Adverse selection. If your differenciating feature is "you can say what you want without getting banned", your userbase is going to tend towards people who get banned on other platforms. In todays climate, that is mostly the far right.
Compounding this is PR and network effects. Once they become known as the place for the far right, then more far righters go there, and more distant people avoid it.
You're putting words in their mouth and then arguing with those words. Seeing as you're responding to a single sentence, this is an impressive amount of extrapolation.
You're suggesting that right-wing white males are an oppressed minority in the USA. It takes a serious amount of ignorance and mental gymnastics to sincerely believe this. I suspect you are trolling, but if you're not then I don't know what would convince you otherwise because the amount of information you'd have to discard or ignore to reach this conclusion is alarming.
If you're just going to lie, you could at least pick something everyone isn't versed in. As opposed to implying the US has no oppressed minorities, which is by now so well and extensively documented to be the case nobody sane will take you seriously after reading you say it isn't.
It happens on very few of my comments, usually when I'm a bit too forceful while pointing out something that can be construed as politically left-leaning. Thank you :)
White vs Black was something that was ripping the United States apart since the arrival of the first slave on the continent, so I'd have a hard time crediting the KGB for it.
What could you possibly mean by 'no chance for consensus'?
Let me get this straight. One group of people has all the political power in an area. That group of people repressed another group. The second group wants to be treated like human beings.
To me, it seems that if you want to avoid conflict and strife, the first group should immediately give in to those demands. Those demands are just, and the status quo is indefensible, and the first group has the political power to solve the problem, and anyone obstructing the immediate implementation of those demands is the one causing strife.
Since they have a monopoly on power, the onus is on them to make the society they built just, not on the people they are repressing.
>The second group wants to be treated like human beings.
Who is that? The Citizens or the establishment? You have much deeper problems in your society, and it's not skin-color, that's just the game to distort you (yes and the police) from the real problems...trans vs woman, democrats vs republican, man vs woman, white vs black, vegans vs meat-eater those are some of the other ones. You always hit your nearest made up "enemy" not the one thirteen steps away. Keep the dump's entertained with problems so they don't see the bigger picture, and at one point they start to entertain themself with made up problems.
Segregationists, and their various flavors of racist allies of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. I don't really care which party they belong to. They had a monopoly on power, they built an unjust system, and I will firmly put all arising strife on their unwillingness to treat people of other races as human beings.
> Who is that? The Citizens or the establishment?
African Americans during the broad civil rights era. You are talking about the KGB, right? The KGB operated between 1954 to 1991, so I have to assume that whatever black versus white 'conflict' you are talking about is somewhere in that time period.
> You have much deeper problems in your society, and it's not skin-color, that's just the game to distort you (yes and the police) from the real problems
I assure you, when your society has no-n_____ water fountains, train cars, classrooms, and suburbs, your society's problems include skin color. They include it incredibly prominently.
Are you arguing about real issues that real people faced? Or are we going down some weird, theoretical rabbit hole? I have no patience for the latter.
>They had a monopoly on power, they built an unjust system, and I will firmly put all arising strife on their unwillingness to treat people of other races as human beings.
Had? Have, is the right word or did that changed i the last 2 month? But yeah absolutely, human are humans and everyone has the same right and has to be treated the same way.
>African Americans during the broad civil rights era. You are talking about the KGB, right?
I was talking about that one of the KGB strategies was to heat already existing conflicts up to the point where no consensus is possible, that just works in democratic systems where consent is the ~only way to achieve something.
>I assure you, when your society has no-n_____ water fountains
Look that's the problem, i NEVER said that skin color or religion (especially muslims...remember the hate after 2001, but also jews) is not a problem in your country, again for me there is no race just humans. But ATM it's white vs black etc, that's the opposite what Martin Luther King said like "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that", atm your countrymen create borders between community's which creates a downward spiral, and the profiteer is for sure not "we the people" but we the media and the party (the two same ones) which can profit out of it and in the meantime easily maintain the status quo (both the democrats and the republicans...they have the exact same goal, they just play different so you have the illusion of choice).
> the first black slaves were brought over by the ethnic group we now call Latinx.
No, they weren't. Latinx (or the equivalent combination of Latino/Latina) is not synonymous with Hispanic, and more to the point, even if it was, the slavers were (by modern American terms) racially White ethnic Hispanics, so it wouldn't change the White/Black racial dynamic.
That’s some pretty impressive mental gymnastics. It’s likely that the crews of those first Portuguese and Spanish slave ships included plenty of mixed Hispanic/North Africans too.
By the way North Africans raided as far as the south coast of England in order to capture slaves of their own.
This is simultaneously a fair point (the Portugeuse were the first slavers) and a miscategorization (puritans/white european invaders were quite racist and violent from the moment they landed on Plymouth rock and began stealing from / killing Natives).
This pro-slavery attitude was huge from you people.
Black people enslaved other blacks in Africa, Latinx shipped them to America where the natives were also enslaving each other. White people put an end to all 3 of these activities, everywhere. This is historical fact.
Welsh, british, scottish, all the same. All three groups were slavers, both of Africans and of the Irish, not to mention countless other Asian cultures.
You rewrite history, white wsshing it to make yourselves out to be the great white saviors despite having participated for many centuries.
“Hey the Africans sold their enemies to us so it must be Ok.”
I know people are going to mad about this because tech boys loooove him but google it he's a eugenics supporter and endorses far-right race philosophers.
On Gab daily. Never seen a single Nazi. Seen some unorthodox/thought-provoking views for sure, but that's part of why I visit and one of the same reasons I visit HN.
Andrew Anglin, operator of The Daily Stormer is famously one of the biggest 'influencers' to move to the original Gab platform, and he remains fairly active there. Gab's front page has been tuned over time to be less egregious, but I have been poking around the site for a long time and remember when even in logged out view the home page would be a lot of altright / TDS type of posts filled with general /pol/ tier takes.
And though the main feed / explore page is not quite as openly tilted toward that audience today, the 'groups' features not one but three QAnon groups, which appear to be some of the largest on the site.
In short - if you've been looking at Gab's content since their inception, it be hard not to see activity from some prominent altright/stormer users, and there remains a large quantity of both weird political extremism and general cultism promoted at the top level of the site.
So what? If you happen to see an obnoxious Nazi posting, simply mute them and move on with your life.
Personally, I usually don't even do that, because it's useful to occasionally comment on their posts (which are a tiny, tiny fraction of Gab's content) to point out to them that Nazi totalitarian tyranny is in no way preferable to socialist/Communist totalitarian tyranny.
I wonder if anyone here has ever even seen either site, because the vast majority of the comments here are simply regurgitating national media talking points about the sites - and those talking points bear zero relationship to reality.
America used to be about the free exchange of ideas.
There are a handful of Nazis on Gab, as I'm sure there are a handful of Nazis on HN. One of the nicest things about Gab is its Mute feature, which allows you to easily to never see the really obnoxious idiots again.
As for myself, I hate all totalitarians - Nazis are no worse than Communists, but they are no better, either. (Arguably, as horrible and inexcusable as the Nazis were, by the numbers they are in the flyweight class for genocide in the 20th century compared to their Communist counterparts...)
Ok, give this some thought for minute: you’re a normal person going about your business everyday and sure, you have your personal views. Let’s say you strongly believe in having your own network infrastructure vs going to the cloud. It’s better for your business than cloud XYZ, which will eat into your profits too quickly. Now, imagine having a rational discussion about this topic on HN and it makes you feel good that you’re able to project your thoughts in a positive manner. However, the next day you find out that you’re banned. All of the sudden, your views are being titled “extremist” as if you’re against the society if you’re not hosting your app in the cloud.
Would you say that this kind of a pushback on your views, which to me don’t seem extreme, have any significance in actually making you an extremist?
> The point is there’s nothing inherently “far right”...
The point being made is that the application of censorship on some platforms results in a uneven distribution of users with such views in platforms that don’t due to self selection.
If the entire population has an X% rate of folk with extreme views, and 0% are allowed on platforms A, B, C... but platform D allows it.
The regardless of the overall distribution of users you cannot deny that the rate of folk with extreme views on D will be more than the 0% on A, B, and C.
Like, it’s not a matter of opinion; that’s just a fact.
So it’s fair to say Gab has higher proportion of users with extreme views simply by allowing them; that is, it is inherently controversial to even allow controversial discourse on your platform.
I don’t care if you don’t like that; that’s irrelevant. It’s simply not correct to assert that the platform is not to blame; when different platforms enforce different rules you get different content on different platforms.
It’s the same for porn, under age users, pictures of dogs ffs.
If you allow it, you’ll get it... and if you do when no one else does, you’ll get attention for being the “only
Platform with [whatever]”.
The argument to here is about if the content is good or not; whether Gab is “far right” or “far left” is just arbitrary bs labels that distracts from the actual discussion of the content itself.
> Protection of offensive speech is a bedrock classical liberal view.
So is the protection of personal freedom, and yet no one claims we shouldn't put people in jail. Protection of speech is not an absolute principle of liberalism; just one principle that is weighed against others. Plus, in this case, most of the speech banned by Twitter is protected and can't land you in jail. It is also not at all a principle of liberalism that any publisher must publish any speech. Quite the opposite, the reputation of institutions like newspapers and universities are entirely predicated on their freedom to filter out and not disseminate certain things. The liberal view is that institutions should be able to build their reputation by choosing which speech they want to disseminate and amplify.
> Tech's obsession with hating on Gab/Parler is based upon on the identity of the people in them, not on whether offensive or not-sanctioned speech should be allowed in general.
Because it’s often one and the same: the “identity” of the people on them are the ones spreading hate speech and disinformation. You don’t need to sugar coat it as “not-sanctioned speech”, nobody is banning anyone for saying “hey I support Donald trump!’ They are banning people for saying “trans people will burn in hell” and “the Jewish cabal that run the world are eating babies and that’s why Biden stole the election and the democrats will be executed on TV by trump”.
Unfortunately this kind of speech comes from mostly one side of the political spectrum. Yes, I’m sure you can cherry pick random left-leaning Twitter users saying dumb things, but it’s not quite on the same level as you can find on ParlerWatch[1] for example.
Two irrelevant niche forums banning you does not make an argument.
Go to /r/conservative and say “I support Biden” and you will be banned within a minute. Does that mean liberals are being brutally silenced by oppressive moderators and therefore we have no choice but to helplessly become radicalised by racists?
That is exactly the point. People that define their identity by feeling superior because of their race, religion or their sexuality are not the kind of people that are known for their differentiated, non problematic comments.
People have suggested re-education camps or other "deprogramming" for Trump voters, including elected Democratic representatives.
And yeah, it is often one and the same. Don't remember who it was, but someone said that the problem with free speech is that you'll spend most of your time defending scoundrels.
As far as hate speech goes, people literally lecture that people who happen to be born like me are "born into not being human", say the lives of people like me don't matter. We are told we should not speak and yet that our silence is violence. Trainings for "diversity" across a wide range of institutions have started segregating along racial lines, and the list goes on. During the Grievance Studies hoax, for example, one of their papers was sent back because it was too sympathetic and not sociopathic enough. Said paper advocated making white students sit on the floor and putting them in chains as a learning experience.
Yet open racism is fine, because the target ethnic group and sexual orientation are acceptable to the activist class.
Likewise, people who get kicked out for "transphobia" will often not be people who hate transpeople in any proper sense, but have policy disagreements where there are no win-win solutions. Yet anything but being completely on board with the activist class's 100% no limits pro-trans policy agenda is "phobia". The claim holds up as well as wet paper.
How about gender affirming treatment for kids who cannot physically know what sexuality properly is because they haven't been through puberty? Someone's a bit off their gender role? Tomboy, nah, they're a boy, time to stuff them full of hormones. Concerns that this just might be insane are again, labeled hate.
Said cultists insist on mantras of trans(wo-)men are (wo-)men in an explicit denial of biology that the best of our medicine can't alter: We just craft a facade that eases dysphoria to care for our fellow human beings. As Buck Angel put it: "I use testosterone to masculinize myself so I feel more like me." He's routinely called a transphobe.
This is basically the biology equivalent of flat eartherism or young earth creationism, but not subscribing to the creed is stamped hate speech. The mantra wouldn't even be necessary if its claim was actually true. It's even worse than flat eartherism, since a human can't at a glance confirm that the Earth is indeed round, but TWAW/TMAM asks us to baldly deny the input of our eyes in everyday life.
Hate and disinformation do not at all come "mostly from one side of the political spectrum" - science denial in the "party of science" is alive and well.
So one is from a leftist journal condemning their own (thanks for the context! I’m glad the leftists are policing themselves from violence it seems!) and the other is a clip? What about the multiple paragraphs about trans people?
> nobody is banning anyone for saying “hey I support Donald trump!’
If that person says they don't believe the results of the election they are. If that person says that they don't believe the vaccines or lockdowns don't work, they are.
Twitter, Facebook, and tech in general have lost this card to play. They've been banning people for things that have nothing to do with racism and everything to do with them being not-Democrat.
In a world where 95+% of tech companies are Democrats in the U.S., it's easy to believe all the head-nodding and congratulations that your views are the only morally correct ones. It's also easy to deliberately avoid any sense of nuance or context because that would require overcoming cognitive dissonance that half the country isn't a bunch of racists.
> If that person says they don't believe the results of the election they are. If that person says that they don't believe the vaccines or lockdowns don't work, they are.
The political spectrum of tech is pretty centrist. Leaning fiscal-conservative, even.
It's the right wing of American politics that has swung so far to the right of where it used to be that it's made tech look Democratic in contrast. If tech employees are supporting Democrats, it's because the alternative has come to look insane.
Because he routinely harasses other trans people and has a coterie of cis people chomping at the bit to bully trans kids he retweets and mocks. He's not called that for the quote you chose. I think similarly the rest of your points are warped and exaggerated to fit your view that you are under siege by "open lunatics" because you're tired of certain people you find undesirable having a collective voice all of a sudden.
It’s mostly normal people freely associating with other normal people, without fascist establishment elite government control, like Twitter, Facebook, elite media, and most other social media.
Did you ever wonder why you are calling others far right or far left? Why are you referring to other American citizens with those terms? Who is pushing those terms that divide the vast majority of normal Americans? Who stands to gain?
The fascist establishment elite are getting richer by the second, while the lower classes are calling each other insulting names and fighting amongst themselves.
There’s an old movie called They Live. When you watch it now, you can call it time shifted documentary.
Wait, you object to describing "american citizens" with political labels and then in the very next paragraph use a political label on a specific group of american citizens.
Alternative viewpoint: platforms without censorship tend to be right wing because that is what succeeds in a free marketplace of ideas. Left wing ideas require censorship to thrive.
Mainstream ideas require censorship to survive. In the 60-70s it was the left that was obsessed with free speech because their views were less mainstream, something many people on the side of censorship seem to ignore.
As glen greenwald says, censorship eventually is always about those in power staying in power. Unless you are in power it’s sad to see so much pro censorship these days.
Read up on Ira Glasser at the ACLU or watch the documentary. Why did he as a Jew defend neo nazis?
Normally, people use "socialism" synonymously (intentionally or unknowningly) with _international_ socialism. There are plenty of other kinds, and _national_ socialism is one of them.
Obviously, if you're going to name your faction with a preceding adjective like national/international then:
a) it's important to you
b) you're probably not going to get along with the other faction that is named in direct opposition to yours
Which pretty much explains how these two groups of socialists hate each other and why the Nazi's 25 point plan [0] reads 50% nationalist and 50% socialist.
Oh, I see. Names don't matter if they are inconvenient....
Nazis (a literal shortening of Nationalsozialismus) - no they weren't the left.. 'cos Hitler, and Hitler bad.
Freedom is speech, but not 'hate speech'. (Who defines 'hate speech'?) What is hate speech except for a reason to stop people speaking. These are ideological positions couched as morality. And everyone needs moral busybodies who know it all, to tell them what to do, right?
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
- CS Lewis
Besides, party names have never been a good indicator of political standing. Only policy is. You can look at the Liberals in Australia as an example of a conservative party.
That's got to be the lowest bar for "socialism" i've ever seen. So, is Eisenhower socialist as well? The US Interstate highway is much bigger than the Autobahn, so it surely counts?
This only works if you put cold war blinders on and equate the word communism to being left wing. Their policy and actions were decidedly not left wing.
The problem is left and right are not a single dimension. Liberal left wing policies can often overlap with libertarian right wing policies. This is because the align on the freedom dimension. There are other examples but I don't think you can argue that Mao and Stalin are not left wing. They both push the idea that the state can and should supply the needs of the people. This is a very left wing view on both the financial and social dimension.
However it also depends are you simply looking at the economic beliefs of left/right wing idealogies or also social rights? It also depends on which era of left vs right is being considered, since the traits of the spectrum have changed over the decades.
Perhaps the issue is many consider only the economic models as the indicator, whereas many others consider the entirety of policy with regards to equality and rights.
If we're only looking at economic policy, then sure, Mao and Stalin are left wing.
If you look at it socially, then I'd argue they were not because they violently impugned on the freedoms of people to install totalitarianism.
Maybe one could argue they're far left, or alt left in todays vernacular however. But even that would be eschewing much of the social aspects of leftism. Mostly because their aspects of "equality" only applied to the people they deemed equal. Which was unequal to start with.
Well that is what I was trying to illustrate. There is an authoritarian right ( e.g. Hitler ) and an authoritarian left ( e.g Stalin ).
It sucks if you're on the left or right and are more on the pro freedom end when someone drags up the authoritarian cohort of your respective side.
I'm right of centre ( pro private industry ) but anti fascism. I'm pro private industry because I don't like a concentration of power. So a mix of small government with the power to provide basic services and break up monopolies seems the best way to keep everything free. So slightly left wing social policies such as free medical care aren't my first choice but much better than giving the government more surveillance powers. So I think I'm further away from fascism than I am from socialism. Yet as I'm right of centre people throw Hitler is on your side at me.
It's a bit rich to claim you're neither right nor left, when you're constantly repeating right wing talking points. Maybe you don't prescribe to a label, but all your arguments thus far all hinge on labels and not policy.
He didn't state any of his own political views so you can't place him. You should consider whether those talking points actually have some legitimacy rather than using them to identify which group he's in. This is actually part of the problem he refers to.
So you're l saying he raised specific points but that they aren't reflective of his political beliefs but are somehow reflective of mine because I don't agree with them?
That's certainly a level of mental gymnastics to paint things favorably for your political beliefs.
Ok - here's my criticism of the 'right'. They talk about less government, but never do anything about it! Never. They will say whatever it is that sounds good to conservatives, but do the opposite.
Left and right are all on board with the same system. And this is increasing a fascist system, run by corporations.
But whatever the case - if people purport to have a constitution that allows for free speech - but that a lot of people do not have meaningful ability to exercise it, well its not surprising that places like Gab spring up. And that all those de-platformed views make their way there. People need to be able to have their say.
It used to be that it was a left position to say 'I don't like what you say, but I'll fight for your right to say it'. Those days are long gone - de-platform the hate speaker!
Not really if you read Kershaw's two vol bio early on the NAZI party did have some "socialist policies" but Hitler changed the policy and threw those out in the late 20's.
Its also one of the reasons that the SA was purged.
The Nazis were socialist only in name. I highly suggest reading at least the first book in Richard J. Evans’s trilogy on ‘The third Reich’ if you want your eyes opened to unbiased historical facts. Referring to names to determine the leaning of a political party or even community groups is never a good idea. Look at their policies and what their people are saying.
Absolutely, look into it. Mixed with their tyrannical racial nationalism, you will also find many socialist ideas; here are some examples from the 25 point plan, their early party platform:
> We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood.
> We demand... that all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
> We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
> We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
> We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
> We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class; the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople
> We demand...the abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
> We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.
> The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health
Edit: I'm not surprised that these inconvenient facts are being downvoted. Why acknowledge facts when you can attempt to suppress them instead? Why read history in the very words of the people of the time, when you can rewrite it instead?
It's hard to argue against this, that really is the 25 point program of the Nazis. However, I think it is generally understood that Hitler's entrance into the National Socialists marked a deviation from Socialist ideas.
My understanding was that there were literally two factions, one which took the socialist aspects seriously and one which had no interest in socialist principles.
The socialist faction had people like Gregor Strasser as figureheads and they got routed out as part of the night of the long knives.
Much of the Big Business that invested in the Nazi party were tentative at first because of socialist name and were convinced by Hitler et al that it was in name only..
> I think it is generally understood that Hitler's entrance into the National Socialists marked a deviation from Socialist ideas.
No, the 25 point plan was announced by Hitler in 1920, including all of those socialist ideas.
And the night of the long knives was in 1934. For over 14 years, socialists like Strasser were an important part of the Nazi party, working side by side with Hitler.
Then Hitler consolidated power and eliminated all rivals - not only socialists like Strasser, but people with many ideologies. His primary target was not the socialists, but his most dangerous rival, Ernst Roehm, the leader of the brownshirts.
Even after that purge, the socialist programs continued, such as Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), Deutsche Arbeitsfront (the German Labor Front), and Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (National Socialist People's Welfare).
> The NSV [National Socialist People's Welfare] was the second largest Nazi group organization by 1935, second only to the German Labour Front. It had 4.7 million members and 520,000 volunteer workers.
> The Nazi social welfare provisions included old age insurance, rent supplements, unemployment and disability benefits, old-age homes and interest-free loans for married couples, along with healthcare insurance, which was not decreed mandatory until 1941
> No, the 25 point plan was announced by Hitler in 1920, including all of those socialist ideas.
I'm not contesting that.
Here's what the book I'm reading has to say about the 25 points:
> A good many paragraphs of the party program were obviously merely a demagogic appeal to the mood of the lower classes at a time when they were in bad straits and were sympathetic to radical and even socialist slogans. Point 11, for example, demanded abolition of incomes unearned by work; Point 12, the nationalization of trusts; Point 13, the sharing with the state of profits from large industry; Point 14, the abolishing of land rents and speculation in land. Point 18 demanded the death penalty for traitors, usurers and profiteers, and Point 16, calling for the maintenance of “a sound middle class,” insisted on the communalization of department stores and their lease at cheap rates to small traders. These demands had been put in at the insistence of Drexler and Feder, who apparently really believed in the “socialism” of National Socialism. They were the ideas which Hitler was to find embarrassing when the big industrialists and landlords began to pour money into the party coffers, and of course nothing was ever done about them.
> They were the ideas which Hitler was to find embarrassing when the big industrialists and landlords began to pour money into the party coffers, and of course nothing was ever done about them.
I think that's fair, but I would characterize it this way:
The Nazis started out "socialist" in the traditional sense of collective ownership, and ended up "socialist" in the modern sense (popularized by Bernie Sanders) of a strong social safety net.
(That safety net being restricted, of course, to those the Nazis deemed worthy.)
Yeah and the really really bad part that we all remember the nazis for took place after hitler rose to power and all the socialists in the party were murdered.
When people say “the nazis were socialist” they are trying to draw a line from the modern left to genocide. But this is just not a functioning argument.
I'm not trying to draw a line from the modern left to genocide. But I don't agree with refusing to acknowledge historical facts for fear someone might draw that line.
> Mixed with their tyrannical racial nationalism, you will also find many socialist ideas
Yeah, that's true of their early platforms, but even on paper (and much more in practice) socialist elements were progressively deemphasized as Hitler consolidated power within the party.
> Why read history in the very words of the people of the time,
You should definitely read their words, but you should read all of them as they change over time, and track the objective external facts of who held more power as they changed, and also check words against actions. Because just because something was at one point the words tied to a faction doesn't mean:
(1) that it represented that factions immutable view for all time across changes in internal power dynamics, or even
(2) that it was ever anything more than cynical, opportunistic manipulating propaganda.
1. national-socialism seams to have equality as a target. But this equality accounts only for a small group of superior people. In case of Hitler that was the aryan, german race.
2. Those points and the reality are two completetly different things
In fact Nazi-Germany was not socialist but capitalist. Rich people and companies became richer. The only people that were expropriated were jews, political enemies and minoritys. The jews were working as slaves until death to provide wealth for a capitalist upper class. Siemens for example increased their turnover by a factor of 5. Single persons became incredible rich. At the same time, the normal citizens of germany had to live under the worst circumstances because of the war. (You would not believe what my grandma experienced...)
The core idea of national-socialism is inhumane.
Who ever was not productive like disabled people, or people with mental illnesses(which includes homosexuals etc.) got killed.
The Nazis propagated the rule of the strongest and racism. They propagated social darwinism.
That stands completly against everything the left parties in Germany , even socialism, stands for. The main target is equality and equal oppurtunities for everyone. The main target is a humane society. One of the main points of our left wing, is to fight any form of facism to prevent anything similiar to Hitler from happening ever again.
The right wing partys are the Heirs of the Nazis. They want to exclude minorities and restrict their rights.
They propagate racism.
I'm certainly not defending the Nazis here. I'm cherry picking because someone claimed there were no cherries (socialists) in that bowl of grapes (nationalists) and cherries. So I'm pointing out the socialists.
The role of the left in the rise of the worst governments of the twentieth century should be remembered, so that nothing like Hitler ever happens again.
Many horrible governments start with promises of equality and a humane society (not the Nazis, who promised revenge, but certainly the communists), because that much concentrated power is a catastrophe waiting to happen. A government big enough to give equality is also powerful enough to impose tyranny, as we saw far too many times in the 20th century.
Even the Nazis only rose to power because of the horrible mistreatment imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. Germans saw themselves as the oppressed people.
I am not sure If you got my point.
I never said that your are defending the Nazis. But you were and still are refering to Hitler as a part of the political left. Something he definetly wasn't.
I'm not referring to Hitler personally as part of the left, I'm talking about the support he received from so many socialists on the left.
Hitler himself was, I think, a megalomaniac who wanted nothing but his own power, and a delusional madman intent on killing almost everyone. He doesn't belong on the left-right spectrum, because he was motivated by nothing other than his own madness.
I can’t downvote. I’m also being downvoted and definitely don’t think people’s goals are to ‘rewrite history’ here. But also the list you mentioned is just that. A list. Behind every bullet point there’s a grimmer meaning, if a meaning at all outside of gaining more support from the socialist groups who had more political sway at the time. No sane person would place Nazi ‘state education’ in the same class as a modern day public school for example.
I personally think it’s just a bit odd that you’re using a propagandist list by the Nazis on its own as proof that they were socialists. The Nazi playbook is so much deeper than that. The books I recommended earlier quite literally only scratch the surface around the tricks the Nazi's played to consolidate power by all means necessary.
I would argue that there was a grimmer meaning behind similar promises from every socialist leader, except those where there was no meaning at all other than cynical pursuit of power (like Stalin).
Despite that, the Nazis did gain support from many socialists, and ultimately, like so many other governments that rose to power with socialist promises, failed to live up to those promises.
But I don't think Hitler himself was a socialist, and I agree that Hitler was using the socialists just as he used everyone else who supported him. I just think people should acknowledge the role that socialists played in helping him rise to power.
> I just think people should acknowledge the role that socialists played in helping him rise to power.
I think practically everyone, including myself agrees with that. And I pointed that out in my original posts. Power doesn't occur in a vacuum and the Nazi's capitalized on peoples (mostly unfounded) fears and anger to grow their base. My original point was that the Nazi's themselves were not socialists. Referencing a name they came up with and their published propaganda was not a convincing argument to say otherwise.
Hitler wasn't the only Nazi. Some socialists, like Gregor Strasser, weren't merely supporters, they were full members and even leaders of the Nazi party.
Do you not see the irony in the fact that you had to grab a tiny snippet of a response several posts prior to 'prove' your counterpoint to a criticism made towards you in regards to practically every response you've had in this thread thus far?
I'm going to give this thread a break since it seems as though you're simply looking for arguments where none exist.
Again, this only applies if we blindly use the cold war association that communism is a left wing ideal, without actually looking at the policy of the people.
The reality is that communism as a movement spans a wide political range, and both Stalin and Pol Pot had diverged significantly from any form of leftist Marxism in their hunt for power.
This is a very interesting world view you have where Hitler is left wing. I think that alone scuppers any substance to your argument.
Stalin and Mao would only be left wing if you prescribe to the thought that communism by nature must only be left wing. I assume your train of thought on Hitler is similar because you're likely equating the socialist word in the Nazi party to left wing socialism.
At best this is dishonest and ignoring actual policy.
Isn't the flipside of that coin that leftism is more or less just plain good and ceases to be leftism the moment it deviates from what we think of as good, ie. basically a No True Scotsman?
One reason the Marxist kind of thought pattern is dangerous is because of something like that. The ideas in and of themselves can sound good and appealing - who wants poor people to live in squalor and so on? But if we look at what natural and sexual selection ingrains in biological life - it is by necessity kin-preferring, competitive and in non-eusocial social creatures, status seeking, for example. Things that prefer non-kin and don't compete just die out.
In that light, a sound philosophy would understand that those things can't be eradicated by human will, take the impulses and hone something constructive out of them. But Marxist thought is rationalist in the sense that it thinks doctrine and reason can mold human nature to whatever shape, and then achieve their utopistic ends. That, of course, cannot happen because we're built from competitive, kin-preferring, status-seeking genes, not utopistic ones. Marxism is incompatible with biological life, and to get biological life to comply for any length of time, it must be forced constantly, or the utopian society degrade into tyranny, which has thus far happened every single time these things have been tried. But it's never done properly, so we should try again.
I'm hardly invoking any sort of no true Scotsman fallacy.
I'm asking for people to delve into the so called left wing policy of the people they're claiming are left wing dictators.
So far people have only been listing people by their party names. Which would mean that North Korea is a bastion of democracy. I'm asking for substance to back up their assertions.
As a german, I can definitly tell you that Hitler was not left wing. There is no overlap in the political views at all. (Something I can not say about germany's far right.)
I have to add that "no overlap at all", may not be correct, as those points were shared by different political spectrums in the history.
The point is: The core idea, is completly different.
Wow. This comment section is a mess. Did y'all miss the other countries in the world that seem to be left wing without censorship. Or just history in general. Typically it tends to be a bit cyclic cycling between "left" ideas being popular at certain times and places, and right wing ideas being popular at certain times and places.
Conservativism largely fails over time in the free marketplace of ideas as evidence by human progress and societal change. Conservativism is fundamentally about suppressing change in favour of familiarity and established norms, which could certainly be seen as censorship. An obvious example of this is the conservative/Puritan influence in American culture, which has lead to excessive censorship of sexual content and cursing in American media.
Censorship is a product of political extremism though, it has no basis in one political ideology, only in how aggressively it is applied to society.
Counterexample - Islamic culture is conservative and thriving in the world (20% of all humans are Muslim), with roughly the same beliefs and culture as it's had for the past 1000 years.
I'm not sure thriving is the correct term. When it comes to HDI, human rights record, freedom of press/expression/etc. i can't think of a single Muslim-majority country ( which isn't the same as Islamic, and i chose the former because they fare better by definition on various freedoms)
On the HDI, the first majority Muslim country is the UAE, at 31, and that's probably highly skewed by its limited population, extreme natural wealth, and slavery. And considering it's involved in a human rights catastrophe in Yemen, it fails any human rights record-based index directly.
On the contrary, I'd say that Islam is stuck in the past, which doesn't help Muslim nations thrive and develop, and those that do, do it based on "luck" ( natural resources).
Who cares? Gradual changes in a philosophy of a culture that has become the great game-board of all adjunct powers, over and over again, is not relevant. At some point all that remains, is the fact, that getting pushed around on the school-yard of the world, is a bad idea.
Nobody cares for the history of getting pushed around.
Just for the now full of mud, blood and laughter.
It'd be hard to make a monolith out of the beliefs, practices and behaviour of over a billion people even if you could boil some of it down into one book (and you can't even do that as even the Sunni majority uses at least 7).
> Conservativism largely fails over time in the free marketplace of ideas as evidence by human progress and societal change.
This is obviously just selection bias. Everything that changes is a loss for "conservatism"; ignore everything that stays the same, which is the majority of everything.
Here are some "conservative" (i.e. longstanding existing) policies: Due process, separation of powers, warrant requirements, freedom of speech. They are currently under attack. But the attackers are the ones on the wrong side of history -- even if they succeed, they lose, because then the monsters these policies were established to vanquish return and the polices get reinstated once the current generation has had a taste of what happens without them. But that route is a lot harder and bloodier than learning from history.
This depends on is being cancelled. It's not the left that cancelled Kapaernick or the artists formerly known as the Dixie Chicks or howled with rage that the Supreme Court - with the exception of three conservative justices - ruled their longstanding practice of cancelling gay people unconstitutional.
No, but the juxtaposition of "footballers' antiracist gestures must be silenced" with "We must intervene to prevent Big Tech from declining to broadcast racism" in the rhetoric of prominent mainstream US conservatives is a pretty good indication that the longstanding tradition they are actually defending isn't "free speech"...
That only works if your frame for literally everything is racism.
Kaepernick kneeling during the pledge of allegiance can only parse as an antiracist gesture if the thing being disrespected (flag/country) is presumed to be intrinsically racist, i.e. it's accusing the whole country of racism. There are a lot of non-racist patriots who would take offense to that. The answer still shouldn't be censorship, but calling any opposition racism is accepting the very premise that the people opposed to the gesture are opposing it over.
Moreover, the implication that everyone who has been canceled was a racist is contrary to evidence unless you're making some heavy tribalist assumptions about anything vaguely conservative automatically implying racism.
And you're still not addressing the original point, which was that the left going around canceling people over speech is inconsistent with freedom of speech. Nothing anyone on the right does can make that untrue.
Show me a case of "cancel culture" and I will show you a case where the "cancelled" person benefitted in popularity on the right wing side. The people that really do get cancelled, you don't hear from them. The examples you know of are all people who benefitted hugely from the "cancelling". Unless you count the #metoo people. But you probably believe all these men are innocent. I don't really get how due process and opposition to trial by media is usually not important with right wing people when someone is suspected of robbery, but when someone is suspected of sexual misconduct it is suddenly a problem. This feels like the protection of elites (because elites will never be part of a robbery, but can be hurt by a metoo-scandal). And I am seriously curious who is calling for a new war in terror. Tell me, who is doing this?
Ok, I'll bite. First three examples of cancel culture I can think of: dongle gate, rosetta mission guy, and more recent J. K. Rowling. How exactly they benefited?
Because the people there are far right. When you go to a website and the first thing you see is calls to murder jewish people and the n-word repeated ad nauseam, all but the far right decide to just leave. The end result is that gab/parler/etc don't become places where all speech exists but instead places where extreme racism, homophobia, and sexism suck the oxygen away from everything else.
Neither of the things you claim are tolerated on either platform. I suspect you've never looked for yourself.
Gab looks like a version of Facebook that's mostly populated by Christian conservatives. Parler looks like a version of twitter that's mostly populated (or was, before) by Christian conservatives with a small side of some conspiracy theories.
Christian conservatives don't subscribe to the beliefs you think they do.
And ironically enough, Parler, the bastion of "free speech" was happily banning people who were critical of right wingers or did not participate in the right-wing group think on their network.
After rallying against liberals being "snowflakes" and needing "safe-spaces", Parler ironically enough ended up being just that for the extreme right.
Lol, yup, I was just thinking that after I posted. /r/conservative is hilarious in that they rail against censorship and free speech issues and yet basically self censor so strongly that only "flaired" (someone vetted to be part of the group-think) users are allowed to post in pretty much all discussions. And even flaired users who dare to oppose the group-think are quickly banned. The cognitive dissonance on that subreddit is quite amazing.
I don’t think they have much of a choice. When I’ve gone there after large news events and they have unflaired people able to post it turns in to /r/politics 2.0.
I have seen discussions there from people on both sides of the political spectrum where neither side was downvoted to oblivion, which is more than you can say for most of Reddit.
This is irrelevant: you're just making the exact argument that they are ridiculing and claiming to not need about "safe spaces".
That's the point: they complain about everyone else except when it happens to them, and then suddenly it's totally just and necessary. As though the reason women, gays, lesbians, transgender, black, mexican etc. communities don't have their own spaces for the exact reason that otherwise they would be brigaded by no end of people who felt just overly necessary to drop in and talk about how they think none of their problems are valid.
/r/conservative isn't ridiculed because it's moderated aggressively, it's ridiculed because it's moderated aggressively by people who continuously argue that moderation anywhere else is an assault on free speech and wholly unnecessary.
It doesn't help that seemingly half the content posted there is made up. Whenever they open the floodgates their narratives get torn to pieces by people that actually know what they're talking about.
Truth isn't welcomed there. For instance, you will be banned for simply stating that Trump lost the election
Except /r/conservative never claimed to be unbiased. After people started brigading and posting threats (examples are occasionally shown by moderators) they had to tighten up their moderation.
In contrast, /r/politics claims to be about general politics but most content to the right of AOC/Bernie gets downvoted or deleted.
> most content to the right of AOC/Bernie gets downvoted or deleted
As Reddit has a user base that comes from the US less than 50%, this might have to do with the fact that the Overton window shifted so far to the right there that the opinions of AOC or Bernie would count as center-right pretty much everywhere else in the western world, with the Republicans being off the charts lunatic extremist right.
AOC/Bernie economic policy may count as centrist by European standards simply because the US is as a baseline much more right-leaning/libertarian and the big econ-left project is to establish a welfare state, which already exists in Europe. (There are rightwing arguments for a welfare state type of solution, but those are contignent on other things being true first, ie. something more ethnostate-y)
But that's not the only relevant dimension of policy:
Culture matters, and they are not remotely rightwing on culture.
The direction they want to move the country in matters, and they definitely don't want to move the country rightward either.
Right leaning content is downvoted because the US population leans left.
The centrist view, the average American, would be considered a leftist by conservatives. This is why they think they're getting brigaded everywhere. They are. Their beliefs are unpopular.
The only reason the US Republican party is viable while being so far right is structural voting advantages. That's why they've lost the popular vote almost every time for 30+ years. That's why 50% of senators are Republican when only ~43% of the populations votes R.
On the internet where these artificial advantages aren't present it's much more obvious that Republican policy is broadly unpopular, and conservative opinion is the minority. Or more accurately, the moderate left is actually the center, and the average Republican is substantially far right.
Your comment would make sense if Reddit and r/politics is an accurate description of the US population.
But I'll have to disagree, since the comment above me suggests that there are a significant number of non-American Reddit users who lean more left than the average American, skewing the upvoting patterns. I'd argue that there are a different set of "artificial advantages" on the internet, such as that.
And when I browsed r/politics during the 2016 and 2020 election seasons, it was clear that Bernie Sanders was the favored candidate by Redditors. However, more moderate politicians like Clinton and Biden actually won the nominations.
And the popular vote count is a reflection of the Electoral College process...if elections were actually decided on the popular vote, campaign strategies would be focused more on cities than rural areas shifting the results.
Redditors lean farther left than the average american. The average internet user is also left of the average american because they trend younger.
But it's also undeniable that the average American leans left. That's why Republicans lose the popular vote in both chambers of congress and the presidency nearly every election. Their positions are unpopular, that's why they get down voted on "mainstream" sites where the user base is large enough to revert to the mean.
And campaign focus outside of urban cores would mean that the average American is even farther left than they appear to be.
Biden is farther right than the average Democrat because he needed to be to win. The structural advantages to Conservatives means the Democratic party needs to run centrist candidates.
In comparison, the same advantages mean the Republican party can still win with extreme right wing candidates. For example, Trump was the first president that never hit 50% approval rating but it was still high enough for him to win and do okay during his second campaign.
This explanation ignores the cabal of moderators which controls all political subreddits, as well as the fact that /r/politics and /r/worldnews are regularly ridiculed in the rest of reddit for being Bernie-Central, to the poinnt that posting about other candidates on the left gets you called a traitor.
Anyway that's why I get my politics on /r/anime_titties.
I'm saying internet wide. There's almost 20% more democrats than republicans nationwide. And since young people use internet more, it could be much higher ratio on the net.
If 2/3 of US internet users are left of conservatives, that's why they get downvoted to hell anywhere outside their safe spaces. IMO the crazy moderators on reddit are a result of the left lean, not the cause.
No, websites have different cultures, so each one isn't a proportionate sample of all internet users.
Reddit leaned a lot more right/libertarian before nearly all coservative subreddits were systematically banned under spez and Pao. Spez also enacted more subtle censorship like algorithmic tweaks to keep t_d out off the front page and eventually the creation of /r/popular to keep similarly "undesirable" subreddits from the front page.
Show me a single mainstream website where conservatives don't REEEE about censorship. You won't find one. Because any website large enough to capture a few percent of worldwide web traffic leans left. Because the English speaking world leans left and the republican party is a hard right structure.
The truth means nothing to those that wont listen. The Republican party is a far right monstrosity. The democrats in US are a right leaning party for all practical purposes. Hell, Biden said he would be fine running with a Republican VP.
By curiosity I've looked on Gab and I don't see any content you mention. Yes, there is something about protests against banning guns, some celebrities teaming up to support Trump, etc., which is considered to be "far right" but I haven't seen anything you mention.
I might have missed that obviously during my five minutes of browsing there, as a result, if they really call for murdering Jews, could you provide a link to such resource - calling to murder someone is a crime in the US, so such link would be a good evidence for prosecution.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/ is a community that tries to collect and highlight the fringes of communities like Parler, that's a good place to start.
This is a false depiction. I haven’t used Parler much but checked it out a few times and did not encounter a single piece of content advocating violence, talking about Jewish people, using the n word, or partaking in any kind of racism. Your claim that these are repeated ad nauseum suggests you never actually visited any of these sites and are just criticizing them without basis.
"Hate Speech" as you call it, no matter how distasteful you may find it, is protected speech under the US Constitution, and thus (if also not a threat of violence, doxxing, or similar) is permitted on Gab.
I have no problem with platforms allowing any and all speech, since it actually just allows stupid speakers to beclown themselves.
Free speech is the most liberal idea there is - as Voltaire famously said, "I may disagree with everything you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
I would agree that this was not really the case on Parler though one could find a couple accounts like that. Gab has been a little more extreme but the worst by far was Voat.
Because the only defense they constantly employ for saying atrocious things is that it's not literally illegal to say them. It's not literally illegal to be racist, it's not literally illegal to be xenophobic, it's not literally illegal to be transphobic. So they think they should be all those things, although they don't call themselves those names.
Things should be said based on the inherent merit of what they say, not be said just because it's not literally illegal to say them. If the only reason you can find for justifying what you say is that nobody has made a law yet to stop you (and we do have laws to stop some things from being said), then perhaps you need to find a better thing to say.
I agree with you, but Twitter is rife with leftists being almost as horrible as Gab's extremists and not getting banned because Twitter execs lean left. So let's not act like Gab users are the only ones being awful.
Good luck with that position. Too many people fail to recognise the Ying and Yang that is Twitter and Gab. Both of them are dominated by extreme ideologies, but only one has all celebrities, politicians, governments and business leaders.
Complete nonsense false equivalence. Gab is _dominated_ by far-right racist content and conspiracy theories. My mum uses Twitter and doesn't see a single far-left opinion, 99% of the content on Twitter is that way.
You're comparing an entire polluted pool that is unfit to swim in with a single floating turd in the ocean.
Really? It literally isn't possible to look at the "trending" panel in Twitter without seeing far-left talking points.
For example, today's trending topics include the "cancellation" of Dr Seuss (with many tweets giving examples of why he should be cancelled in the author's opinion) and the use of the words "latinx" and "womxn" to avoid offending people by using gendered language.
Stuff trends on Twitter without it appearing in my timeline all the time though, so it is quite true you can use Twitter and never deal with left wing politics even if the rest of Twitter is ranting about bean dad or whatever that was.
Hell kpop shows up on the trending as often as leftist stuff but I don’t claim kpop controls Twitter.
> It literally isn't possible to look at the "trending" panel in Twitter without seeing far-left talking points.
You've gone from complaining that twitter is consumed by the left to complaining that the left is allowed on twitter at all.
> For example, today's trending topics include the "cancellation" of Dr Seuss (with many tweets giving examples of why he should be cancelled in the author's opinion) and the use of the words "latinx" and "womxn" to avoid offending people by using gendered language.
Right-wingers post about that stuff 10:1 compared to anyone on the left. You're posting about it now.
> You've gone from complaining that twitter is consumed by the left to complaining that the left is allowed on twitter at all.
I'm not complaining about anything though - are you confusing posts from different HN users? I really don't care who uses Twitter or for what purpose. I'm pointing out that it's unlikely someone could use Twitter and be unaware of left-wing posts on the platform given that Twitter themselves amplify such content daily.
I just looked and nothing about seizing the means of production from our capitalist overlords, or that money is a construct that needs to be abolished is trending on Twitter today.
You are attempting humour of course, but leftists in the West have long since abandoned those goals - I wouldn't expect anything of that sort to trend on Twitter.
The far left is still advocating these things. That's what makes them the far left. If you just lop off the extreme wing of the spectrum so you can call the mainstream left "far left", where does that leave the people advocating for democratic control over the means of production?
Nah, Twitter just seems full of leftists to you because you use the "both sides" or "what about" argument, a common conservative talking point. You think arguments like hey, let's use a word like "latinx" to be a far left talking point. It's silly, but the position is nowhere nearly as radical as "let's get rid of all governments, by force if necessary". The extreme left views to you seem to be to get rid of Dr Seuss. You can't even think of even more extreme left views as viable discourse, such as getting rid of all world rulers.
There aren't nearly enough leftist talking points on Twitter as it appears to your rightist brain, and there's plenty of homophobia, "feminism has gone too far", "it's okay to be white", worldwide anti-immigration sentiments, and (still!) Trump supporters. Maybe they're bots or whatever, but the talking points are there.
> If the only reason you can find for justifying what you say is that nobody has made a law yet to stop you (and we do have laws to stop some things from being said), then perhaps you need to find a better thing to say.
If a person thinks that perhaps, maybe, there's 2 genders and not 700+, they should be prevented from civic discourse? That maybe we should not be providing chemical treatments to toddlers for gender reassignment, that's hate? If they believe that math isn't actually racist, but is an objective way of making sense of reality, are they racist? How about people who criticize Islam and argue that it is a fundamentally violent ideology? That lockdowns and "scientific" COVID-19 recommendations were harmful because Florida had fewer deaths per capita than NY or CA
Today, merely speaking any of these positions gets a person called a "transphobe" or a racist or a science denier. In addition to not convincing anyone and unfairly slandering the speakers, it destroys our ability to think as a society.
Socially "acceptable" speech has never needed legal protection (in any society, liberal or authoritarian). It's the offensive things that need protection from the book burners.
It's also possible that their defenses sound like that to the people making the "not literally illegal to say them" crowd. As a stereotypical example, grab a random Christian, they say they believe gay marriage is wrong on Biblical grounds, this gets interpreted as "I want to hate gay people".
If we look at racist hate speech, people literally lecture that people who happen to look like me are "born into not being human", say the lives of people like me don't matter. We are told we should not speak and yet that our silence is violence. Trainings for "diversity" across a wide range of institutions have started segregating along racial lines, and the list goes on. During the Grievance Studies hoax, for example, one of their papers was sent back because it was too sympathetic and not sociopathic enough. Said paper advocated making white students sit on the floor and putting them in chains as a learning experience.
Yet open racism is fine, because the target ethnic group and sexual orientation are acceptable to the activist class.
Likewise, people who get kicked out for "transphobia" will often not be people who hate transpeople in any proper sense, but have policy disagreements where there are no win-win solutions. Yet anything but being completely on board with the activist class's 100% no limits pro-trans policy agenda is "phobia". The claim holds up as well as wet paper.
How about gender affirming treatment for kids who cannot physically know what sexuality properly is because they haven't been through puberty? Someone's a bit off their gender role? Tomboy, nah, they're a boy, time to stuff them full of hormones. Concerns that this just might be insane are again, labeled hate.
Said cultists insist on mantras of trans(wo-)men are (wo-)men in an explicit denial of biology that the best of our medicine can't alter: We just craft a facade that eases dysphoria to care for our fellow human beings. As Buck Angel put it: "I use testosterone to masculinize myself so I feel more like me." He's routinely called a transphobe.
This is basically the biology equivalent of flat eartherism or young earth creationism, but not subscribing to the creed is stamped hate speech. The mantra wouldn't even be necessary if its claim was actually true. Hell, it's arguably even worse than flat eartherism, since a human can't at a glance confirm that the Earth is indeed round, but TWAW/TMAM asks us to baldly deny the input of our eyes in everyday life.
It's not one side that has gone insane: Good chunks of both are open lunatics. Q at least is thankfully fringe, but even they've managed to get representatives elected.
> How about gender affirming treatment for kids who cannot physically know what sexuality properly is because they haven't been through puberty? Someone's a bit off their gender role? Tomboy, nah, they're a boy, time to stuff them full of hormones. Concerns that this just might be insane are again, labeled hate.
Trans girls have horrible anxiety about going through puberty. It's not them being "a little off their gender role". It's a fundamental dread about being given an irreversible treatment of hormones that will change their voice and secondary sexual characteristics.
Puberty is far more irreversible than HRT. The percentage of people who detransition is tiny; far more people who transition are much happier for doing so. It is also incredibly difficult to actually get HRT. The therapy is beyond the reach of most children. It's a total boogieman that this is happening left and right and all of the children are getting stuffed full of synthetic hormones.
Please educate yourself more.
Anti-trans positions are up there with "gay people are going to sexually assault my children" or "being gay is disgusting 'cause I don't like thinking about anal sex". Complete and utter bullshit based on unfounded fears.
And a religious person would say that we should follow ten commandments. Should we make it illegal not to follow them? Should we move toward punishing the sinners by law? I am against immoral behavior but it does not mean I am for banning speach and art, quite the opposite. The Christian culture is crumbling and is being slowly replaced by a more repressive one. And it is worrisome to say the least.
The problem is that it isn't true, you can say things that they agree with without being banned, but say anything even slightly leftish and it's insta-ban.
It is liberal, in the sense that absolute liberty is anarchy is chaos is degeneracy is suffering.
Non-degenerates know that long lasting liberty comes with responsibility, and that responsibility is moderation and correction.
The far right operates in degeneracy. They may fly the banner of freedom but they fly it alongside nazi flags so what do symbols and ideals even mean for them.
Generally the argumentation presented is a dogwhistle for fringe elements (nazis, other unpleasant people, etc). Sadly they are currently dominated by far-right ideologies (and ofc the inevitable sexual predators).
I don't consider your example of hate speech to be anything close to actual hate speech. I consider your example to be an example of an ignorant and un-intelligent statement.
This is a perfect example of two major issues going on:
1) America is catering to the lowest common denominator of who is offended and therefore creating a race to the bottom for societal norms (i.e. you considering your example to be hate speech, but I don't...but society currently feels the need to make sure you feel comfortable in your safe place)
2) 95% of the platform discussion may be in the form of your "Free speech" example, but if there's any occurrence of your "Hate speech" example, the entire platform is labeled a "Hate speech" platform....and this feeds back into issue #1
I don't know how implying an entire country of people are rapists isn't hate speech but ok. At the very least it's racist and intolerant which has no place in public discourse.
I do agree with 1. America goes too far to cater for people having "safe spaces". This cuts both ways though though and I would say the American right go much further to create and enforce safe spaces where their views won't be challenged. (r/conservative and TD before that).
2. I don't think this is true at all. Reddit definitely has its share of hate speech and nonsense but it's not considered a hate speech platform. It's only when the overwhelming majority of content is hateful garbage that you get to that point. Gab/Parlor being the 2 main current examples.
To me your argument is like many others, trying to find a way to excuse hateful, racist, homophobic nonsense as "free speech" as if in some way this speech should be protected because it provides some value to society (it doesn't).
Many also argue it's a bias against conservatism but that isn't true either. Conservatism isn't meant to be any of those things and if they could drop all of that they might find people much more receptive to their ideas.
There are constructive ways to push conservative views, I myself would measure myself as a centrist. I see both sides of many arguments but I am definitely tired of the right wing rhetoric. Just because I think fiscal conservatism is a good idea and small-ish government can be a good thing in certain areas doesn't mean I should need to read/tolerate all the crap currently being pedled.
> Since free speech platforms don't censor any content, leftists naturally hate them...and they'll do anything in their power to slow them down. Rather than acknowledge this, they make themselves feel better by claiming any non-censoring platform is "hosting far right terrorists".
Parler and Gab certainly aren't free speech platforms, so curious what you're referring to here.
Usenet is a free speech platform to some extent, and nobody gives a shit. Parler and Gab censor lots (and lots and lots) of content, far more than legally required, they just leave racism, homophobia, transphobia and incitements to violence up specifically.
Indeed, liberals are now commonly being mis-labeled as "far-right" in America. The left has become intolerant of conservative views, and labels anything conservative as "far-right". Liberals tend to entertain views across the spectrum, and thus are labeled as "far-right" by many people in the left.
Are conservative views -- low taxes, low regulation, strong military, opposition to abortion, opposition to gay marriage -- banned on Twitter? Let's be honest, we're talking about racism and anti-democracy, and if that's not far-right, what is?
No, you missed the part where this isn't about conservative values — it's about even liberals being banned and called far-right and racist and anti-democracy when they are nothing of the sort.
Liberals are being called racists and anti-democracy as a way of attacking and deplatforming anyone who disagrees with the leftist tribe. This isn't about values, it's about tribal allegiance.
If you actually believe that these people are far-right racists then there is a strong chance that you are being fooled by tribal manipulation.
You're being far too abstract, so it's easy to think you're making this up. Who did Twitter ban for disagreeing with the leftist tribe about, say, higher taxes, unions, civil equality -- all these cornerstones of the left?
The big social media platforms tend to find themselves in hot water when something approaching "hate speech" trends on them. So they have a tendency to regulate that content away.
The center and left in the US are normally not in favor of hate speech, while the right is more supportive of it.
What happens then is people who want to discuss hateful topics and post hateful speech can't easily do it on the current popular social media platforms, so they need alternatives. That's the market for Gab and Parler mostly.
At this moment, it happens that the far-right in the US has a very "hateful adjacent" messaging. They generally support and promote populist, nativist, collectivist authoritarian, and conspiracy-minded ideas. Those often overlap with hate of immigrants and non-white Christians, as well as hate of liberals and social democrats due to believing in their participation in demonic conspiracies. They also tend to suggest violent and authoritarian methods to get what they want, like killing their opposition or storming the capitol, and other forms of violent insurection. Thus they fall in the market category of Parler and Gab pretty strongly.
It's mostly the far-right aka radical right, the regular right in the US does not all prescribe to these and don't all have "hateful adjacents" messaging.
Also some more extremist current left movements also have "hateful adjacent" messaging, though maybe less so, when they do it's often targeted specifically at the far-right, most likely as a reactionary measure.
Also, there are reports of such left-leaning accounts being banned and censored on Parler and Gab, hard to say how true this is, but even if a rumor, it keeps the less radical right from trusting them. And so they are often considered to falsy upheld free speech.
> The big social media platforms tend to find themselves in hot water when something approaching "hate speech" trends on them. So they have a tendency to regulate that content away.
> The center and left in the US are normally not in favor of hate speech, while the right is more supportive of it.
The left is very supportive of hate speech, it just has to have the right target. There's abject, open racism against whites all day. Black people attacking Asian people is white supremacy nowadays.
I think I mentioned that the extreme left side of things also had hateful adjacent messaging. But I personally haven't observed as much of it, and it also doesn't seem there is a big enough market on that side for a startup to capitalize on. Maybe I just never heard of them though?
I'm personally more centrist overall, but I've tried as much as I could to give an unbiased summary, though being unbiased in those cases is hard. I'm trying not to judge the behavior, just observe it.
One thing I have observed is that the current moderate left in the US does seem to align more with Canada/UK/France style of free speech, with a broader definition of what is considered hate speech and stronger enforcements against it. Where as the right seem more aligned with the traditional American view on it, where hate speech is limited only if it can be shown to have directly and immediately caused lawless action.
This seems to be the crux of the issue as well. With the big social media platforms available today, it has enabled hateful speech to have more reach at a wider scale than ever before. It also enabled not only Americans to reach others, but even non-Americans can promote and propagate hateful messaging in a targeted and strategic way. The question is what if anything should be done about this, could it lead to instability and divide and throw the country in turmoil, or maybe it's actually a good thing and will allow more voices to be heard and considered.
It's the age old trade off of free speech and restricted free speech. Where do you draw the line? What risks are there on either side of it?
And my observation has been the right leaning Americans seem to still consider that there should be no regulations on this, and everyone everywhere, even non Americans, should be allowed to freely share, promote, upvote, and target any message they want, even hateful, no matter the intent behind it, because upholding the right to speak up and against the government is more important and so we should stay as far as possible from threading water or any slippery slope.
And my observation is the left leaning Americans seem more cautious, and think some regulations might be needed, to make sure that no bad actor takes advantage of this, or that discourse doesn't rely purely on emotions and hate targeted reasonings. And that not doing so would actually bring more instability and chaos, and the risk of threading the line between restricted but still free speech and non free speech is worth it, or maybe an exagerated concern, where they don't think in practice it would be difficult to distinguish dissenting views from hateful ones or those with bad actors behind them.
TLDR: You can be super racist, describe how you're going to kill everyone you don't like, spread crazy fake stories without any consequence.
It's liberal in the same way it would be liberal to have a party where you walk around naked and smear feces on each other.
Definitely a liberal party, but not one that most people want to participate in. Most people would rather have moderation where you're not allow to scream the N word at blacks. Which concentrates N word screamers and similar onto these free speech forums
For a non-American, could you explain how this is far right? Sounds pretty liberal.