Obvious as it may sound, people with authoritarian beliefs hiding behind free speech actually consider it as a weakness akin empathy. It allows losers like them to amplify their reach despite not being in power. They abandon their “free speech absolutist” postures the moment they think they are in power.

  • OrloNorppa@sopuli.xyz
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    It’s insane to me that somehow free speech has been successfully twisted into a dog whistle to basically just spread disinformation, actively call for extermination of minority groups and openly attack and threaten other people. That shit is not free speech those are malicious actions - and they should absolutely not be tolerated under some vague guise of free speech.

    • rockSlayer
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      Precisely. That’s why the most important mantra we can recite is “this is not normal”. No matter how normalized it gets, fascism is not normal.

    • yesman@lemmy.world
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      If you pay attention to the reactionaries, they always steal ideas from the left. Fake news, media bias? That’s Noam Chomsky. Incels stole the idea of critical examination of gender from feminists. Racists are banning books on the theory that they target people based on their race.

      That’s why they’re called reactionaries. They cannot organize and ideology or a movement except as an opposition to the left dragging society forward. And like anyone motivated by spite and envy, they study us closely.

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        It is always a little sad and funny to me when they essentially put on a suit made of the hollowed-out skin of a leftist concept. They heard people say “we want to see more women in electoral politics” and so they started running the Sarah Palins and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world. The point of the ask isn’t just to have women - it’s to have people who will use their experiences of marginalization to empathize with voters and with other marginalized people, to build coalitions. Not because we wanna see tits on CSPAN.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Which is intensely frustrating for people who actually care about free speech. Can’t talk about it without setting off everyone’s “that guy is probably a nazi” alarms.

      It’s absolutely an intentional trap to attempt to get people to support moves against free speech by tainting the concept through negative association.

      We shouldn’t tolerate hate speech. But I’m concerned about where we end up in a few decades if the concept of free speech keeps the current connotations.

      And people might consider even this comment as sealioning or something.

      Meanwhile we have people unironically using phrases like unalive and censoring swear words in screenshots so they don’t trip the automated content filters on mainstream social media. That should be more concerning than people seem to take it. People joke about “literally 1984”, but unalive is blatant newspeak.

      • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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        This is what the fascists do: hijacking legitimate terms of discourse and abusing them so they become meaningless. It’s a deliberate strategy to subvert their opponents’ ability to talk about the issue by poisoning the terminology. See also what they’ve done with “fake news”, “critical race theory” and “DEI”.

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      There’s never been any actual free speech. There was never free speech for slaves, etc. We’re literally barred for saying the state should be overthrown which is probably the most important thing that anybody could say. Legally money is speech and corporations are people. Regular people can say whatever but capital has a nonstop bullhorn into our homes, tvs, radios…

      It’s a completely meaningless concept.

  • Hubi@feddit.org
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    When our opponents say: “Yes, we used to grant you freedom of opinion”, yes. You did, that is no reason why we should do the same to you! Your stupidity need not be contagious to us! [Laughter.] That you have given this to us - that is proof of how stupid you are! [Laughter.]

    • Joseph Goebbels
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      Goebbels must have felt really clever when he killed his children and wife. Right Goebbels?

      Goebbels? (Gore)

      Oh.

        • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.ioM
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          Mod here: Nah, that stays up.

          You just sear that image into your brain and think about it every time you hear the word Nazi, remember what they did to human beings (even their own).

          If you haven’t seen them, look up pictures of the holocaust because those horrors should never be forgotten.

          • rustyfish@lemmy.world
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            To be fair, the gore part I kinda understand. How do I tag a comment with gore? I mean he could have told me himself but he was so scared of what I might reply, he blocked me.

          • Higgs boson@dubvee.org
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            Fuck you. This shit is traumatic for me. had family members murdered by the actual Nazis. Blocked you and this shithole community.

            • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.ioM
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              Yes, the holocaust was an extremely traumatic event, that’s the whole point.

              I’m not whitewashing history for you, sorry.

              • notsoshaihulud@lemmy.worldOP
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                I would have reported the pic for gore, but I think hiding it under spoiler is fair game. What humanity should have learned from this story is that just because ideologies that consider fairness or empathy a weakness might appear viable and effective to grab power quickly, we have plenty of gory evidence that they do lead to the annihilation of millions, including those initially benefiting from them.

                • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.ioM
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                  A spoiler would be OK by me, but I would still encourage everyone to look at what they did if they have not seen it. Visit a holocaust museum even. Frankly, I don’t know that everyone understands, there are an increasing number of people who downplay or outright deny the horrors of World War II and everything that led to it.

            • DogEarBookmark@reddthat.com
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              Sorry to hear about your family.

              If the world is going to blatantly ignore history, then the atrocities should become more abundantly available as a reminder. Censoring history is re-writing it.

            • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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              I had great uncles and an aunt I never got to meet because of Nazis. This picture is soothing, being a reminder of what happens to all Nazis. They all die. Every single one of them is removed before their time. It’s comforting to know that this too shall pass.

        • comfy@lemmy.ml
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          Search: goebbels death -> Goebbels Wikipedia article:

          In the mid-afternoon of 30 April, Hitler shot himself. […] On the evening of 1 May, Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz, to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of a cyanide compound could be then crushed in each of their mouths. […] At around 20:30, Goebbels and [wife] Magda left the bunker and walked up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they killed themselves. There are several different accounts of this event. [I’ve omitted contradictory claims of how they died and were treated after by SS soldiers] The corpses were then doused with petrol, but they were only partially burned and not buried.

          • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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            Thank you for that! I know you didn’t have to do it, so I want you to know that I appreciate your effort.

        • uienia@lemmy.world
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          No tolerance for the intolerant in a tolerant society. It has been thought about a lot.

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            Agreed, but that wasn’t what the other comment demanded. If we treat other people like Nazis treat their victims, you are a Nazi yourself.

            That Nazis do not get the benefit of the doubt or a public soapbox or platform is something I agree with and hopefully what the other commentator meant instead of executions and ovens. But it is important to not dehumanise Nazis and not stoop to their level. They are all too human, that is the problem.

        • PotatoLibre@feddit.it
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          Read the same story the other day. They missed Hitler’s escalation believing he will never lie to such a point, until he did and then it was too late.

          If someone has a dictatorship as a goal, you can’t just fight under the democratic rules, especially if your system is not bullet proof.

          I’m not saying “grab a gun”, I’m saying there’s not much time to act. Anyway, this gives me some hope:

          https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world

        • comfy@lemmy.ml
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          True. We should instead just use one bullet for each and be done with them, no point in copying their atrocities.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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      Remember that smile gave Moscow Mitch gave when they confirmed Trump’s lame duck Supreme Court nominee, despite rejecting Obama’s?

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Here’s what is not free: Fuck zionism.

      You might lose your job, be kicked out of school, be deported, kidnapped, tortured, genocided, ethnically cleansed, etc… I’m afraid to even say it semi-anonymous on the internet.

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    Fascism is incompatible with any kind of freedom. Free speech is co-opted by conservatives and fascists so that they can promote bigotry without consequence. There is no reason that members of the KKK should be legally allowed to recruit people. That should be against the law. It should be against the law to promote xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and queerphobia. The only people who benefit from a system where you can espouse those beliefs without legal consequence are bigots and fascists.

  • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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    The far right are well-practiced at co-opting and twisting concepts. It’s classic doublespeak.

    It’s why you have “Christians” who are staunchly opposed to feeding the hungry, or treating the sick. (See: school lunches.)

    It’s why “capitalism” now represents the complete lack of meaningful competition, when that competition is the only thing that ever made capitalism worthwhile in the first place. (See: Microsoft getting away scot-free after being found guilty of illegal, anticompetitive business practices all throughout the 90s.)

    It’s why “free speech” proponents are laser-focused on creating new and terrifying mechanisms for censorship. (See: *gestures widely*)

    I could go on.

    It’s sad how little resistance has been made against this corruption. How easily our natural allies have been turned into our greatest enemies.

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    First thing Free Speech Absolutionist Elon did when taking over Twitter was making it so that cisgender is a slur, but the n-word is not

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    Their version of free speech is to prevent you from contradicting the lies they continuously spew and then paint your rebuttal as an attack on their rights to spew them. They’re the victim of leftist propaganda.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        Well, only their free speech.

        Your blasphemous thoughts should be banned, obviously.

        • lemonaz@lemmy.world
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          No no, we still value free speech, just that yours isn’t really speech, it’s the woke mind virus. And that needs to be eradicated. So, you see, we’re still free speech absolutists!

          This is how they trick people.

    • notsoshaihulud@lemmy.worldOP
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      Interesting read.

      They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The antisemites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

      This is what we see these days. Trump and his followers lying is normalized, i.e., they are not “obliged to use words responsibly”, whereas anybody argues against trumpists is.

      They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.

      This is what changed since then. They no longer fear being seen as ridiculous or stupid. They embrace it.

  • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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    Does anyone?

    The closest I can think of to “real free speech absolutists” is the old-school doctrinal libertarians. Even they have limits on what they believe should be allowed and specifically state that contracts should be legally enforceable.

    • notsoshaihulud@lemmy.worldOP
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      yeah it’s a philosophical question the answer to which changes with the times (like, does free speech/expression even mean the same thing in the 1700s as in the present era where “speech” is delivered and amplified by machines without even the necessity of direct human involvement).

    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      You don’t need to be an “absolutist” to believe in free speech. Open exchange of ideas is valuable. Not needing to be suspicious of everyone hiding what they really think out of fear is valuable. Censorship powers are very tempting to abuse and the consequences of their abuse are terrible, therefore they should be strictly limited. Believing in free speech can just be understanding this stuff and having a bias against shutting people up as a go-to solution.

      • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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        Exactly. The real debate is on which parts should be off limits.

        Most people can think of some speech that they consider so horrible that nobody should be allowed to say it.

        People often try to hedge that position by arguing that they’re not even really infringing on anyone’s speech because their form of restriction doesn’t meet a sufficient threshold of censorship.

  • comfy@lemmy.ml
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    Yes.

    Fascist ideologies, like Nazism, are explicitly anti-liberalist. They don’t believe in the very concept of liberties. They explicitly write down on paper why they believe democracy and freedom is a failure. So, when you see one pulling the free speech card, they’re simply trying to appeal to your beliefs, or society’s beliefs, to give themselves a platform. It’s inherently insincere, they’re mocking you.

    Nazis have to act like this. History has shown us, without doubt, how repulsive their plans are both in theory and in practice, so until they have power, they cannot show their true colors. They can’t just be honest and play “might is right” yet because communities would just do the right thing and violently extinguish their movement (including, but not limited to, punching them on sight). So they must hide behind society’s privileges, the rights and freedoms of liberalism. They can enjoy police protection at protests to save them from the people they work to have killed, they can sue people for collecting intelligence on them and getting them fired, they can just point out liberalist hypocracy if their freedoms are violated, but listen to leaks and how they organize behind closed doors to know that’s simply opportunistic cowardice.

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    “First they fascinate the fools, then they muzzle the intelligent” Bertrand Russell.