Trolling, Free Speech and the Law

Seems to mostly be people who aren't likely to ever be victims of it telling minorities that they should be cool with the option being on the table for discussion.

Suggestion: Maybe you should stop feeding the troll?

Well, I suppose that there is a case study here in how those most interested in free speech absolutism are terminal brogressives or unemployed Dirlewanger wannabes.

There won't be any debates about genocide until the genocide supporters can provide evidence for the claims they're using to justify it, which I'm convinced they can't. That's kind of the point. There is no obligation to respond to unproven claims.

By demanding evidence, I can (hopefully) show any fence sitters out there that there isn't any, while also remaining true to my principle of always acknowledging the possibility of being wrong, especially about topics that I hate or take for granted. (I'm here after all...)

Attempting to shut people up by... - What's the plan here? Arresting them all? - will only make people wonder what you're afraid of.

You'll have to take my word for it, but I try to do my best to be honest about my opinions.

If I'm failing to get the point across, I think that this person says it better than me. It's an old article, but sums up many of my views on censorship pretty nicely. (tldr: Historical and scientific truths are better weapons than laws.)

Then they go and twist data, outright fabricate evidence, and distort history, which gets presented as an argument and convinces some random fence-sitter.

By saying "if they have an argument", they come up with a bad argument, start a "debate" and use emotion rather than logic to convince people to join them.

There is no condition under which you debate genocide. None.

Once again, the last time America had a real, intense, public debate about whether to commit genocide, it resulted in a bunch of those watching deciding that genocide was the way to go. Let's not do that again.

So once again we have someone who insists that neo-Nazis can be debated who demonstrates that they've never debated a neo-Nazi. You know what the fantastic thing about arguing about a fictitious problem is? You can make up whatever nonsense you have to in order to support it.

Pay a visit to Stormfront sometime. Take a look at the mutually exclusive positions that people in the same debate will take in order to argue for the same point, and look at their ability to agree with one another despite that. Ponder how Jews are simultaneously a weak and inferior race and a threat to the existence of the white Aryan superman. And realize that you cannot argue with someone capable of that level of doublethink and that all you do by giving them a platform is enable them to recruit.

People watch debates, not to see who has the best facts, but to see who comes out of it looking the worst. And if one side tries to use actual facts and the other side just invents whatever they want to, the side that uses facts is the side that is going to come out looking the worst, because they will be unable to have a ready made response to every lie that comes out of their opponents' mouths.

Debate only functions when both sides are playing by the same rules, and neo-Nazis, genocide advocates, incels, and other members of the lunatic fringe don't play by the same rules that reasonable members of society do. There is nothing to be gained from debating them and nothing to be gained from letting them have a platform.

And by acknowledging that genocide might be the answer you have let them win.

To which I will respond "I'm afraid the nutcase calling for genocide will act on it." Also, this is another nonsense slippery slope about how hate speech laws will somehow create more hate speech. My country has far stronger hate speech laws than the USA (though not strong enough in my opinion) and we have a lot fewer Nazis than they do. Because surprise, surprise, hate speech laws work.

edited 22nd Aug '17 11:06:08 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

So we're back to how people are so irrational and easily manipulated that censorship is the only answer?

You might have given up on them, but I won't. I believe in educating people to recognize and fight lies and bad arguments, not in hiding such things from their view. If that makes me a Nazi sympathizer or whatever in your eyes, then so be it.

You don't educate people by permitting public debates about the merits of genocide. That's not education. There are times and places to debunk any of these arguments—history classes, for instance—and how thoroughly stupid they are, and many other ways to try and teach critical thinking.

Permitting debates that have real-life consequences and negative consequences at that, which glorify crimes against humanity? Er, no. That's a terrible move.

I'm going to quote Men in Black, here: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

You might be able to get through to somebody on a one-to-one basis. But, a public forum where they are playing to the gallery and the gallery is playing back in kind isn't that.

Social psychology works in weird ways. <_<

edited 22nd Aug '17 11:52:41 AM by Euodiachloris

Did anyone even read Corv's article? It was written by a Jew who had to go to court against a holocaust denier. He was arguing against censorship. And he won his case. The debate happened, and history won.

edited 22nd Aug '17 1:52:06 PM by DeMarquis

Er, yes, I read it. The case was one of libel, not one of censorship, and the summation of the article is an argument for truth rather than censorship and to not be hypocritical. Also, if I'm not wrong, the man jailed was the one to bring the case in the first place, presumably for having his reputation as a "historian" insulted.

Historical fact is somewhat different from whether you should stage or encourage debates about a concept or course of action, in my opinion.

edited 22nd Aug '17 2:14:03 PM by RainehDaze

NVM

edited 22nd Aug '17 4:30:35 PM by M84

The point is that we can win public debates with these people:

"...More importantly, there is a far better way to fight Holocaust denial than to rely on the transitory force of law. When Irving forced me to go to court to defend my freedom of expression, my most important weapon was the historical truth. We have truth and history on our side. From both an ideological and strategic perspective, those are far more powerful weapons than laws, especially laws that seem to counter the ideal of freedom of expression.

The best way to counter Holocaust deniers is to teach as many people as possible this history. That is why courses on Holocaust history have proven so popular and important. Students who take those courses will never fall prey to the David Irving-like distortions."

Except even that person probably wouldn't think that open public debates on the merits of genocide — thus allowing the other side to present the case that genocide has merit — is a good idea.

And, besides, that article was about Holocaust denialism. Not about a hypothetical debate on "should we give the Holocaust another try."

edited 22nd Aug '17 4:59:23 PM by M84

So I guess we need to be a little more specific about our terms. My impression is that no one in this thread proposed that we sponsor a debate on whether or not we should give the holocaust another try. The debate is whether or not expressing support for genocide should be illegal, whether we should use the law to suppress such opinions, or whether we should allow people to state what they like (provided public safety is maintained) and then counter whatever arguments they might make with arguments of our own. So far as I am concerned, that genocide of any kind is a horrible and unacceptable evil is not in question here.

edited 22nd Aug '17 5:12:15 PM by DeMarquis

We've been stuck on the topic of whether allowing neo-Nazis to speak on university campuses and organised debates for a while, here. Specifically genocide a lot.

I made a distinction a while back between some campus sidewalk vs. a sponsored event (yes to the first, no to the second).

I think by far the most damning argument made in favor of "no we cannot debate these people" was Armbar's elaboration on how the previous time genocide was up to debate in the US (regarding the Amerindian population in the 19th century) the genocidal side just took matter into their own hands and started ethnic cleansing.

I'm yet to see a compelling counter-argument to that.

A) This isn't the 19th century- political and cultural conditions have changed dramatically. Specifically, the vast majority of the US voting population is now firmly socialized to respect the concepts of universal human rights, at least in theory.

B) Related to that, WWII happened. We all know what the outcome of the Fascist race-based theories were. Very few people in any country want to return to that.

C) The legal conditions have changed. The US Constitution, and a huge body of Federal law would need to be amended before genocide could be considered legal here.

D) The historical and scientific consensus regarding human "races" has changed- the concept of race no longer has the scientific or scholarly support and respect it had then. Indeed, everything we have learned since the 1800's makes a very strong argument against race-based theories. Witness the response to the "Bell Curve" controversy some decades back. The good guys won.

E) If the principles of humanism weren't strong enough to consistently advance in the face of tremendous pushback, they wouldn't have gone mainstream and survived this long. In the end, the Truth has a way of asserting itself, and in general people are not assholes.

Hence my "evidence or gtfo" comment earlier. You have no obligation to listen or respond to the "we should..." part unless there are objective facts that make it necessary. Without those it's all just hypothetical speculation. I still consider the claims made by neo-Nazis and the like to justify their ideologies to be complete bullshit, but those claims just on their own are at least bullshit that can be discussed (and debunked) in a somewhat sensible way.

Whether or not they actually take that option or just resort to throwing insults and death threats around (in which case they should be thrown out and/or sued for harassment) is up to them - and to be honest, I'm not very hopeful in this case - but it's an option that should be available to anyone, imo. Just being wrong should never be a crime.

And it's less "stage or encourage" and more "don't criminalize" btw.

edited 23rd Aug '17 9:57:36 AM by Corvidae

If there is no possible argument to justify something, why does it need to be legal to promote?

Because making ideas, any ideas, illegal is a slippery slope that extreme conservative forces will exploit the first chance they get. The law is the instrument of whoever is in power. Best to keep it under tight constraint.

You could make a case against encouraging people to act on unproven claims, or against wrongfully presenting unproven claims as facts, but making those claims in the first place is a different matter.

You can't force people to believe things. (Well, you sort of can, but not in any safe or ethical way.)

edited 23rd Aug '17 10:33:55 AM by Corvidae

Expanding hate speech to include advocating or suggesting genocide, for one, rather than just "immediate call to violence" is not as extreme a change as you appear to be suggesting. If you can't advocate for going out right now and murdering people, it's not far-fetched to realise "you shouldn't suggest in the whole that groups should be dead".

I don't follow. If, legally, morally, and historically, we have decided that genocide is wrong in every circumstance and there is not an argument that can justify it, why do we need to have claiming it should be done as a legality? You can't go around saying that someone should be murdered. It's not suddenly more acceptable because you've made the targets far more numerous but less specific.

It's "credible threat", not "immediate call to violence." Planning a genocide in a realistic way is and should be illegal, regardless of how far in the future the implementation might be. You can advocate murdering people, just so long as you say and do nothing that would make it any easier. In any case, my colleagues and I are on public record advocating various criminal activities (protest actions), and I don't want to see our first amendment legal protections weakened any more than they already are.

edited 23rd Aug '17 11:48:47 AM by DeMarquis