> A culture that produces that kind of hatred will not be stopped by losing
> a channel to express it. Word of mouth spreads quickly,
> and actions speak even louder.
Culture... is the thing that prevents the enacting of our bestial urges.
This channel normalizes the bestiality, and so it becomes culture.
Every society have some people without a mic that are blatantly inhuman.
A society becomes it when you give them a mic.
What does it mean to "give them the mic"? I feel like your comment makes sense in the abstract but when it gets more concrete it gets a lot fussy. Do you mean disallowing people who make nasty radio broadcasts? Jailing people who send nasty tweets to all their 10 followers?
Most people aren't "given the mic" by some benevolent all-powerful force, they just grab a mic and use it.
Prior to the eighties, if you put out something sufficiently noxious or unbalanced on broadcast media, you could have the FCC come visit you and threaten to revoke your broadcast license. The broadcast license was required to be used in the public interest.
Then the 80s came and you had cable TV which didn’t require a broadcast license, you had video tape, and you had the repeal of the fairness doctrine.
Prior to all that the only way you’d get your weird message out was through print, which reqires someone to pay for the printing and distribution, so it’s slower and more limited, and print doesn’t have the same emotional punch of TV or radio.
Obviously the Internet has turbocharged this transition. If it were the 80s someone like Andrew Tate would have a very hard time getting an audience. He’d have to use print, and probably a lot of his material would be age restricted. The closest analogue I can think of is Hugh Hefner, and to read his stuff you had to be over 18, although obviously a lot of boys got their hands on a Playboy or two.
enforcing this would require building a panopticon world of brains in jars. no thank you. ill hold individuals responsible for their own actions and keep my freedom of speech thanks
And even then no jars would be involved. Just keep the platform accountable.
This makes so much sense, that what seeks to destroy freedoms felt compelled to warp the notion of free speech. Now look how much those free speech absolutists actually care about free speech. A classic case of the Paradox of Tolerance.
> by some benevolent all-powerful force, they just grab a mic and use it.
You are a bit optimistic. It is way worse. What happens is: your media mogul more often than not lives in an environment where people's belief systems and preferences vary from oligarchy, tech-fascism, corporatism, cultism, gilded-age etc. I.e. the cult of wealth problem. Then that media mogul buys a platform, and installs a certain kind of people. Double profit: more engagement, belief systems of regular people getting anti-social. The fear, hate and disgust for their compatriots make way for sado-populism. Regular, normal people are getting so mindfucked that instead of seeking the common good they they give autocracy consent to purify society from their imaginative enemies.
> Do you mean disallowing people who make nasty radio broadcasts?
Yes, the paradox of tolerance is a paradox. The only way to keep a tolerant society is to not tolerate the intolerants.
no it doesnt. you could blast "kill your own baby" on radio but 99% of people wouldnt do it. and if they did its their own fault.
you either respect the sovereignty of an individual and they are responsible for their actions, or not and if you dont then follow that to its logical conclusion. which would be that all people are not responsible for anything ever, because even the broadcaster was told to by his own life and culture, and so on and so forth until your litigating the first living goo on the planet.
We are talking about instigating intolerance, with material consequences. Think genocides, like in the OP and Germany in the 30's.
> you either respect the sovereignty of an individual and
> they are responsible for their actions,
Paradox of Tolerance. [0]
An individual lives in a society. Waiting for some other country to sacrifice their 18 years old to clean up your mess because you insisted that you couldn't possibly know what happens when you normalize intolerance is not so nice. And maybe there is no country who could possibly help your compatriots to get rid of their autocrats, so be careful if you try.
It seems there's always a line able to be drawn from a view one disagrees with to the harm that is caused by not contradicting them, and in my experience this does not correlate with how harmful contradiction of the initial view actually is.
So with regard to the paradox of tolerance, I would say one needs to establish that their opponent's views are actually sufficiently intolerant to intrinsically be harmful - and this is not something one can always trust to be done without exaggeration.
The pointe is that that you the moment you want to prevent the action, you have found the public siding with the action. The war is on the mind, you need to get regular people to hand their keys to the autocrats. Infowars, indeed.
Try stopping Hitler from rounding up Jews. Or try to stop Trump's unlawfulness. You are invariably too late by then.
"too late" is relative. Hitler lost after rounding up the Jews and killing 6 million of them. Or rather, Hitler and his many collaborators, both government employees and civilians, did.
not false dilema. i only argued against his position by showing that his assertion, even in the extreme worst case such as somebody broadcasting "kill ur bb" would not result in everybody killing ther bb. therefore somebody broadcasting "get rid of browns" does not therefore mean that listeners are brainless zombies who do what they are told will go get rid of browns.
the broadcaster doesnt control my body. i can listen to a broadcast, respect the persons right to assert that we should "get rid of browns", and then simply disagree and think that person is at best ignorant and at worst evil. my capacity to do so is a fundamental requirement for humans to be sentient and participate in a democracy.
if listeners really are the brainless zombies some of the people here advocate for 'protecting' weve got a bigger problem.
if someone broadcasts "kill ur bb" then we should punish those went and killed a bb. the broadcaster has not damaged property or person.
my freedom of speech, whether serious or satire, should not be limited just because there are evil people in the world.
The information operations do not focus on silly messages the sponsors will not profit from.
It is about intolerants demanding that their intolerance and inhumane views will be normalized. By the time enough regular people have shifted towards normalizing it, you are too late to come in action. Because you don't have the minds for stopping that.
That is how you burn Jews in concentration camps. That is how you deport Untermensche without due process. Regular people consent to it, and with that they block the anti-dote.
Autocracy is war for the mind. Because to few stand to benefit from it, you have to be lured in via moral degradation.
Every society have some people without a mic that are blatantly inhuman. A society becomes it when you give them a mic.