> Censorship is bad. But battles should be fought for people who need protection against it, not for people who try to exploit tolerant societies' carve-outs for free speech.
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
― H.L. Mencken
Granting someone the power to decide who does and doesn't get to speak never ends well. It's that "power corrupts" thing.
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> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.
Answering fists with words doesn't always work (it can sometimes if the people using fists are subject to public opinion that you can influence, but that's fairly limited circumstances).
But pretending that words are fists in order to manufacture an excuse to respond with fists is something else, and is a misreading of that footnote you referenced to ignore the thing it's a footnote to.
It should be noted that the kiwifarms dude has spent 15 years trying and trying to be such a shitfuck that the rest of society stops giving him the benefit of the doubt, and has only recently succeeded. It may be possible to get kicked off the internet accidentally by saying the wrong things to power, but in this case he got kicked off by intentionally and personally pissing off every person and organization connecting him and the web.
> intentionally and personally pissing off every person and organization connecting him and the web.
I thought the whole "#dropkiwifarms" thing was more shaped like an organized pressure campaign, rather than every new provider he signs on with organically deciding within days that his interactions with them are deliberately obnoxious.
It is terrifying how poorly educated people are today in terms of critical thinking or even basic logical reasoning. "only good speech that enough people agree with needs to be protected by freedom of speech"
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/52416-the-trouble-with-figh...
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
― H.L. Mencken
Granting someone the power to decide who does and doesn't get to speak never ends well. It's that "power corrupts" thing.
.
> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.
Answering fists with words doesn't always work (it can sometimes if the people using fists are subject to public opinion that you can influence, but that's fairly limited circumstances).
But pretending that words are fists in order to manufacture an excuse to respond with fists is something else, and is a misreading of that footnote you referenced to ignore the thing it's a footnote to.