1784

Well that explains the crazy.

1785

That’s an interesting point. Not sure if you meant that in a facetious manner or not, but I have always believed there is tremendous value to having one’s own beliefs challenged. Either those beliefs become stronger, or we gasp form new ones. I think that’s something we have lost as a society, largely. No one is supposed to have their beliefs challenged any more. There’s a difference between decency and respect for fellow human beings and political correctness being taken to such an extreme.

1786

CONVINCING people to change their political beliefs, is the essence of democracy.

Pressuring/Strong Arming people to change their political beliefs, is the essence of fascism.

Have you people finished school?

Mainstream media aren’t forced to promote everyone. They can promote what they like. Media like TV, newspapers, etc, are allowed to publish what they like. No discrimination there.

But social media and communication platforms, that are public and open for everybody, shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate. Because they are public platforms.

Those political groups you refer to, don’t have access to mainstream media, but do have access to social media and services like Youtube. I have seen plenty of it.

You should not be able to ban someone from a social communication platform, unless he broke the law. If someone wants to believe Hitler was right, it is his right to do so. You are not God and you cannot order him to believe what you like. Unless he preaches putting Jews into ovens in a video, you have no right to ban him. That is all i am saying.

1787

Oh? Why do you draw the line there?

1788

This goes for you as well. That quote is NOT an interesting point. It is a sophistry point. It is a false argument. Convincing people through discussion and propaganda is fine in democracy, but strong arming them to switch based on discrimination and force, is not. Only Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the other good lads, did that. And they would be so proud of you US leftists. In fact, you are better fans that what Hitler and Musolini had to work with…

1789

Oh this discussion is going places! Discriminating vs. Nazis makes you worse than Hitler!

1790

Because that is illegal. That breaks the law. He demands violence.

Saying that “Hitler was right”, is not illegal. It can be your opinion. Discussing Hitler’s point of view, is not illegal. Being a Hitler fan is not illegal. Only promoting violence is illegal.

You should not be able to ban people from the internet if they did not break the law.

1791

Dude, in the beginning, they will be Nazis. Afterwards, it will be something else. It is the principle that counts.

If you, on principle, allow for the banning of ideas, it won’t stop there. Nazis will only be the beginning. Afterwards, it will be the communists. Then the conservatives or democrats altogether. Then anyone who opposes that the rich get all the money and the rest stay in FEMA camps for extermination…

It doesn’t stop, once it begins, dude. Study history, or repeat it. The “Nazis” serve only as the cheese to lure you into the trap, like mice. The end goal is corporate fascism and the end of free speech. The free internet is too dangerous and some wealthy serpents want it silenced.

And you are helping them out of sheer ignorance.

1792

Everyone gets to decide for themselves. That’s part of what makes us free. I am not obligated to respect your beliefs… I’m merely obligated to respect your rights as defined in our constitution.

I can decide you are an asshole, and vice versa. We are not obligated to endorse each others beliefs. We are not obligated to help each other spread them.

That’s totally fine! They are absolutely free to think I’m an asshole, and say they don’t want to listen to me!

If they’re having a meeting, they aren’t obligated to let me come in and speak in front of them. They are not obligated to let me join their message forums and tell them why they are wrong.

But surely you see how the actions of Hitler and Stalin constituted a gross violation of various rights, beyond their simply not agreeing with the beliefs of some religious group?

I’m certainly not saying that you can round of some group you disagree with politically and execute them, or seize their property, etc.

Assholes are absolutely allowed to speak. We’ve already covered this.

But I am not required to HELP you speak.

Ah, this is actually false, and we’ve covered this a number of times already. You can read back through the thread to see the various arguments made against this point.

Nazis can be thought of as ceding their rights in some ways, by choosing to exist outside the social contract where rights are protected. Since their belief system inherently incorporates the removal of rights from innocent people, you can create a consistent ethical model which respects the rights of others while not those of Nazis.

But right now, we’re not even talking about restricting their rights.

1793

In this case, that’s not how capitalism functions. The government did not ban them from the internet. The service providers – private corporations – decided they didn’t want to be associated with hate speech and decided to deny them service. In a sense, that corporation exercised its own right to free speech in doing so. Since courts are inclined to treat businesses as people these days, it’s going to be a tough argument to even the most ardent believers in freedom of speech that a corporation that receives no federal government subsidy shouldn’t be allowed to distance itself from hate speech.

1794

It’s okay. I just think @ArmandoPenblade’s black ski mask is chafing his face a little tonight. Plus it’s cumbersome with the Basque-style military beret on top. ;-)

1795

Why you say i am crazy? Marx was right. Have you ever studied Marx? You would be surprised.

It is true, in US people loath Marx, because they are priviledged. The most priviledged people in the world, they walk outside and it rains dollars. Not for everyone of course, especially now, but in general most people are pretty well off there. Compared to most other countries, at least. While your first world problems are what game you are going to buy next week, other people have to ponder if they will have to eat tomorrow, or a place to stay…

You see, when people can have it relatively easy, they don’t question things. Capitalism is good to them, after all, they have malls, and food, and stuff, and they are fine! It is only when the shit hits the fan that people put that brain matter into use.

The thing is, capitalism if left unattended always leads to fascism, every time, or your money back guaranteed, lol. Once monopolies become strong enough there is no politician alive that can stand against them, no matter how many votes he got. And this is when things go downhill.

You in US, are at that stage already. And corporations alongside their political puppets are moving to remove your freedom of speech and heavily censor the internet. Mainstream Media are already censored, of course.

Next who knows what they’ll do. Perhaps even change the constitution, why not? As long as you have your games and your doritos, who cares, right?

I am sorry, but i am not crazy. I wish i were. The sad truth is, YOU are.

1796

Is that the oft-quoted ‘paradox of tolerance’?

It’s possible to tolerate intolerant views and beliefs, but not tolerate intolerant actions. Isn’t that where we generally draw the line in public?

What aspect of Rwanda makes you think that it was tolerance of hate speech that resulted in genocide, rather than ethnic/class warfare stemming back to precolonial times (and don’t forget the role the Kingdom of Belgium and the Catholic Church played!)?

What’s the difference between a Hutu and a Tutsi? The latter had more than 10 cows during a census, and had their ethnicity recorded as Tutsi on identity cards.

The ‘capitalism’ thing is fine up to a point, except I’m fairly sure you cannot have a domain name without using a domain registrar. If a domain registrar can pull a domain (while breaking ICANN’s rules in doing so) based on pressure from a group that pretty much lies about Anders Breivik to sex up how evil Stormfront is*, shouldn’t every private domain registrar be stripped and new public bodies created to serve that function?

*The SPLC, Hatewatch and the Lawyer’s group all use ‘100 murders by Stormfront members’ to show how manifestly evil Stormfront is. Anders Breivik posted 4 times, 3 years before his atrocity. ‘23 murders by Stormfront members’ wasn’t sexy enough, dishonesty is fine as long as the target is bad.

1797

I’ve studied him quite a lot. Saying he was right is absurd. He failed to deal with the fundamental problems that arise from a LTV system. It simply does not work.

Marx’s attempts to come up with a system of value without use of a market was nonsensical in the extreme. It was filled with logical fallacies, circular logic, implied use of markets, and simple refusal to even provide answers (we don’t need to worry about the price of works of art, because we’re only dealing with scientific stuff!)

Marx’s theories were fundamentally, grossly, flawed. But that’s for another thread. If you feel like getting into it, start a thread. Let’s get it on.

1798

An advocate of Marx. Never thought I’d see that on Qt3.

1799

Life is full of surprises

1800

For what it’s worth, I’ve seen TemplarGR around in the games forum, so I don’t think he’s necessarily the “Hi P&R / MAGA / Bye Stalinist echo chamber” type trolls we’ve seen in the past. It could be that he’s just as wrong about freedom of speech as he is about Pillars of Eternity.

1801

Pizza chat in the Battletech thread…

1802

I strongly disagree, but let’s not derail the discussion. I will start another thread in due time.

In any case, even if we agree that Marx failed, which he didn’t, but let’s assume he did, that doesn’t mean that capitalism is a succesful system either. And you may disagree with Marx on his proposed changes, but you can’t disagree with his accurate assesments of capitalism’s failures as a system.

Capitalism repeatedly fails, and is only patched through band-aids, until it fails again.

Also, capitalism is based on exploitation. Capitalism is essentially a global legal ponzi scheme. It is like a game of musical chairs, it works as long as the music plays, or in economical terms, as long as there are areas or people to exploit. When those cease to exist, the system crumbles.

When that happens, the upper class fearful of the “plebs” taking action, begin supressing the liberties of people.

US is becoming poorer, and once people have less stuff, will grow restless, and will demand some of the 1% stuff. The 1% don’t want to share their stuff, so they prefer to supress political liberty instead.

And there are happy little fascists who want to help them by pretending it is for “defeating nazism”(wasn’t nazism already defeated 70 years go?)

1803

Please do.