Removing him only removed him from your conversation. He is not silenced. Same with banning the Trump reddit forums, what this achieved was to shift them to their own platform where they, no longer hear opposing views or being challenged. And to me it seems worse than ever in their views and speech, shockingly though sometimes.
Using something like the Paradox of tolerance logic is dangerous itself. People love to find justification to their own bad deeds, and this smells like something along those lines to me. The 'I cant be too tolerant or you will use it against me'.
I think the key flaw in the Paradox you quote is "tolerant without limit". I agree if this were true, but society has never had this and never will, it's such an absolute. As fairly standard wherever you live you will have libel and slander laws, rules about promoting things illegal, or encouraging violence.
Overall is a giant problem and is full of grey zones without a perfect answer, but in that I feel its important to steer strongly to the higher principle, be it tolerance or free speech etc, and accept there is cost to higher principles, as sad as that is, but this is far better than allowing a society to swing the other way.
> this smells like something along those lines to me.
> is full of grey zones
That is exactly why it's called a "paradox". We all recognize that we cannot allow tyrannical actors to act unchallenged, but the act of challenging their behavior itself often can be seen as a form of tyranny.
This is why we need an entire system for interpreting and enforcing the laws in a nuanced and careful way. The world is too complex for a simple system of rules to work without consideration to the context of each individual circumstance.
Generally, I agree with what you're saying, though. Sometimes it does feel like all paths lead to a consolidation of power, no matter how well intentioned things began.
No, he's not silenced. He has a newsletter. But he isn't amplified to the heights that he was before either, and less likely to attract new followers. No one's reporting his newsletters.
I'm not looking forward to seeing responses to Trump tweets across social and news media when he returns. There was no escaping it then. The guy adores the limelight from daily controversies and he's going to capitalize on it again.
> Same with banning the Trump reddit forums, what this achieved was to shift them to their own platform where they, no longer hear opposing views or being challenged.
They had actually already moved around 4 months before the ban. The official action was just virtue signaling, it was already dead on reddit (I think their mods had actually locked it and prevented posting).
> Same with banning the Trump reddit forums, what this achieved was to shift them to their own platform where they, no longer hear opposing views or being challenged. And to me it seems worse than ever in their views and speech, shockingly though sometimes.
There is another aspect to this - the benefit to the rest of the world from not being derailed by memetic diarrhea. Trumpism absolutely paralyzed the mainstream discourse by swamping it with nonsense. Even if you were against the nonsense, you ended up having to deal with it, by addressing it or distancing yourself from it. It took much more empathy to read nuance in others' points and not simply write them off as more Trumpist nonsense. Also, see all the times that Trump had a position that had some merit, but yet the opposition Party still staked out a position contrary to it.
The concern isn't whether the Trumpists' dialog grows ever more extreme, but rather whether their numbers grow or diminish. Trumpism is made attractive by real problems, to which it promises simplistic not-even-wrong answers. The fundamental way to make it less attractive is to address those problems, making for a more compelling constructive alternative. This requires being able to debate workable solutions in good faith, without being derailed by the trolling attractor.
Twitter itself may or may not be a platform for constructive debate (their format is horrible and they mostly lucked into the position), but this is the overarching societal dynamic as I see it.
That is largely the media's fault. They covered Trump 24/7 during his entire presidency like it was some sort of addiction. They could have covered anything they wanted (and they ignored numerous newsworthy stories). Perhaps we need a media with the self-discipline to look away from a car crash for 5 minutes.
I'm referring to grassroots discourse and good faith debate. It's awfully hard to discuss approaches to problems and weigh blue-paradigm approaches with red-paradigm approaches when you've got a sizeable contingent who's position is that the whole problem is "fake news" and by the way everyone who thinks it might be real is stupid.
And sure, the same effect caused the media to go crazy. That doesn't mean the entire effect can be lumped onto "the media". Destruction of the memetic environment via disinformation is real in and of itself.
> It took much more empathy to read nuance in others' points and not simply write them off as more Trumpist nonsense. Also, see all the times that Trump had a position that had some merit, but yet the opposition Party still staked out a position contrary to it.
Isn't this an actual instance of "the boy who cried wolf"?
I think anyone pitching the “paradox of tolerance” needs to understand recursion a little better, or perhaps try to understand how their argument looks in a mirror to someone who disagrees with their stated position.
In my opinion that "paradox" is just used as a justification to silence speech of others. All one must do is label their opponent as "intolerant", and all of a sudden all bets are off. And frankly, nowadays more and more perfectly normal behaviour such as simply disagreeing is seen as intolerant.
The problem is exacerbated because 'intolerance' is a buzzword like 'violence' now. It's a label used to attempt to silence or de-platform a dissenting opinion.
The people applying the label are often themselves the perpetrator of intolerance against a valid, and perhaps even mainstream, political viewpoint. Turns out silencing your political opponent is an extremely effective strategy.
> It's a label used to attempt to silence or de-platform a dissenting opinion.
Right. Dissent != intolerance. Something that is just a dissenting opinion would not qualify as something we should be intolerant of, only actual intolerance.
even recursive loops have a point of exit, in this case it would look something like
if ("promotes violence" && "has not been receiving violence") {
print ("this person is intolerant")
}
else if ("has been receiving violence" && "promotes violence") {
print ("this person is oppressed and is trying to oppose that")
}
else {
print ("this person is not within the scope of intolerance")
}
All rights have limits, often rights exist at the expense of other potential rights, our ancestors/predecessors and us have decided what those should be, how they should be handled and what exceptions/allowances should be made. Free speech is one thing but in twitter's particular case is bumps up against property laws as twitter although open to the public is private property. Similarly slander laws exist, and similarly there are other limits of speech that are not protected by the 2nd amendment particularly categories like: incitement, defamation, fraud, obscenity, child pornography, fighting words, and threats. These exclusions always were intended to deal with the intolerant (meaning those who would perform or incite violence unprovoked). Can it be leveraged to silence opposition, yes our laws are not as air tight as they should be especially on the enforcement end of things, but was that the case here? I don't think so, this is a pretty cut and dry case of incitement.
What does it say about the state of our ability to assess what is right or wrong that a requirement for something to be morally right is that it is said in a friendly way?
What happens in the US elections, is more likely to have a bigger impact in your own country than your own country elections. Think of the major strategic implications of a pro-Russia or anti-democratic US administration for example...
My anxiety when reading news online or listening to radio went noticeably down when Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, and I don't live in the US. I entirely agree with you.
I think this is the fault of the news media exploiting peoples anxieties for clicks and engagement. They made everything seem like some kind of catastrophe.
Selective memory or maybe from a place of privilege?
His team called their initial orders their 'shock & awe' strategy and resulted in colleagues not able to come to school+work because they were not allowed back to the US after visiting relatives. You may have been unimpacted, but each such action is real to the people under the boot, and that was just them testing their powers and setting precedent.
That was just the beginning, and as with the Roe v. Wade collapse now playing out, every month of hateful rules, non-handling of COVID, and corrupting the executive & judicial branch, many Americans will be feeling the hangover for literally decades. One of the worst US Presidents in history is known for the Trail of Tears, which killed maybe 1% of those on Trump's watch.
