Malcolm Harris is a fascist. A fascist attacking other fascists. Both are despicable. Should we not have kept this "marketplace for ideas" open for civil rights? Gay rights? Abolitionism? He fundamentally doesn't understand the problem with censorship. Free speech exists to protect the obscene. Free speech isn't necessary for things considered acceptable. Nobody is going to stop you from saying "murder is bad" or "I like cheese." Yes, people want to stop you from saying "white power." Yesterday, people wanted to stop you from saying "black power." We cannot know what will be considered acceptable tomorrow. When you censor, you're saying "I don't trust other people to make rational decisions." You know what's right and what's wrong, and wrong speech must be censored to protect the stupid. You know what? I'm neither stupid nor gullible. Furthermore, I disagree with your definition of "wrong." You have no right to impose your morality on me. I believe censorship is as wrong as fascism (in fact, censorship is fascism). Am I allowed to censor your speech encouraging censorship? Or are you the only one who gets to decide what's censored? Or is it the masses? If 51% of people agree something is wrong, we can censor it? So the majority can oppress the minority?The ostensible reason for this free speech for extremism is to keep the marketplace of ideas open
But liberals are making a category error: White supremacy isn’t a source of information
All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. —George Bernard Shaw
Because that when it is your turn to speak we won't stop you, either. This is why GITMO is bad. This is why torture is bad. This is why solitary confinement is bad. This is why no-knock warrants are bad. This is why tear-gassing protestors is bad. Because if they do it to them they will eventually find reason to do it to you.But when liberalism protects white nationalists against those who seek to disrupt their vile, anti-liberal activities, what does our system hope to gain?
I'm surprised to find you feel this way. To me, this is a clear case of the cure being far worse than the disease. I absolutely support their right to be wrong and to share their wrongness together. For in the eyes of others, I am also very wrong, and I am sharing my wrongness with you.
And I think you make a fair point. I definitely wobble back and forth on the issue of something so dangerous and so vile and wrong being protected just as much, but I simply can't make a case for truly protecting something that can lead to another genocide, especially during a time when anti-semitism is at its peak since WWII. I believe freedom of speech is vitally important and to be protected, and writing a law saying "except in the case of...." is also wrong. What I don't understand is truly following through on that conviction in cases like 700 cops escorting 45 nazis because of their rights to it, but you can't give cops to give a fuck enough to actually address actual issues or complaints or calls for help in the same type of neighborhoods. It gives the impression (unfortunately the correct one) that cops care more about protecting the rights of controversial groups than actually protecting and serving the communities they're in. I agree with you 100% on the political and theoretical side of this, but direct action and application is a different story, namely in law enforcement. If we have the year we just had with the horrifying militarization of police to harm and vilify minorities, where no change is being made to correct it, and the police are willing to turn blind eye after blind eye to the injustices of their departments, why aren't they turning a blind eye to the crimes against nazis? Especially when these groups exist solely as hate groups in the first place. My point is the country doesn't need to enact some law limiting free speech to what the government deems good and bad, but it needs to directly address the issues of hate groups. They have every right to do and say as they please, as long as what they do and say are not an attempt to limit the rights of others, which is precisely what nazis do. The actions don't exist in legislation, but in the enactment of proper police work. If you want to march nazis don't a poor neighborhood, they sure as fuck better be serving that neighborhood without flaw after the fact, if not before, lest it looks like the government cares about nazis and not, say, the people of Ferguson, or like caring about minorities is a minor concern for police countrywide, or that the rights and values our government espouses are reserved exclusively for white people, or indirectly condone nazism by giving them the stage instead of the minorities, and then recruit more nazis. And the problem is all those things are already happening or beginning to happen in the eyes of the people. So, no. Don't limit the rights of anybody, just don't apply the rights selectively and only for the oppressing group.
Dangerous ideas will always exist. Consider that the suppression of opposition played a large role in the Nazi takeover, and was likely as critical (if not more so) as the ideology itself. Dangerous regimes control the flow of ideas. Circumstances will always make some ideas particularly vile; however, protecting ideas when it is difficult reveals the true nature of our system. We will always desire to make exceptions, and the motivations to so will often be genuine and well-founded. But the exceptions that we would seek will change over time. Instead of weakening the protections for ideas, we should rely upon those protections to reveal dangerous ignorance for what it is. Doing and saying are very different things. For example, I fully support someone's right to campaign for the prohibition of abortion, and to draft, and vote for legislation that prohibits abortion. However, as long as abortion is legal, I do not support someone physically restricting another from having an abortion, or harming them for doing so. We do not care enough about black people in this country, and our law enforcement reflects it. IMHO this state of affairs is more a result of our ideas (ones prevalent in the general populous) than it is due to those of neonazis. Thus, IMO suppressing the ideas of neonazis would be a dangerous window dressing.They have every right to do and say as they please, as long as what they do and say are not an attempt to limit the rights of others, which is precisely what nazis do.
You're right. But my problem doesn't rest in nazis words so much as our system's response to nazis. When the system touts the rights of nazis, but doesn't even put up the facade of allowing the same thing for black people, it gives the impression that the system tacitly supports nazis and not the people who are fighting for their right to merely exist. Like I said above, I don't want to limit the rights of speech of those who are wrong, I just want to see our law enforcement take the same steps to protect minorities that they do to protect those who have dangerous and genocidal ideologies.Doing and saying are very different things.
While I agree that antisemitism is problematic and shameful, there doesn't appear to be much beyond public perception to substantiate claims that it's growing (at least, not in the West). Not that that's the thrust of your argument. I've just heard this echoed elsewhere, and it never struck me as correct, given that acceptance of all minorities seems to be on the rise over the decades.
The changing face of antisemitism is interesting. "Traditional" antisemitism, if we can call Christian European antisemitism as traditional, appears to be ebbing, while Muslim-initiated antisemitism has spiked. It suggests that liberal democracies, and those who buy into them, are becoming more accepting, and hopefully this can be extended to being more accepting of all marginalized groups. But the Israeli-Arab conflict appears to be a general Jewish-Muslim conflict in Europe, which is sad. Any way you slice it, antisemitism is certainly too high, but hopefully the long term trend is in the right direction.