So, in other words: which of your core beliefs do you think has the highest likelihood of being wrong? And by wrong, I don’t necessarily mean the exact opposite - just that the truth is significantly different from what you currently believe it to be.
It’s the intolerance paradox in action. It’s like tolerating cancer. Cancer is a living thing, it doesn’t mean you respect it and let it have its way with you without interference. Same principle.
The intolerance paradox is an explanation of fascism, not a rebuttal.
It demonstrates the motivation: destroy those who pose a danger to our way of life. It allows us a justification to do to others exactly what we accuse them of doing to us.
We’re coming for the Nazis today, and nobody is stopping us. Who are we going after tomorrow?
Hard disagree. You’ve oversimplified. We ONLY need to do to the Nazis what they want to do to everyone else, because we have no other choice except to to let them win and then die. Their actions dictate their demise, not ours.
If they left everyone alone, they’d be left alone. Since they want to kill most of the planet, and will given the opportunity, they must be killed.
No, that’s untrue. We do, indeed, have a choice.
For the nazis to thrive, society has to value the ability to eradicate others. We have to accept the idea that we may very well be the ones in the wrong. Probably not today, but quite possibly tomorrow. The Nazi does not value such introspection. They cannot consider a world in which they could ever be the bad guys. Our willingness to annihilate a perceived threat must always be tempered with the humility that we are not an omniscient, objective source of truth. We can, indeed, be the baddies.
The delineation always needs to be at the point of eradicating “others”. That always needs to be a trait of “them” and never of “us”. Our mindset must always be “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
That statement is addressed to a hateful speaker, but that speaker is not the intended audience. The intended audience is the one who would try to stop someone from speaking. The message is “We collectively defend even the people we hate.”
I will never accept that to let everyone live in peace no matter what they look like or who they consensually sleep with, is wrong. And therefore the rest of your argument falls apart for me. Nazism is a hateful, violent belief system and not something you are born with, and for those reasons is unworthy of protection of any kind.
I see where you’re coming from. I just don’t agree with it. Hatred must be stamped out, and that can’t always be done peacefully. I am ok with this paradox, hypocrisy, whatever you want to call it.
I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend - to the death - your right to say it. The same goes for anyone you would silence or eradicate.
You can’t out-auth a fascist without becoming a fascist yourself, and I don’t want to live in a fascist state.
Well, I don’t believe you.
Would you defend the right of someone to stand across the street from an elementary school with a megaphone, every day (for years) while the kids get on and off the bus, yelling in great detail how much he enjoys watching them and how he dreams about them every night? Not quite crossing the line into vulgarity that would get him arrested, but definitely causing stress and great anxiety to everyone around him, and harming the mental health of small children at the least?
If you don’t defend that speech, then you do have a line. You just draw it in a different place than I do.
Just because something is spoken does not make it speech. The spoken word can, indeed, be “violence”.
You’ve described “disturbing the peace” (“megaphone”, “yelling”). You’ve described “harassment” (Every day for years while the kids get on and off the bus). You’ve described “assault”. (causing stress and great anxiety; harming).
The actual “speech” you’ve described, you have explicitly defined as insufficient to get him arrested, so I would have to defend his right to say it.
But in the context you’ve provided for him, the totality of his actions rise to the level of “violence”, and nothing I’ve said demands tolerance for that.
In a public forum that he hosts for himself? The “disturbing the peace” charge falls away. Non-vulgar comments about what he finds enjoyable and the content of his dreams, that don’t rise to the level of harassment? The stress, anxiety, and harm you described didn’t come from his speech, but from his harassment while disturbing the peace: Since his statements are no longer harassment or disturbing the peace, the “assault” goes away as well.
Now, he’s speaking. And now that this is speech, I would invite you to join me in speaking back to him, even as I caution you not to censor him.
We certainly do draw lines in different places. You are calling for the violent eradication of certain people. We agree those people are despicable. We can even agree the world would be a better place without them. But, I’m going to stand between you and them, and tell you not to become them.
When they cross the line from speech to violence and actually try to “silence” others, we will, of course, defend those others. We don’t need the paradox to do that; we don’t need to become fascists ourselves to identify and defend the victims.
No, I am calling for the eradication of a hateful belief system. Whether it becomes violent is up to them. (It will)
I suppose you haven’t been reading the news lately. We are past that point. They are literally arresting people that speak up for the rights of others, under false pretexts.