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.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        Well, only their free speech.

        Your blasphemous thoughts should be banned, obviously.

        • gabbath@lemmy.world
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          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.

  • d4rko@lemm.ee
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    7 days ago

    “First they fascinate the fools, then they muzzle the intelligent” Bertrand Russell.

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    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.

  • ghostfish@lemm.ee
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    They believe in free speech only enough to get into power and then remove it.

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    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.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      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.

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      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.

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        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.

  • Wilco@lemm.ee
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    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.

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    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!

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    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.

    https://youtu.be/Sx4BVGPkdzk

  • SabinStargem@lemmings.world
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    I am a free speech absolutist. Evil people should say what they want to do…so that I can tell them what will happen if they try to ICE my neighbors. 🔫 🩸

    The thing about modern discourse on social media platforms like Reddit, is that bigots get to threaten people all they like. If a good person mentions Luigi or what should happen to Musk, they get banned. THIS is the real threat to democracy.

    It is best if the bad guys don’t work in secret. They should expose themselves to be monsters early and often, with decent folk making it clear that evil positions deserve equally merciless responses. I think part of why the Republicans have been so successful, is because they feel like “winners” to people who value assertiveness. Democrats almost always holds true to decorum and norms - which gives them the impression of being “weak” losers.

    Some people vote for the strong, because by extension, it makes themselves feel strong. I think this explains why some people simply never listen to any amount of reason or evidence - they perceive the world through feelings, not thought. This is why “rough” speaking democrats might hold value in our society, because they can speak the same language, while still holding the values of goodness close to their heart.

    To put it simply, a lot of Republicans might cease supporting Trump, if the following entered their mind: “They are stronger than me. I don’t want to get punched! Let’s stay home.”

    …it isn’t terrific, but I think some people are simply biased towards authority. Be it good or evil.

    • bananoidandroid@feddit.nu
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      I agree with your point in general but free speech is a right that is only a protection from consequences from the government and does not include private coorporations or citizens. If someone start spewing racist remarks in my house, i’ll ask them to leave. The same applies for reddit and other platforms. We can freely move to a place where our speech is allowed. We can’t just force every single platform or every gathering allowing all speech at all times.

      • SabinStargem@lemmings.world
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        I disagree about private corporations. Money is no different from that of religion, violence, or any other form of power. So long as you have a large monopoly on these things, you can greatly influence people to speak…or silence them. Reddit traditionally served as a public square, but now we see selective speech being forced upon everybody: Musk good, Luigi bad.

        It is one thing to control speech within your personal dwelling, but it is quite another when you are in charge of a service. Should you be allowed to ban gay folk from buying cake? Or prevent a black man dating a white girl from dining at a classy restaurant?

        Violence has many permutations, and forcing everyday norms is by far the most corrosive to personal identity and the social fabric.

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          I respect your ideal and i think its a good basic value to have, but lets be honest. Reddit has always had content moderation in one way or another but had very high level of tolerance. I remember when every second post on reddit was a huge ascii of pedobear and they had subreddits with legal yet very untasteful pictures of underage girls and bullying fat people had their own subreddit. At some point it became large enough to get large investors that doesn’t want their name next to a barely dressed 14 year old. Then TheDonald and other right wing subs was banned, so it has mostly upheld free speach for what is popular among its users for the longest of time but has never been a free speach platform. Even 4chan today is nowhere near what it used to be, for good reasons i think because i think no sane person would look at it and think, this is free speach in its prime.

          • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
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            Moderation is when you take down material because the recipient doesn’t want to see it. Censorship is when you take down content because you don’t want the recipient to see it, regardless of how the recipient feels about it. If people think censorship is sometimes justified, they should argue that, and not muddle the picture with moderation.

            • bananoidandroid@feddit.nu
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              I disagree with the notion that moderation is done when the recipient doesnt want to see it. Moderation is the tools of censorship.

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    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.

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      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.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      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.

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        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.

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      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.

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        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.

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      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.

      • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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        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”.

      • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        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.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      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.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          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.

          • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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            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.

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              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.

  • Hubi@feddit.org
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    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
    • rustyfish@lemmy.world
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      Goebbels must have felt really clever when he killed his children and wife. Right Goebbels?

      Goebbels? (Gore)

      Oh.

        • comfy@lemmy.ml
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          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.

          • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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            Thank you for that! I know you didn’t have to do it, so I want you to know that I appreciate your effort.

        • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.ioM
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          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.

          • rustyfish@lemmy.world
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            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.

            • snooggums@lemmy.world
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              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

                • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  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!

          • Higgs boson@dubvee.org
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            Fuck you. This shit is traumatic for me. had family members murdered by the actual Nazis. Blocked you and this shithole community.

            • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.ioM
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              Yes, the holocaust was an extremely traumatic event, that’s the whole point.

              I’m not whitewashing history for you, sorry.

              • notsoshaihulud@lemmy.worldOP
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                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.

                • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.ioM
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                  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.

            • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              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.

            • DogEarBookmark@reddthat.com
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              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.

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              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.

      • orcrist@lemm.ee
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        No, it doesn’t mean that. Think about what you are suggesting.

        • uienia@lemmy.world
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          No tolerance for the intolerant in a tolerant society. It has been thought about a lot.

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            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.

        • PotatoLibre@feddit.it
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          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

        • comfy@lemmy.ml
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          7 days ago

          True. We should instead just use one bullet for each and be done with them, no point in copying their atrocities.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Remember that smile gave Moscow Mitch gave when they confirmed Trump’s lame duck Supreme Court nominee, despite rejecting Obama’s?