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Re:Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to qui... by krapp on Sunday October 02, 2022 @10:41AM (#33056239)
>"That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it.""Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."

I'm not aware of any group intending to overthrow a government or otherwise do harm which was allowed to recruit and spread their propaganda as aggressively and freely as possible, and which was thwarted in their aims by nothing more than civil discourse. I don't know what experience he believes to be contrary to that classic argument, but that of the Nazis and Communists ain't it.

It certainly doesn't seem to work with modern propaganda or conspiracy theory. I'm certain QAnon and anti-vaxxers have been presented with arguments contrary to their claims, and those of white supremacists and anti-semites have been litigated for a century or more, and yet not only do they persist, but are experiencing a modern renaissance.

Show me an example where this proposition that "letting them all talk" is the best way to prevent organized violence and mayhem at scale. I can raise you book burnings and gulags and death camps galore.

Re:Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to qui... by pessimizer on Sunday October 02, 2022 @11:38AM (#33056855)
> I can raise you book burnings and gulags and death camps galore.

Yes, the famous events that come from letting everyone speak: book burnings and death camps. If we could just burn enough books, we could keep books from being burned forever. If we silence enough people, we can keep people from being silenced.

[dead]
Re:Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to qui... by pessimizer on Sunday October 02, 2022 @02:40PM (#33058887)
Elaborate on your examples of how the powerful allowing the weak to speak leads to book burnings and death camps, and I'll give you something more detailed than a clear, concise response.
Re:Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to qui... by CrazyPyroLinux on Sunday October 02, 2022 @11:39AM (#33056862)
So in order to prevent book burnings we must...burn books that advocate book burnings?
Re:Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to qui... by jdlshore on Sunday October 02, 2022 @12:45PM (#33057644)
The argument is for deplatforming, so it would be more accurate to say, “in order to prevent book burnings, we must not give them any assistance in publicizing their thoughts.”

Deplatforming doesn’t forcibly prevent speech, it just pushes it to the margins. You can still publish your book in favor of book burnings, but, in a deplatforming world, no major publisher would publish it, so you’d have to do a small independent print run that would likely be ignored.

This is the way the world has always worked. Publishers (including TV channels, newspapers, etc.) have always exercised discretion over what they thought was worthy to publish. What’s different today is that the human content moderation has largely disappeared, which has allowed the marginal voices (antivax on both left and right, QAnon, etc.) to flourish.

Edit: That’s not to say this content moderation has been perfect. It allows small communities to exercise behavior that the larger society finds abhorrent, such as refusing service to people of color. And so laws are passed regulating what small communities can do, which understandably pisses them off. Human systems are messy; there’s no absolutist answer that works, either in unbridled control or unbridled tolerance.

Re:Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to qui... by ethbr0 on Sunday October 02, 2022 @10:48AM (#33056308)
Scientology?