Tolerance was never a reason the Nazis rose to power or stayed in power. It was always rigorous control of others that enabled them.
Even when they were being opposed - by the violence of the communists, they met violence with violence. And escalated that violence. It was a "us or them" situation that they built - and german society eventually chose the Nazi's violence over the communist violence. This wasn't tolerance of the Nazis. They simply outlasted the communists.
Please please please stop spreading this falsehood.
I didn't talk about the actual rise of the original Nazis. I am saying that we need to use judgment to judge the qualities of someone's speech. If someone is saying "Ethnic Group A is responsible for our problems!", we shut them the fuck up. We don't exterminate them. They're still allowed to say other things, productive or otherwise. They're just not allowed to support fascism.
> we need to use judgment
Who's 'we' in this case?
Today: Corporate overlords, which is Bad.
That's why I don't propose that there is a solution-in-isolation to improper censorship. It can only work in a holistic approach to greater transparency and respect within our society and on our tech platforms for discourse.
Getting rid of speech restraints entirely (a solution-in-isolation) just results in a different, implicit censorship, where marginalized voices self-censor because they are afraid. So, in other words, it's not really a solution that leads to a better world, it's just an alternative Bad Situation to the one we're in now. It's easy for people to think it's a solution because it's simplistic and because it is extreme, which means it aligns with an ideal that people hold, and everyone believes their ideals are sustainable if implemented to the extreme (yes yes even me etc)
edit: and, yeah, my quip above was kind of stupid.
I just read an article the other day saying that the majority of Americans don't feel comfortable stating their opinions in public. For university students the number was quite a bit higher (I wanna say 65%). If self-censorship is a problem, then it's one we should be confronting now, not just worrying about in hypothetical futures.
I agree with you that the solution is...well, more sophisticated and self-moderating systems. I was going to say 'more sophisticated censorship', but actually I think that should be a last resort.
The single biggest part of the problem, I think, is the incentives facing media, tech, and news companies. Social media companies have every incentive to drive engagement, which often means promoting the most controversial posts and people. Then media & news companies are incentivized to report on or debate with those posts & people in order to generate clicks and ad views, which raises their profile still further. The result is that we all see the worst (or at least, most extreme) behavior and opinions on the other side. This makes our opponents into a caricature, while at the same time we end up adopting and defending the extremists on our own side. Being constantly exposed to the nuts on the far side leads to the belief that censorship is good and necessary.
If we just aligned the incentives for the health and benefit of the readers, the crazies would sink to the bottom and be forgotten. That's hard to do, but I'm holding out some hope for federated social media. Of course...that still leaves news & media companies.
Sure but I am not necessarily concerned about all of those people. For example, I think the majority of Americans still don't believe in systemic racism. Like they don't believe it exists. If they're afraid to share such anti-scientific beliefs in public, then I consider that a good start.
https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship...
The intolerant seem to have quite a bit of free time on their hands and spend it recruiting others online using speech to do so. Communities who encounter the intolerant find themselves largely unable to change their minds. Rather than getting effectively DOSed, they find it easier to accomplish the same ends via censorship.
Is it possible to discourse the intolerant out of that state? If so, is it time-effective to do so?
Therein lies the fundamental assumption that I don't agree with. I take part in online spaces where I am a moderator and others where I merely feel confident that the moderators care about my concerns.
I know that this is harder to scale. But I don't think it's impossible. That feels almost silly to me to say. Systems can be made incrementally more transparent and more robust, therefore why should we expect there to be a hard physical limit on how transparent and respectful moderation can be?
However, based on that assumption that it's physically impossible, I still don't think I agree that speech should be completely unrestricted. I'd maybe prefer to have tools to weed out dangerous elements even if means some good ideas are being censored, but that would require some really nuanced examination.
Have fun hanging out at the Nazi bar then[1]. Don't drag us into it. It turns out, completely unrestricted speech actually has a massive negative effect on open discourse. Which is why we see more and more art, discourse, politics, etc. from marginalized people when we shut Nazis up.
I think excessive and partisan application of censorship is a bad thing. I think a total eradication of limitations on speech is also a bad thing. I think nuance is a great thing :)
I do agree that we need better transparency and oversight on corporate censorship of communication... but I would never suggest that we should stop calling people out for being assholes (a form of free speech which is often ironically touted as censorship by said assholes), nor would I suggest we should allow fascists to inject themselves into every conversation. In the latter case, I actually support censorship of people using speech to do harm to society. Also, I believe fascism is harmful to society - surprisingly controversial among the free speech champions.
[1] https://notes.alexkehayias.com/nazi-bar-theory/