The change many people are noting is that opposition to free speech used to be largely confined to the religious right. It's now much more broad.

I think part of it is the rise of online echo chambers. People act like the media they consume, and latter generations grew up with online circle jerks being the norm.

Another factor is the rise of so much bad faith disinformation coupled with the extreme virality of bullshit on social media. It seems like the truth of a story is inversely proportional to its likelihood of being shared on Facebook.

There's been a panic about the explosion of things like Qanon, neo-fascism, and anti-vaccine disinformation. I hear a lot of people questioning whether it's possible to have a liberal open society without... ironically... censorship.

I don't think censorship can be the answer, but I don't know what the answer is. The last few years has left me utterly shocked at the gullibility of human beings. Do people even think at all or are we indeed just mindless "meme machines" whose central nervous systems are vectors for replicating patterns?

I think the answer is to view Free Speech as a positive right. Ie, something the state guarantees you have. As a logical consequence, the state must then also fight those who actively oppose you having the right to speak freely. Or any of your other rights. Those who seek to destroy your positive freedoms should have them taken away. Similarly, not being discriminated based on skin color or sex or gender is also a positive right in my view, so anyone who discriminates based on those categories should similarly be punished, otherwise their intolerance propagates.

Censorship of those who seek to oppress is necessary to require freedom (or to put it another way, the paradox of intolerance is that you must be intolerant of those who are intolerant, to guarantee that maximum tolerance is not only possible but guaranteed over a long time frame).

On the note of meme machines, I always liked to think that Memes ought to be studied in a university course, Memetics could become a serious field of study.

> Censorship of those who seek to oppress

I suppose one could argue that this amounts to a threat of violence, which is a form of limited speech. I am not free to make bodily threats of violence toward other named individuals. Threatening positive rights is threatening force, so it definitely gets at least near to that line.

It doesn't have to be force at the start. If a politician were to run on the platform "no free speech for poor people", obviously they're not applying force or threatening it.

And even when elected, they threaten no force, they simply remove a right from the law.

At no point did they threaten force against poor people, only that their free speech be taken away. They got elected and are doing it non-violently.

Now poor people no longer have free speech.

Hence, either you must treat a threat against free speech as violence unconditionally of it's physical or psychological component (ie if it has a legal component) or you must acknowledge that free speech can be threatened by non-violent oppression.

> Censorship of those who seek to oppress is necessary to require freedom

Besides the obvious, who defines what is oppressive? If we are censoring people then there should be due process at a minimum, so who writes those procedures and laws? How do we ensure they don’t become politicized?

Oppressive is that which seeks removes your positive freedoms. Positive freedoms should be fairly uncontroversial, things like freedom of opinion, freedom to bodily autonomy, freedom to seek work, freedom to basic living conditions etc.

To ensure they don't become politicized, any new positive freedom should require a 2/3rds approval by the government (and for the people in the US that means you need to figure out multi-party or this is gonna suck) and removing a positive freedom would require 3/4th approval by the government.

The procedures and laws should be handled and drafted by a separated government branch, which is dedicated to protecting the freedoms granted by the constitution (as well as protecting the constitution of your country itself). They substitute prosecution in case of violations but do have to go through the same courts as everyone else.

To ensure that this doesn't escalate for person-on-person disputes, generally they should only prosecute those who are threatening to oppress or have oppressed a group of people or a person for being part of a group of people under protection from the constitution (like their sex, gender, economic background or skin color).

And you think this new gov department won’t become politicized? Whatever affiliation you are, imagine the opposite side running these offices. That is very scary.

Then there’s the question about your so-called “nonpositive rights”. What does this include? What does it take to remove these?

Your vision of the future here is terrifying, and I will personally fight against a truth dictator and the removal of rights with every ounce of my being.

Positive and negative freedoms aren't something new and even the US has plenty of examples. They merely stipulate what the state has to do to ensure them. A positive freedom is one where the state has to act to preserve them. A negative freedom is one where the state has to not act to preserve them.

For example, owning property is a negative freedom, because the state must not act against your property to ensure this freedom.

Being free of violence is a positive freedom, as the state will have to act to ensure this freedom (by sending a police officer when you dial 911 for example). In this note, not being a victim of theft would be another positive freedom, as the state will act to prevent it or redress you as a victim.

Negative rights don't have to be removed, as you fear, they're simply rights that the state can passively guarantee without having to interfere. Generally, such negative rights/freedoms don't require protection from the state, (hence they're negative).

On the flipside, the positive rights and freedoms do need to be protected. You have a freedom of speech/opinion, which is positive in that the state should act that you can enjoy them. If it were a negative freedom, then they could be lost at the toss of a hat the next time a truth dictator comes to power, as they aren't required to be protected.

So by the very nature you say you fight the removal of these rights, you're already reinforcing that freedom of speech is a positive right. (I don't even get were truth dictator comes in?)

To point out, there is gov departments in a few countries that already do what I describe or very close to. While generally not perfect, they have been useful in digging out neonazi groups and fighting for your freedoms more than the armies of those countries.

This got real buried. Thanks for the intro to positive and negative rights. My complaint is with removing rights. Rights are not supposed to be removed, you’re born with them. I do not think any entity should be able to remove any right, positive or negative. It’s a dangerous precedent and I reiterate, every ounce of my being.

Again, I don't advocate for removing them, but that in order to protect your positive freedoms, the state will have to violate someone else's freedoms, negative or positive.

At the moment, the US has no protection against a political party removing your freedoms from the constitution. If someone were to attempt it, they would be let off scotts-free, so to speak. There is no punishment for saying "poor people shouldn't have the right to vote or freedom of speech", which some of your politicians are already saying in a roundabout way.

And once you lost them, you won't get them back as easily and that will be more dangerous that violating someone's freedoms to protect everyone elses.

In the Boomer and GenX generations the right wing opposed free speech and the left wing fought for it. In Millennials and GenZ it’s the opposite. If you have a group that’s mixed in age but most made up of left of center people from their respective generations then you are likely to see all the would be censures in the younger half.