On Punching Nazis and other hyperbole

[mneme]

I'm willing to sing about punching Nazis, but I'm not willing to seriously advocate that doing so (or censoring them) is ethically and morally right.

Ken White (Popehat) has an excellent post as to why not. (oddly enough, -do- read the comments here).

Comments

Re: On the no-platforming of Nazis

[mneme]

Fair enough on the local thing, but...except with government support (ie direct censorship), you can't "no platform" someone in the general case; just prevent them from using your platform, i.e. avoid associating with their message.

I had the Milo/UW case in mind, although you added some interesting details. The question, fundamentally, is what the right response to a jackass like Milo speaking at your school is -- and somewhat differently, what the right method to combat his likely (or possibly stated; I don't remamber that much of the details) intent to harass and/or foster harassment of a student. Harassment is a weird case -- since our legal policy of mostly treating it as a tort doesn't work super-well.

The (justified) erosion of trust in law and law enforcement in certain communities is a big deal, of course, and kicks in proper behavior in the absence of working law and working collective/democratic methods. But WRT principles like "freedom of speech," and the like, the individual responsibility is not entirely dissimilar to the government one -- fundamentally, the US government doesn't refrain from unnecessary breaks on speech because it's in the constitution; we have a constitutional ammendment preventing censorship because it's the right thing to do, and that applies on an individual level at all. You don't need to listen to someone, or engage in commerce with them, but you shouldn't force them to stop thinking or talking a certain way, even if it's wrong.

Re: On the no-platforming of Nazis

[avram]

you can't "no platform" someone in the general case; just prevent them from using your platform

Which is another way of saying that depriving a person of access to a particular platform isn't censorship, right?

Anyway, the US government restricts speech for all kinds of reasons. Did you know that obscenity is still unprotected speech, and legally censorable? The definition of what's considered obscene has narrowed over time, though. And "fighting words" are still unprotected, which might have relevance to the issue of what sorts of things one can say that might lead to a riot.

Anyway, the line separating protected from unprotected speech has shifted over the 200-odd years that the First Amendment has existed, and it would be irrational to assume that we happen to have arrived at the perfect balance right now.