Joshua Kronengold

Second, on the matter of denying Nazis access to platforms of expression over which you have some authority or control: Did you notice how much longer and more complicated that part of the sentence before the colon was than just "censoring of Nazis"? That's because there's a difference between censoring someone and denying them a platform. Nobody has a right to demand a platform that they don't own, and Nazis should not be among the people granted such access.

An argument sometimes made by free-speech absolutists is that there's a marketplace of ideas, and that good ideas can drive out bad. Nazis, by their behavior, refute this argument. Nazis are not convinced by reason. If you challenge a Nazi to a debate, and all of their arguments are crap and all of yours are strong, the Nazi will not concede defeat. The Nazi, and his fellow Nazis in the audience, will not think to themselves Oh no! My reasoning has been proven faulty! I must change my ideas! No, they will think to themselves Awesome! They let us get away with saying this stuff in public! Let's push harder; I wonder what else we can get away with!

This sequence played out recently at the University of Maryland. Last month, someone chalked racist graffiti on the campus grounds. When students erased the graffiti and replaced it with more positive, accepting messages, the university president tweeted that they were "exchange[ing] ideas and engag[ing] in debate." The racists apparently got the message that they were free to push harder, so a couple of weeks later a noose was found at a UMD frat house. Then, a few days ago, a Black student (visiting from another school) was stabbed to death by a neo-Nazi.