Being aware of people and surroundings in their true form is better than gagging some of the people around us, yes?
We have been hating on others not like ourselves since the caveman days. I honestly can’t think of any time in history when we haven’t been doing horrible things to each other. It’s like cancer. We are able to diagnose it and hear more about it now.
It’s like saying ...we are going to install a ban on sharing that you have cancer. “If we don’t know about it, we don’t have to acknowledge that there is a terminal illness amongst some of us. And all will be fine and dandy.”
Yes and no. It's definitely better if you're in the business of tracking down violent extremists and interrupting their recruitment or action plans. On the other hand, not everyone is cut out for that and it's unreasonable to expect everyone to do that all the time for themselves.
Rather than gagging certain people, anti-racism and CVE focuses on raising the cost of certain kinds of speech acts, specifically ones that are less about intellectual inquiry than about intimidation and coercion, which behavior may endorse or actually escalate into violent physical acts.
Despite the aphorism 'sticks and stones may break by bones but words can never hurt me', hate speech imposes a significant burden on the unwilling recipient from general anxiety up to full-on fight or flight reactions, and the infliction of this burden is deliberate and strategic. It seems entirely reasonable to me that the people who want to engage in such speech should experience for themselves how their speech acts feel for the recipients.
There is a certain honesty in being openly racist. I kind of appreciate that because I can walk away.
I can walk away!! That is an enormous relief and I am in control. I got a cue..information and I am free to act upon it.
If I don’t have cues, I will walk INTO unknown circumstances and be clueless with those who don’t want me in their midst.
True story: the most vicious racism I have experienced is the covert passive aggressive kind in the heart of liberal Berkeley. And I have lived in the south. Yes. The South. Some were absolutely lovely and others..they don’t want you eating corn and grits with them at their Waffle House. And that’s fine. Because I knew to stay out of certain waffle houses.
But Berkeley tho’...I needed therapy. It was serious mindfuck.
And yet quite a lot of people get beaten up or murdered by racists, why didn't they just walk away? Because, in many cases, they didn't have the option. Some racists just sit there and say hateful things, others are more active. I'm guessing you do not have much experience dealing with the latter variety.
You are missing the point of the original article. It’s about Facebook censoring content based on words. That is not going to stop people from acting in reprehensible and violent ways.
And you're ignoring the points I made above that don't support your argument, so it appears we've reached a conversational impasse.
That is not going to stop people from acting in reprehensible and violent ways.
It's going to make it harder for them to get the audience they desire, and harder to recruit, radicalize, and organize. Contrary to the 'lone wolf' trope, violent actors almost always have identifiable and often leaky support networks.
We have been hating on others not like ourselves since the caveman days. I honestly can’t think of any time in history when we haven’t been doing horrible things to each other. It’s like cancer. We are able to diagnose it and hear more about it now.
It’s like saying ...we are going to install a ban on sharing that you have cancer. “If we don’t know about it, we don’t have to acknowledge that there is a terminal illness amongst some of us. And all will be fine and dandy.”