"And one person gets up and says, “you know what, this holocaust, I’m not even sure it happened. In fact, I’m
pretty certain it didn’t. Indeed, I begin to wonder if the only thing is that the Jews brought a little bit of
violence on themselves.”—That person doesn’t just have a right to speak, that person’s right to speak must be
given extra protection. Because what he has to say must have taken him some effort to come up with. Might
contain a grain of historical truth; might, in any case, give people to think why do they know what they
think they already know. How do I know I know this except I’ve always been taught this and never heard any
thing else? It’s always worth establishing first principle….don’t take refuge in the false security of
consensus and the feeling that, whatever you think, you’re bound to be okay because you’re in the safely, moral
majority"
I think one of the things we've been learning real hard as a globally interconnected species is, if people can do nefarious shit through insisting their intentions be taken in good faith, over a large enough sampling size they WILL do nefarious shit because it is in their interest to do so.
It's like criminal justice. If you look at a large enough population you begin to run into people where you can't take their word on things. And mandating that such people must have the ability to make their case is not the same thing as taking their side. Sometimes what they have to say did not take great effort to come up with. Sometimes they say what they say because they're what they appear to be, and it's a thing that is criminal or otherwise unacceptable.
Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance comes to mind, but my issue with that is who gets to decide what is intolerant? I don't like the idea of some unelected board or career politician deciding what is suitable for me to read or view.
I strongly believe that one of those principles should be that hate speech is intolerable and unacceptable. And yes, there are grey areas in determining what is hate speech (this isn't a silver bullet that removes all need for human judgement and discussion), but there are also very large areas that are not grey in any way, shape, or form.
... Might contain a grain of historical truth; might, in any case, give people to think why do they know
what they think they already know.
Perhaps we'll be able to set up elaborate simulations one day to see how things play out.
If Hitchens had said, "I've weighed the two potential worst cases against each other, and I believe that the harms of protecting Holocaust denial are something that we can all live with", then I'd consider it a valid opinion. As it is, this quote strikes me as shallow and poorly thought out.
He's reduced a complex balance to a simplistic decision by excluding any input from the people at the most risk of harm. If he were Jewish, I doubt he'd have written that paragraph. The strongest advocates of unrestricted speech always seem to be those who have the least at risk, and the risk to others seems completely invisible despite their supposed attachment to hearing from everybody. He's taken refuge in exactly the opposite "false security of consensus".
The argument comes from a place of privilege, is egregiously reductionist, and completely ignores simple precepts like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.
"I'm not a proponent of unlimited free speech. It's those grey areas that concern me. Like, using Hitch's example, is holocaust denial hate speech or an incitement to violence? Under certain circumstances, I imagine it would be. It's easy for me to say it should be allowed because I know the majority of society right now would dismiss their claims, but at what point (in terms of the percentage of society) would I start to feel uneasy about the idea being discussed? Is it better then to censor it outright? What if, as Hitch says:
... Might contain a grain of historical truth; might, in any case, give people to think why do they know
what they think they already know.
The problem, as I see it, isn't even about incitement to violence. There's plenty of Holocaust denial that isn't an incitement to violence, unless by stretching that term far past its breaking point. It's not even really hate speech, in a strict reading of that term -- it only becomes defined as "hate speech" because we know that it originates from people who have had more explicit hate speech restricted.
But that doesn't mean it's without harm. These "questions" are really assertions that rather than being killed en masse, Jews have in fact inflicted great deception on the world. That creates mistrust -- sometimes violent, but more often merely prejudicial. Those prejudices can take effect in myriad ways, impossible to trace to the questioner, but nonetheless real.
Would a smart person like Hitchens be fooled by this? Surely not. But then again, he doesn't even seem to consider that it's a possibility. As you say, he seems to think that violence is the only way harm could be inflicted, and nothing else seems to be involved. That's a blind spot.
That blind spot is important here, because his entire argument is based on "Let people make their arguments and surely we'll come to the right conclusion". I don't believe he himself is capable of coming to the right conclusion because he's missing something right in front of him -- something somebody must surely have pointed out at some point, but which he doesn't even consider to be a problem worth mentioning.
Every single ideology will say their opponents are responsible for countless lives lost. (And if they lump everyone who disagrees with them together can probably make such a case) Just for an example, capitalism vs communism. I'd rather not be stuck in a China like situation where arguing against government beliefs like "this new virus in Wuhan is nothing to worry about citizen" gets censored or we get eternally stuck in a suboptimal state because arguing for anything different is considered dangerous.
"The rise of neo-Nazism and other forms of militant, hard-right reactionary ideology, as well as vaccine deniers, and the hundreds of thousands of lives they have provably cost us, are a price worth paying to make sure that no one can tell me I can't post whatever videos I want on a privately-owned video hosting site."