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.
Serendipity in my feed.
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.
the conflation of ‘normal’ with ‘okay’ is sickening to me. unfortunately, this is normal now.
and that should set off fucking air raid sirens in every single person’s head.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A better fate than what he deserved, IMO.
Unfortunately he was allegedly burned after his death
See? Better than what he deserved.
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.
Thank you for that! I know you didn’t have to do it, so I want you to know that I appreciate your effort.
I think you confuse him with Göring.
Probably
Reported for untagged gore. Blocked for being a shitbag troll.
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.
To be fair, the gore part I kinda understand. How do I tag a comment with gore? I mean he could have told me himself but he was so scared of what I might reply, he blocked me.
Hide it as a spoiler that is titled what it is and that it has gore.
deep fried goebbels (gore)
Pretend there was gore here
Thx 👍🏿
but also, and im not a mod of anything and this would probably get you banned a lot of places:
nazi shit needs to be shown for what it is. no more looking away. a century of looking away and pretending it couldn’t happen here, that it wasn’t happening here, that it was just about ‘ethics in games journalism’ or whatever bullshit is what got us here. show that shit.
if we keep looking away, we will keep letting it happen. I would rather see a few old photos of gore a bunch of times than have to smell them, or risk being them, every time I go outside. a state of affairs which we are perilously fucking close to.
edit: so please; post more gore. you might just be saving lives!
You might be interested in History of Everything’s video, “How? How educated people commit genocide”. It is available for free, uncensored, at his Patreon. This is history that should be remembered, so that it can’t be repeated.
Fuck you. This shit is traumatic for me. had family members murdered by the actual Nazis. Blocked you and this shithole community.
You know that’s a Nazi in the pic, right?
He doesn’t. But now nobody can tell him. Because he blocked everyone 😔
🤷♂️
Yes, the holocaust was an extremely traumatic event, that’s the whole point.
I’m not whitewashing history for you, sorry.
I would have reported the pic for gore, but I think hiding it under spoiler is fair game. What humanity should have learned from this story is that just because ideologies that consider fairness or empathy a weakness might appear viable and effective to grab power quickly, we have plenty of gory evidence that they do lead to the annihilation of millions, including those initially benefiting from them.
A spoiler would be OK by me, but I would still encourage everyone to look at what they did if they have not seen it. Visit a holocaust museum even. Frankly, I don’t know that everyone understands, there are an increasing number of people who downplay or outright deny the horrors of World War II and everything that led to it.
hey, yeah, so, my people were also slaughtered by the nazis. some of the first, actually. and again by reaganites. I have watched loved ones die slowly and horribly with my own eyes in non-nazi-related deaths. like actually seen smelled touched it, not just heard stories from grandma.
and I would rather see this shit if it reminds people the stakes of current politics. also, that’s a nazi in the pic, it just happens it also got kiled because of nazi shit.
Sorry to hear about your family.
If the world is going to blatantly ignore history, then the atrocities should become more abundantly available as a reminder. Censoring history is re-writing it.
I had great uncles and an aunt I never got to meet because of Nazis. This picture is soothing, being a reminder of what happens to all Nazis. They all die. Every single one of them is removed before their time. It’s comforting to know that this too shall pass.
never cry over spilled nazi.
Grow up.
That’s why we have to treath them the same way they would treath us.
No, it doesn’t mean that. Think about what you are suggesting.
No tolerance for the intolerant in a tolerant society. It has been thought about a lot.
Agreed, but that wasn’t what the other comment demanded. If we treat other people like Nazis treat their victims, you are a Nazi yourself.
That Nazis do not get the benefit of the doubt or a public soapbox or platform is something I agree with and hopefully what the other commentator meant instead of executions and ovens. But it is important to not dehumanise Nazis and not stoop to their level. They are all too human, that is the problem.
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
True. We should instead just use one bullet for each and be done with them, no point in copying their atrocities.
Remember that smile gave Moscow Mitch gave when they confirmed Trump’s lame duck Supreme Court nominee, despite rejecting Obama’s?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
laws will never protect the people who need it. every community should be on the lookout for this shit. everything should turn against you when you do a fascism. if you want to spread fear of everything as an excuse to murder the weak to make you feel good, there should be no inch of the world where you are safe.
like, a lot of the nazi shit here in the united states WAS against the law. that didn’t help. just a bunch of wrist slaps.
Communal action > government “protections”
Every time.
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
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.
The far right are well-practiced at co-opting and twisting concepts. It’s classic doublespeak.
It’s why you have “Christians” who are staunchly opposed to feeding the hungry, or treating the sick. (See: school lunches.)
It’s why “capitalism” now represents the complete lack of meaningful competition, when that competition is the only thing that ever made capitalism worthwhile in the first place. (See: Microsoft getting away scot-free after being found guilty of illegal, anticompetitive business practices all throughout the 90s.)
It’s why “free speech” proponents are laser-focused on creating new and terrifying mechanisms for censorship. (See: *gestures widely*)
I could go on.
It’s sad how little resistance has been made against this corruption. How easily our natural allies have been turned into our greatest enemies.
christianity, since the roman empire adopted it at the very least, has been mostly a tool of appropriating warm fuzzy feelings and directing them towards a king.
capitalism was always been into lack of competition. it’s not about markets, that’s a more modern bullshit invention. it’s about valuing ownership over labor. caring about the nobility rather than the peasants’ labor, but with more contrivance.
mood on the free speech.
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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.
Anyone who thinks that Nazis believe in free speech is an idiot.
Indeed, GAB is a great example, their “freeze peach” or banned :)
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.
They only like free speech because it lets them claim to be censored.
The only free speech they like is their own – unopposed and the only thing heard.
Jean Paul Sarte articulates my feelings on this better than I ever could.
Interesting read.
They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The antisemites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.
This is what we see these days. Trump and his followers lying is normalized, i.e., they are not “obliged to use words responsibly”, whereas anybody argues against trumpists is.
They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.
This is what changed since then. They no longer fear being seen as ridiculous or stupid. They embrace it.
That’s why I claim all conservatives are pig fuckers. I don’t care if it’s true. It’s up to them to argue with me. And they won’t do that because they have their full 3" stuck in some pig.
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I think they still fear being perceived as ridiculous, but they’ve been very successful at making the bar really fucking high.
I think they only fear looking weak.
I was looking to jot down that quote. It perfectly encapsulates the shitbags who denies vaccinations or the damage that DOGE is doing to humanity.
Does anyone?
The closest I can think of to “real free speech absolutists” is the old-school doctrinal libertarians. Even they have limits on what they believe should be allowed and specifically state that contracts should be legally enforceable.
Does anyone?
Yes, old-school liberals, the ACLU, etc.
It’s bizarre & disappointing that newer generations seem to associate freedom of speech with right-wing authoritarians when freedom of speech has been a firmly liberal value advanced through the enlightenment & civil rights movement. Everyone ought to defend it.
Claim it, twist it, poison it, ruin it. Hate groups and vile scum always do that with things people used to care about or that used to be innocuous.
Claim it, twist it, poison it, ruin it.
Nothing new historically. You don’t have to accept their false premises by surrendering ideas to them.
things people used to care about or that used to be innocuous
Free speech is power, not innocuous: authorities fear it. It belongs to the people unless they surrender it.
Used to care about? Only if you let them stop you.
The ACLU are nationalist ideologues who don’t believe in anything. There’s no objective definition of “civil rights” or even “free speech”. They promote the wacky idea that money is speech and corporations are people. They’re only “free speech absolutists” for the rich or whatever the system tells them. They’re fash enablers.
That’s the most delulu & citation-free comment I’ve read in recent time: good job!
The premise of free expression is that the people get to decide what speech they want to hear, and it’s not the role of an authority to decide that for them. Seems you oppose that liberty & want an authority to decide. Isn’t there a name for people who oppose freedom & want everyone to obey authority? Aren’t there some rather unsavory characters who agree with you? That’s some awfully bad company: despite your superficial differences, you’re a bit too alike.
yeah it’s a philosophical question the answer to which changes with the times (like, does free speech/expression even mean the same thing in the 1700s as in the present era where “speech” is delivered and amplified by machines without even the necessity of direct human involvement).
The ACLU believes money is speech and corporations are people. They’re just capitalist/nationalist wackos.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-aclu-wrong-about-citizens-united/
You don’t need to be an “absolutist” to believe in free speech. Open exchange of ideas is valuable. Not needing to be suspicious of everyone hiding what they really think out of fear is valuable. Censorship powers are very tempting to abuse and the consequences of their abuse are terrible, therefore they should be strictly limited. Believing in free speech can just be understanding this stuff and having a bias against shutting people up as a go-to solution.
There are no absolutists, my friend. Everyone has limits.
Exactly. The real debate is on which parts should be off limits.
Most people can think of some speech that they consider so horrible that nobody should be allowed to say it.
People often try to hedge that position by arguing that they’re not even really infringing on anyone’s speech because their form of restriction doesn’t meet a sufficient threshold of censorship.
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.
