Comment on I HAVE BEEN BANNED FROM SO MANY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS FOR NOT BEING OKAY WITH FASCISM AND VIOLENCE!
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 21 hours agoPlease look at the next reply in the chain.
Free speech is free speech. The only justifiable limitation is harm, not mere offense. While fascism is harmful, their speech merely offends. Only they, their violence, threats, & appeal to force can be justifiably suppressed, not their merely offensive opinions.
If anything, your tact is counterproductive, because it robs everyone the open discourse necessary to observe the reasons against fascism & their effective articulation to discredit fascist rhetoric. People need practice to hone their abilities to deliberate & articulate themselves effectively. Relying on dogma, taboo, & censorship leads to brittle thinkers & incompetent defenders of righteous causes.
Moreover, their remark of “disagreeing about ICE” (as outlandish as it seems to me) doesn’t automatically make them a fascist. You’re making somewhat of a leap here. Do you know the US is full of douches?
We can politely disagree on almost everything, but absolutely not fascism.
Impoliteness is ineffective & unskilled at discrediting bad positions. Having reason on your side & articulating it effectively makes a more resounding (& satisfying) defeat.
I wanted to tackle that “devil’s advocate” crap head on.
Then you boldly played yourself & deluded yourself into “victory”.
Seems you’re raising an etymological fallacy. Unless you’re psychic, you don’t know what the commenter truly believes & no one needs to declare/imply/admit they’re playing devil’s advocate to do so.[^lemmy-sucks]
Exposing someone’s hypocrisy over the principle of free speech by eliciting a response just as the commenter had fits the definition exactly.
We are not just having a friendly, weightless debate
That’s up to you. We’re on Lemmy: nothing you do here does anything to oppose fascism. The fight against fascism is out there where the fascists are. I’m not even sure the commenter is advocating fascism: I think they were just luring you into a trap to expose your lack of principle regarding free speech. All we’re doing here is exchanging insignificant words.
so we certainly do not need ICE advocates
On the contrary, exclusion instead of correction is a mistake that got us here. Before we got complacent, we dealt with idiots by legitimately discrediting their rhetoric in open discourse & advocating better ideas. Before deplatforming began, the problem was more manageable. Relying on censorship to knock them off platforms fanned the flames: their persecution complex feels justified with “liberal social media” against them, and by forming separate platforms where their rhetoric goes unchallenged, they can radicalize themselves & organize to defeat the liberal system “persecuting” them. Civic disengagement, apathy in our political system didn’t help either.
The same complacency that got us here won’t get us out. Censorship is incompetent advocacy.
[^lemmy-sucks]: Especially on here: prefatory explanations for any move Lemmy could maliciously interpret in the worst way possible (which is all of them) gets exhausting & inspires defiance.
PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 20 hours ago
Strongly disagree. Their speech moves other people to commit acts of violence, appeals to force, etc.
The reasons against tolerating fascism are extremely simple and don’t need much debate: it is as simple as that fascists aim to dominate and eliminate basically anyone except for themselves.
Like we can debate the parameters of fascism, the history of fascism, hell even the justifications used for fascism throughout history, but we first have to agree that fascism is bad. And unfortunately, I live in a country where people don’t even agree on this anymore.
Yes it is lol, I’ve been here my whole godforsaken life and I will probably die in this shithole country 🙃
Yes, and when I’m doing an ordinary debate, I try to be polite and open-minded. But there are a very small minority of topics that I’m just not willing to debate, like whether or not you can have my wallet (you can’t, not debating it), whether or not I deserve to be shot (I don’t, not debating it), or whether or not we should tolerate fascism (we shouldn’t, not debating it), for the simple reason that “losing” that “debate” results in death and destruction and misery.
…yeah I know with pretty good probability what that commenter truly believes, especially based on his follow-up responses. I already knew the moment I commented. I’ve met a thousand dumb fucks like him with identical opinions, and I’m sure I’m gonna meet a thousand more 🙃.
Let me make explicit what I have only been implying: I clocked that dude as a piece of shit immediately and responded in kind. Now I know I’m not perfect at reading people, but I gotta work with what I got, and at least in this case, I nailed it. And I clocked you as a decent person, and I’m responding in kind.
Respectfully, hard disagree. Fascists used real concerns about censorship as cudgels, as they use every rhetorical tool, to barge into spaces where otherwise, their ideas would be absolutely obliterated.
I.e., no matter how good at debating you get, you cannot win a debate with a fascist. By putting fascist ideas on the same pedestal as your own ideas, you have already lost, because the fascist will simply use that platform as a cudgel to bully you and advocate for your oppression.