The victims in Rotterham went to the police and were turned away because the police considered what they were reporting to be potentially offensive. You're right that it wasn't exposed by conspiracy nuts, but that's because it was a real thing and the people with flimsy evidence were ignored. That it wasn't exposed by people with flimsy evidence is my point. In a different context and with different laws they would have the circulated the story and it would have gained attention, credibility, and scrutiny. There is a reason why "Grooming gangs" are common in the UK compared to the US. I think the suppression of speech is one of those reasons.

It's basically gaslighting to praise the work of the government by saying "It was exposed by real investigative journalism and law enforcement work". Absolutely not. Multiple victims reported it to the government and were turned away. The government and journalists ignored it for decades. That's hardly "real investigative work". The government and journalists managed to detect the organized rape of hundreds of children after only 30 years!

The other reason to bring up Rotterham is to point out that conspiracies like this aren't purely fantasy. Sometimes the government is involved in the organized rape of children. Prohibiting people from talking about the possibility because you feel their evidence is insufficient is not a trade off I think should be made.

> to point out that conspiracies like this aren't purely fantasy

You're doing it again!

You can't justify belief in a baseless conspiracy theory by saying that some other vaguely related thing was true! You can't. The logic doesn't work.

And it's expressly harmful, because now that "justified" belief can be weaponized to hurt your political enemies. Stop it.

I don't think it's appropriate to say things like "Stop it". Please do me the courtesy of not treating me like a child and acting like you are instructing me.

The QAnon conspiracy is about pedophiles in government. The Rotterham scandal is about pedophiles enabled by government. The Epstein case is a mix of pedophiles and government. It's not crazy to suggest that pedophiles are mixed up with the government. We have multiple contemporary cases of this happening now.

Furthermore, it is exactly the tendency to censor speech which enabled the Rotterham scandal to endure for so long. Because people were censored for fear of causing offense hundreds of children were raped and victims were ignored. That's an extremely relevant example to a case where people are saying we must not permit people to talk about offensive things.

> It's not crazy to suggest that pedophiles are mixed up with the government.

Yes. It. Is. Because that suggestion requires evidence, which Q Does. Not. Have. Rotherham is not evidence for Q. Epstein is not evidence for Q. Rotherham and Epstein existing in history are not a license to make shit up about democrats and pretend it's the truth.

I've not said Epstein and Rotherham were evidence for Q. I've said they're examples of pedophiles intermixed with governments and examples of where holding high standards for what is appropriate to say resulted in the rape of innumerable children.

My point is not "Because Epstein therefore Q" but rather "We should allow speculation and conspiracies, even hurtful, hateful, or baseless, because the alternative is restricting what people can say, and such restrictions enabled and perpetuated some horrible crimes of a similar nature that happened recently."

This makes no sense.

Trump has several claims of rape against him, has been known to be on Pedophilia flights and private trips with Epstein and walked in on pageant changing rooms and other things.

If QAnon was about pedophilia, it would be about pedophilia. BUt its not.

It's really about projection. Make enemies of people with baseless claims so they believe its true.

Sad really.

He's using your desire to not be censored to fill your desire for hate. And anyone who disagrees with your hate violates your freedom to talk about it. Everything you don't believe in is fake news.

It's a reality distortion field.

Since you can't even spell Rotherham, I'll not give much weight to your analysis of the reasons behind the police failure there.

Since you evaluate arguments based on the spelling of proper nouns from foreign places I'm afraid I can't bring myself to care about the esteem with which you regard my analysis.

It's not just any foreign place is it? It's the foreign place you've been spouting off about so authoritatively

Odd, that in a conversation about balancing the benefits of free speech with the harms of it, and when discussing the example of an organized conspiracy of child rapists acting in the UK with the tacit consent of the government for decades, you've chosen to fixate on a minor spelling error.