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.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    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.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    7 hours ago

    They abandon their “free speech absolutist” postures the moment they think they are in power. you ask them why they support malicious advertising, impersonation and pedophilia

    Fix’d. Because those things would be protected under “absolute” freeze peach.

  • LadyAutumn
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    11 hours ago

    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.

    • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      laws will never protect the people who need it. every community should be on the lookout for this shit. everything should turn against you when you do a fascism. if you want to spread fear of everything as an excuse to murder the weak to make you feel good, there should be no inch of the world where you are safe.

      like, a lot of the nazi shit here in the united states WAS against the law. that didn’t help. just a bunch of wrist slaps.

  • OrloNorppa@sopuli.xyz
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    14 hours ago

    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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      13 hours ago

      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.

      • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 hours ago

        the conflation of ‘normal’ with ‘okay’ is sickening to me. unfortunately, this is normal now.

        and that should set off fucking air raid sirens in every single person’s head.

    • yesman@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      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.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 hours ago

      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”.

      • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 hours ago

        yeah, I can’t say ‘libertarian communist’ or people will be like ‘do you mean ephebophile communist? how does that even work?’.

        they have to steal our names for shit, because they always do horrible shit under their own.

  • Hubi@feddit.org
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    13 hours ago

    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
    • rustyfish@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      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 her: 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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            12 hours ago

            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.

            • snooggums@lemmy.world
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              Hide it as a spoiler that is titled what it is and that it has gore.

              deep fried goebbels (gore)

              Pretend there was gore here

                • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  10 hours ago

                  but also, and im not a mod of anything and this would probably get you banned a lot of places:

                  nazi shit needs to be shown for what it is. no more looking away. a century of looking away and pretending it couldn’t happen here, that it wasn’t happening here, that it was just about ‘ethics in games journalism’ or whatever bullshit is what got us here. show that shit.

                  if we keep looking away, we will keep letting it happen. I would rather see a few old photos of gore a bunch of times than have to smell them, or risk being them, every time I go outside. a state of affairs which we are perilously fucking close to.

                  edit: so please; post more gore. you might just be saving lives!

          • Higgs boson@dubvee.org
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            11 hours ago

            Fuck you. This shit is traumatic for me. had family members murdered by the actual Nazis. Blocked you and this shithole community.

            • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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              8 hours ago

              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.

            • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.ioM
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              12 hours ago

              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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                11 hours ago

                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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                  11 hours ago

                  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.

            • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              10 hours ago

              hey, yeah, so, my people were also slaughtered by the nazis. some of the first, actually. and again by reaganites. I have watched loved ones die slowly and horribly with my own eyes in non-nazi-related deaths. like actually seen smelled touched it, not just heard stories from grandma.

              and I would rather see this shit if it reminds people the stakes of current politics. also, that’s a nazi in the pic, it just happens it also got kiled because of nazi shit.

            • DogEarBookmark@reddthat.com
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              12 hours ago

              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.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Remember that smile gave Moscow Mitch gave when they confirmed Trump’s lame duck Supreme Court nominee, despite rejecting Obama’s?

  • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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    12 hours ago

    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.

    • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      christianity, since the roman empire adopted it at the very least, has been mostly a tool of appropriating warm fuzzy feelings and directing them towards a king.

      capitalism was always been into lack of competition. it’s not about markets, that’s a more modern bullshit invention. it’s about valuing ownership over labor. caring about the nobility rather than the peasants’ labor, but with more contrivance.

      mood on the free speech.

  • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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    11 hours ago

    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.

    • 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.

    • 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).

    • 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.

  • limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 hours ago

    Which is why liberalism in a not so democratic country can do little to stop this type of decline. Too non violent, too careful, too scared

    Ideally one would vote out authoritarian candidates, but what to do when it’s a taboo to criticize electronic vote counting? Vote counting on electronic platforms run by the very people the liberals oppose? Vote counting supported by a steadfast belief of state governments not being corrupted, and not being in cahoots with the wealthy families running said platforms?

    “There are safeguards”, ”I trust in the process”

    Then when voting fails what to do but use free speech to oppose what is happening?

    “Surely they will allow my voice to rise and be heard and I can use reason”

    Yes people will hear you but it won’t do much.

  • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.