> If the German left had succeeded, as it desperately tried to
> do, in breaking up Nazi meetings and preventing them from
> using "the same platform as everyone else" to gain power,
> would your objections still hold? Does free speech elevated
> to the level of a principle - "no matter how dangerous or
> provocative" - take precedence over what resulted, in part, from its
> exercise: the subsequent wholesale massacre of Jews, gypsys,
> homosexuals, the disabled, and political dissidents? Not for
> me. Of course, like everything else where abstract principles
> are concerned, there is a slippery slope, which is why I
> think all principles have to be rooted in context.
Marvin:
I made a "new year's resolution to limit my participation in silly internet debates that have no rational resolution, an I also have been cited for overposting, so this is my last posting this day. I think you seem to forget that the fascists in Germany and Italy won not on the power of their ideas, but by the power of their paramilitary thugs and financial backing of the elites - factors that have nothing to do with free speech or lack of it.
Today's neo-nazis and assorted vermin have nothing even remotely comparable to the material resources that the Italian and German fascists had in the 1920s and 1930s. They are basically a small bunch of violent nuts with crazy and unpopular ideas. The best way to counter- them, if that is really necessary, is to let them speak and demonstrate and revel how weak and short on ideas they are. Censoring them only adds gravitas to their cause, casts them as "martyrs" and creates an illusion that they have something "powerful" to offer - so "powerful" that it must be censored. I think that the posse of commissars who call for censorship actually do them a favor by wanting to censor them - this gives them publicity and there is no such thing as 'negative publicity.'