Obvious as it may sound, people with authoritarian beliefs hiding behind free speech actually consider it as a weakness akin empathy. It allows losers like them to amplify their reach despite not being in power. They abandon their “free speech absolutist” postures the moment they think they are in power.
It’s insane to me that somehow free speech has been successfully twisted into a dog whistle to basically just spread disinformation, actively call for extermination of minority groups and openly attack and threaten other people. That shit is not free speech those are malicious actions - and they should absolutely not be tolerated under some vague guise of free speech.
Precisely. That’s why the most important mantra we can recite is “this is not normal”. No matter how normalized it gets, fascism is not normal.
If you pay attention to the reactionaries, they always steal ideas from the left. Fake news, media bias? That’s Noam Chomsky. Incels stole the idea of critical examination of gender from feminists. Racists are banning books on the theory that they target people based on their race.
That’s why they’re called reactionaries. They cannot organize and ideology or a movement except as an opposition to the left dragging society forward. And like anyone motivated by spite and envy, they study us closely.
It is always a little sad and funny to me when they essentially put on a suit made of the hollowed-out skin of a leftist concept. They heard people say “we want to see more women in electoral politics” and so they started running the Sarah Palins and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world. The point of the ask isn’t just to have women - it’s to have people who will use their experiences of marginalization to empathize with voters and with other marginalized people, to build coalitions. Not because we wanna see tits on CSPAN.
Which is intensely frustrating for people who actually care about free speech. Can’t talk about it without setting off everyone’s “that guy is probably a nazi” alarms.
It’s absolutely an intentional trap to attempt to get people to support moves against free speech by tainting the concept through negative association.
We shouldn’t tolerate hate speech. But I’m concerned about where we end up in a few decades if the concept of free speech keeps the current connotations.
And people might consider even this comment as sealioning or something.
Meanwhile we have people unironically using phrases like unalive and censoring swear words in screenshots so they don’t trip the automated content filters on mainstream social media. That should be more concerning than people seem to take it. People joke about “literally 1984”, but unalive is blatant newspeak.
This is what the fascists do: hijacking legitimate terms of discourse and abusing them so they become meaningless. It’s a deliberate strategy to subvert their opponents’ ability to talk about the issue by poisoning the terminology. See also what they’ve done with “fake news”, “critical race theory” and “DEI”.
There’s never been any actual free speech. There was never free speech for slaves, etc. We’re literally barred for saying the state should be overthrown which is probably the most important thing that anybody could say. Legally money is speech and corporations are people. Regular people can say whatever but capital has a nonstop bullhorn into our homes, tvs, radios…
It’s a completely meaningless concept.
It’s insane to me
How?
This isn’t the first time, won’t be the last time.
It’s not even a Nazi thing, it’s a human thing.
Reddit said you can’t say “Luigi had a good idea” so idiots try to find the furtherest they can take it without repurcussions, and when they face repurcossions they screech that their free speech was violated because they were dog whistling to advocate for murder
So people get banned from reddit for it, and come here and they’re *still stuck on trying to find the line in every situation so they can put their toes on and screech “freeze speech” like teenagers playing the penis game.
Obviously the people saying “Luigi was right” and the Nazis are different.
But it’s the exact same human instinct to push boundaries and see what they can get away with, then claim innocence when faced with consequences. Little kids do it constantly, and with our education system lacking on critical thinking since No Child Left Behind, people aren’t learning the critical thinking to internally make the call on what’s ok, they just try shit and see if there’s negative consequences. That’s all that matters: can I get away with saying this.
We just saw it on a national stage where trump kept talking about tarrifs on Canada, he wanted them to engage in a bad faith conversation about fentanyl while his tarrifs were active and free of consequences. Instead Trudeau finally ovaried up and hit back with retaliatory tariffs.
trump got consequences and he’ll stop. But if there wasn’t he’d have kept pushing it.
Obviously not, which doesn’t matter because the behavior isn’t unique to either group:
It’s not even a Nazi thing, it’s a human thing.
I thought that by stating that nice and clear in the beginning would prevent confusions like yours, but I forgot some people read something and instantly forget it.
When our opponents say: “Yes, we used to grant you freedom of opinion”, yes. You did, that is no reason why we should do the same to you! Your stupidity need not be contagious to us! [Laughter.] That you have given this to us - that is proof of how stupid you are! [Laughter.]
- Joseph Goebbels
Goebbels must have felt really clever when he killed his children and wife. Right Goebbels?
Goebbels? (Gore)
Oh.
What’s the story here? I thought Goebbels was among those tried at Nuremberg
Search: goebbels death -> Goebbels Wikipedia article:
In the mid-afternoon of 30 April, Hitler shot himself. […] On the evening of 1 May, Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz, to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of a cyanide compound could be then crushed in each of their mouths. […] At around 20:30, Goebbels and [wife] Magda left the bunker and walked up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they killed themselves. There are several different accounts of this event. [I’ve omitted contradictory claims of how they died and were treated after by SS soldiers] The corpses were then doused with petrol, but they were only partially burned and not buried.
Mod here: Nah, that stays up.
You just sear that image into your brain and think about it every time you hear the word Nazi, remember what they did to human beings (even their own).
If you haven’t seen them, look up pictures of the holocaust because those horrors should never be forgotten.
No tolerance for the intolerant in a tolerant society. It has been thought about a lot.
Read the same story the other day. They missed Hitler’s escalation believing he will never lie to such a point, until he did and then it was too late.
If someone has a dictatorship as a goal, you can’t just fight under the democratic rules, especially if your system is not bullet proof.
I’m not saying “grab a gun”, I’m saying there’s not much time to act. Anyway, this gives me some hope:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
Here is what free speech is:
Fuck the USA, Fuck Russia, Fuck China, Fuck France, Fuck the UK.
Here is what free speech is NOT: [Racial Slurs]
Honestly, the latter is absolutely free speech. They are 100% free to say that shit if they want. They are not free however from consequences, i.e. getting hit in the mouth, fired from their job, etc.
This is the real takeaway. Freedom of speech is the freedom to say anything. That’s it. You can just say it. It does not protect you from the consequences. It’s an important distinction to make, and I’m glad to see other people making that point.
Counterpoint:
You can say anything in an authoritarian state, the consequences are that you’ll get disappeared in the night.
I guess the primary difference is between legally free speech versus socially free speech. The argument being that the government shouldn’t stop you from slinging slurs, while you have absolutely no right to not be ostracized/shunned/shamed by your fellow man.
I also think while yelling racial slurs should not be illegal, organizing and mobilizing under a racist ideology that promises to eliminate free speech should be criminalized. The tricky part is doing it in a way that won’t be abused ie calling things that aren’t racist and supremacist ideology those things to criminalize them.
If only there was an art vs porn emergency button encoded into the law. You just know it when you see it and can call things what they are
They are not free however from consequences, i.e. getting hit in the mouth,
I would say that this is wrong. If you get hit in the mouth for something you say, than it’s not freedom of speech. It’s the law of the strongest.
Example: You wouldn’t hit a UFC fighter for something he said to you on a 1 to 1, however you would beat him if you are 10 against him. This is the law of the strongest.
I don’t believe in absolut free speech. I think that it needs to have limits in it (very well defined limits), and there should be consequences for certain things. And the consequences need to be enforced in a way to counter them, like for example if you say hate crap then you should be forced to contribute to anti-hate orgs.
My point from a legal standpoint is that ‘fighting words’ are not protected speech
https://www.thefire.org/news/80-years-ago-supreme-court-introduced-fighting-words
I disagree. Free speech should have limits, like every other freedom, because freedoms oppose each others. Insults, defamation, threats, calls for hatred, lies, … shouldn’t be covered by free speech.
Like it or not, that’s been the interpretation since the founding of the US. It is not the case in some other countries, but I’m assuming we are talking about the US here. What most people miss is it only restricts the government from punishing your speech, not private entities. Insults, defamation, and lies, are absolutely allowed, but you can be found liable civilly for any damage done by this speech either through punitive damages (lawsuit settlement) or other means, deplatforming, loss of employment, etc.
threats, calls for hatred, are a bit of a gray area. It depends on the severity of the threat, but true threats can be prosecuted.
Hate speech is generally allowed, but if it is inciteful enough to be a true threat, it too can be prosecuted.
If you’d like to read up on true threats, see below:
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2024/08/True-Threats-Guidance-3.pdf
Fascism is incompatible with any kind of freedom. Free speech is co-opted by conservatives and fascists so that they can promote bigotry without consequence. There is no reason that members of the KKK should be legally allowed to recruit people. That should be against the law. It should be against the law to promote xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and queerphobia. The only people who benefit from a system where you can espouse those beliefs without legal consequence are bigots and fascists.
First thing Free Speech Absolutionist Elon did when taking over Twitter was making it so that cisgender is a slur, but the n-word is not
