the following:
“We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law.”
Final text around the cartoon of Popper has no correspondence to the actual text.
(Edited to fix link)
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Paraphrased or directly quoted; the gist is that tolerance cannot be all encompassing.
A civil, enlightened society does not tolerate willful evil.
What’s “Willful Evil?”
Believing/saying that someone else shouldn’t be allowed to exist, for starters.
And fyi; I’ve peeped your comments, I know I’m preaching to the choir.
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That’s exactly what the Criminal Code of Canada does. It doesn’t target ideologies; rather, it targets actions. In Canada it’s illegal to advocate genocide or to publicly incite hatred against anybody distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.
It doesn’t make us entirely immune to racist asshattery, but it shuts down the worst offenders before they can get started. And it does help inoculate us against the Coutlers and Milos and Fred Phelpses of the world, because they cancel their bookings in Canada when the RCMP informs them that their usual schtick will get them arrested.
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Indeed. But choirs are so effective (and affective) because they comprise many voices, singing in unison.
Keep preaching, baby.
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First they came for the notzees, and I spoke out
"nice petards notzees!"
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I bet BDS will be the next target.
That wouldn’t be ironic and appropriate in the way this is. I don’t think this is a precedent for that.
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According to Breitbart, some asshats got their PayPal back:
PayPal reinstated the accounts of both Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative following outrage from supporters over their suspensions.
Breitbart previously reported on Jihad Watch’s suspension and the founder of the website, Robert Spencer, calling for a boycott of PayPal if they continued to “bow to leftism.” Many Jihad Watch supporters took to Twitter to express their anger over the website’s suspension:
NB: That’s Robert Spencer the Muslim-hater*, not Richard Spencer the Nazi.
- I refuse to use the prissy term “Islamophobe”. It’s like saying the Nazis were jewophobes.
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It’s like I tell the kids… everything has a history.
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To be fair, the alt-right are Democratic National Socialists.
I’ll assume that’s like the Holy Roman Empire.
I’ll give them national though
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I suspect that some of them are just dumb, and others just shock jocks; but unless you think that the ‘Overton window’ thing is utter nonsense; there is a certain tactical case to be made for it.
If anything can make some college republican ‘racial realist’ look like something other than a complete asshole; it’s an actual imperial wizard and a swarm of crack 4chan shitposters for context.
I will absolutely entertain the idea that an elected government might have some say in who gets to post what on the Internet. Certainly, threats, the organization of violence, &c are clear-cut examples of places where someone needs to step in. No argument.
However, the monopoly companies which represent large parts of the communication infrastructure cannot possibly have this power. A government can be voted out. A monopoly is unavoidable, especially when it is a monopoly on infrastructure.
What they can do to Neo Nazis—which are wretched wretched wretched examples of humanity—they can do to anyone, and all the tools to silently, unavoidably, remove someone from the 'net can be turned onto anyone and, if past experience is any guide, they will be.
If not for anything else, in the fullness of time we will need to break the present monopolies. How kindly do you think they’d look at talk about that?
I stand with the EFF on this. We can’t give this power away, especially not so lightly. It might feel good now, but the price, in the long run, is too much.
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Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island. Discuss.
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Pam Geller, oy vey!
Glad the EFF took a stand. Good on them.
I don’t disagree that the monopolies are worrying - although tbh I prefer them to Government control of the internet which almost certainly WILL be politically motivated - but you have to pick your battles.
Defending Nazis is not noble, and not the group you want as your Aryan posterboy for free speech. Ever. It’s going to lose a whole load of people like me who are on the left and aren’t libertarians and realise the danger of promoting their ideology however accidentally or unrelated that might be. There are many other examples you could choose - go for them, where a real limit on free speech is happening.
But fascists are fascists, and there are genuine reasons to control their speech, because they want to take ALL of our free speech away. It’s not some liberal/libertarian hypothetical case, it’s actually what they want to do…and promoting or helping that agenda in any way is dangerous. That’s much worse that the slippery slope argument, defending extremes of opinion cos they MIGHT come for you, Niemoeller style (and who caused that?) when actually those extremes are not defensible in any way - and are the sole ones EFF, ACLU et al choose. I don’t see them defending actual terrorists, Al Qaeda, ISIS et al, and neither should they. But these groups are also terrorising people - and defending what they do like with say, Heather Heyer as some idea of a race war. That’s not free speech. That’s hate speech.
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The angry right… established replicas of key services… Gab, resembling Twitter…
That’s weird, I thought Twitter was the far-right Twitter.
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