Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
Yes:
Adding more laws that we’re not going to enforce fairly isn’t going to help, and will probably make it worse.
I’m sorry, when did I ever give the impression that I’m a conservative? I’m about as liberal as they come, in the apparently old fashioned definition of the term that prioritizes individual rights.
For president, I have voted Republican once (McCain), Libertarian once (Gary Johnson; I hated Clinton and Trump near equally), and Democrat once (Biden). I abstained in 2012 because I had recently moved and didn’t feel comfortable enough with local politics to vote (and I didn’t know if I’d stay), and the Presidential candidate was a near guarantee in my new state (Mitt Romney in Utah, no way he loses there).
I’m a left leaning libertarian, and depending on who you ask, I’m simultaneously a dirty commie, a fascist, or an anarchist, none of which remotely describe me. I am in favor of liberalizing all parts of society and helping the poor. I believe firmly that the ends do not justify the means, and will spend a lot of effort looking for solutions to problems that don’t violate my principles.
Hitler was elected my guy. There’s no evidence that his electoral victory in 1933 was in any way tampered with. He was democratically elected. He ran on a campaign of ending democracy. Same deal as Trump pretty well. He also served prison time. He was punished by the law. That didn’t stop the people for voting for him to end democracy. He campaigned on genocidal authoritarian fascism. He bought media companies and proliferated fascist ideology over radio and newspaper. He had movies made to promote fascism. But he broke no laws doing any of that. He was elected.
You are essentially saying that the government of Weimar Germany did nothing wrong. They prosecuted him legally for crimes he committed during an insurrection attempt. Then when he was free he ran about talking about how great fascism is and how awful the jews are and how great it’d be if he got elected cause he’d take all the jews out of the government and the schools and the media. All of those were actual campaign points of his. People readily voted for it. They practically worshiped him before he was even elected.
Nazis don’t deserve fairness. Nazis should be met with a fist. They advocate the destruction of liberty and crimes against humanity. They indoctrinate others into genocidal bigotry. Tolerating their presence at all is unacceptable, and they should be forcefully removed from society by legal frameworks.
I also never said you were a conservative but that you were convinced by conservatism. Liberalism is also not a left-wing ideology. Individual rights is mostly a buzzword for unfettered and unrestricted capitalism. Elon Musk loves talking about individual rights and freedom of speech from his billionaire fascist pulpit where he silences anyone arguing against him lol.
Ironically this conversation always comes up in conversation about how “we really need to let Nazis speak you guys. No don’t silence them it’ll hurt democracy’s feelings :( yes they’re convincing everyone to kill the minorities but no no no we need to let them talk, yes i know they recruit regardless of whether we tell anyone their fascists because their entire ideology is based on non-falsifiable conspiracies about minorities secretly controlling the world but no it’s okee we just need to let them talk and everyone will reject them im sure” aaaaaaaaaaand fascists have taken over your country. The same way they did in the 30s. And the 20s. The same way they have time and again over and over and over, proving without any shadow of a doubt that history will endlessly repeat itself specifically because everyone seems hellbent on refusing to learn from it.
Yeah you’re a liberal. You’re not a leftist or a progressive. I’m an anarchist, ironically as you listed that there lol Nazis can get bent, and the government should’ve had them all sentenced to life in prison without outside contact. If, you know, the government actually cared at all about preventing a fascist uprising. Kinda too late now, there’s probably a good 10 million totally indoctrinated american fascists, at least.
He absolutely was, and no hate speech law would’ve stopped that because his speech was popular at the time. Don’t forget that.
Not the same at all.
They do, under the law.
This is also true. And you have my blessing to punch the next Nazi you see.
That really depends on your definition of left vs right.
The original definition was based on the seating arrangements in the French National Assembly, with those on the left espousing liberalism (revolution, democracy, and secularisation, all liberal concepts) and those on the right preferring the monarchy.
I personally prefer the two axis “political compass” with economic policy on the left (socialism) vs right (laissez faire capitalism), and government authority on the top (authoritarian) vs bottom (libertarian). US politics is in the top right quadrant, I’d place classical liberalism in the bottom center-right, and I believe I straddle the left/right line in the bottom third.
And he wouldn’t know what those are even if they hit him in the face. All he seems to care about is the same thing as Trump does: seeing his name everywhere. He sort of hitched his wagon to the left when it was convenient getting Tesla visibility, and now he’s hitching to the right now that he’d like to keep out Chinese competition and get his Tesla compensation package approved.
He doesn’t care about individual rights, he only cares about himself. At least that’s the Musk I see.
We need to let everyone speak, but we don’t need to give them a platform. I like this quote:
Let them out themselves, and move on with your day.
Exactly. Thanks for recognizing the difference.
I don’t see how this can possibly follow. An anarchist wouldn’t support the institution of prison, at least not one run by a central authority. Anarchists reject the idea of a monopoly on force.
I doubt it, but even if true, that’s <3% of the total population. It looks like >7% of the population identify as LGBT, so why fear a group that’s half the size?
Well because 10 million people is more than enough to commit crimes against humanity on a frankly ungodly scale. You can commit genocide with those numbers.
I’m an anarchist, so ideally I’d advocate no government whatsoever in which case we could… shall we say do away with the nazis the way God intended. But we don’t, do we. We live in a society with prisons that currently house millions of people who shouldn’t be there. Nazis should be there, or dead. Either is fine but the least we could do is lock them up and prevent them from interacting with other humans.
Barrack Obama did nothing to prevent fascism. He was an American imperialist who was directly involved in the mass murder of innocent people in the middle east. I also just honestly love that you defended my strawman version of your arguments, genuinely incredible.
Saying that you’re not a progressive is as good as saying you don’t really care if Nazis take over again. You’re not invested in it enough to actually try and change anything.
You also ignored 90% of what I had to say about Hitler. I guess because you have no legitimate response to that? Do you believe that Hitler just came along to find a Germany that was already genocidally bigoted towards queer people and jews? If so you were given a seriously poor education. Germany was arguably the most liberal country in the world leading up to his rise to power. Your failure to understand that Trump played into the exact same political strategies that Hitler did belies your poor understanding of how Hitler came to be democratically elected. The world was not that dramatically different from today. People relied on mass media in much the same ways they do today, just at the time that was print and air waves. Radio stories and misinformation can be broadcast on the same day they happen though, much like social media stories can today. The media is and has always been inherently intertwined with fascism. It’s how you can indoctrinate someone into genocidal bigotry. Tell them everyone is lying to them and secretly jews control everything, and make it so that’s all they hear all the time from birth, and you have created a mass indoctrination machine and predisposed all those people towards genocidal violence.
Preach!
Not sure I agree with your next statement which smacks of genocide, but I guess I’d need to see your definition first (with specific examples). That’ll likely get both of us on a list, so perhaps leave it at that.
In fact, he arguably made things worse. But the man has some good quotes, even if he didn’t seem to live them.
I’ll defend good arguments, regardless of the source or original intent. I’m not here to win an argument, I’m here to discuss ideas, and ideas don’t take sides.
Non-sequitur much?
My post was long enough, so I cut some corners. I don’t really see the point in rehashing the pre-WW2 German political and social situation.
I think he succeeded because Germany was already primed for it. The people were destitute, desperate, and felt wronged, and Hitler channeled and focused that into a single, tangible enemy.
Socialists use “capitalists,” US conservatives use “woke,” and progressives use “hate speech,” though none seem nearly as effective as Hitler’s marketing, unless conditions are right. Lenin and Stalin succeeded because everyone hated the Tsar, but Trump succeeded because Democrats completely dropped the ball despite largely missing why people were pissed (and it’s not because of LGBT folk, it’s because stuff is expensive). The options in 2024 were more of the same or Trump’s promise to grow our way out. The former was probably the better deal, but the latter sounds better on paper.
Hitler won because he tapped into a common frustration (poverty and anger at reparations), and was able to redirect it at a latent concern that he could alleviate. People like simple solutions like “it’s their fault, if we take them out, our problems will be fixed.” Look at the messaging here on Lemmy, “eat the rich,” “Luigi was right,” etc. It’s the same kind of redirection Hitler and Lenin used to get power.
Trump kind of had that in 2016 with “drain the swamp” (people hate corrupt politicians), but he failed to deliver. He didn’t seem to find that same mark this time, but Harris fumbled so hard (said she wouldn’t have changed anything about Biden’s term) that he was able to win. People here like to blame Twitter/X, but I really don’t think that was a significant contributor.