We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26432620.
This is the story of Daryl Davis, a black man who convinced 200 KKK members (yes, real violent racists, not just people who disagreed with you on tax rates) to change their ways. If a black man can do it by talking to KKK members, maybe it's after all possible for you to dialogue with your neighbor about tax rates?
2) How do you determine that a specific person you're dealing with can be specifically categorized into that bucket?
3) Are you calling them that name because it accurately defines that person's identity and behavior or is it because this tag is a really easy tag to slap onto people so you can deal with them very easily without having to think too much..
Like if I call someone a simp, beyond me insulting him and conveying I don't like him, it doesn't really mean anything..
not like he's going to become one (whatever that would mean) because I called him that..
The urge to label them fascists and make them seem monstrous and unworthy of engagement is the impulse leads to civil war.
edit: At least nobody I've seen yet. People are probably gonna say it (this goes for any "it" as conversation length grows), but I'd expect it to be downvoted.
So regardless of the HN crowd's restraint when using labels, the labels themselves can carry unintended implications.
Fascist is not just "extreme right" it's a specific political ideology or goal. The extreme left is therefore ???
Because while the US certainly has a small following of communists like how every country has a small following of everything, they're certainly not the group which attempted to seize the Capitol building on January 6.
1. Declare people who disagree with you fascists 2. Declare that it's impossible to dialogue with fascists
Then it all becomes very easy.
Maybe that’s what they meant by “fascist form of government”?
Just as there was an attempt by a presidential candidate to overturn the results of an election and install himself in 2000. And many times before. Challenging election results is not something unusual, it happens all the time. And will undoubtedly happen again. There's nothing "fascist" in using free speech and court system to try and prove there were election fraud (or miscount, or whatever the next candidate could think of). That's why we have the court system, so they have their chance to prove their case.
> Maybe that’s what they meant by “fascist form of government”?
Except nobody tried to change the form of government. So either we already have the fascist form of government right now, or trying to prove, using existing form of government, that you were - by existing laws - the rightfully elected candidate - can not be seen as advocating "fascist form of government".
So, if "that's what they mean", they're mis-using the term.
Or do you mean fascist as a slur, ie. anything I don't like?
THAT is how you beat fascism. Not censorship.
Lazy programmers trying censor via bits and bytes are never going to accomplish in a million years what Mr. Davis already has.
Some great things are done by great people, but they don't necessarily scale well.
Do you want a (difficult) method that works (personal involvement and direct conversation), or a simple, easy, lazy one (deplatforming/cancel/censorship) that doesn't?
Nazi censored. Stalin censored. Xi censors. Seems hard to explain if censorship doesn't work.
Nazis also killed the speakers. Stalin killed the speakers. Xi kills the speakers.
Citing mass genociders as "censorship works" is hilariously bad evidence of censorship working when terminating the speaker most definitely works.
We want something that works and that doesn't have the nasty side-effects. Nazi, Stalin, and Xi's tactics aren't the answer we're looking for.
It seems unlikely that at least a thousand people out of 90 million aren't gullible enough to be swayed by hellbanning.
"it seeming unlikely" hardly compares to a man with 200 trophies to prove his method works.
Mr. Davis has 200 examples. I'm only asking for one. His method works. The deplatformers' citation of their own platforms only proves that they control their own platforms, not that any extremist view was changed.
How else are you supposed to respond to a comment like this?
But I do believe you need to give reasonable responses to extreme views, to prevent others from becoming extreme. Calling someone "fascist" is in that sense never constructive.
Reasonable views are hard to argue with.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. 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 anti-Semites 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. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
step 2: declare that you cant debate fascism
step 3: ...
step 4: censorship and violent supression time
I'd suggest you might try the other path, as Chomsky also suggests:
> “If you're in favour of freedom of speech that means you're in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise you're not in favour of freedom of speech.
> There's two positions you can have on freedom of speech, and you can decide which position you want.”
Science is an excellent framework, leftists are very good at it when it’s about criticizing the opponent, and we are very good at it when we want to criticize the PC of the moment. Now we need to converge.
Please don’t despair. Please don’t give up discussing and trying to sort out truth from pollution.
You can't tweet at them though.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. 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 anti-Semites 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. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Very good quote.
FTFY!
Which ironically runs right into the famous poem:
>First they came for the Communists >And I did not speak out >Because I was not a Communist
>Then they came for the Socialists >And I did not speak out >Because I was not a Socialist
>Then they came for the trade unionists >And I did not speak out >Because I was not a trade unionist
>Then they came for the Jews >And I did not speak out >Because I was not a Jew
>Then they came for me >And there was no one left >To speak out for me
The same goes for your post about tolerance towards intolerance. And then you complain about anti-white racism, which is not a thing.
Care to elaborate?
The right is the one failling at cancelling people, but they try just as much as the left