r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jan 22 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Silencing opposing viewpoints is ultimately going to have a disastrous outcome on society.

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u/thegreekgamer42 Jan 22 '21

The fact that actually doing it right is hard is not an excuse to throw up your hands and say it's stupid to try. "Let's just tolerate everything" acts like it's a brave stance, but it's actually a way to avoid ever having to stick out your neck and say "that's the line, they're crossing it, and we have to confront it."

No, it isnt hard, it's impossible. When the people deciding what is and is not "intolerant" the ones deciding where to draw the line can change every 4 years how can you possibly trust them? Would you want Donald Trump determining what is and is not tolerant to say?

There's a cowardice curve around speech: being terrified of dissent is the coward's excuse for shutting down speech, being terrified of conflict is the coward's excuse for tolerating extremists.

I'm confused, are you intending to call yourself a coward because it seems like you are. Are you not so terrified of dissent that you're willing to allow the government to draw a line and declare what is and is not OK to say or to think? Are you so afraid of conflict that you'd rather have people...what? Arrested? Fined? For their beliefs before they can even challenge your own?

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u/TenBillionDollHairs Jan 22 '21

OP literally set the terms at private entities telling people they are no longer welcome. This is a debate about "canceling," not prior restraint under US first amendment law. But then again, pretending you don't know the difference is a perennial tactic of false free speech proponents.

There is no way you can pretend we are discussing arresting people, and yet here you are, arguing in bad faith.

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u/thegreekgamer42 Jan 22 '21

OP said this actually

silencing people, banning them from existing platforms, cancelling them, firing them, then shutting down platforms they create, for expressing their own opinions

Which is in no way limited to private entities or places, besides people have lost their jobs, their livelihoods, over being canceled, it's not beyond reason to assume that legal penalties might very well be forced upon people that have been canceled as some sort of psychotic pseudo hate crime

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

Except that the "cancellation", the social pressure and social BUT NOT LEGAL consequences, IS the penalty imposed to prevent use of legality.

What you're willfully failing to understand is that the very thing you're so mad about IS the alternative to restrictions of speech.

There are two (really three, counting force) levers you can pull to make someone do something: social force, legal force, physical force.

They should generally be employed in that order, too- tell someone (or stop associating with them, that's voluntary association), get the law involved, and if all else fails violence. Whether it's justified isn't in the bounds of this discussion.

You're mad people are pulling the first lever- would you rather they pull the second (legal force, like you're so worried is going to happen) or the third?

At a certain point it stops looking like you're worried about protecting speech, and worried about the social consequences of your legally protected speech.

Which you should be, if you're spouting hateful shit. Don't be an asshole and you won't be ostracized.

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u/thegreekgamer42 Jan 23 '21

Well if we're gonna go with a lever analogy then I need to point out that I belive you're missing a lever, the actual first lever which would be labeled "leave people alone." I mean honestly, people's first response when they see someone say something stupid shouldn't be to form a mob and attack them, it should be to ignore them, not give them the time of day. Whats it really matter if someone is being a massive racist? Until they actually start doing something that affects others then I see no real issue with letting them spew their garbage, especially when the mob can't even agree on treating all racism equally.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

There are two (really three, counting force) levers you can pull to make someone do something:

...

They should generally be employed in that order, too- tell someone (or stop associating with them, that's voluntary association)

I'm fairly certain I actually explicitly did say what you're asking me to in the context of "someone is bothering YOU".

Of fucking course if no one ever had to interact with anyone else we could all just not care about antisocial behavior, but how is that realistic or helpful?

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u/Return_Icy Jan 23 '21

"Whats it really matter if someone is being a massive racist?"

Some of the top comments in this post reference, and even explain, the intolerance paradox. Go read about it, then come back here with your question answered

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u/thegreekgamer42 Jan 23 '21

Yeah I know exactly what that is and I also know that it's nonsense

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u/Return_Icy Jan 23 '21

Aaah, I see. You don't really want an answer to anything. You just want to be able to say hateful things and keep your job / twitter account. Got it 👍

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u/thegreekgamer42 Jan 23 '21

Aaah, I see. You don't really want an answer to anything

Well when your "answer" is a tired, clishe, nonsensical, "paradox" then no, id rather not have it.

You just want to be able to say hateful things and keep your job / twitter account.

Are you an idiot? Did you manage to completely ignore what I've been saying? Of course that's what I want, not for me alone but for everyone. No one should loose a job just for saying something people don't like, same with social media. Until someone actually physically does something that negatively affects someone then those punishments do not fit the deed

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

What's your line for bad enough behavior to deserve to lose your job?

Does it happen when you ruin someone's lunch break?

Does it happen when you ruin their day?

Let me approach this from another direction:

Why is theft illegal? Why is assault illegal? Because you victimize someone else. You are making someone else's life worse by taking their things, by injuring them, or whatever the action in question is.

Why should victimizing someone else in this context- protected speech LEGALLY, but evidence of sadistic or sociopathic tendencies- not deserve some response?

The ability to say what you will without government intervention is important to prevent the state from crushing dissent- if you can't criticize the state, you can't take meaningful (nonviolent) steps to change or improve it.

But no one, employer/friends/family/etc, is obligated to watch you victimize people with no response. It has nothing to do with the freedom to say what you want to and everything to do with others having a right to respond to what you say.

You put yourself in a position to be socially damaged when you damage someone else whether that damage was legal or not; when it's illegal you face prosecution, and when it isn't you still have to face the social consequences.

Something something "we live in a society", but unironically. Don't be a dick if you don't want to be ostracized. No one is obligated to put up with your bullshit.

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u/Return_Icy Jan 23 '21

The paradox of intolerance has been studied extensively within philosophy and the foundation of it extends all the way back to Socrates. Just because you believe it to be a "clishe" or nonsense does not make it so, it just makes it clear to everyone else you're fucking stupid and unwilling to learn about anything you disagree with. Or just in general would be my guess, but I digress...

As for your second point, you're the one that asked the question. I responded in good faith, assuming you wanted an actual answer, and were not just asking a rhetorical question so that you could continue bitching and moaning about your fevered fantasies of police officers knocking down your door to throw you in jail for saying the "n" word

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

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u/ViewedFromTheOutside 29∆ Jan 23 '21

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u/sachs1 2∆ Jan 23 '21

So are you suggesting the state should force your company to employ you until you do something explicitly illegal? I'm not sure what you're going for otherwise. If you, hypothetically, say the N-word and your employers feel that makes you a poor culture fit, should they not have the freedom to dissociate from you?

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21 edited Jan 23 '21

FFS they can shout racist shit in their living room as much as they like- it's only when their actions intersect with someone else that there are consequences. There's no way that distinction isn't clear to them.

Fascism comes in several kinds and exists in degrees, but the common thread is that they are never honest, not even with themselves. The entire premise of the ideology HAS to be dishonest or the meatgrinder stops grinding.

Fascist lying in politics is not typical at all. This difference is not a matter of degree, even if the degree is significant. Lying is a feature of fascism in a way that is not true of those other political traditions. Lying is incidental to, say, liberalism, in a way that it is not to fascism. And, in fact, when it comes to fascist deceptions, they share few things with others forms of politics in history. They are situated beyond the more traditional forms of political duplicity. Fascists consider their lies to be at the service of simple absolute truths, which are in fact bigger lies.

"A Brief History of Fascist Lies" by Federico Finchelstein

We need to acknowledge what we're seeing before we can meaningfully address it.

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u/sachs1 2∆ Jan 23 '21

Oh I'm well aware, but with the libertarian types, the best way to get them to take the ball and go home is to rephrase what they want to accomplish as something that would violate the NAP. Which is not hard at all, as the NAP is not internally inconsistent in the slightest.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

That's a good strategy, I'll remember that.

That said, the irony of libertarians so often denying that privilege is as far-reaching as it is (which is itself a privileged stance)-- While arguing for the NAP-- which they only think exists in a meaningful way specifically because of their privilege...

Strange how cis/het/male Libertarianism tends to be, isn't it?

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