U.S. Politics: I Did Nazi That Coming

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Just now, A True Kaniggit said:

What do you consider incitement to violence?

I'll make this as simple as possible.

1) A person gets up on a platform and says, "Yes, I believe Jews/non-whites/homosexuals/(any other of the myriad of people who are not me) need to be killed". So this would count as incitement to violence, correct? And as such would not be protected under free speech laws.

2) A person gets ups on a platform and says, "I am a Nazi. I think what us Nazi's believe is correct. I'm going to try and recruit you to become a Nazi".

You don't consider what person number 2 says as incitement to violence?

Because I do. The term "Nazi" has been around for a long time. A person who claims to be a Nazi know full well the endgame of that ideology.

Well in number 1 are you causing someone else to commit violence? If I say 'I wish Donald Trump was dead' ( which a lot of people will say) is that incitement to violence and so should be banned? 

As for number 2, I'm not sure everyone who calls themselves a nazi is signing up for what you suggest. They might just be hateful racists, they might not like liberals, they might just like the ill-fitting clothes and homoerotic marching. Is every muslim up for the extermination of israel and all jews? Do you prevent them from holding a rally for simply being a muslim because elements of their group believe some horrendous things even if they aren't calling for it?

[denstorebog]

4 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 And 4chan is concerned with their rep among "normies"? That's a fucking knee-slapper. It's a card carrying troll community whose mission statement is "piss off the normies". 

Not at all. If you've spent any time on 4chan, you know that reputation among normies is like their main concern. They don't do stuff to piss the general populace off, they do stuff to get the general populace pissed off at others, be it individuals, organizations or ideologies. This is the MO for pretty much all their hoaxes and political sabotage: Using the normies as a weapon against someone.

It's also one of the main concerns of the alt-right in general, dressing heinous things up so they're palatable to the mainstream. Fuckers like Milo are obsessed with teaching their subordinates techniques to blunt and counteract the outrage of the 'lefties' so that they are the ones that come off as petty or hostile to the more centrist population. Even when the subject is neo--Nazism.

 

4 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Obviously I don't know what country you're from.  This is a faulty measurement, but here's a map of the popular vote for the main nationalist party in each country. 

I don't get this map. The colors are wrong for at least some of the countries, at a quick glance. For example, Denmark's NP got 20+ % of the last vote (which is also stated in the article related to the map), so it should be dark red, but it's not.

[The guy from the Vale]

I didn't claim perfect correlation, and I will agree that this is only a back-of -the-envelope thing and not a thorough scientific survey.

Sweden is well-known to take its hate speech laws seriously. Norway... not so much.

Nationalism is discredited in Spain and Portugal because of Franco and Salazar, respectively. 

 

 

I don't think it's the Holocaust denial ban per se that makes Germany more resistant to the current rise of the right. As I sad in the first paragraph, the main factor, to me, is that the countries with weak nationalists have had fascist regimes in the last century. Germany certainly drills its children with the lesson that nationalism has been responsible for our worst crimes. And yes, I think knowing what fascists look like from up close helps in defending yourself against them. Cheering on your nationalists in history lessons for defeating the other side's nationalists doesn't teach the dangers of nationalism to the same extent.

 

[A True Kaniggit]

1 minute ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

1) Well in number 1 are you causing someone else to commit violence? If I say 'I wish Donald Trump was dead' ( which a lot of people will say) is that incitement to violence and so should be banned? 

2)As for number 2, I'm not sure everyone who calls themselves a nazi is signing up for what you suggest. They might just be hateful racists, they might not like liberals, they might just like the ill-fitting clothes and homoerotic marching. Is every muslim up for the extermination of israel and all jews? Do you prevent them from holding a rally for simply being a muslim because elements of their group believe some horrendous things even if they aren't calling for it?

1) Yes to both. You've caused someone else to commit violence. You say "x person needs to be killed" to a crowd, and someone in that crowd goes and attempts to kill that person, you've incited violence.

2) Sorry you think people are complete idiots. WWII ended in 1945. It is now 2017. Go find the person who claims to be a Nazi because they like ill-fitting clothing.

[DMC]

22 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

I don't get this map. The colors are wrong for at least some of the countries, at a quick glance. For example, Denmark's NP got 20+ % of the last vote (which is also stated in the article related to the map), so it should be dark red, but it's not.

Yeah, as I said, it's faulty measurement.  It may be faulty in other ways.  I do not stand by that map, it was just the easiest thing to use without doing extensive research.  I'm guilty of laziness.  For about the 9,000th time in my life.

24 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

As I sad in the first paragraph, the main factor, to me, is that the countries with weak nationalists have had fascist regimes in the last century. Germany certainly drills its children with the lesson that nationalism has been responsible for our worst crimes. And yes, I think knowing what fascists look like from up close helps in defending yourself against them.

Ok.

[OldGimletEye]

On 8/14/2017 at 4:24 AM, Dr. Pepper said:

Free speech blah blah blah free speech blah.  

We liberals really fucked up when we decided freedom of speech meant we need to protect the speech rights of terrorist groups that seek to recruit and incite violence and genocide.  

I don’t think so. I think free speech has served liberal causes very well. You know there is a reason why the ACLU defends free speech so vigorously. And that was because there was a time when free speech was important to left wing causes. Everything from protesting the draft in World War I to promoting Civil Rights in the South.

Now it’s easy to say we should ban Nazi’s and white supremacist and other assorted assholes.

But banning people like that from writing or publishing isn’t as easily said as done, if we’re not going to do violence to speech that we might want to hear.

The point here if you are going to say,”X should be banned from speaking, writing, or publishing” then you need to develop some kind of analytical framework, which indicates how it will be decided who gets to speak and who doesn’t. And what exactly constitutes, in your view, white supremacist speech that should be banned. Because while it’s easy to say “this specific group should be banned from speaking”, laws of general applicability will have to be applied to everyone else. And the fact is you can’t just hand wave this stuff.

Traditionally, American First Amendment law has banned rules that restrict speech based on its content or its offensiveness. Well kind of sorta. Arguably we do allow it in certain restricted environments like schools or the military, which I generally find to be reasonable. But, we’ve always been more hesitant to do it in general public discourse.

Now if we’re are going to say that speech can be limited, in general public discourse, based on it’s content or it’s offensiveness, what I want to know, is how you’d write the rules to distinguish between that offensive speech that is subject to restriction and that which is not. Is it to ban only those that promote genocide or ethnic cleansing (which I’d probably be down with) or do you have something else in mind? These details matter a great deal.

Because, it’s easy to say, “such and such group should be banned”, but writing rules of general applicability, not so much.

And personally, I think people are right to worry, when others start talking about banning the speech of others without explaining their general approach to deciding what offensive speech gets banned and which does not. 

The fact of the matter is there are those on the left that have a problem with Free Speech. They talk about stuff like “speech as violence” concept, without really telling us how they  go about setting the lines of demarcation, and potentially destroying the usual distinction between speech and action.

And the fact of the matter is some on the left, often using post modernist thought, see free speech as a joke anyway. They claim it’s just a tool of the privileged and should be severely restricted. Of course they won’t lay their cards on the table and accordingly there is reason to worry they are not on the level when it comes to free speech issues.

Unfortunately, I think, some on the left have come to believe that they can with great precision cut out speech they don’t like, without doing harm to speech they may want to hear. And they don’t seem to contemplate that the rules they’d wright today may come back, eventually, to haunt them.

The fact of the matter is that there are authoritarians on the right and there are authoritarians on the left. Both need to be stopped.
 

[Seli]

2 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Damn. I know I'm not a regular poster in this thread, but it saddens me to see all this infighting. At the very least I'd hope that everyone participating in the discussion would agree (no matter their view on how far Freedom of Speech should protect people), that if Nazi's ever again actually started exterminating people, it would be every moral human being's responsibility to do everything within their power to put a stop to it. And yes, this would include going out and fighting/killing aforementioned Nazis who are exterminating people. Because if you didn't, could you really justify to yourself that you did the right thing because "Violence is never the answer"?

 

We mostly agree on that. The conflicts boil down to what we can and must do before they start exterminating openly again.

[The guy from the Vale]

@OGE: I tend to repeat myself on this, but still: Incitement to violence is no permissible form of free speech. And coming to a rally armed to your teeth while wearing t-shirts sporting Hitler quotes or carrying a Confederate flag is incitement to violence. This rally should never have been granted a permit, or if it had, it should have been under conditions along the lines of "carrying arms during that protest is strictly forbidden, as it crosses over into incitement to violence territory. Any protestor who carries a gun is going to be arrested and tried on those grounds. No, torches aren't permitted either." That would have made things a lot easier from the start.

[OldGimletEye]

On 8/14/2017 at 6:37 AM, theguyfromtheVale said:

@OGE: I tend to repeat myself on this, but still: Incitement to violence is no permissible form of free speech. And coming to a rally armed to your teeth while wearing t-shirts sporting Hitler quotes or carrying a Confederate flag is incitement to violence. This rally should never have been granted a permit, or if it had, it should have been under conditions along the lines of "carrying arms during that protest is strictly forbidden, as it crosses over into incitement to violence territory. Any protestor who carries a gun is going to be arrested and tried on those grounds. No, torches aren't permitted either." That would have made things a lot easier from the start.

Except current American jurisprudence doesn’t consider it to be an incitement to violence.

So were at the problem of how we define incitement to violence.

And while it’s easy to say that Nazi doctrine is an incitement to violence, the question is how does the rule, whatever it’s final form, apply to other cases?

I believe it has been said that “hard cases often make bad law.”

And I agree about the weapons thing. People shouldn’t be allowed to be better armed than the police in case shit gets out of hand.

[The guy from the Vale]

While I think Fascism is indeed an ideology based on violence against "others", it's the weapons thing this judgement should be based on. No matter how wrong I think US jurisprudence is on Nazi ideology, encouraging the participants to bring weapons to your rally should make your rally illegal because this is indeed a nonideological standard to base this on, and one that doesn't inhibit free speech itself, but makes incitement to spontaneous violence that much harder.

[OldGimletEye]

On 8/14/2017 at 7:21 AM, theguyfromtheVale said:

While I think Fascism is indeed an ideology based on violence against "others", it's the weapons thing this judgement should be based on. No matter how wrong I think US jurisprudence is on Nazi ideology, encouraging the participants to bring weapons to your rally should make your rally illegal because this is indeed a nonideological standard to base this on, and one that doesn't inhibit free speech itself, but makes incitement to spontaneous violence that much harder.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I believe that Nazism is simply banned in your nation’s constitution.

That’s really how I’d rather handle it, I think. Just have any speech that explicitly promotes ethnic violence, genocide, or ethnic cleansing simply banned in the US constitution.

Then we wouldn’t have to deal with these thorny problems of what constitutes “incitement to violence.”

[The guy from the Vale]

Sure, I think this is one thing we did get right during the last 70 years. So I'd applaud the US if you went the same route. But isn't that precisely the proposal free speech absolutists are so vehemently against?

[Toth]

47 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

@OGE: I tend to repeat myself on this, but still: Incitement to violence is no permissible form of free speech. And coming to a rally armed to your teeth while wearing t-shirts sporting Hitler quotes or carrying a Confederate flag is incitement to violence. This rally should never have been granted a permit, or if it had, it should have been under conditions along the lines of "carrying arms during that protest is strictly forbidden, as it crosses over into incitement to violence territory. Any protestor who carries a gun is going to be arrested and tried on those grounds. No, torches aren't permitted either." That would have made things a lot easier from the start.

There should be laws about unlawful assemblies in the US. They need to be enforced.

And like we have in Germany, there should be a law that allows the banning of anti-constitutional parties and symbolism, a law that takes away their 'freedom' to demand the restriction of freedom of others. Of course this law is barely ever used here as well, but it forces Nazis to avoid openly declaring their intentions and with that constantly reminds them that what they are doing is antithetical to the rights they themselves profit from.

[OldGimletEye]

On 8/14/2017 at 7:34 AM, theguyfromtheVale said:

Sure, I think this is one thing we did get right during the last 70 years. So I'd applaud the US if you went the same route. But isn't that precisely the proposal free speech absolutists are so vehemently against?

Some absolutely.

But, you don’t have to be a free speech absolutist to worry about how this stuff gets implemented in practice. And you don’t have to be a free speech absolutist to worry that some on the left (and right too) don’t think much of free speech rights, even though they may give it the obligatory lip service.

[The guy from the Vale]

@OGE I tend to oppose restrictions to freedom of speech, too. It's this one issue (apart from yelling Fire! in a crowded room or similar things) where I think restrictions are appropriate. The only way to protect free speech from those who abuse it to get rid of it, is to not grant them - and only them - this right for this one purpose.

[OldGimletEye]

On 8/14/2017 at 7:43 AM, theguyfromtheVale said:

@OGE I tend to oppose restrictions to freedom of speech, too. It's this one issue (apart from yelling Fire! in a crowded room or similar things) where I think restrictions are appropriate. The only way to protect free speech from those who abuse it to get rid of it, is to not grant them - and only them - this right.

An absolutist stance on Free Speech is intellectually indefensible.

That said, free speech is a great thing, and we should rightly worry about the details of how it gets regulated and be skeptical of those regulations.

[Toth]

10 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

An absolutist stance on Free Speech is intellectually indefensible.

That said, free speech is a great thing, and we should rightly worry about the details of how it gets regulated and be skeptical of those regulations.

I just want to emphazise that our Grundgesetz Article 21 was only ever used 1956 to actually ban the communist party and that was solely for the political risk of their natural ties to Soviet Russia, not because they would have something in their constitution that incites violence. So you are right that it is a little concerning how such a law is effectively used.

The actual Nazi party, or at least the closest thing wie have to it (the 'National Party', effectively only omitting the socialist and the worker part of the actual Nazis) was always kept intact because people think they are too small and harmless to pose any risk. Though the law itself did help to force them to restrain their speech out of fear that they'd get banned anyway.

But there should be no denying that the situation in the US is getting out of hand and you should muzzle your resident dipshits before they manage to normalize their speech any further.

[OldGimletEye]

On 8/14/2017 at 7:35 AM, Toth said:

And like we have in Germany, there should be a law that allows the banning of anti-constitutional parties and symbolism, a law that takes away their 'freedom' to demand the restriction of freedom of others. Of course this law is barely ever used here as well, but it forces Nazis to avoid openly declaring their intentions and with that constantly reminds them that what they are doing is antithetical to the rights they themselves profit from.

Here is a book by, general nut job, Hans Herman Hoppe.

He’s not very kind in his assessment of Democracy. In fact, he seems to promote monarchy as a better alternative.

I think it’s fuckin’ nuts.

But does that mean, I think the book should be censored?

Nope.

One is for the reason that John Stuart Mill gave in his defense of free speech rights: You’re opponent maybe ultimately wrong, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing to be learned during the argument.

And secondly, you know, I do want to have these kind of intellectual fights out in the public. If people do believe in this kind of wing nuttery, there is an advantage to getting it out in the open so it can be thrashed.

Does this mean I’m an apologist for Austrian Economics? Well, I certainly in the hell hope not. It’s not like I haven’t spent anytime ranting against the Hayeks and the Mises.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Here is a book by, general nut job, Hans Herman Hoppe.

He’s not very kind in his assessment of Democracy. In fact, he seems to promote monarchy as a better alternative.

I think it’s fuckin’ nuts.

But does that mean, I think the book should be censored?

Nope.

One is for the reason that John Stuart Mill gave in his defense of free speech rights: You’re opponent maybe ultimately wrong, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing to be learned during the argument.

And secondly, you know, I do want to have these kind of intellectual fights out in the public. If people do believe in this kind of wing nuttery, there is an advantage to getting it out in the open so it can be thrashed.

Does this mean I’m an apologist for Austrian Economics? Well, I certainly in the hell hope not. It’s not like I haven’t spent anytime ranting against the Hayeks and the Mises.

 

Well said, sir.

[Toth]

9 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Here is a book by, general nut job, Hans Herman Hoppe.

He’s not very kind in his assessment of Democracy. In fact, he seems to promote monarchy as a better alternative.

I think it’s fuckin’ nuts.

But does that mean, I think the book should be censored?

Well, there is a difference between writing a book that is critical of democracy and founding a party with the intention to destroy the constitution and ethnically cleanse your population, isn't it?

Just to be clear, I am only talking about taking away your right to officially found political groups to further such a goal and give it the air of being a valid political standpoint.

... and of course to show up at a protest rally with a fucking armed militia...