The Paradox of Tolerance

[Toth]

20 minutes ago, Yukle said:

The intention of this topic is more broad than the USA. It's philosophical, and meant to be considered in a more theoretical manner. Examples are fine; I'm just trying to avoid this morphing into a pseudo-USA politics thread.

Sorry then. Wasn't quite aware of that, by the time I reached the latest point of discussion, it was already solely about the US and people were fallaciously argumenting that because they have no 100% guarantee that anti-hate-speech laws improve the tone of public discourse, they preferred to do nothing at all. That just got to my nerves.

Regarding the theoretical aspect of it... well, duh... As someone living in a country that has learned from harsh experience that democracies need to be able to defend themselves against those who want to cast it down, I see absolutely no paradox in being intolerant towards the intolerant. Because being tolerant means respecting my fellow human being and accepting their equal place in society no matter their background, so when others in that society want to deny them that, it is my duty to protect tolerance and society itself against them. I think Rippounet expressed that earlier far more eloquent than I ever could: The moment these people decided that they see no reason to be tolerant, they are exempting themselves from the tolerance of everyone else. Easy as that.

[Seli]

42 minutes ago, Yukle said:

The intention of this topic is more broad than the USA. It's philosophical, and meant to be considered in a more theoretical manner. Examples are fine; I'm just trying to avoid this morphing into a pseudo-USA politics thread.

In a broader view it can be seen a purely utilitarian question. How do we maximize happiness and participation of people in society? Which is a balancing act, but again people who set out to minimize and destroy the rights of others seems to be a sensible and defensible border to tolerance.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

Regarding the comparison to European countries I would say that, while we have hate speech laws here, my impression is that they are usually not that strictly enforced in reality. I don't think Trump would have been convicted for anything he has said here, for example. A bunch of representatives from our own nationalist party have said very questionable things over the years without anything happening. 

We also have an actual neo-nazi party here (though very small), and while some of their members have been fined for hate speech over the years, they usually get away with most of what they say too, including very inflammatory stuff. 

I think people from other parts of Europe should chime in on this discussion and tell us about how strictly these types of laws are actually enforced in practice. 

 

 

 

[Rippounet]

27 minutes ago, Ran said:

So, again, no violence or censorship is tied to the increasingly positive attitudes.

You're strawmanning. I already said several times that the primary purpose of the laws we're discussing is to protect the people that are the targets of hateful speech.

As far as affecting attitudes go, it's a complicated picture. Laws are but one factor among many, and can be seen as a cause or a consequence of public opinion, depending on the case you're looking at and your own perspective and experience. And I was careful to point out that laws don't necessarily have as much impact on public opinion as we'd like to think they do.

The heart of the matter, as far as I'm concerned, is whether a society decides to protect some of its members against hatred. This can be done with or without a majority of the public supporting it. In fact, sometimes it might be necessary for a government to ignore public opinion if said public opinion is in favor of belittling some groups within the population.

Gay marriage is a poor example if you separate it from the long history of fighting homophobia in the first place. And even in that particular case, it's quite clear that laws were instrumental in the outcome, whether you see them as a cause or a consequence. Because the fact remains that as things stand, laws are indeed what protect gay people against various forms of discrimination in most of our Western countries. The fact that those who would engage in such discrimination are now in the minority doesn't change that.
And the thing is, what if a majority of Americans were still homophobic and the Supreme Court decisions widely unpopular? Would that make such decisions any less right?

The point here is, protecting minorities against majorities is one of the purposes of government. Individual freedoms are not more important than that. The principle of equality between humans trumps individual rights. This is a pillar of almost all developed societies, and what allows many of them to even exist. The only question here is whether speech is harmful enough to be prohibited, or whether prohibition should be reserved for actions.

27 minutes ago, Ran said:

So we come back to the fact that discourse has been the way that positive civil changes have generally happened in the modern era.

That would depend on your definition of "discourse."
Whether you're looking at racial or religious conflicts, homophobia, or even women's rights, violence was always involved. Laws were generally implemented as a way to keep the peace, either to protect the targetted minority from violence, or to address the legitimate demands of a minority that threatened to radicalize itself. Quite often a bit of both, as a matter of fact.
Maybe there were cases when a minority acquired the respect of the majority through discourse alone. No such examples come to my mind however. Civil changes that are linked to identity are generally messy affairs.

[Ran]

Rippounet,

I was responding to someone else who insisted a very negative picture of how things work, and my remark was continuing on that line rather than as a direct response to you.

I could look back at other things in our history -- the Civil Rights movement, for example, which certainly featured _violence_ from the majority against the minority, but the minority used discourse and ultimately carried the day as the majority shifted opinion.

In fact, one might argue that the violence inflicted was instrumental in leading to liberalization. Violent action begat negative opinions of those committing the violence. 

In the broader historical picture, the history of state censorship by and large reveals negative consequences, which has led to increasing feeling against censorship for much of modern history. That now at this moment some are reassessing this viewpoint is certainly worth discussing, but in general it feels like people are whole-hog leaping to extremes.

There's little empirical study on the actual impact of hate speech laws. I've found just one paper for Australia, for example, which seems to find that their anti-vilification laws  have limited negative effects... and limited positive effects. 

More recently in the news, we have this -- a law passed in Germany has been basically copy-and-pasted in Russia, providing cover for state control of expression. When the West abandons principles of free speech and pushes for more state control of expression, the less liberal regions of the world take note.

Ultimately, the long history of many nations in the West to liberalization of thought and expression, and while there are points of turmoil and sometimes great ugliness, the trend is positive. I find it disturbing to find people wanting to roll that back.

 

ETA: A recent survey discussed at the Atlantic provides a very complicated picture of what people believe regarding this business.

[Seli]

38 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

Regarding the comparison to European countries I would say that, while we have hate speech laws here, my impression is that they are usually not that strictly enforced in reality. I don't think Trump would have been convicted for anything he has said here, for example. A bunch of representatives from our own nationalist party have said very questionable things over the years without anything happening. 

We also have an actual neo-nazi party here (though very small), and while some of their members have been fined for hate speech over the years, they usually get away with most of what they say too, including very inflammatory stuff. 

I think people from other parts of Europe should chime in on this discussion and tell us about how strictly these types of laws are actually enforced in practice. 

 

 

 

Prosecution is rare and even then, for example with Geert Wilders, rarely successful. But the same is true for existing laws against blasphemy and lèse-majesté. More importantly is that the laws can be used to show there are boundaries at which we as a society see as acceptable. Even if we can't quite define legally where they are.

Of course democracies are weird and what is acceptable depends on how people talk about things. Our oldest continuous party is one of Christian fundamentalists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Political_Party). They want to prohibit public religious freedom for all non-christian religions (legal since 1848 ~ish), are against universal suffrage (legal since 1919), for death penalty (illegal since 1870), and so on. But since they belief in the law, and are set to change it within its structure they are seen to be acceptable.

[FalagarV2]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

That would depend on your definition of "discourse."
Whether you're looking at racial or religious conflicts, homophobia, or even women's rights, violence was always involved. Laws were generally implemented as a way to keep the peace, either to protect the targetted minority from violence, or to address the legitimate demands of a minority that threatened to radicalize itself. Quite often a bit of both, as a matter of fact.
Maybe there were cases when a minority acquired the respect of the majority through discourse alone. No such examples come to my mind however. Civil changes that are linked to identity are generally messy affairs.

I'm curious as to what you're basing this on. To be sure, violence of some kind was involved in all these instances, but there's a difference between violence being 'involved' and violence being instrumental. To my knowledge, the gay community never threatened to radicalize to any large degree. Nor was the decision to protect sexual minorities through legislation, around here at least, effected because of violence against gay people - which has been around for ages, and in which the state previously actively participated, - it was changing attitudes in certain sections of the population which led to protection being seen as desirable, and violence against gay people as illegitimate. 

That is not to say that the threat of violence has never been effective in producing positive institutional changes (and eventual changes in popular opinion). The introduction of democratic institutions and the success of the workers' movement certainly had violence and threat of violence as one powerful motivator - although they also in part responded to much older changes in the conception of the state. But we should not confuse the presence of violence with its instrument effect.

[Jo498]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

The point here is, protecting minorities against majorities is one of the purposes of government. Individual freedoms are not more important than that. The principle of equality between humans trumps individual rights. This is a pillar of almost all developed societies, and what allows many of them to even exist. The only question here is whether speech is harmful enough to be prohibited, or whether prohibition should be reserved for actions.

I don't want to nitpick but what I highlighted is obviously wrong in practice. (A simple example: It is totally wrong wrt distribution of economic power in western democracies, individual rights to get rich clearly trump any claim for equality. They even often trump the invidual right not to be harmed, e.g. by pollution)

One should rather say that the principle of equality and individual rights limit each other and different countries find different, often precarious balances between those two. The same goes for the balance between freedom of expression and what shold be legally forbidden (not societally ostracised) as "hate speech". Because the main point of the "friends of freedom" are not banning the books of obvious Nazis or nutcases but that once restriction is accepted and broadly practised a lot of speech that is mainly "outside the Overton window" can be treated as "hate speech" and people get into trouble for uttering it.

[Free Northman Reborn]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

You're strawmanning. I already said several times that the primary purpose of the laws we're discussing is to protect the people that are the targets of hateful speech.

As far as affecting attitudes go, it's a complicated picture. Laws are but one factor among many, and can be seen as a cause or a consequence of public opinion, depending on the case you're looking at and your own perspective and experience. And I was careful to point out that laws don't necessarily have as much impact on public opinion as we'd like to think they do.

The heart of the matter, as far as I'm concerned, is whether a society decides to protect some of its members against hatred. This can be done with or without a majority of the public supporting it. In fact, sometimes it might be necessary for a government to ignore public opinion if said public opinion is in favor of belittling some groups within the population.

Gay marriage is a poor example if you separate it from the long history of fighting homophobia in the first place. And even in that particular case, it's quite clear that laws were instrumental in the outcome, whether you see them as a cause or a consequence. Because the fact remains that as things stand, laws are indeed what protect gay people against various forms of discrimination in most of our Western countries. The fact that those who would engage in such discrimination are now in the minority doesn't change that.
And the thing is, what if a majority of Americans were still homophobic and the Supreme Court decisions widely unpopular? Would that make such decisions any less right?

The point here is, protecting minorities against majorities is one of the purposes of government. Individual freedoms are not more important than that. The principle of equality between humans trumps individual rights. This is a pillar of almost all developed societies, and what allows many of them to even exist. The only question here is whether speech is harmful enough to be prohibited, or whether prohibition should be reserved for actions.

That would depend on your definition of "discourse."
Whether you're looking at racial or religious conflicts, homophobia, or even women's rights, violence was always involved. Laws were generally implemented as a way to keep the peace, either to protect the targetted minority from violence, or to address the legitimate demands of a minority that threatened to radicalize itself. Quite often a bit of both, as a matter of fact.
Maybe there were cases when a minority acquired the respect of the majority through discourse alone. No such examples come to my mind however. Civil changes that are linked to identity are generally messy affairs.

I don't understand what it is you are asking protection from. There should not be laws to protect people's feelings. If someone's words lead to a specific violent action against a person or group, well, then prove it in court and he will be convicted as an accessory to the crime. Otherwise, he should be free to say what he wants to.

Simple as that.

[maarsen]

44 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I don't understand what it is you are asking protection from. There should not be laws to protect people's feelings. If someone's words lead to a specific violent action against a person or group, well, then prove it in court and he will be convicted as an accessory to the crime. Otherwise, he should be free to say what he wants to.

Simple as that.

Not quite. Charles Manson did just what you suggested. Incitement to violence or murder IS a crime and that is why Manson died in prison. And deservedly so. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

19 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Not quite. Charles Manson did just what you suggested. Incitement to violence or murder IS a crime and that is why Manson died in prison. And deservedly so. 

That's exactly what I was saying. Or meant to say, if it was somehow in doubt.

[Knight Of Winter]

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Okay, let's go with this a bit.

The purpose of repressing certain ideas is NOT to make them disappear off the face of the planet. The purpose is to ensure that said ideas are not ever acceptable as mainstream discourse. Germans making Naziism verboten to discuss didn't make nazis disappear, but it made sure that for the last 70 years it has not been something acceptable to regular people in any way. Whereas in the US, we can talk about  and have regular marches of Nazis, and the result has been people actually getting elected as Nazis.

I won't disagree here. I said in my first post in this thread how every speech inciting unlawful behavior (Nazis definitely count here) should not be tolerated - and I believe that's a fine line to draw.

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

All of the examples you provided are either completely, off-the-wall wrong or don't apply in this case.

How? They all provide same principle applied through history.

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Not really. Point of fact, there are very few historical  examples where a 'smarter' approach is needed and worked. Basic psychology would also tell you otherwise; one of the best ways to get other people to do something or at least not go along with something is, in fact, to tell them that what they're saying is shitty and ostracize them. This doesn't work if you're not anything to them, but it works marvellously if you're friends or family with them. 

You expect family and friends of rasists/sexists etc. to correct their behaviour? They're probably the source of it.

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

We tried it. It doesn't work. People don't believe the person that is most eloquent. Tyson himself has told off Trump; how has that worked out for him?

We've also tried it with intelligent design vs. evolution, we've tried it with climate change vs. deniers, we've tried it with anti-vaccers vs. vaccers. Every single time the extremist viewpoint GAINS more followers.

It's not a different idea, it's a very basic one, and one that nazis LOVE to have, because they want to make their ideas seem reasonable.

Than try something different, just don't continue with the same old approach. Because it's obvious that that one doesn't work either.

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

There are a couple of counterexamples here and there, but Trump is far and away worse than any of the above save perhaps Hungary (which has been democratic for all of 20 years), and even Berlusconi didn't have majority support. 

Since I feel you're steaming from Europe-->more censorship-->less problems; USA-->no censorship-->more problems viewpoint a lot, I'll ask you to elaborate more on this. Is there any way to determine whether America's problems are due to lack of censorship, and not due to any number of other possible factors? If Europe introduced censorship as reaction to its trauma of WWII, then do other non-European countries also face similar problem as USA? Where do New Zealand or Canada stand in this, for example?

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

We literally have a document on how to do this. We stopped following several important parts in it.

Again, the US had that system. We threw it away. And even it wasn't super awesome.

Sorry, I'm not American and can't immediately draw a connection to know which document you refer to? Declaration of independence? Some law? Some amandmant? Some important proclamation? It any of them outlines good system on how to choose acceptable values and norms - I'd be interested in hearing it.

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

And sure, that's fine - but saying it was ONLY information is bullshit. And it still ignores China, which is thriving and Communist. It ignores Russia, which is doing better than ever after reversing their democratic views and systems. 

Ok, I should have specified I as referring only to communist countries of eastern Europe. Meanwhile, China is thriving in good part because they adopted decidedly non-communist idea of free market (at least in much greater measure than other past or present communist country), while Russia is not communist at all (if anything, it leans towards autocracy).
 

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, this is simply incorrect on a whole lot of levels. Trump didn't get particularly more votes than Romney or McCain. His opponent got more votes than any white male in the history of the US. She lost because Trump got the right votes in the right places. You're basically listening to his propaganda, and it's bullshit. 

About 95% of the Republicans who voted for McCain voted for Romney and voted for Trump. His biggest fans are assuredly happy that he makes their racist viewpoints mainstream - but again, if it were for censorship, he would never have been allowed. Trump in other countries would have almost immediately been jailed and fined and condemned by everyone and dropped off the ticket, early on, when he called all Mexicans rapists and criminals.

Ok, I was informing myself from sources which seemed credible and well-written and posited what I outlined in my post above. It's quite possible that all of them were misguided or just plain wrong, and myself with them.

A digression - I'd like to ask you is there anything special then with regards to Trump voters? Is there any demographics that he in particular attracted more than other Republican candidates before him?

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Again, there's almost no evidence to this being true and a whole lot of evidence to it being false. I know that it feels like the right story because you want it to be, but maybe consider that you don't actually have evidence.

If you're such hard-core for evidence, by all means - provide your own. Stating "I have evidence for X" doesn't really say much.

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Again, the topic here is not 'different beliefs'. It is 'different beliefs that fundamentally oppose the existence of others'. Religious reformation looks quite a bit different than racist, and looks SUPER different to someone who believes that my family should be killed.

I don't think I've gotten my point across well, so I'll try to rephrase. Concepts such as sanctity of human life, equal rights for all sexes and races, religious tolerance etc. are absolutely essential to moral framework of our current society - for clarity and brevity I'll call them core beliefs. To use a Luther example: his land (Europe, and more specifically Germany of 16th century) has no such beliefs. They were obviosuly religiously intolerant, in fact religious wars had happened and will have happened several times; they cared not about (every and each) human life nor did they believe in equality between men and women. Their core beliefs were different, and one of them was living according to religious doctrine (call it God's plan or whatever) and belief that Pope is God's chief messenger and should thus be respected and obeyed.

And in the same manner that rasist attacks our society's core beliefs, so did Luther beat on 16th century Europe's ones. Purely on conceptual level - the level of ideas, how do they spread and how do they influence people - it doesn't matter that out of these two, one was right and the other wrong; one progressive, other regressive; one opposing the existence of others and other not. What I wanted to draw parallel between is that both of them were ideas going against core beliefs of their times, and both could not be stopped by censorship.

Btw, thanks for an article. Good and informative read.
 

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

For starters, yes it's more complex than that.
Most importantly though, these people could voice their opinion. They always could. In fact, many of these ideas were notoriously popular way before the election of Trump. The idea that they couldn't is just another fantasy cooked up by the right (and not the best right, too).

Besides, political correctness and hate speech laws might seem comparable on the surface (both are forms of censorship, I guess), but in actuality, they're really not. Outside the workplace it's very easy to reject political correctness. The rule of law on the other hand cannot be so easily ignored.

One must also be careful of the right's narrative on "political correctness." I don't think of myself as a politically correct person (I can be brutally honest with people in real life) and I would tend to reject some forms of PC, but what was deemed "politically correct" by many on the right was fighting back against what were really derogatory terms for specific groups. For instance, some people were pissed for not being able to use racial slurs anymore. Or worse.

Regarding the Trump phenomena, it's quite possible that I missed some of the facts, or have gotten the wrong. I wrote my post based on (what I thought) I knew.

Yes, I believe this part is quite important. It's not enough to be able to voice your "politically incorrect" opinion between family, friends and like-minded people in general - one should also be able to express them openly - in public - as long as opinion isn't violent and doesn't incite lawbreaking behavior.

Let me take your example of racial slurs. The problem is not that people could express their rasist opinions though said slurs, the problem is that people had these opinions in the first place. Hushing them up won't change anything. Bringing their ideas in the open and beating them time and time again maybe could. In one month or 15 years - but it stands a chance of making lasting change.

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I think the main problem here is your view of freedom of speech in the first place.
Freedom of speech is not absolute. It's only a right as long as it doesn't put others in danger.
 

Agree absolutely. "One's freedom stops with the freedom of other" is a good rule of thumb I adhere to,

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

The very fact of describing hate speech laws as "censorship" is rather misleading. Hate speech laws technically dont suppress freedom of expression ; what they do is make people accountable for what they say. It's a subtle nuance, but it actually does have real life consequences because the restrictions are not as broad as you might think and condemnation is not that easy.

That corresponds to every society ever. In medieval Europe you could also say whatever you want, for example that the king is a big fat coward who should kiss your ass every morning. But you also had to be accountable for what you said: namely in the form of king's men who could beat or kill you. The fact that form of punishment is different: being beaten in the first case and facing fine/jail time/having to apologize - doesn't detract from the idea that each society tries to protect it's values by introducing censorship. And in spite of said censorship, these contrary ideas still persist.
 

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I understand the "slippery slope" argument, but conversely, one shouldn't act as if rights are absolute. The rights of individuals are linked to the social contract within a society. Hate speech laws make sure that members of a society are forced to respect one another. That's hardly an overreach. In fact, many of our societies couldn't last without such limits on individual rights.

From my standpoint, this could be another argument.for the reduction (not abolition) of censorship and generally more more openness for all kinds of ideas. Let's look at history: from our viewpoint, viewpoint of modern 21st century people living in liberal democracies - history is full of failures. All these feudal, autocratic, sexist, religiously fundamentalist, segregationist, oppressive societies are wrong and inferior of our own. And the fight for what we call human rights was usually opposed, oftentimes drastically to these systems. Imagine how different and quicker would human rights progress if their ideas were accepted quicker, without any censorship? You find the idea of racism to be utterly wrong and even disgusting, wanting to shut it down as soon as you see it appears (aka censor it)? Well, the average man of 19th century also found the idea that women should vote as wrong and ridiculous, wanting to shut it down whenever it appeared.

In fact, if you un-construct your argument " Hate speech laws make sure that members of a society are forced to respect one another" and apply it to broader scale, you'd get something like "Censorship laws make sure that members of a society are forced to obey the societal norms". Given how (again, from our perspective) backwards all the historical societies were, you'll see the reason why I'm opposed to censoring ideas in general.

And lastly, I could add that censorship in general promotes complacency. However naive I may sound, I want a society brimming with ideas and ideologies; where each and every individual, as well as community as a whole, has to constantly think about them and choose which ones to reject immediately, which ones to implement, which ones to partially accept etc. Where and idea is implemented because it's valid, not because its alternative has been censored. Where people would actually stand behind their values and know why they have them. And if, in such a society, majority of people would choose regressive beliefs, then we're screwed in either way and no amount of censoring can help us.

7 hours ago, Seli said:

Oh dear, you might want to read up on the history of that last election. Wikipedia has a nice summary of the violence used to gain that plurality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_March_1933

From a purely technical point: go to you page you provided and find articles for previous two German elections (both held in 1932.). You'll again find a single party holding 30+% percent of views

From a conceptual point: regardless of numbers, it's clear what Nazi party was quite popular and its ideology widespread. It can't be called "external" to German society by any stretch of imagination.

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, Knight Of Winter said:

I won't disagree here. I said in my first post in this thread how every speech inciting unlawful behavior (Nazis definitely count here) should not be tolerated - and I believe that's a fine line to draw.

How? They all provide same principle applied through history.

You expect family and friends of rasists/sexists etc. to correct their behaviour? They're probably the source of it.

Than try something different, just don't continue with the same old approach. Because it's obvious that that one doesn't work either.

Since I feel you're steaming from Europe-->more censorship-->less problems; USA-->no censorship-->more problems viewpoint a lot, I'll ask you to elaborate more on this. Is there any way to determine whether America's problems are due to lack of censorship, and not due to any number of other possible factors? If Europe introduced censorship as reaction to its trauma of WWII, then do other non-European countries also face similar problem as USA? Where do New Zealand or Canada stand in this, for example?

Sorry, I'm not American and can't immediately draw a connection to know which document you refer to? Declaration of independence? Some law? Some amandmant? Some important proclamation? It any of them outlines good system on how to choose acceptable values and norms - I'd be interested in hearing it.

Ok, I should have specified I as referring only to communist countries of eastern Europe. Meanwhile, China is thriving in good part because they adopted decidedly non-communist idea of free market (at least in much greater measure than other past or present communist country), while Russia is not communist at all (if anything, it leans towards autocracy).
 

Ok, I was informing myself from sources which seemed credible and well-written and posited what I outlined in my post above. It's quite possible that all of them were misguided or just plain wrong, and myself with them.

A digression - I'd like to ask you is there anything special then with regards to Trump voters? Is there any demographics that he in particular attracted more than other Republican candidates before him?

If you're such hard-core for evidence, by all means - provide your own. Stating "I have evidence for X" doesn't really say much.

I don't think I've gotten my point across well, so I'll try to rephrase. Concepts such as sanctity of human life, equal rights for all sexes and races, religious tolerance etc. are absolutely essential to moral framework of our current society - for clarity and brevity I'll call them core beliefs. To use a Luther example: his land (Europe, and more specifically Germany of 16th century) has no such beliefs. They were obviosuly religiously intolerant, in fact religious wars had happened and will have happened several times; they cared not about (every and each) human life nor did they believe in equality between men and women. Their core beliefs were different, and one of them was living according to religious doctrine (call it God's plan or whatever) and belief that Pope is God's chief messenger and should thus be respected and obeyed.

And in the same manner that rasist attacks our society's core beliefs, so did Luther beat on 16th century Europe's ones. Purely on conceptual level - the level of ideas, how do they spread and how do they influence people - it doesn't matter that out of these two, one was right and the other wrong; one progressive, other regressive; one opposing the existence of others and other not. What I wanted to draw parallel between is that both of them were ideas going against core beliefs of their times, and both could not be stopped by censorship.

Btw, thanks for an article. Good and informative read.
 

Regarding the Trump phenomena, it's quite possible that I missed some of the facts, or have gotten the wrong. I wrote my post based on (what I thought) I knew.

Yes, I believe this part is quite important. It's not enough to be able to voice your "politically incorrect" opinion between family, friends and like-minded people in general - one should also be able to express them openly - in public - as long as opinion isn't violent and doesn't incite lawbreaking behavior.

Let me take your example of racial slurs. The problem is not that people could express their rasist opinions though said slurs, the problem is that people had these opinions in the first place. Hushing them up won't change anything. Bringing their ideas in the open and beating them time and time again maybe could. In one month or 15 years - but it stands a chance of making lasting change.

Agree absolutely. "One's freedom stops with the freedom of other" is a good rule of thumb I adhere to,

That corresponds to every society ever. In medieval Europe you could also say whatever you want, for example that the king is a big fat coward who should kiss your ass every morning. But you also had to be accountable for what you said: namely in the form of king's men who could beat or kill you. The fact that form of punishment is different: being beaten in the first case and facing fine/jail time/having to apologize - doesn't detract from the idea that each society tries to protect it's values by introducing censorship. And in spite of said censorship, these contrary ideas still persist.
 

From my standpoint, this could be another argument.for the reduction (not abolition) of censorship and generally more more openness for all kinds of ideas. Let's look at history: from our viewpoint, viewpoint of modern 21st century people living in liberal democracies - history is full of failures. All these feudal, autocratic, sexist, religiously fundamentalist, segregationist, oppressive societies are wrong and inferior of our own. And the fight for what we call human rights was usually opposed, oftentimes drastically to these systems. Imagine how different and quicker would human rights progress if their ideas were accepted quicker, without any censorship? You find the idea of racism to be utterly wrong and even disgusting, wanting to shut it down as soon as you see it appears (aka censor it)? Well, the average man of 19th century also found the idea that women should vote as wrong and ridiculous, wanting to shut it down whenever it appeared.

In fact, if you un-construct your argument " Hate speech laws make sure that members of a society are forced to respect one another" and apply it to broader scale, you'd get something like "Censorship laws make sure that members of a society are forced to obey the societal norms". Given how (again, from our perspective) backwards all the historical societies were, you'll see the reason why I'm opposed to censoring ideas in general.

And lastly, I could add that censorship in general promotes complacency. However naive I may sound, I want a society brimming with ideas and ideologies; where each and every individual, as well as community as a whole, has to constantly think about them and choose which ones to reject immediately, which ones to implement, which ones to partially accept etc. Where and idea is implemented because it's valid, not because its alternative has been censored. Where people would actually stand behind their values and know why they have them. And if, in such a society, majority of people would choose regressive beliefs, then we're screwed in either way and no amount of censoring can help us.

From a purely technical point: go to you page you provided and find articles for previous two German elections (both held in 1932.). You'll again find a single party holding 30+% percent of views

From a conceptual point: regardless of numbers, it's clear what Nazi party was quite popular and its ideology widespread. It can't be called "external" to German society by any stretch of imagination.

Complacency. That actually describes well America during the period we had a lid on the Nazi garbage. And we had good reason to be complacent actually. Right wing elites would do a fairly good job of keeping a lid on the worst excesses of the far right. That kind of allowed us the luxury or not worrying about it, or so we thought.

I really don't know the answer to where we go now in this new age of Nazis and Nazi cosplayers. I'm generally opposed to censorship, but have no real solution. Separating the right to free speech from the right to wave guns and threaten people's lives might be a good start though.

[Larry of the Lawn]

This article from propublica is a pretty good example of how even a tolerant society needs to crack down on intolerance.  Here we have, to use the most benevolent language possible, a group of white nationalists that brags about their violent exploits, has assaulted numerous people on video, and yet the police have done nothing.

Everyone seems to agree that it's ok to restrict free speech when someone is inciting violence.  Well here you go.  Ban them from social media.  Arrest them for assault and anything else.  But this isn't happening.  

So all the academic stuff is cool and all I guess and quoting a bunch of political thinkers, but the truth is that right now, violence is being openly committed under a transparent but functional shield of the first amendment.  So I can understand calls to reconsider where we draw the line between speech and violence.  I can understand the calls for hate speech laws in the US.

And this isn't even going into WHY this group hasn't seen any enforcement efforts.  I doubt if these guys had been members of say, BLM, that theyd have gone unprosecuted.

 

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

6 hours ago, Seli said:

Prosecution is rare and even then, for example with Geert Wilders, rarely successful. But the same is true for existing laws against blasphemy and lèse-majesté. More importantly is that the laws can be used to show there are boundaries at which we as a society see as acceptable. Even if we can't quite define legally where they are.

Of course democracies are weird and what is acceptable depends on how people talk about things. Our oldest continuous party is one of Christian fundamentalists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Political_Party). They want to prohibit public religious freedom for all non-christian religions (legal since 1848 ~ish), are against universal suffrage (legal since 1919), for death penalty (illegal since 1870), and so on. But since they belief in the law, and are set to change it within its structure they are seen to be acceptable.

Sounds similar to Sweden then, except that we don't have any punishments for lèse-majesté or blasphemy. I remember when an SD representative said that rape was a deeply rooted expression of Islamic culture, and he still didn't get fined for it because the statement was considered to lay within the bounds of reasonable political discussion. In other words, the hate speech laws we have are relatively lax unless you go full Hitler-style or something. But yeah, perhaps they do set some sort of boundaries.

Hehe, that sounds like an... interesting political party. I hope you vote for them?

[Seli]

1 hour ago, Knight Of Winter said:

...

From a purely technical point: go to you page you provided and find articles for previous two German elections (both held in 1932.). You'll again find a single party holding 30+% percent of views

From a conceptual point: regardless of numbers, it's clear what Nazi party was quite popular and its ideology widespread. It can't be called "external" to German society by any stretch of imagination.

Yes? And since that experience European nations have done their best to keep the ideology of the nazis external. That is the reason that nowadays it is a sensible measure to push against the type of hatred they spread.

 

[Ran]

54 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

This article from propublica is a pretty good example of how even a tolerant society needs to crack down on intolerance.  Here we have, to use the most benevolent language possible, a group of white nationalists that brags about their violent exploits, has assaulted numerous people on video, and yet the police have done nothing.

This is purely a failure of law enforcement and not a result of the First Amendment protections, as Michael German notes in the article. These people are posting videos of crimes, and the police are doing nothing not because they're saying they have a right to free speech, the police are doing nothing because ... well, multiple reasons are given, largely circling around the idea that they are overwhelmed.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

8 minutes ago, Ran said:

This is purely a failure of law enforcement and not a result of the First Amendment protections, as Michael German notes in the article. These people are posting videos of crimes, and the police aren't doing nothing because they're saying they have a right to free speech, the police are doing nothing because ... well, multiple reasons are given, largely circling around the idea that they are overwhelmed.

 

Fair enough.  But German was also critical of the police at these demonstrations allowing the protesters and counter-protestors to come into such violent contact from the get go.  I think he described it as something like 'acting out low scale political violence'.

[Ran]

Sure, but that's narrowness of vision from the police, again as German said. They just said, "Oh, these are protesters, they have a right," and don't grasp that these are in fact violent groups using the cover of protest to act violently. And this goes for the violent Antifa types, too, of course, who have also similarly been seen sharing and boasting about their actions.

Better policing is what's needed, not changes to the First Amendment.

[Yukle]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

...the police are doing nothing because ... well, multiple reasons are given, largely circling around the idea that they are overwhelmed.

Agreed; it's hard to remember at times that people are people first and their profession next.

In lots of those small towns and communities, police aren't seeing Nazis, they're seeing their neighbours. What do they do? In all fairness, put yourself into the shoes of any police:

You live in a town where you know most families and know of the remainder. You're close friends have been your children's godparents, or come over to your house each week, you chat at work, you holiday together.

And then, while standing beside just a handful of other police, you see the march coming. You know that, at best, you can manage a fifth of that amount of people, so you aim to bluff through it and show a sign of force that will hopefully disperse the crowd before anything happens. And then, as they march by, you see in the flames: faces of people that you know. Maybe not your friends, but certainly family members of theirs. In your head, you know that any arrest you make has the potential to inflame, rather than dissipate, the situation. How can you ensure that this doesn't drag out as a public court case that doesn't simply breathe more oxygen to the flames?

You hesitate... and the march goes by. You try to yell out and disperse everyone, but nobody is listening. In your head, you wish for at least 100 more of you to actually break this up, but you also know that bringing such numbers will escalate matters. In short... you don't have an answer, and you know that you have to head to your next family holiday knowing there's a rift between you and people you're not sure that you know any more.

That's not to say that there's not a "right" approach and a "wrong" approach, just that they're in an extremely difficult position.