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 not just nazis but fascists more generally.
Just look at what the zios are doing to anti-genocide resisters.
Zionists & Nazis; Like two peas in a pod.
Wow. Just wow. This makes me sad.
Yeah, especially after he attacked the ADL for so long. Huge disappointment.
A reminder that X is called “the free speech platform” by Elon Musk.
They believe in free speech only enough to get into power and then remove it.
This video is an oldie but a goodie, and deserves a listen for its analysis of fascist dialogue and how to talk to and about these assholes. A lot of us haven’t engaged with this sphere for a long time and this is a good primer on pushing back.
Every single thing a fascist (unless to a fellow fascist) is designed to throw good people off the stink of their despicable beliefs.
“First they fascinate the fools, then they muzzle the intelligent” Bertrand Russell.
Yes, this is absolutely true. The evidence is clear when you consider how Twitter is going and with the censorship mentality spreading to other media, like the Reddit bans.
Anyone who thinks that Nazis believe in free speech is an idiot.
Right, like, when have they ever believed that?
Well, only their free speech.
Your blasphemous thoughts should be banned, obviously.
No no, we still value free speech, just that yours isn’t really speech, it’s the woke mind virus. And that needs to be eradicated. So, you see, we’re still free speech absolutists!
This is how they trick people.
It’s important for everybody to not just assume the people on your own team, or the people that look like you, are being truthful and arguing in good faith.
That goes for everybody, but it seems pretty consistent that you need to me more wary of it as you move towards the conservative end of the scale. And conveniently for those politicians, the citizens on that end of the scale are the worst at cutting through the BS. Arguably that’s what landed them there in the first place!
Yes.
Fascist ideologies, like Nazism, are explicitly anti-liberalist. They don’t believe in the very concept of liberties. They explicitly write down on paper why they believe democracy and freedom is a failure. So, when you see one pulling the free speech card, they’re simply trying to appeal to your beliefs, or society’s beliefs, to give themselves a platform. It’s inherently insincere, they’re mocking you.
Nazis have to act like this. History has shown us, without doubt, how repulsive their plans are both in theory and in practice, so until they have power, they cannot show their true colors. They can’t just be honest and play “might is right” yet because communities would just do the right thing and violently extinguish their movement (including, but not limited to, punching them on sight). So they must hide behind society’s privileges, the rights and freedoms of liberalism. They can enjoy police protection at protests to save them from the people they work to have killed, they can sue people for collecting intelligence on them and getting them fired, they can just point out liberalist hypocracy if their freedoms are violated, but listen to leaks and how they organize behind closed doors to know that’s simply opportunistic cowardice.
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
They believe in ¨I speak¨
Yep, even in the face of genocide.
Barely anyone truly believes in it. They only care when they need it.
I’ve been a free speech advocate and activist for years and I helped people that literally wanted me banned 2 months prior for the most nonsense reasons. They didnt care sbout free speech until they stepped over a line - then, free speech was the most important thing in the world.
That’s universal for all political alignments btw. It’s both fascist clowns or wannabe antifa super soldiers. Both only care about it when it’s needed.
What speech were “wannabe antifa supersoldiers” trying to suppress?
There’s legitimate benefits to societies disallowing fraud and abusive speech- lies and threats can drown out useful benefits of actual free speech by squelching it.
They didnt care sbout free speech until they stepped over a line
What line? Calling for genocide or calling for its end? Because only the former is actually bad and only the later is actually attacked.
Free speech absolutism enables fascism. So does “both sidesing” fascism.
It’s called the paradox of tolerance. There’s a cartoon about it because it’s kinda 101. Like something that most children understand.
Ah, the paradox of intolerance. The all time favorite argument against free speech.
Free speech absolutism enables fascism.
No, we don’t. Ironically, YOU are the ones that enable fascism because you want to lay the foundational laws that a fascist government requires to enact fascism. This is called the “Paradox of Power” (It actually doesn’t but it sounds cool). If society is enforcing intolerance toward intolerant views, then whoever holds the power gets to define what “intolerance” is. Now, what this does in reality is that the “ruling ideology”, so to speak, can label dissenters as “intolerant” and justify their suppression, which is effectively leading to the very tyranny your principle claims to prevent.
I once heard a very good comparison in a youtube video. Imagine the government is a tank, and that tank is supposed to protect you from the evil fascists. Now, you want it to be strong so it can defend you better against them, so you slap on some more armor, some more weapons, a larger cannon, even more armor until that tank (your government) is an unbeatable killing machine that is deleting fascists left and right. Now, all is good and well - until a fascist gets into the tank. And at that point, he has all he needs, he runs the killing machine and starts enacting fascism - and the reason why he can do that is because you have build the fucking tank. That is what you’re doing with the stupid hate speech laws - and that leads me to the second point …
(drum roll)
… the slippery slope!
As you are not the one in control over the list of things we have to be intolerant against, but the people in power, it is fairly easy for them to extend the list to things they don’t like. Funny enough, the soviet union suppressed dissent under the guise of “combating fascism” in the very same way you are arguing here right now. Suddenly, mentioning historic events like tiananmen square is no longer allowed. Or things happen but you don’t hear about them, like the “Röhm-Putsch” in 1934 where hitler assassinated hundreds of people that could pose a threat to his power - the event was never reported in the news and nazis justified the suppression and framed it as “necessary to ensure stability and order”.
Remember: True tolerance means engaging with differing viewpoints, even uncomfortable ones, rather than preemptively silencing them out of fear.
Their version of free speech is to prevent you from contradicting the lies they continuously spew and then paint your rebuttal as an attack on their rights to spew them. They’re the victim of leftist propaganda.
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]
Here’s what is not free: Fuck zionism.
You might lose your job, be kicked out of school, be deported, kidnapped, tortured, genocided, ethnically cleansed, etc… I’m afraid to even say it semi-anonymous on the internet.
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.
It depends on the source of the consequences.
Social consequences? Completely fine, even desirable.
Legal consequences? This is where trouble starts and freedom of speech is no longer given.
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.
Your argument is… valid. Everyone, we’ve just established worldwide freedom of speech! Put this in the history books!
The argument means that if there are severe systematic consequences to some things you say, then it cannot be considered free speech.
I know, it was a joke. I guess I forgot the /s
Oh, sorry, I’m too depressed from the world situation to see humour in anything…
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
organizing and mobilizing under a racist ideology that promises to eliminate free speech should be criminalized.
Who’s the fascist now, huh??? \s
100% this. The freedom to say anything also does not entail the right to be listened to. Nobody is required to platform “undesirable” speech. Getting banned from a platform is a perfectly acceptable consequence.
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
Oh I know more or less how the American law works. But I think it’s a bad one, that’s all.
I’m French, and in France hate speech is illegal. Negation of crimes against humanity is illegal. Defamation is illegal. And you know what? France is still a free country. Freer even maybe, as our other freedoms and rights (like our rights to live peacefully) are more protected.
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.
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.
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”.
yeah, I can’t say ‘libertarian communist’ or people will be like ‘do you mean ephebophile communist? how does that even work?’.
they have to steal our names for shit, because they always do horrible shit under their own.
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.
Luigi and nazis are not even close to the same thing.
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.
Just because you make an argument, doesn’t make it true. One is a group who came to power through hate and used that power in an attempt to exterminate political enemies, dissidents, and as everyone is well aware, the entirety of the Jewish population. The other is someone who got screwed over by our Healthcare system and decided to do something about it. Comparing the two and saying they are the same is either intentionally disingenuous, or just stupid.
Just because you make an argument, doesn’t make it true
Mate…
I “made an arguement” that it wasn’t just Nazis that did this …
And used an example of people who were not Nazis doing it to show that …
And you accused me of saying both groups are the same.
After I literally said:
Obviously the people saying “Luigi was right” and the Nazis are different.
You felt the need to say almost verbatim the same thing back to me like it was something I didn’t know.
There’s not an easier way to explain this, I’m sorry but I’m not helping you anymore.
