Nothing emboldens racists like pointing to government oppression of their ideas. The KKK has free reign in the USA and they've experienced plummeting membership.

Nothing kills bad ideas like sunlight and scrutiny, you don't need to ban it and make them martyrs.

Bollocks.

This is old, early internet era naïveté.

Sure - anecdotally- you could perhaps convince one person by highlighting information.

But the plural of anecdote is not data.

At scale - sunlight and exposure increases dissemination of bad ideas.

Designing ideas to sound appealing in a viral sense means that even their dismissal and refutation by authority sources only increases their spread in the target population.

“Of course the governments going to deny they made the corona virus! They aren’t stupid.”

“Of course scientists would say that, they need grant money.”

All the ideas that grow from the root of this tree fail at scale.

Malicious actors are beyond the scope of this axiom for example - they don’t care about being defeated in argument- they just want to let vulnerable people know they exist, and then have them fall into their ideological orbit.

Competition over information networks only drives the news cycle effect - a market adapting to target the weakest link the human Fight or flight response, over giving better quality news.

To the point where the ACLU actively defended KKK members' First Amendment rights multiple times.

Second, and more directly related to the events of this weekend, there are important reasons for our long history of defending freedom of speech — including speech we abhor. We fundamentally believe that our democracy will be better and stronger for engaging and hearing divergent views. Racism and bigotry will not be eradicated if we merely force them underground. Equality and justice will only be achieved if society looks such bigotry squarely in the eyes and renounces it. Not all speech is morally equivalent, but the airing of hateful speech allows people of good will to confront the implications of such speech and reject bigotry, discrimination and hate. This contestation of values can only happen if the exchange of ideas is out in the open.

There is another practical reason that we have defended the free speech rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Today, as much as ever, the forces of white supremacy and the forces for equality and justice are locked in fierce battles, not only in Washington but in state houses and city councils around the country. Some government decision-makers are deeply opposed to the speech we support. We simply never want government to be in a position to favor or disfavor particular viewpoints. And the fact is, government officials — from the local to the national — are more apt to suppress the speech of individuals or groups who disagree with government positions. Many of the landmark First Amendment cases, such as NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware and New York Times v. Sullivan, have been fought by African-American civil rights activists. Preventing the government from controlling speech is absolutely necessary to the promotion of equality.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/equality-justice-and-f...

You're saying that racism and white supremacy is declining?

That's not what I said, but it is according to empirical data. America is a long way from segregation and the LA riots.

In 1990, nearly 50% of white respondents to a survey indicated they'd oppose living in a neighborhood where half the residents were black. In 2014, under 20% would oppose it and over 80% are indifferent or would favor it.

Going back further than 1990 only serves to bolster that fact.

What explains the disconnect between public opinion surveys and real life segregation?

"Throughout the 20th Century, racial discrimination was deliberate and intentional. Today, racial segregation and division result from policies and institutions that are no longer explicitly designed to discriminate. Yet the outcomes of those policies and beliefs have negative, racial impacts, namely with segregation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unit...

You think it’s increasing? Over what time frame?

At least in North America, racism and white supremacy is a fraction of what it was 50 years ago.

I think it morphed, changed character, while the level is constant. For instance, racism is now more sorted along with partisanship.

But a lot worse than it was only four years ago.

Maybe? Don't confused the increase in media coverage with it actually getting worse.

If you go by the number of hate crimes reported to the FBI (which has reporting bias), it has gone up, but it's still lower than it was during the late 90's.

The LA riots were in 1992. People were getting arrested for marching for civil rights in the 1960s.

Things have improved quite a bit. There was just a period where things were brushed under the rug and not acknowledged, but giving internet access to everyone has made us aware of what's been ignored for so long. There are clear bumps of race-motivated crimes or discrimination sometimes, but there's a pretty obvious downward trend in acceptance of it.

I'm not so sure. In the public sphere, certainly.

There remain many dark corners, where these pathologies flourish.

Social media just changed the landscape. Engagement maximizing algos birthed outrage cancel culture. It lets people find each other. It accelerates radicalization, both left and especially right leaning.

And the filter bubble keeps these things out of the public sphere.

In my home country Sweden, I used to think that the rise of the "sweden democrats" (a right wing populist party) was a sign of growing support for their views. I have recently reconsidered that view. I think what we see today are things that never went away. I may be alone in this, by I regard the right wing populism as a democratisation of society. Not because I like the views voiced by the people representing that part of the spectrum, but because it introduces a large part of the population to the public debate.

I think that we, in 30 years, will look back at the rise of right wing populism as a symptom of a positive development. The populist parties do get a lot of votes, and if anything I believe that is a sign that the voters have not felt represented by the power. Which, in turn, I also believe is why the populist party supporters are so loud. If I actually believed that the government did not represent the people, I would be loud as well.

When the "anti establishment" has become the establishment I think the democratic process will end up being stronger with a discussion climate that better represents the population.

I hope you prove more right than wrong.

As a German, I certainly don't want the governments of the world to generalize this. As the country who (arguably) started two world wars that killed probably low three-digit millions of people, we are in a special position to assure the world that we're not gonna launch a third. Part of that is being honest about the consequences of fascist governments. The relevant ban has decades of history as being specific and limited. Frankly, at this point I trust our government to not try and balloon it into a general suppression of free speech. I don't have the same trust for Youtube.

The devil is always in the details. What does “denial of X” even mean? Can you dispute certain facts, like numbers and dates? Who gets to decide the ultimate truth?

It takes a long time for the details of history to settle. For example, nobody knew most dinosaurs had feathers until the last decade.

Truth and fact are two different things.

So would you support banning everyone on YouTube who went against WHO’s tweet[1] saying there’s no evidence of human to human transmission? That was only in January.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/who-haunted-by-old-tweet-sayin...

First of all, this is about “YouTube banning 'medically unsubstantiated' content.” as well as content that “would go against World Health Organization recommendations,” which (if those guidelines are followed) doesn’t mean banning of people or discourse, but rather disinformation. Secondly, the WHO tweeted that, but had actually already acknowledged human-to-human transmission multiple times[1][2] in the days before the tweet, so no, I wouldn’t support banning discussion around a tweet.

1. https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unk...

2. https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/09-01-2020-who-stateme...

Content that goes "against World Health Organization recommendations" is not necessarily misinformation though.

I agree. That being said, I think getting more definition and transparency around all this on YouTube/Google's part is going to be really important, though I don't expect it, sadly. There's a fair amount of flimflam being pushed on YouTube right now--everything from literally ingesting chlorine dioxide, to other "holistic" cures that _appear_ to be benign.

>saying there’s no evidence of human to human transmission

Saying there is preliminary research that gives no clear evidence of it. Stop twisting the words

Nah its oppression.

Given that they reinvented gunboat diplomacy for Greece, not really.

How is Germany's handling of the Greek debt crisis at all comparable to forcing a nation to the table with the threat of invasion?

Please, show us the facts where was a threat of invasion against Greece?

Instead, there was a Greece threat to seize German property as a compensation for WWII: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31831694

I'm saying there wasn't such a threat. throwqqq's parent comment compared it to gunboat diplomacy though, which is tantamount to a threat of invasion.