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Members of Texas Republican party free to associate with Nazi sympathizers
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Because being an asshole isn't illegal in America. And you wouldn't want it to be, either.
Nazis are not only grumpy assholes, they literally want to kill entire groups of people just because of their skin colour or ethnicity. A democracy can‘t tolerate people like that because they themselves are anti-democratic.
Can't prosecute people for what they think or want, only what they do. And again, you wouldn't want that to be the case.
You're getting downvoted, but people just need to imagine that the people in power use that same law to arrest pro-palestinian protesters. You don't want the government to have the legal authority to arrest you for your opinions.
That said, it doesn't mean you as a person have to tolerate Nazis. You don't
I usually hate being downvoted; it makes me feel dumb. But this is one of those opinions I'm very confident in, so I'll live with downvotes.
So the genocides need to happen again before we can do anything about them?
This isn't thought crime - it's a group motivated by hate, that has a history of genocide, and previously had to be stopped by the military might of the bulk of the western world. They're working to recruit and to intimidate, there's zero value to their existence, and very good reason to stop them.
What have I missed?
I mean... There are other models? Being a Nazi publically is illegal in a number of countries. America doesn't have restrictions on hate speech but Canada does. Here's how it works here :
You are totally allowed to express your opinions in private, to other people directly. If you are at my house and call me a slur - still legal. You are a fucking asshole and I am allowed at any time to tell you to leave for any reason and if you refuse to leave my house you are then commiting a completely different arrestable offence.
But if you take your paint and decide to mark a big swastika on the side of your house or wave a sign with "we should kill ____ people" (for any of the protected categories of people race/sex/sexuality/religion/gender/mental illness etc. ) on an overpass or assemble in a big group white pointy hoods with the express purpose of working yourself up to a genocide. That is illegal.
It's the aspect of public expression which makes it illegal.
Americans tend to think that any checks on their freedom of speech is a sudden descent into 1984 but laws like this have quietly existed on our books for the past 30 years.
That is certainly a way to do it, but I don't think limiting public expression is good. Bad things done with noble intent are still bad things.
Hard disagree. Advocacy for genocide or groups historically known to enact genocide has zero public merit. They deserve no devil's advocate and literally nothing good comes from treating them as a valid position. At best they have a negative value of contribution to peace, social tolerance and the real everyday mental and physical welfare of people habitually eradicated by genocidal regimes.
The step these groups require to make their desired outcomes happen is to be normalized and to have the sense that they represent a majority. Allowing them to build concensus and harass their targets in public with the express permission of the law allows that foothold. Sometimes we should agree certain actions don't belong in the places we share. That public space should reflect a democratic attitude of mutual respect, safety and tolerance.
And I would argue that if these ideas are gaining any kind of foothold broadly, the rest of the citizenry is abjectly failing to meet their social obligations. Society doesn't get to just coast; we all have to be out there every day expressing and pushing for what society should be. Make the public square so full of good ideas that the fringe ass holes are drowned out.
And the harassment that you describe is possible because too many of us don't engage and make clear by our actions and speech what isn't socially acceptable.
It is an uncomfortable idea that the rise in authoritarianism around the world is somehow our fault. No snowflake and avalanches and all that. But if we are sleepwalking into a world where garbage in the public square isn't fought against by overwhelming numbers of people, we kind of get what we deserve as a whole and everyone suffers, especially those that are disadvantaged. We are responsible.
And no, it is not good enough to simply hand over the responsibility to "fix" this to the state-sanctioned-violence branch and your local paramilitary police force. The hearts of men can't be legislated away; they must be won. With hard work and public display. And if we try to coast and just "keep it out of the public" these ideologies will definitely fester in private.
Perhaps being a member of a group that committed a series of genocides, was a military enemy of the and US, and is grounded in nothing but conspiacism and pseudoscience that had to be stopped by the combined military force of half the western world should be illegal.
The main downside of protecting Nazism is genocide - what's the upside?
Would you defend the rise of ISIS in the US for the same reasons, and if not, why not?
That all groups are equally protected under the law, whether you like them or not. I'm sure AIPAC would love to designate supporting the liberation of Palestine a hate crime. I'm sure that corporate lobbyists would love to designate unions as a violent and disruptive organizations.
If they are committing concrete acts of violence, no. If they rise as a political body, then yes.
Both ISIS and the Nazis have committed a huge amount of violence, yet you defend them - why?
You don't see the issue with comparing two groups whose objective is genocide with two groups with fairly specific goals oriented around freedom, which have committed sporadic violence serving those ends?
For what it's worth, I place Hamas in the Nazi/ISIS bucket for consistent reasons.
I don't have to support a group's actions to still believe they have the same human rights of freedom of speech and thought that others do. There's a reason that human rights apply to everyone, even prisoners. Even monsters. Stripping away fundamental rights from the "right" people is not a moral stance.
I defend their human rights for the same reason I defend yours.
You drew the line at violence, but defend the Nazis and ISIS - What's the bar for unacceptable violence? More than the 17 million people the Nazis killed, obviously, but where is that line?
I don't know what you want from me man. To say nazis are bad? No shit, that's obvious.
You ask where I draw the line. Between actions and ideas. I can't make this any more clear.
Nazi held a sign at a protest? Shitty, but not illegal.
Nazi hurts someone? Illegal.
I don't think there's any doubt the Nazis are bad - which is why they're a good example. When they've had power, they killed millions - the violence has already happened at an incredible scale, but you continue to defend their existence.
Surely you don't propose atomising response to the individual level - that we only react to individual members of openly genocidal groups after they harm/kill someone, otherwise allowing the unhindered operation and growth of those groups?
Protecting openly genocidal groups' speech is akin to protecting individuals' rights to make death threats (even after they've killed a bunch of people) - the speech itself is harmful, intimidating minorities, and it's a strong indicator of upcoming violence that you can prevent instead of waiting for innocent people to get harassed, attacked, and killed. Conversely, there's zero social utility to the hate speech other than identifying genocidal cunts that are probably deserving of some violence, for the betterment of society - the ol' paradox of tolerance.
I do.
Death threats too? Shouting fire in a crowded theater?
Again, this speech reduces freedom, has no meaningful utility, and very directly leads to, encourages, and spreads the violence - with all this in mind, it's unfathomable to me that anyone would defend it.
Outside the disagreement, I'll also say I'm pretty wary of free speech absolutists - I can't speak for you, but they tend to drop their principles the moment someone says something they don't like - see Musk for an example of this.
Criminal threats are typically actionable. They indicate a concrete act is intended.
A famously incorrect example of unprotected speech. It actually is protected speech, it's just a catchy phrase that people never seem to look into beyond a surface level.
Because at least half of the country I live in would love nothing more to apply these same ideas of restricting the flow of ideas and speech to me. To their mind, my liberal lefty atheistic ideals are diametrically opposed to their world view. To their understanding of the world, I'm actively making the world a worse place just by being in it. I have actively benefited from the freedom of thought and speech that I support while growing up in a deep red and deeply religious small town.
What you should be asking yourself is why these abhorrent ideas get any traction at all. The public square should be filled with good ideas. Put your ideas out for how to make society better. Put out your critique and world view. The speech you hate so much should be drowned out by all the good speech. The fact that it's not, and has garnered any sort of appeal points to a failure on society's part, writ large. We have an obligation to push society forward and be proactive in guiding society where we want it to go. Like I said in another comment, the hearts of men can't be legislated away; they have to be won.
We clearly have different philosophies on the value of freedom of thought. I don't think we're going to get anywhere with this.
It's super-weird that you'd defer to what's legal when you're asked if something is moral - particularly when you imply there's a risk legislation will turn against you at some point.
There's a bunch of reasons bad ideas circulate, but they're generally a product of the interests of those with economic/political power. That's a far broader, more difficult issue to solve than the proliferation of genocidal ideologies.
You want this problem solved?
Here's the definition of genocide (the UN one works fine).
Genocidal groups are now outlawed.
As far as organised crime goes, there's not really a higher bar, is there? The likes of BLM that you cited earlier don't meet this bar - not by a long shot.
I'd defend someone who's being arrested for wearing an isis t-shirt
Putting aside the effect of the t-shirt, has that happened (for ISIS or Nazis), or are you making things up to be afraid of?
Both ISIS and Nazis are terror groups whose explicit goal it is to kill large numbers of people. Their very existence is tantamount to a death threat made against Jews, "sexual deviants", "lesser races", the west, socialists, and so on...
Not in the US that I'm aware of. Nazi t-shirts are banned in Australia, and probably several other countries. I wouldnt say I'm afraid of it but I'm not making it up either.
You'll get no argument from me. But wearing a T-shirt or shouting a slogan is a far cry from killing someone. The freedom of speech in the US includes the freedom to hold and express shitty or simply unpopular opinions. It's a necessary evil in order to prevent things like banning legitimate criticism of Israel.
It's in Victoria, not Australia wide (and came in response to a huge amount of Nazi fuckery), but that's beside the point. Even when a Nazi dipshit stood outside a courthouse in Melbourne, next to Tom Sewell, shouted "HEIL HITLER", while doing a Nazi salute (after appearing in court for attacking 6 backpackers), then shouted "Australia for the white man, heil Hitler.", there was zero consequences.
The violence is the ideology. The very simple answer to "This is a slippery slope - where does it stop?" is when it becomes a problem. Protecting genocidal morons is a problem - stopping them is both a moral imperative and social good.
However, wearing face coverings in Florida for these purposes, IS: https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/876.12
And it hasn't stopped cops from arresting people for being black, etc in the past.
Those things are bad and that shouldn't be a law.
Those laws exist in a lot of states. That's why I mentioned Idaho specifically in the first reply. They're home of one of the biggest KKK groups in America, and are one of the very reasons why they didn't have those laws implemented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_law