> 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.
---------------------------------------------------
Why must you always throw in some gratuitous remark? If it's too far beneath
you to participate in this "silly" debate, why bother? No one is forcing you
to use up your last post; there's no expiry date, and you can use it
tomorrow on a subject more worthy of your talents. Jeez, you make it hard to
motivate myself to even give you the courtesy of a reply.
But I will. I said the Nazis' ability to utilize legal bourgeois-democratic
channels was "in part" responsible for their victory. I don't think that's
at all in dispute, or ignores that they were also involved in a wide range
of extraparliamentary actions. So were the Communists and Socialists. It's
characteristic of all mass movements, except for the anarchists, to try and
utilize bourgeois-democratic channels to further their aims. They have
always and understandably sought to work aboveground and within the
electoral system as much as permitted, if only to supplement what they were
doing underground or outside of the parliamentary arena. If they didn't
think there was value in utilizing the political system and engaging in
legal and peaceful means of protest, they wouldn't attempt to do so. The
thuggery which you say had "nothing to do with free speech" had, in fact,
everything to do with it; the left and the right tried to violently disrupt
each other's meetings and dissemination of their party newspapers precisely
in order to prevent each other from speaking freely to the masses.
---------------------------------------------------
> 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.'
---------------------------------------------
Have you actually read what I wrote previously? Where have I said fascism is
an imminent danger which requires censorship? I'm opposed to hate
legislation.
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