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https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/
"I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The comic is actually self contradictory, because the top-left panel satirizes being tolerant with Hitler, while the bottom left satirizes accepting some wars. No wars would mean letting Hitler just go around annexing countries and creating concentration camps wherever he wants.
Hitler will be defeated in the marketplace of ideas.
"The Marketplace of Ideas" is such a scam, all that phrase accomplished was getting Bill Nye to debate creationists, who then gained followings because "The TV Box said that the Creationism and Evolution are equal ideas worth debating and considering the merits of!"
Don't let them make you think that Piss belongs on the shelf with Pepsi.
Chicken and the egg, he would have been defeated in the marketplace of ideas, if he didn't seize power and destroy the marketplace of ideas. If the German population held freedom of expression, equality for all under the law, etc., as sacrosanct, and Hitler wasn't able to manufacture a legal mechanism to seize power, nothing would have happened. But, they were missing that kind of unity, the idea of what a better society should look like and why it's worth defending, so that enough psychopaths organized around Hitler that he was able to enforce his mandates.
Ultimately the question is about whether or not a political paradigm can gain enough traction to have its followers come out on top of everyone else. The prevailing wind of society has to be justice instead of injustice. And not always "domestically", either, war and colonialism take a very similar shape. just as a projection from one region into another. This gets to Chomsky's description of "power structures". A fascist power structure could defeat, or be defeated by, the organization of the people, but it all depends on their collective cultural mindset - strength in numbers, arms, organization, etc. That is why ultimately the fight against fascism is about the necessity of education, and why fascists attack all forms of education.
Insistence on classic freedom of speech doesn't mean centrist, moderate, or apolitical. It means supporting civil liberties without being an ignorant hypocrite that takes those hard-fought liberties for granted. There was a whole movement that was pivotal to the civil liberties movement.
I once saw a guy on Twitter who edited the second panels compromise sign to say "You're both fucking stupid". He used it as his profile banner.
People like this actually exist in real life.
not taking a side, is taking the side of inaction, which will inevitably result in oligarchy. You can say you don't care, withdraw, and refuse to participate, but don't pretend like it's not an active participation. You're actively in this life, you're just choosing to let the wrong team win.
Most people will choose the side of inaction as long as they're comfortable enough. That's something I don't get with today's oligarchs. They are just as stupid as they are greedy. If they hoarded just a bit less -- if they were willing to live a lavish post-scarcity lifestyle while having as much money as a SMALL country rather than living a lavish post-scarcity lifestyle while having as much money as a midsize country -- they could live the exact same day to day existence without the working class being up in arms and in love with CEO assassins.
In the movie of their life, the only difference would be the "high score" text at the top of the screen.
But I guess if you value a practical good life over unchecked avarice and ego, you probably aren't cut out for the oligarch lifestyle.
This is one of the best summaries of it that I've seen.
People are being stupid when they call oligarchs selfish. They aren't selfish. They're idiots.
If you took away the internet and TV, People would riot like they never have before. You hit the nail on the head, enough of us who would do something are just comfortable enough not to. We have comfort food, alcohol, weed, TV, video games, and movies. All distractions. Take away the comfort, take away peoples last remaining reason not to revolt.
Not trying to sound obnoxious, but from my experience the average people and voters don't know much on just about any given topic. The masses are inundated and distracted by consumerism, vapid entertainment and other white noise to pay attention to what is beyond their immediate concerns, which makes them miss the bigger picture. Even if you make a person aware the gravity of the issue, some simply would not care because it is just more convenient not to think about it or gives them self-gratification. Case in point, data privacy protection outside of EU and California is non-existent because people do not even know companies sell personal information nor even care if pointed out. That's why social media thrive because most humans love the feeling of that dopamine hit when they receive likes; and companies and politicians are all to happy to exploit that and won't tell their users what they do in the name of harvesting their personal data.
The moral purists are lashing out with hyperbole since the Israel/Hamas ceasefire has castrated their big issue. They have to pretend letting Trump win by refusing to vote for Harris cuz she "supported genocide" was still the right thing to do, and they weren't just being impatient toddlers demanding a cookie RIGHT NOW. Apparently they don't understand that diplomacy isn't something you can just click on.
Let me guess- they are claiming that this ceasefire is because Harris lost.
"It is a less significant thing I do, than I have ever done."
I also would like a reasonable amount of wars.
The reasonable amount of wars just happens to be 0.
People that are in favor of legal censorship of political speech make the mistake of assuming that the laws will always be applied to censor the speech that they find objectionable or harmful.. As soon as you start allowing the gov't to determine what speech is and is not acceptable, that power will be used to oppress whatever the currently disfavored group is. The words themselves are not the harm; it's the actions that can arise from the words.
I'll defend the right for anyone to speak their mind, but I'll allow the masses to take their pound of flesh when their mind is filled with hate and bile.
just because you can speak your mind doesn't absolve you of the consequences of doing so.
You cannot apply the paradox of tolerance without understanding the outcome. If you tolerate everything, the extreme takes over. You are also making it an either:or choice - don’t censor vs lose control of all free speech.
This is false, and stems from the assumption that there is a victory only one way or the other.
There is no victory in any form of governance seeking to hold a middle ground for any aspect of society. You don’t get to set up some rules, dust off your hands, say “That should do it…” and think you’re done.
It is a constant battle that must be fought every single time an issue becomes a problem. No, not all speech is acceptable. But we should also aggressively protect the speech that is acceptable even if we don’t like it. If we can’t do that, then we’ve lost for different reasons.
It's your inability to differentiate between political speech and hate speech that's the problem
In modern societies, we're happy with the government banning the latter and not the former
In undeveloped countries like the US, their toddler-level reading skills prevent them from knowing which one's which
Government censorship isn't just a ban on speech currently deemed to be hateful. It is also an endorsement of speech they currently believe to be political.
The problem should be wildly apparent when we realize that governments around the world have a long and colorful history of making "political speech" that is only later determined to be hateful.
Even "Good" presidents in our recent past have held positions that, in hindsight, are dehumanizing, abhorrent and vile. Our entire "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for example.
Our incoming president has indicated his intention to treat immigrants as enemy combatants. He plans to deport adults who were born and have lived their entire lives in the US if he determines their parents did not adequately prove their legal presence. He has determined that this racist position is "political speech".
Government has no fucking business deciding what is and is not protected speech.
One important caveat: there is a difference between "speech" and "violence". Threats may be spoken, but threats are not speech. Threats should be criminally prosecuted, not arbitrarily censored by the government.
I agree that pureexpression is a horrible idea in combination with the internet. You can't allow people to just rile up eachother with misinformation and become terrorists over issues that don't exist. Be it Jewish space lasers, Mexican rapist immigrants or dumb conspiracy theories like vaccines causing autism.
Especially if you have a following, or echo chambers, content just has to be stopped.
Humanity is not ready for full free flow of information, not as long as dumb idiots believe anything they reas
What even is people's problem with autism? It can - even and does - make people super smart, after all.
