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A comment on Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim. Parent comment

Re:Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Ho... by adventured on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:25PM (#32363903)
The KKK was thoroughly defeated as a power in the US thanks entirely to the US system of freedom of speech; the KKK had a very large, potent base at one time. They were not outlawed as a group, sunlight-as-disinfectant overwhelmingly won out (and no, the US still having a small number of KKK members with next to zero political power isn't a good counter point). It was the ability to tightly regulate and limit speech that assisted the Nazis in coming to power and implementing totalitarianism in Germany.

It's extremely obvious that Trump (his government, his admin) not being able to control the media, control speech, was a really good thing. And that's true whether it's a terrible Republican or terrible Democrat, or any other terrible politician, that is in power. If you give them one big lever of speech control to start from, they'll expand that control, you can count on that.

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Re:Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Ho... by dragonwriter on Friday August 05, 2022 @11:06PM (#32364435)
> The KKK was thoroughly defeated as a power in the US thanks entirely to the US system of freedom of speech; the KKK had a very large, potent base at one time. They were not outlawed as a group, sunlight-as-disinfectant overwhelmingly won out

While the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 didn't, you are correct, outlaw the Klan as a group, it did authorize a whole lot of measures—including authorizing federal military force and suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and new federal civil and criminal causes of action—to combat their actions and those of similar groups, and those authorities were liberally used in suppressing them. Describing the successful strategy as “sunlight as disinfectant” rather than massive application of force is... not grounded in fact.

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Re:Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Ho... by MrMan on Friday August 05, 2022 @10:11PM (#32364156)
I know very wealthy people in the south who are giving a lot of money to militias. does that count?
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