That Nazis have shown that they will use the idea that we should be tolerant of all free speech to gain power and kill millions for the crime of existing.
That is an incorrect summary of the situation in 1930's Europe. Weimar Germany had laws against hate speech, they closed down hundreds of Nazi propaganda papers.... and they even banned Hitler from speaking.
Censorship leads to authoritarianism.
In any case, I will take my cues from people who actually KNOW about Free Speech, having studied it for many years. People like Nadine Strossen (
President of the ACLU from 1991 to 2008, and one of the greatest experts on freedom of speech alive today), and Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt
(authors of "Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure")
When there is a sufficiently tight and direct causal nexus between speech and specific serious imminent harm, including violence, free speech principles permit such speech to be punished.
www.thefire.org
The below is just a fraction of what is available for those who have the courage to have their worldviews confronted and challenged. In the link these experts comprehensively debunk false claims such as...
"Hate speech laws are important for reducing intolerance, even if there may be some examples of abuse."
"Free speech is the tool of the powerful, not the powerless"
"Free speech was created under the false notion that words and violence are distinct, but we now know that certain speech is more akin to violence."
"Free speech rests on the faulty notion that words are harmless"
"Shoutdowns/heckler’s vetoes are an exercise of speech rights, not censorship"
Here's a couple to get you started - the rest is in the link - if you dare to go there!
Assertion: Free speech was created under the false notion that words and violence are distinct, but we now know that certain speech is more akin to violence.
Retort: "Physical violence directly and inevitably causes at least some physical harm, as well as associated psychic harm. Words may indeed have the same harmful potential. Unlike physical violence, though, speech can influence listeners only through their intermediating perceptions, reactions, and actions, and only as one of countless other factors that also have potential influence. For this reason, hurling words at someone is materially different from hurling the proverbial “sticks and stones.” Sticks and stones directly cause harm, through their own force, but words at most can potentially contribute to harm; whether particular words actually do cause harm depends on how individual listeners perceive and respond to them, which in turn is influenced by the listeners’ personalities and circumstances, including innumerable other factors that also potentially influence their psyches and behavior."
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Edited by jimbob:
snipped for rule 4
