Your link does not necessarily refute the post you're replying to. Gay people are not a protected group under Federal law; nor, AIUI, are they in most states.
> "Free speech" on the internet never really existed
Long before 4chan repeated everything Usenet had done many years earlier there was plenty of free speech on the Internet.
Not because nobody was in control to prevent it, but because the news admins who were in control believed in free speech enough to facilitate it. Although Usenet is a shadow of its heyday, that still applies even to this day.
He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare.
The excuse he uses for terminating TDS is an absolute crock; if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim.
It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like.
Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.
Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN, nor are accounts that use the site primarily for ideological battle. That isn't what HN is for, and it destroys what it is for. Therefore we ban such accounts, and I've banned this one. Would you please stop creating accounts to break HN's guidelines with?
> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like.
I have a problem with this, because in effect it is saying that if you want to be in business, you have to check your principles at the entrance.
I do run a business, and I do reserve the right to withhold service from people whose principles I find offensive. Just as as an employee, I would reserve the right to withdraw my service (resign) from an employer whose principles I disagreed with.
All this is very healthy for our society - it provides excellent feedback about your views, in both directions. The business owner losing business if they are overly intolerant, and the customer loses a valuable service if they are overly offensive. The system works pretty well - much better than any legal solution could.
I think that your point would be correct if businesses did not wield the enormous amount of power that they currently do. Who competes with Cloudfare right now? Who competes with AWS? There's already jokes about how if one of those services is down then the internet is down. While everyone might agree currently with getting rid of the Daily Stormer because they are assholes, the precedent and power is now set.
For the same reason is not ok for a public business to not make cakes for gay couples, we should not allow public businesses to pick and choose who is allowed to be part of the economy. If you want to argue against that, that is fine, but you have to accept it when people with the completely opposite set of morals start discriminating against _you_
edit: In case it wasn't clear, I am not a fan of Nazis, but I don't want to even set up the opportunity for businesses to have the power to just exclude me from normal day to day activity just because the CEO has decided he doesn't like whatever group I am in
Gay people can't choose not to be gay. People can, however, choose whether they're going to be part of a political movement dedicated to the oppression and eventual "cleansing" of large groups of people primarily based on things those people can't choose. I really don't get why you can't see a difference.
I'd still think it's awful because I don't see being gay as a bad or immoral thing - there's pretty much no imaginable situation in which allowing gay people to exist unhindered causes damage to anyone. I'd suggest that if being gay were a conscious choice, the shop should have a right to refuse service to gay people, but again, I'd have a right to stand outside their shop with placards, shout about it in the news, etc etc.
On the other hand, allowing neo-nazis to go unhindered may quite reasonably result in people's deaths, so.
Why are you even going down this road? Human beings are tribal. Tribes based on "choice" and tribes based on our DNA. We form numerous institutions based on this fact. Stop pretending otherwise. If I don't initiate force against you, you have no right to initiate force against me. If I don't want to trade with you, you have no right to demand me to trade with you. Why are we overlooking something that should be taught in Kindergarten???
I'd suggest that you could very well refuse to serve someone over their support of whichever side in the current Palestine occupation, as an example of something that might reasonably happen. And I don't think there's anything that would actually prevent you from refusing to serve pro-choicers, except that you'd probably go out of business quite quickly.
I'd suggest that your customers would have a right to boycott you, protest you, and attempt to socially shame you if you did either of those things.
The answer is: no, the baker cannot discriminate against pro-choice customers or else they'll be shutdown by the mob and cease being a baker.
I think GP's point was that there's a nasty double standard as to whose conscience can be exercised and whose cannot.
I think the gracious thing for you to do now would be to acknowledge that that double-standard exists AND confirm that you're fine with that double standard in some cases.
There's a single standard. You are free to engage in business with whomever you choose. This applies to everyone. But this freedom doesn't liberate you from the social consequences of your actions.
Cloudflare will probably endure social consequences for its actions - mostly inflicted upon them by social libertarians who believe they made this decision arbitrarily. Some of the social repercussions may be justified. But that doesn't mean their decision was unlawful, just frowned upon by certain quarters.
It always comes down to a war of values. This discussion is just a proxy for the larger discussion, which concerns which values are right and which are wrong. And there is, most of us would say, a real, universal answer there. We might not know what it is, but we believe there is one. Or else all of this hand-wringing is just arbitrary, and it comes down to who has more power.
I don't think Cloudflare is preventing DailyStormer from engaging in peaceful expression. They are just not going to help them do it.
And based on events in Charlottesville, white supremacy is inherently a violent movement & don't need any excuses to engage in violence. If they say they engage in violence because media & internet companies shut them out, I'm not sure I buy that excuse.
"They've been marching for years without violence."
And then, when they felt they had a government sympathetic to their aims, they stopped being non-violent, and stopped covering their faces to hide their identities. And someone died being run over with a car, many people were brutally beaten (this has been captured on videotape), and two cops died responding to the chaos they caused.
I don't know about the history of "Antifa" violence but I do know what I can see with my own eyes, which is that Nazis are violent. Their expressed philosophy of government is of white nationalism, of removing all non-whites from the nation (whether through deportation or genocide). It is a proposal of mass violence. It is a movement of violence.
Yes, I'm sure that the radical right marchers shot down the police helicopter with their readily available Strela-3 rocket launchers that they keep on hand, just in case the opportunity to do so arises.
You're trying very hard to make a connection there.
Antifa has been instigating full on riots since the election. We're talking beating people unconscious (captured on video), torching buildings (captured on video), looting businesses (captured on video), destroying property (captured on video), and blocking traffic (captured on video), all without significant media coverage (despite the video footage). This can mostly be attributed to the general populace not being familiar with Antifa or its downright violent tactics/rioting.
It's a miracle Antifa hasn't managed to kill anybody yet. It is the only reason they haven't received significant media coverage; had the nut in the car not driven through a crowd, this whole mess would have flown under the radar, just like every political riot before this.
I'd also like to add that Trump is "sympathetic" to neo-Nazis in the same way Bernie Sanders is; isolationism is popular among white nationalists and supremacists. Adolf Hitler supported gun control, strict conservation efforts, and discouraged smoking; is everybody who supports these ideas a Nazi?
Yep - some lefty engaged in violence at some point and therefore the moral differences between these movements are completely erased. Sounds good to me - what about, what about.
Here are the concrete facts: The President failed to condemn open, white supremacists with designs on ethnic cleansing as the chief instigators of this violence. Nazis feel like they have an ally (Not wrongly) in the White House, and are emboldened. They have actually acted violently. Nazism is a violent ideology. These are the prevailing winds. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of false equivalency with you.
You're ignoring a prominent and consistent streak of politically motivated violence because in this case you dislike the other group more. You're diminishing the reality that Antifa is a worldwide movement/ideology with consistent violent tendencies.
The president did condemn open white supremacy, and did associate them with the violence, albeit not as strongly as it seems you would prefer, and not as the sole instigators (which they weren't).
Modern Antifa is also a (generally) violent group rooted in extreme socialist/communist politics, with the general overreaching idea of the violent overthrow of anybody they consider to be a "fascist." They have "actually acted violently," and have done so with much greater frequency and magnitude than any far-right group has in the last twelve months.
This isn't a false equivalency as much as it is an inconvenient one for leftist/progressive politics.
Where do you get that idea of the moral superiority of the modern left (is that not what you meant?) from? Isn't it quite strongly related with cultural Marxism, which is related to Marxism which (I hope) we can agree has been been the most genocidal ideology of human history, birthing Bolshevism, Stalinism and Maoism?
This is both a segue and something tightly related; do you think the genocide of white males is hypothetically possible, and do you have an opinion on the relation between the Armenian genocide and the modern-day "alt-right" notion of "diversity = white genocide" in relation to (re/dis)placement migration as promoted by the European Union, Sweden, Canada, Germany and France?
(I just noticed the combination of overwhelmingly (Islamic?) male illegal migrants and "diversity" as in the promotion of ethnic minorities and non-males, I think that might result in some interesting conflicts re: normal non-Western attitudes regarding women, but perhaps there is no conflict because of some dynamic I'm underestimating or overlooking?)
> I don't know about the history of "Antifa" violence
I think a lot of people aren't aware; the media hasn't been reporting it much. Someone who wants the full picture of what happened in Charlottesville should learn more about their history of violence, everywhere from Berkeley to Hamburg.
They've been violent against people ranging from neo-Nazis to college speakers to Trump supporters to police officers to the G20.
The baker can discriminate against pro-choice customers perfectly legally, as far as I'm aware. The same thing - the boycott and protests - will happen to the baker who discriminates against anti-choice customers in a rural town, except their customers might actually have legal backing since being anti-choice is usually a religious belief. What the society that baker operates in chooses to do about it is entirely separate from what the Government should be allowed to do about it.
Yes, a "double-standard" exists in that people think that some forms of discrimination are reprehensible and others aren't. I think it's entirely reasonable that people use their freedom of speech and freedom not to interact with people they don't like in any way they see fit - to think otherwise is to deny people some of their core human rights.
At the root of it all, the state is in the position of ensuring a person's livelihood, not me as an individual, not any individual business.
Nazis vs Gay couples are easy, softball examples of "clearly reprehensible" versus otherwise. But if you allow the double standard, you'll find a fairly large grey area. Are meat eaters reprehensible too? The religious? The anti-religious? non-religious pro-lifers (like myself)?
As I said, the answer is simply NO. The mob will try to destroy you if you're on the mob's bad side.
Oh you are a dear for air-quote acknowledging that there is a double standard that you approve of. A CEO can break his company policies and refuse to serve an ugly customer who is engaging in protected speech but that they find morally reprehensible. A baker cannot refuse to serve a protected class that they find morally reprehensible or else suffer government penalties, media firestorms, and a ruined business and reputation.
The crucial difference that many people in this partly appalling thread (and partly even more appalling, mind-bogglingly fascist moderation) don't get is that gay people have not committed a Holocaust against 6 million Jews and also do not generally sympathize with people who advocate genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc.
This thread is so full of false analogies, it's unbelievable.
Should any business be obliged by law to make business with and thereby indirectly support advocates of genocide and racism? Should any business be forced to make business with Nazis, Red Khmer, Stalinists, etc.? If your answer is Yes, then I have bad news for you. No need to spell it out, though, as it's obvious...
I'm genuinely shocked at how some people can so blithely, and possibly obliviously, throw out textbook pro-discrimination arguments when the target of the discrimination is something they don't happen to support.
Society is self-regulating, it's important to avoid herd-mentality within society, and that's why people talk about protecting free-speech, but when everyone agrees that something is not ok, e.g. sexual harrasment is not ok and shouldn't be protected by free speech, then there's really not a problem with allowing these rules to exist. A society where everything is ruled by some sacred maxims, like some sort of philosophical school, doesn't exist, life isn't that simple.
Let's say you own a café. The local political youth group "Club Hitler" submits a proposal to have their weekly meetups in your venue. You agree, and they host a number of meetups. They then begin to publicize your venue's support for the Nazi cause as part of their promotional materials.
At what point in this process do you think it would be been morally appropriate for you to cancel your service to this group?
There exist laws which were explicitly written to address that kind of specific situation. If someone communicate a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual person, business, product, or group, that someone can be charged under defamation laws.
Let say a local youth group submits a proposal to have their weekly meetups in your venue. They then begin to shoplift. What is the rational behavior to address this issue?
I would start by calling the police and report the crime. I could then start denying service to them (which casinos are known to do). But if I start to do general statements about any people which share identity, belief, political membership, or sexual orientation with the local youth group then I am likely stepping a bit to far into the realm of discrimination.
In a perfect world I think Cloudflare should have filed a police complaint in regard to the daily stormer and then canceled the account. Such decision would have nothing to do with regulating content, censorship, vigilante justice, or freedom of speech. It would just be a simple matter of a customer not obeying the law.
Would it be an important matter of principle for you that you give them sufficient time to retract their claims, instead of terminating their service immediately?
Lotharbot suggested the following standard, which I think makes good sense: if a business provides a generic product, they should not be able to discriminate in who they sell it to, and in turn, we as society recognize that they are not saying anything about support or disagreement with their customers' views by selling them things. If, on the other hand, a product involves customization and expression, the business can refuse customers for ideological reasons, and we can infer from their work what they support.
So a bakery making generic wedding cakes must provide them for everyone, and we as society are crystalclear that this does not imply the baker supports interracial marriage. However, a bakery providing custom cakes based on the couple cannot be compelled to write "Arranged marriage between children is beautiful" on a cake.
A web host is required to sell you webspace regardless of your content, unless it is actually illegal or contrary to technical and ideologically neutral terms of service. But a web design firm may decline to design a page for you based on its content.
I think this is a really good principle, and a great way to preserve both free speech and freedom of conscience.
> I have a problem with this, because in effect it is saying that if you want to be in business, you have to check your principles at the entrance.
Well, welcome to the club! Other noteable groups objecting to their principles being regulated by a government office include Masterpiece Cakeshop of Lakewood, CO, and Memories Pizza of Walker, IN. (For the moment, disregard the likes of Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor, as their matters of principle-regulation are less directly relevant.)
I figure there are three-ish main options.
1. People are consistently required to suppress their principles, and do business with groups like the Daily Stormer.
2. People are consistently allowed to exercise their principles, and refuse service to gay weddings.
3. A disaster area of conflicting regulations both for and against the right of various groups to be served by various businesses, conforming to no consistent set of principles but rather to whatever is politically popular and expedient today, and hypocritical to the core.
My money's on 3.
(There's a theoretical possibility they'll actually nail down specific principles and not make it a total mess, but I don't think it's plausible.)
You're missing out on option 4: People can't discriminate on properties that the person they are doing business with can't pick or change (gender, sexual orientation, color of skin, hair, size of nose ...) but can discriminate on properties that the person in question did choose or could change (voicing the desire to kill or suppress large parts of the population, affiliation with nazis or just being an idiot in general).
Your notable groups are not required or regulated in any way that would require them to print a swastika on a cake or a Hitler face on their pizza if the customer ask so. They are, however, required to serve queer and non-queer people of all skin tones. There is indeed a difference between these kinds of discrimination.
I think this entire argument is classic "logic overreach". This is all socially constructed. There is no perfect logical algorithm for deciding what is reasonable.
The rule is more like "don't randomly screw people". Ok, we've decided to screw this Nazi website. Hmm, is that a case of randomly screwing people? Nope. OK, move along.
> People can't discriminate on properties that the person they are doing business with can't pick or change [...] but can discriminate on properties that the person in question did choose or could change
Religious beliefs seem to fall squarely in the latter category (at least to the extent that political views do). Are you really comfortable with people discriminating on that basis?
In principle I'd be fine with including religion and every (political) view in that list as long as the view infringes on the freedom of the person doing business. For example: view (a) that demands that all living people must wear black gloves and run in circles five hours a day would be on my "that's ok to discriminate against" list while view (b) that requires the follower to wear a three-pointed pirate hat and eat pasta at its religious gatherings would not be.
Basically: If your view demands anything of me or any other person I might know other than pure tolerance of your view, I can choose to discriminate against you. If your view only demands tolerance and only makes prescriptions for you, I can't. Obviously, the real world is a bit more messy since even a political moderate view that demands higher taxes to feed the poor infringes on my freedom to earn money - so the question where to draw that line is a matter of open debate.
I suppose you haven't heard of the "Trump voter divorce" yet, have you?
Political views are sometimes similar in character to religious views, such that expressing contrary opinions results in shunning and being ostracized by one's family and community.
It's one of the major reasons why free and fair elections have to use secret ballots, aside from vote-buying. Around here, it's risky to even participate in partisan primary elections, because employers can look up your name in the voting records and determine which party's ballot you used, then engage in party-based discrimination at work that ranges from subtle to blatantly overt.
While this area seems to have more than its fair share of petty and bigoted persons, it can basically happen anywhere that requires a declaration of party affiliation during the primary.
My own spouse has turned a bit more left over the years, even as my siblings-in-law have gone more to the right. It has resulted in some rancor, as those four gratuitously post replies on Facebook for each other's posts and summarily delete replies by my spouse. They're really being a bunch of a-holes.
If you don't conform to the views of your local community, you're going to have a hard time. And the more homogenous it is, the more you can be punished for your non-conformity.
It's still a choice to remain with your religion. It's not a simple one, granted, but if you stick with a religion that requires you to hate or be intolerant to other people, you don't deserve that others are tolerant of your religion. Hence they can choose not to engage with you. Why would hey have to bear the burden of you picking the easy path.
Does it harm you when others hold hand in public? No, it does not. It only requires a modicum of tolerance. So no, it's not ok to discriminate based on that. Or do you discriminate based on couples kissing in public?
"Public service" is an important distinction here that you're missing. There's a big difference between opening a shop and running a telecommunications business. While it would be totally appropriate for you to set the tone and messaging of your shop and even discriminate among customers, I submit it would not be good for our society if telecom companies banned customers based on their legal speech. You wouldn't want that, because while it would be great if it only targeted racists and Nazis, what if it didn't? This is basic public communication infrastructure, just like the public streets that link up private shops.
The principle that applies is a basic Enlightenment one: everyone has the right to speak. You don't have to agree. You can not visit their shop. You can protest outside their shop. But you don't get to barricade their shop and cut its wires.
Gender, race, age, sexual orientation, etc. are “protected classes” that you can’t discriminate on. Being a Nazi is not a protected class. If you have a business, you can feel free to discriminate against Nazis. And you probably should.
If you operate on public infrastructure, like being granted public right of ways to lay fiber, I think you lose the right to discriminate. This feels good because Nazis are assholes but it sets a very dangerous precedent. This is why the ACLU has a long history of defending Nazis and their ilk. Because one day it will be you on the other side. We should all discriminate against Nazis by denouncing them, ignoring them, etc. Public infrastructure should not.
You can talk about how things "should" be, about "precedents", etc, but the true guideline to measure these things is what the vast majority agrees to, because that's what public approval is all about. So all you can really do is try to convince the majority about what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'.
You mean when the redshirts rioted and killed 24 people which pushed the public towards the brownshirts and ultra-nationalism? Was that when we're imagining the Nazis were ignored?
He's referring to the fact that a major catalyst for the Nazis gaining power was German communists engaging in what was practically open warfare with them.
This isn't so clear cut though. Religion is usually included in that list, even though That is pertly ideological. Recently, gender and/or sexual orientation/identity has become arguably ideological too. Racial identity has some problematic examples (are jews white? what about light-skinned hispanics?)
Can of worms doesn't even begin to describe these half-baked, feel-good, shortsighted, "shore up a few voting blocks" measures. Parents who petition the city council for soft playground surfaces have done humanity a great disservice. Just be grateful there is a playground and work to make sure others get playgrounds before you turn your child into someone who can't produce something of value without first making sure everyone else is following "the rules".
It may be helpful for people to understand some of the underlying legislation that lays out protected classes. Of course, there is state and local legislation that can further refine the protections at a state/local level in addition to the national legislation.
> if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim.
The damage of libel is reputational damage. Getting the libelous claim retracted after the claim has been seen by the public doesn't undo or erase the damage the claim does. Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation.
Assuming good faith on all parties (including in this discussion)...
The public posting was probably on their website, which is now likely blackholed due to being DDoSed after they were no longer protected by a CDN.
The Internet is broken when some terrorists can get together and decide to blockaid someone else; even if that someone else is nearly universally agreed upon to vile.
I agree with that user on Twitter that wants to make (the racist) individuals /infamous/ so that they can receive the blowback they deserve for their public behavior.
It doesn't even have to cause reputational damage yet I don't think. IANAL, but the contracts one signs with this sort of company tends to include things like not claiming endorsement of the content by the provider.
> Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim
Yes, that something is called suing for libel and proving it is libel in a court.
Simply claiming something is libel (which Prince doesn't even do in his blog post) doesn't make it libel.
> Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation.
Because of Cloudflare's action there are now 1000 times as many people, including myself, who are aware of TDS's claim who otherwise wouldn't have heard of it.
> He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare.
Well... Yeah. I'm not sure why people think this is not how the internet works. It's a knit of private industry in most of the west and with the exception of a few (eroding) laws, private industries do all kinds of things.
The problem for DS is: there aren't many sites that WILL CDN them now that are as good as the alternatives that will surely not.
We can talk about strengthening guarantees of access to internet services and hosting, but that'd almost certainly be government mandated. Very few governments in a position to dictate this kind of policy to a global entity like the internet are terribly friendly to outright fascist, nazi policy.
So you can pick your poison: inconsistent rules from private entities or more consistent but more likely unfavorable and less mutable rules from government mandate (probably with the weight of government survey and law enforcement).
> Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.
The difference here is that neo-nazis make a decision to be bigots. They could stop. Most LGBT people consider their status to be a matter of birth.
Even for deeply held religious beliefs, we've long recognized a difference in fairness between discriminating on the circumstances and nature of birth vs. the circumstances and nature of choices made.
I think CDNs are a problem in general (their existence speaks to the self-inflicted wounds of an ultimately lawless internet, bad actors contained within gradually destroying it from abuse). It's a bad thing if they start consistently policing content.
But I think it's much worse to vigorously justify murder of people exercising their rights to free speech. Ultimately, people opting out of the tit-for-tat game of free speech and engaging in spontaneous acts of violence are opting out of society as a whole, and will start finding themselves exiled and imprisoned formally. And it's difficult to see any other way to proceed.
> The difference here is that neo-nazis make a decision to be bigots. They could stop. Most LGBT people consider their status to be a matter of birth.
I don't understand why this argument gets thrown about so often. Obviously not so much about neo-nazis in particular, but whenever a comparison is made to LGBT people. And before anybody jumps to conclusions, I am not about to argue that sexual orientation is a choice.
Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of all kinds, from all sorts of sources, there are people that seem to honestly believe the earth is flat. There is no way to make a reasoned decision to believe that. It must be something they are not in control of. It could be something they were born with, something in their experiences, or both, but it's clearly something they are not rationally deciding.
I'm not certain it can be said that the neo-nazis are definitely making a choice. It seems to be a pretty vehement emotional response, which would indicate it's not.
I don't mean to say we should tolerate neo-nazis in the sense that we just let them do their thing. But I do think we might be better off treating them as people that have some predisposition to being neo-nazis than as people that just decided to be one.
Muslims make a decision to follow Islam. They could stop.
But then they would be considered an apostate by most of the people they have ever known, and some of those people may consider apostasy to be a capital crime.
Do you really think it that easy for someone who is immersed in a niche culture to walk away from it, particularly if it is an insular and unpopular culture? It happens, but not everyone is strong enough to overcome the cognitive dissonance and leave behind everything they have ever been taught.
It isn't a matter of expecting a neo-Nazi to suddenly decide to stop being one, but in getting one to a cult deprogrammer counselor and providing sufficient social support afterwards, as they will likely have to discard all previous friends and family in the process. It would be similar to a homosexual kid coming out to fundamentalist parents. "Mom, Dad... I have decided that all people are created equal, and I want to judge people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." "I knowed we never shoulda sent you to no public school. Get out."
For most humans, leaving an accidental community requires subsequent joining of an intentional community. And the stronger the stigma and adversity against that original community, the harder it is for someone to believe they could be accepted by anyone else upon leaving it.
But that really only applies to the passive followers, who go along to get along. There are always true die-hard believers, for whom facts and contrary evidence simply dissolve under the light of their religious or pseudo-religious faith. They have intentionally excised their own capacity to question their beliefs. How much effort are you willing to expend to crack open that nut and "save" them? They are certainly never going to pull themselves out under their own power.
> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like.
> Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.
Work and business is an enormous part of human life: exempting businesses from Constitutional protections dramatically limit the scope of those protections. Should federal agents be able to raid a business without regard for the Fourth Amendment? Should Texas be able to take legal action against Amazon, Microsoft, etc. for speaking out against the anti-bathroom bill?
In America, you get to run a business with whatever political views you have, subject to very narrow restrictions of a handful of anti-discrimination statutes (which are, incidentally, all based on the much-maligned Commerce Clause).
Nazis aren't a protected class, yet. Do you think that businesses shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against skateboarders, or people who refuse to wear shirts and shoes?
Not that you can't think that, but it's a weird personal ideology that calls for explanation and argument, not some pronouncement of what should or should not be done.
I'm pretty sure you can make the argument why gay people, women and racial or religious minorities shouldn't be discriminated against. Make the same argument for skateboarders if you don't want to make it for Nazis. Do you have an similar argument for why Nazis shouldn't be fired, or why we shouldn't consider whether the people that we do business with employ, or are, Nazis?
Political affiliation is a protected class. I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis. Unless a person registered with the NSDAP prior to 1945, technically they are not a Nazi.
> I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis.
This coyness about the dilution of meaning is utterly irrelevant here. We're not discussing figurative Nazis or the erosion of the term. We're discussing people literally waving modern variants of historical Nazi flags, historically used Nazi flags, inventing new similar flags, chanting english versions of Nazi slogans, publishing extensive content about racially motivated violence that cites pre-existing Nazi dogma, and cheering acts of spontaneous and fatal violence against those that oppose them.
This is not some case of the excluded middle. The word "Nazi" is used judiciously here and no one seems to be feigning confusion except the people who think it should be okay to endorse acts that even our conservatively run justice department things could be categorized as hate crimes.
And forgive me, but it's difficult to not hear a note of falseness in this kind of protest. Many of these people in these rallies self-identify as Neo-Nazis, and use slogans that have been associated with violent white-supremacist movements for decades. A powerful deductive intellect is not required to make the connection here.
If all that's required to make this right in your book is the prefix "neo-" then please, let me offer you a chrome or firefox plugin to tighten up everyone's language to match one you'll understand.
So I ask: are you actually confused here or is this simply a rhetorical tactic?
Over the years, a common argument I've heard against the tactic of calling all kinds of right-leaning people Nazis and Racists was that one day we might really need to identify Real Nazis as Nazis and then nobody will believe it (the boy who cried wolf).
That's not the problem. The problem is that for many, the years and years of calling your run-of-the-mill Republicans and whatnot "nazis" has diluted the term, just like GP mentioned.
So, now, when people try to get others to understand that the Nazis we now have are almost exactly the same we had in Germany way back then, people don't really make that connection (even if they say they do) on emotional level. Instead, they associate the self-professed Neo-Nazis with the "nazi Republicans" and the not-really-a-nazi-alt-righters that have been cried at in the 2000's.
Source: many acquaintances who are clearly very, very confused on the matter.
One would think that, for the people calling Republicans "nazis" in the 2000's, the absence of swastikas and Nazi Hails should have cleared things up. But they did it anyway.
People are not simple creatures, and things like crying the wolf actually do confuse us pretty easily.
So you're actually agreeing that someone waving a swastika and calling for the extermination of jews can be considered a Nazi, yet you choose not to do it, just to spite those lefties that annoyed you in the 2000s?
And, specifically, they annoyed you with their use of slightly-hyperbolic rhetoric, used to underline their contention that the Republican strategy of racial division and incitement of culture wars may create fertile ground for a resurgence of staples of the fascist ideologies? And that, if we continue down this path, America may some day start electing strongmen playing on feelings such as xenophobia?
I am not doing any of that. I'm just pointing out that this is a very real case of "crying the wolf" effect working it's voodoo, and that maybe, in the future, something could be learned from all this.
Personally, I'm not even from the US, and find many of the policies of the Republicans almost absurd. Where I'm from, your run-of-the-mill republican would be considered so deep into the right wing as to be completely niche. Almost alt-right, if you wish.
Look, I see where you're coming from. But is it so hard to see that waving the nazi stamp around willy-nilly really will dilute the meaning and connotations of the term, no matter how much you think it was justified. Nazi's are probably the Satan of modern times, literally the thing people use to mean "the worst there can ever be". However Republican policies seem baffling to me, I see no reasonable way to stamp them with that kind of stamp. They're 50% responsible for running your country, for God's sake :)
I can see how that criticism isn't completely invalid. I just don't see how it connects to this case, considering the website in question chose to name itself after a well-known Nazi propaganda paper (as in the realest, 1930s Nazis in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Stürmer)
There's also some confusion about terms, obviously. The meaning of Nazi has morphed and includes more than actual, card-carrying party members. The dictionary lists "a person with extreme racist or authoritarian views" as one of the definitions. It is also meant, and generally understood, as an insult, and a reference to a certain mindset (cf "Grammar Nazi"). And while neither Trump nor most other Republicans would be considered Nazis, there are some obvious tendency at play in the party that invite the comparison, such as the attempts to disenfranchise groups of voters, or, more recently, the Presidents' encouragement of police officers to "rough up" arrestees.
The only thing I said was that the term you are talking about most probably does not inspire the loathing it should (and once did) after all the crying-the-wolf. And considering that, I tried to hint that maybe in the future it might be sensible to take this effect into account before going down the same rabbit hole again.
> And considering that, I tried to hint that maybe in the future it might be usensible to take this effect into account before going down the same rabbit hole again.
To who? Is it implicit that I've misused the term? That I am misusing it here?
Who requires this admonition? If not me, then why are you burying this dire warning arm-deep in a comment thread on HN?
They're calling themselves Nazis. They wave flags, with Swastikas.
I do understand that GWB wasn't a Nazi. And maybe there was a bit too much wolf-crying. But even if the boy has had this annoying habit at crying "wolf" every day–does that render you unable to recognise a wolf when he's staring you in the eyes?
Who is "they" in this sentence? The original comment was giving a hypothetical subject.
Someone waving a flag with a Swastika, non-ironically, yes, they're a Nazi. Someone calling themself a Nazi? Yes, they're a Nazi.
Holocaust-denier and notable anti-semite and crazy person David Icke? A delusional idiot, but not a nazi. KKK members who believed National Socialism was still socialism and battled Nazis in WWII? Racist fuckheads, but not Nazis. Francoist Faciscts? Probably not Nazis, although I'd forgive you for making a strong case for it.
We have words and phrases like white supremacist, anti-semite, racists, and Nazi. They all mean things, and there's plenty of overlap. I'm not sure what we gain by mislabelling one group as another, other than opening ourselves up to accusations we're crying wolf.
Wellll... I mean I gave a list of things to watch for in a collective group. If a collective group is doing all these things, on camera, proudly... you're probably safe calling them Neo-Nazis and "Nazi" for short.
While the Klan has a long and inglorious tradition, it merges seamlessly with the pro-Nazi elements of the US in world war 2, for the most part. And Nazis are what folks had in mind when they say, "Anti-semite".
So I'm curios if YOU were ever confused. Or if this is for the rhetorical masses (who by and large don't seem too confused once they see a picture, that I can discern).
> If a collective group is doing
> all these things
If a collective group is doing any of the other things you've mentioned, I'd say they're pretty definitely a Nazi.
> [the Klan] merges seamlessly with
> the pro-Nazi elements of the US in
> world war 2
I don't think that's accurate. Overlap, yes. I'm not sure what muddying the water between different hate groups achieves.
> Nazis are what folks had in mind
> when they say, "Anti-semite"
I don't think that's even slightly accurate. Anti-semitism is a (terrible) feature of many many ideologies, from ISIS to mediaeval Iberian Catholicism, to people who believe that we're all controlled by shape-shifting masonic lizard aliens.
> So I'm curios if YOU were ever confused
Yes. Is David Duke a Nazi? Milo Ywhatever-his-name-is? Gamergate people? The_Donald?
Duke acts in accordance with most of their principles, so yes.
> Milo Ywhatever-his-name-is?
He hangs out with some self-proclaimed Nazis, but we've yet to see him walking in a march waving the flag.
> Gamergate people?
I actually think most are sexist. I see plenty of post-gaters resisting Trump and decrying the violence we're discussing.
> The_Donald
The reddit? Or DJT himself? For the reddit, I don't even know what it is. It's like one of those lego advertisement cartoons that doesn't have to make sense so long as we all agree we should buy Legos.
As for DJT himself? I would have said no before last week, but that last press conference really left me wondering.
I've seen plenty of people, these last few days, using those exact same acts of violence to label every Republican a Nazi. It's been hard to avoid on social media. I've seen an equal number insisting that the definition of Nazi is crystal clear and anyone who suggests otherwise is covering for Nazis.
Thing is, the latter never seem to aim their ire at those who are actually stretching the definition of Nazi to tarnish their political opponents. It's always aimed at those who observe this happening and criticise it.
This is not true at the federal level, which is generally what people mean when they refer to "protected classes". However, there are some states that prohibit discrimination based on political affiliation, including California. [1]
The folks in question seem to eagerly and happily apply the word "Nazi" to themselves and embrace the so-called ideals of the German Third Reich.
So if you'd like to nitpick over the semantics of "Nazi" versus "adherent of a Nazi-Party-of-Germany-inspired philosophy", be my guest. But I'll be busy opposing them with my every breath, because that's what we do to Nazis.
> Do you think that businesses shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against skateboarders, or people who refuse to wear shirts and shoes?
I don't believe that businesses should be allowed to discriminate against anyone who is behaving in a lawful manner.
Is that belief what you're calling a "weird personal ideology"?
> Do you have an similar argument for why Nazis shouldn't be fired, or why we shouldn't consider whether the people that we do business with employ, or are, Nazis?
If someone's beliefs don't negatively affect their ability to do their job, why should they be fired for their beliefs? Should Democrats be fired? Should atheists? Are "Nazis" the only people capable of bias and discrimination?
Likewise, why should someone's beliefs be a factor in whether I do business with them? If I'm buying something from someone why would anything other than price and quality of the product or service even come up?
> why should someone's beliefs be a factor in whether I do business with them? If I'm buying something from someone why would anything other than price and quality of the product or service even come up?
Okay, let's make an example. Let's make a really blatant one.
Imagine you're Jewish. Furthermore, imagine there are two bakeries in town: Bob's Bakery, and Pastry 88.
All of the people working at both of them are perfectly civil when you go in to buy a donut. But everyone in town knows that Al Hilter, the guy who owns Pastry 88, is a Nazi. And now and then Mr. Hilter takes out ads in the local paper espousing his Jew-killing views.
Bob's Bakery and Pastry 88 are right across the street from each other. You have a hankering for a donut. Where are you gonna go to fulfill this desire?
Let's make it a little more complicated: Pastry 88 makes an amazing lemon-filled donut, and Bob's Bakery Bob's kid has a major lemon allergy. So you can't buy anything with lemons in it at Bob's. And you love lemon donuts. Do you love lemon donuts enough to give money to someone who has said that you should be gassed and have your tanned skin used for lampshades?
Let's make it even more complicated. Bob believes absolutely everything Al does, in fact his views are somehow even worse than Al's, but because he's not allowed to express his opinion nobody knows what he really thinks and he can only plan his genocide in secret.
Also, neither business is carbon neutral, nor do they plan to be. Refusing to buy doughnuts is implicit fat shaming, so you have to buy from somewhere. Due to a local endangered species deciding to build nests on the only road into town, no doughnuts can be shipped in from the outside.
I'm beginning to think that the only reasonable thing to do in the ridiculous hypothetical is to lease another corner on the same intersection and open up "Solomon Cohen's Pro-Semitic, Lemon-Friendly Bagel Shop and Delicatessen".
> I don't believe that businesses should be allowed to discriminate against anyone who is behaving in a lawful manner.
This principle doesn't seem very robust. Can a bar refuse entry to children? Can a cinema kick someone out for talking during a movie? Can a dance club have a dress code?
If it's legal for children to enter a bar, I don't see why a bar should be able to refuse entry to children.
> Can a cinema kick someone out for talking during a movie?
If they're causing a problem for other people in the cinema and refuse to stop, sure. A right to be access a product or service shouldn't override other people's right to get what they paid for.
So for "lawful manner" in my above post: "lawful manner, or manner that doesn't negatively impact other customers".
> Can a dance club have a dress code?
If a club wants to only allow a specific type of member then it should be a private club.
> If a club wants to only allow a specific type of member then it should be a private club.
All clubs are private, they just have varying degrees of specificity in their entrance requirements.
That's really the entire point here. Private entities have the right to choose who they will do business with unless the law prevents them from doing so, as it does in many cases (sex, race, etc).
> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like.
I don't think that Cloudflare (or any company) should be legally obligated to work with someone they don't like. (Besides, do you really want your wedding cake baked by someone who hates you?)
However, I think it's a moral and practical travesty that companies have the ability to effectively deplatform people from the modern internet. It's our responsibility as technologists to make sure that you cannot be silenced, whether you're a persecuted minority or someone who would persecute minorities. Having political gatekeepers to the internet is bad for everyone in the long run.
I never once in my life imagined that one of the first comments on a front-page HN post would be one that claimed that refusing service to Nazis was "spurious" and "bigoted" and that said comment was not flagged-to-oblivion.
For anyone reading this thread, please know that this is NOT the majority opinion within the tech industry - not by a long shot. We are not Nazi sympathizers, and we do not think this is normal. It's not normal.
Nobody is sympathizing with Nazis. And who is “we” and what don’t you think is normal? Essentially who elected you as a tech industry representative or the official pollster of the tech industry?
This my isn’t about Nazis. This is about speech and freedom, business policies, discrimination.
Change the word “Nazi” to “Communist” and I would be willing to bet you would not be making the same statements, despite communists being more murderous throughout the 20th century than the Nazis.
Is the ACLU a Nazi sympathizer? Of course not. Use your brain and stop being distracted by the “Nazi” part of the discussion. It isn’t relevant.
"They shot Bin Laden. So wrong! Change the name 'Bin Laden' to 'my Grandmother' and I would be willing to bet you would no longer support it!"
It's super-convenient to create an argument where you can just ignore the actual topic that's being discussed. To say that this isn't about Nazis, a few days after they splattered some peaceful pedestrian along a wall, is cynical to a degree where people may indeed mistake the free-speech absolutism as a badly-veiled attempt to cover actual sympathies with such terrorists.
I'm wondering where all these but-I-will-give-my-life-for-your-right-to-say-it-grandstanders were on Saturday, when muslims in Charlottesville were praying while fascist militia in fatigues, and with automatic weapons, were standing outside, chanting threats.
I'm surprised at how many people are pretending not to understand what I wrote, seemingly in order to proclaim how anti-Nazi they are.
When I was a teenager and first read Chomsky, being anti-censorship was a left-wing thing. I don't think Chomsky has changed his opinion on censorship, or his political persuasion, and neither have I.
It's a pity that people who believe in fascistic ideals (censorship and discrimination based on political beliefs) are what is deemed "the left" these days.
IMO, if you believe in censorship and do not support free speech you are not left-wing.
> claimed that refusing service to Nazis was "spurious" and "bigoted"
Do you seriously need me to explain that "bigoted" referred to the cake example? Seriously?
As for the rest. Cloudflare did not refuse service to "Nazis". Had they done so, they would have not had to remove that service, under the entirely spurious reason that Matthew Prince woke up in a bad mood and claims they wrote something he didn't like.
They're still providing service to Stormfront, and who knows how many other "Nazi" sites.
I've also read Chomsky and lived in a country (the UK) with 'incitement to racial hatred' laws for most of my adult life. There are many countries like this. I have a carefully held belief that there should indeed be certain limits on free speech, and these countries get it more or less right.
Believe it or not, you can actually be 'left' or 'right' wing (or anything else) and hold more subtle positions than absolute, black and white. I think this is a huge problem in discourse in the USA right now. People believe that everyone is completely divided and polarised at opposite extremes.
It's incredibly ridiculous. You can hold many varying positions, and I think people who are completely absolutist are in the absolute minority. Just look at this thread.
> if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim.
I'd go a step further. If cloudflare were a branch of the government like the literal internet police, then it would be immaterial if an entity claimed they supported them. The response would be to simply ignore or refute the claim, not demand that they withdraw it lest they lose police protection.
Cloudflare is essentially performing the function of the police protecting the KKK's right to march, just like they protect the right of civil rights marchers to be free of denial-of-marchedness. The core issue here is that government-like functions on the internet are handled by an amalgamation of private entities, who are not bound to the same constitutional requirements.
I have the right to police protection, but that doesn't mean I get to have a cop patrolling my building 24/7. That's why businesses hire private security.
Likewise, DDoS is a crime and TDS has every right to present a criminal complaint. Cloudflare is just the Internet equivalent of private security.
Where that analogy fails is that IRL you still do enjoy police protection even if you can't afford private security. Even if they're not patrolling 24/7, the cops should still show up if someone's trying to burn down your unpopular place.
OTOH if you're a private business, refusing service to someone can be a way to express your political opinion. It's easy to call out injustice and oppression for many categories (race, gender, ...) but that case is harder to make for categories like "political ideology that actually favors oppression".
Of course this should not result in human rights violations and being restricted from communicating your beliefs to the world is one of them. Especially in infrastructure, we rely on private companies to fulfill basic needs that are protected by human rights.
If your infrastructure company is huge and as powerful as a public institution, and is able to single-handedly mess with people's human rights, you should of course not be allowed to have a political agenda. Not selling cakes to Nazis in your corner shop is something completely different.
> He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare
A -> B does not imply !B -> !A
Example: if you eat an Apple, saying "hey, that's one good-looking Apple!", it does not require you to heretofore eat every good-looking Apple you come across.
A -> B does imply !B -> !A. The error in reasoning here seems to be that attitude towards a website is assumed to be a binary "like/not like" variable, while in reality one can also neither like nor dislike something.
False equivalence. Gay people don't choose to be gay, and gay people aren't harming others. A business can refuse to serve skateboarders, shirtless people, and other people who are being a nuisance; and it can certainly refuse to serve people who bring violence wherever they go.
You seem to contradict the recent view in the LGBTQ. community that gender is a social construct and that you can choose which gender feels right for you!
Your implication that being gay has to do with biology and hence it has a hereditary component is at odds with what we are currently hearing from everywhere.
Which view is it the valid one?
To me these are exclusive so in the community should choose just one discourse.
Wow, grossly misrepresented and mischarachaterized.
As a member of the LGBTQ community I have met zero trans people who feel that they chose their gender expression, and zero people who felt they chose their sexual orientation, instead of being born and growing into their identities over time. I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I highly, doubt it's anywhere close to a plurality much less a majority.
Where exactly have you heard that most trans people are "choosing" their expressed gender? And why do you think there is one view for many people to "choose"?
Sorry, I'm not sure which part of those sites supports your claim.
Identification and expression, in gender and sexuality, are not the same as choice.
A gay person living in an society oppressive to gay men would not choose to identify as gay and may express themselves as being straight, but that doesn't mean their orientation is heterosexual.
They may choose to repress their sexual orientation or gender expression for the sake of survival, or other reasons, but the innate feelings behind the expression are typically not choice. Do you think LBGTQ people in countries where expression is punishable are death are just casually opting to risk the lives of thmeselves and their family?
Not coincidentally, LBGTQ people were persecuted and exterminated by Nazis.
To be honest, the whole idea of protected vs. non-protected classes makes me uncomfortable. Yes, there are some things that force you to compromise your ideals in order to make a workable system, but it's a hack, not a proper solution.
In a democracy, the majority has limitless power. They can vote to oppress or kill the minority, which survives only due to the majority's good will and whim. Democracy is the angry mob. 'Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner', goes a saying.
The solution is constitutional democracy, which includes rules protecting the minority, via civil rights. In the U.S., these rules are the Bill of Rights. The rule of law also is essential.
But it's very clear that even those rights and laws are not sufficient: In the U.S., slavery, segregation, lynchings of blacks, and oppression of other politically vulnerable groups, including women and LGBTQ, has continued in varying degrees for over 200 years despite the Bill of Rights and rule of law.
The politically vulnerable groups - the groups the majority can oppress and kill and destroy - need additional protection. (That's why when people try to make some logical inference that oppression of white males is the same thing, they miss the core factor: White males are not politically vulnerable to the majority;, they are the majority (in terms of power); a quick look at a group photo of the people in power in every domain of American and European life will show you that.
The only reason to exclude currently-powerful people from basic protections (rather than making basic protections universal) is if you think that one day, those currently-powerful people will be vulnerable enough to need them. And further, that at that point, they don't deserve to be protected in the manner that currently vulnerable people deserve to be protected.
Remember the last time that popular sentiment regarded a group of rich, influential people as not needing those should-be-universal protections because of their privileged position? And then decided that this group was the cause of all their problems? Let's not let that happen again.
This is a nitpick but an important one: the U.S. isn’t a constitutional democracy.
It’s a constitutional republic. And there is a difference.
As far as protected classes; the U.S. Constitution makes each individual a protected class. The protection of individual liberty is the cornerstone of the United States. (Or at least it was.)
This idea that some groups need more protection is ludicrous. We are saying that some people are less equal than others. What is needed is a consistent and impartial application of the law – which, granted, was not always the case. But, the philosophical concept of protected class goes against the concept of equality.
Committing a crime against a gay person IS A CRIME. That exact same crime against a non gay person IS A CRIME. The idea that either one of those should be punished differently is more Animal Farm than US Constitution.
This idea of the thought police is obscene and the very opposite of John Locke.
A man should not be punished for thoughts. A man should not be punished because of his motivations. A man should only be punished for his actions.
That is an ideal, maybe even one that I support, but after over 200 years and overwhelming evidence, you must concede that it does not work in practice.
> A man should not be punished because of his motivations. A man should only be punished for his actions.
To nitpick a little: The law absolutely looks at motivations. For example, pre-meditated murder (1st degree murder) is a worse crime than non-pre-meditated murder (2nd degree), which is worse than unintentional murder (3rd degree).
Free speech, freedom of conscience, and non-discrimination are moral principles that go beyond US federal statute. "US federal law doesn't precisely reflect your moral standpoint" isn't a very good argument against a belief.
All of civilization has been about limiting specific individual freedoms in order to guarantee others to the collective.
Even in the US, freedom of speech is not unlimited. Perhaps we're finally learning that the freedom from discrimination trumps the freedom to preach discrimination.
It's about time we lost our naivety. Our European brethren learned this lesson during WWII.
Naivety is thinking you can open the Pandora's box of government limiting speech based on what is popularly acceptable in an emotional moment, and not eventually having any speech against government or incumbent politicians or ideas eventually labeled in the future as hate speech and banned.
The reason you don't go down the path of Europe in this regard is because Europeans are already losing representation, and democracy fails when people aren't free to speak their minds and express their ideas, love it or hate it. That's how a truly free society actually works.
As a European, I feel well-represented. Whatever that means.
And even though I happen to life in a country where anybody waving a swastika in the last 70 years went to jail, I can still criticise the Government in any way I want.
> freedom from discrimination trumps the freedom to preach discrimination.
Essentially any political viewpoint can be described in such a way as to fail this test. Do you really want to set the standard that if the execution of a viewpoint has a negative impact on some group, it's OK to use violence against anyone who holds that viewpoint? I guarantee you this won't play out how you want.
> Our European brethren learned this lesson during WWII.
The US has strong protections on free speech and other fundamental rights because "our European brethren" didn't, and therefore treated their colonies so poorly as to almost universally engender armed insurrection. Nothing much changed in this regard then or in WWII, so I'm not really sure what "lesson" you think you're referring to; that Germany should have more aggressively censored anti-incumbent sentiment in the aftermath of WWI? Yes, what a lovely lesson.
>> freedom from discrimination trumps the freedom to preach discrimination.
> Essentially any political viewpoint can be described in such a way as to fail this test.
I think it's an essential question about where to draw the line. Obviously there must be limits to speech: You can't shout 'kill all the X' to a group of people with baseball bats threatening a group of X (or commit slander or yell 'fire' in a crowded theater, etc.). Generally, it's almost always hard to find a clear, simple rule that applies effectively in all cases of reality - morality and law are like algorithms in that respect. That's why we have judges, juries, and sophisticated laws.
But here's a proposed, relatively functional solution that is simple: Draw the line at intolerance - the only thing we should not tolerate is intolerance itself. A few reasons: 1) Intolerance is a parasite on the rule of tolerance and free speech; it tries to stop others from having those rights. 2) It violates the basic social contract: You tolerate and respect me, and I'll do the same for you. If you break that contract, why should I keep tolerating you? 3) Look up the "Paradox of tolerance".
> if the execution of a viewpoint has a negative impact on some group, it's OK to use violence against anyone who holds that viewpoint
> Draw the line at intolerance - the only thing we should not tolerate is intolerance itself.
The law should be codified hypocrisy?
By this logic, we should we be allowed to steal from people who believe in communism because they don't believe that property rights are morally justified. If they don't believe in private property, why should they get it?
Here's a better idea: don't start shit, and if someone starts shit with you, you can do whatever needs to be done to protect your rights. This has the advantages of A) not being absurdly hypocritical and B) not violating people's rights in an effort to preempt behavior you think might hypothetically emerge from the expression of those rights.
> I didn't see anyone mention violence.
How do you propose to enforce censorship laws? Ask nicely?
> Free speech, freedom of conscience, and non-discrimination are moral principles that go beyond US federal statute.
What does this even mean? Free speech is severely limited to the point that I can be fined for singing most songs in a public place. What I can say to or about people is limited, and I can be charged with various crimes based on the content of that speech. What I say to a child can be interpreted as abuse just based on its explicitness. In many circumstances, I'm not allowed to tell anyone any significant news about what's going on within a company that I work for or have any connection to, for fear that they might profit.
"Free speech" is about the government restraining people from political speech, and even that's been heavily restricted at different times - currently speech can be interpreted as giving material support to terrorists, conceivably opening one up for indefinite detention. We've jailed people for treason for anti-war speech.
Free speech is not about anybody being forced to help you say whatever you want to say. You can't just literally translate the phrase, it's a shorthand. If you want to fight for businesses losing control of their platform in proportion to their size, I'd be glad to support you. Expropriate and renationalize, I say. If Cloudflare is a public utility, I'd demand that Nazis have the opportunity to use it as freely as everyone else.
As for the rest, 1) there's no indication that Cloudflare can prevent them from thinking what they would like, and 2) non-discrimination is not a moral principle; if we didn't discriminate, we wouldn't need more than one word, or to learn our left from our right. Our norms are against certain types of discrimination, not the basic idea of distinguishing between things. There are differences between Nazis and Jews, for example. If we couldn't see them, we wouldn't be able to understand why some people wanted to murder other people, or discriminate accordingly when deciding who we should do business with.
Nazism is not a political position, it is a death cult. Nazis are murderers or would-be murderers who want me and everyone I love or care about dead. They are actively conspiring to make that a reality, sometimes achieving some fraction of it. Incitement to mass murder is not and should never be protected speech.
They are also actively conspiring to eliminate free speech, freedom of conscience and non-discrimination. Protecting the direct efforts to destroy those moral principles, in the name of preserving them, is an obvious contradiction and an obvious failure to uphold those values.
None of this is hypothetical or theoretical. We know what happened the last time they achieved real power. We know that they have escalated their violence as they have gained allies in power today.
We should protect the free exchange of ideas. We should not protect or give a platform to a conspiracy to mass murder.
Free speech is largely an American thing. You may believe it's universal, but you would be wrong.
It's not uncommon for religious people to think that the principles of their religion are so obvious and universal.
This seems like a very similar attitude. But really, you're just used to it. That's all.
As a person who was not born into western culture, I find the concept sort of weird in some way. Although I do accept it as a given in western cultures, I can't see it as either obvious nor universal.
It's quite clear in the context of the Preamble, which literally says that the non respect of such rights by the rule of law means that "man" is compelled to rebellion.
Free speech is not carte blanche to invite violence or call for a genocide. Please watch the recent vice documentary to hear what and how the Charlottesville white supremacists prepared for. It's truly vile and genocidal.
If you want to see a society who has been much more firm holding against racist nonsense, see Germany who has legislated against Nazi symbols and propoganda. Do you see why allowing indimidation and hateful violence run rampant is a bad idea?
What you're saying is true - freedom of speech is not absolute, and there are well recognized, narrow exceptions to the First Amendment.
That said, Schenck is an awful example of them, considering:
- it does not advance your argument at all - Schenck was an anti-war protester who was trying to distribute flyers. Where's the "impinging on safety or rights of another citizen" there?
- it has been rejected and abandoned as a doctrine, most notably via Brandenburg vs Ohio.
Direct quotes from a Charolettesville neo-nazi organizer:
--
“I’m here to spread ideas, talk,” Cantwell says, “in hopes that somebody more capable will come along and do that, somebody like Donald Trump who does not give his daughter to a Jew.”
“So, Donald Trump, but like, more racist?” VICE’s reporter questions. “A lot more racist than Donald Trump,” Cantwell responds. “I don’t think that you could feel about race the way I do and watch that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl, okay?”
Video from Saturday’s protests show Black Lives Matter and anti-facist protestors with backpacks and signs. The white supremacists facing off against them pack helmets, shields and blunt weapons. After authorities force the crowd to disperse by police and declare a state of emergency, Cantwell says, “We’re here obeying the law,” he continues, “and the criminals are over there getting their way.”
“So you’re the true nonviolent protestors?” the reporter asks.
“We’re not nonviolent, we’ll fuckin’ kill people if we have to.” Soon, Cantwell’s pledge becomes chilling and devastatingly prescient.
If you get what I'm saying - comparing two well-known instances from different parts of the political spectrum where businesses try and refuse custom for ideological reasons - why are you pretending I'm comparing gay people to neo-Nazis?
Because you choose to be a neo nazi, you don’t choose to be gay. I’m not talking about denying service. I’m saying one of them did not choose to be what they are.
No one is comparing gay people with neo-nazis or saying there is some equivalence, they were just two very different examples to illustrate a point. In fact, what makes it such a good illustration is how different they are from each other.
Let me change it to an example more dear to my own heart:
> Don't wanna hire old programmers or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.
I certainly didn't choose to be an old programmer! It seems to have just happened, maybe by some law of nature. But I'm not offended by being mentioned in the same sentence with pro-Nazi sites. It's pretty obvious that no comparison is being made between the two.
No comparison is being made but they are being equated as two of the same types of "discrimination." They are very different in that one group, Nazis, are most notably known for their discrimination against others (e.g., a choice).
What if neo nazis get rebranded under some other name? They'd still be discriminating against others but hey at least they are no longer neo nazis, right?
I don't know how that has to do with anything. A name is just a label we apply to concepts. A discriminatory group is still in the wrong in my opinion.
> Because you choose to be a neo nazi, you don’t choose to be gay.
I agree with you, but many people do not, making it a political statement. Things get very complicated as soon as you abandon the bright line test of "you must serve the whole public."
But the religious groups are a protected class. Religion is something you choose. By that logic, it would be possible to discriminate against "Christians", "Muslims", etc.
The difference is the people of Colorado through their elected representatives included gays in an anti-discrimination law. Here in Georgia, the bakers would get an medal from the legislature.
Right, the distinction is that neo-Nazi's are bad -- hateful, intolerant, divisive, problematic or however you want to put it. I'm uncomfortable saying that it's okay to do these things to the bad guys, even when it's obvious, because in an alternate universe it might be obvious that gays marrying is hateful toward Christians and intolerant of their sacred rituals.
Nobody fought and won war---to the conclusion of unconditional surrender---against an army and ideology of the LGBT community.
Nazism didn't go through some kind of Martin Luther style academic and cultural reformation in the last 80 years. Neo-Nazis are the same as the original Nazis. They have the same ideology & the same ambitions. They're literally incompatible with Western liberalism & enlightenment.
Neo-Nazis are just late-stage Third Reich acolytes, sympathizers, and insurrectionists. They're still trying to fight a war that they lost to terms of unconditional surrender. It's frankly shocking that they're given the deference of being just yet another political voice in the diverse landscape of voices. They are not. Very, very few modern political movements were defeated explicitly at the tip of a spear instead of the stroke of a pen. Nazism is in scarce company in that regard.
There's no point at all to engage any of it as though Nazism is the same as normal political speech. Allowing for ideological recidivism and re-litigating WWII sort of defeats the purpose of having fought that war and conquered them to begin with.
It would make way, way more sense to consider them enemies of the state and deal with them as such.
On point, they are akin to ISIS, perhaps people confuse them for 'just another ideology' just because they are too afraid to act on it right now, but given the opportunity they will, and recruiting people IS their opportunity.
No. The distinction is that neo-nazis chose to follow a hateful ideology. Gay people did not choose to be gay. I’m not supporting denial of service, in fact I think nobody should be denied service. I’m just pointing out that the equivalence is not right.
Were socialists calling for the eradication of a class of people based on race or born characteristics? No. These neonazis were, and it breaches the barrier of free speech. Yelling fire in a crowded theater, light years tamer, also is.
Western society, including the Supreme Court, has decided free speech ends where harm to others begins.
> Interesting how the British told the French and Belgians to fight on
The French only fought because the British (who were not in command) told them to?
> They even forced the French at gunpoint who wanted to defend Dunkirk to destroy their weapons.
You just said the British told the French to fight on. Now you're saying they forced the French "at gunpoint" (?) to destroy their weapons?
> French who wanted to embark were shot at by the BEF [...] The BEF got away and the French fighting were captured.
Of the people rescued by British ships and taken to Britain, 123,000 were French and 198,000 were British.
As for the BEF "getting away", a second BEF was assembled by Britain to defend France after Dunkirk - again under the command of the French - despite France's defeat being inevitable at that point.
> All RAF fighter squadrons were moved to the UK ahead of the evacuation.
The RAF moved to the UK due to European bases being overrun by the Germans. Nevertheless, despite certain and imminent French defeat and despite requiring aircraft for its own survival, Britain did send squadrons to France after Dunkirk. The RAF in fact sacrificed around 1000 aircraft, and even more in personnel, in defence of France.
It is true that the withdrawal was a unilateral British decision and the French wanted to continue fighting. It is also true that most of the rearguard were French and were, presumably, ordered to destroy any heavy weaponry.
Anyone who believes that the French needed the British to tell them to fight or make them obey orders at gunpoint clearly has a very poor, and highly inaccurate, view of French soldiery.
> ... shot at by the BEF ... 123,000 were French and 198,000 were British
Maybe the British weren't very good shots? More seriously, this might be alluding to the fact that the British were originally given priority for embarkation from the French admiralty. This was changed part way through the evacuation but did mean that the rearguard was almost exclusively French troops.
Again, though, whoever came up with the suggestion that French troops needed to be shot at to follow orders is a fairly nasty Francophobe masquerading as a Britophobe (probably not a word).
It's hard to comment on the RAF bit. I mean, where else were they meant to fly to?
It's a weird analysis, the BEF lost ~70k soldiers attempting to help in the defence of France and Belgium. It seems to suggest that did it to spite the French or something. Very odd.
> the rearguard was almost exclusively French troops
Bit of a stretch for "almost". The entire 51st Highland Division stayed as part of the rearguard, and few if any of them made it home. [1]
Possibly apocryphal: "One Highlander on the beaches of Dunkirk was overheard telling a comrade: 'If the English surrender too, it's going to be a long war'”
I don't know if this just sounded like a zinger to you when you wrote it, but "the Internet" is a prime example of anything but a solution in search of a problem.
ARPANET/the Internet was developed to facilitate communication, remote access and data sharing between different computer systems. Are you sticking with "Why not just use a phone?".
20+ years ago the majority of the world had little to no understanding of the internet. People with technical backgrounds may have had theoretical ideas about how connecting the world online would radically change it. But it was exactly a "solution in search of a problem" in the same vein as decentralized computing through blockchain technology is today. A world where the digital world was as critical as the real one seemed ridiculous on its face back then.
To be fair, I don't think many people are killed by toy guns. One thing I'll never forget from the land of Orwell is this from 15 years ago (virtually to the day, ironically enough):
Three 12-year-old children were arrested
by five police officers who then fingerprinted
them and took DNA samples, after the youngsters
were seen playing with a toy gun.
And equally, that wasn't my point -- I am not suggesting toy guns are responsible for many deaths (though there are stories of people using fake guns and being shot by the police 'in good faith').
It's the normalising of 'playing with guns' by handing over toy guns to children that I suspect is something a healthier society could happily eschew without losing much in the way of civil liberties.
In Australia accurate replicas are illegal IIRC - toy weapons are necessarily brightly coloured, to reduce the risk of being mistaken as a real weapon.
I actually somewhat agree when it comes to toy guns.
At the same time: if we go down this path then we should also ban action movies and descritions of war in literature (I grew up without tv and just read about it as a kid an I was as obsessed with war and fight against the Germans (i.e. nazis) as anyone where I came from.)
To borrow a phrase from you: it's the normalization of criminalization of things tuat worry me.
