> How were they not fascists, for all practical purposes?
What does fascists even mean these days?
Real fascists wounded my grandfather and he pushed them back all the way to Berlin. My teacher wintessed German soldiers raping and dismembering their childhood friend.
It seems these days I see a lot of "everyone I don't like is a fascist". Trump is a fascist, the barista this morning who made me a late instead of a cappuccino is a fascist, etc. Pol Pot committed terrible attrocities that doesn't make him a fascist, he was Communist.
How about literal neonazis waving swastikas, calling for violence to exterminate Jews and blacks? Ones literally identify with Nazi facists.
Do you not accept a line where free speech threatening violence harms other free individuals? This isn't a thought excercise, the Daily Stormer is a group calling for the extermination of people based on race and religion.
"Do you not accept a line where free speech threatening violence harms other free individuals? "
I don't.
I rather have people saying out loud, that they want to kill me, than saying it it in private and then just doing it ... so I - and others (like police) know whats going on, and can prepare for them.
If you forbid things to be said out loud, they will just boil hiddenly, until they explode.
Wow, yeah, this article should be higher up. Choice quotes, from the same guy, regarding taking down ISIS sites:
Speaking with IBTimes UK, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, Matthew Prince, said that his company would not be blocking its service to websites listed, as it would mean submitting to "mob rule".
"Individuals have decided that there is content they disagree with but the right way to deal with this is to follow the established law enforcement procedures. There is no society on Earth that tolerates mob rule because the mob is fickle," Prince said.
...
"We're the plumbers of the internet," Prince said. "We make the pipes work but it's not right for us to inspect what is or isn't going through the pipes. If companies like ours or ISPs (internet service providers) start censoring there would be an uproar. It would lead us down a path of internet censors and controls akin to a country like China."
They can die in a gutter, for all I care. They made their line, with the political dissenters, the quiet, and the the hidden. But you know, blame the "bad people" and the "abusers".
The difference is that they thought they were the "good guys" and that other, lower humans, were ruining mankind's gene pool. They pushed for separating those classes of people, and then to kill a portion of them since segregation/"concentration" camps weren't enough.
That's not at all equivalent to other types of discussions we are having today about the economy, the environment, and education.
I guess completely out of context your comment may mean something else to you. In the context of this thread it seems like you're saying that there are other "social revolutions" that could be squashed because of content restrictions that are defended based on this incident.
If you're just saying that some company could be controlled by a "Nazi" and they may restrict their services, I get that. I don't think it's a "slippery slope" type of argument though.
I'm saying that it's often hard to tell the difference between a positive social revolution and a repugnant one. Every social revolution is repugnant to someone, otherwise it wouldn't be a revolution. I am willing to defend your right to say things I find repugnant in order to preserve my right to say things you -- or more to the point, the CEO of my ISP -- may find repugnant.
Just for the record, I find the nazis and the neo-nazis repugnant. I'm a descendant of holocaust survivors, so seeing swastikas being paraded down the street in America hits very close to home for me. And I have no problem shutting down incitements to violence. But that's not what happened here. The Daily Stormer was taken off the air because of an alleged false claim that they made about their CDN. That is a very dangerous precedent.
I think you have: it's pretty fucking clear what information should and shouldn't need help to be distributed. These hosts of this site could throw their page up on a home computer right now and it would be widely accessible to whomever wanted to see it. Nobody's under any obligation to make it safe (SSL certs), convenient (domain registrars) or available (bombardment security), especially when it's something so abhorrent.
If you want to be a hateful little shit, go right ahead, but don't expect a helpful hand. That's the "plot" here, friend.
Very few of those folks held up torches in public chanting an English version of a Nazi slogan. Even fewer still walk in public rallies waving Nazi flags, or hop in cars and run down counter-protesters.
So maybe I this case the general public can distinguish between literal and figurative fascism. The Daily Stormer supported acts of violence committed by the former, not the later.
As a member of neither continent, I find it beyond bizarre that in Europe, they're perfectly capable of determining from context whether someone called a 'nazi' is just having a slur thrown against them, or is actually a follower of the ideology, whereas in America they can't seem to tell the difference. Some yobbo calling a senator a nazi doesn't literally mean the senator is one, whereas people that wave nazi flags, openly promote nazi policies, and wander around giving the nazi salute are a different kettle of fish.
It's like that in America, what things are called is more important than what they are. Obviously there are plenty of Americans perfectly capable of understanding context, but they don't seem to be in control of the political narrative.
You know, I was going to spit venom back, discussing the European in fighting and greed post WWI for putting those goose stepping morons in a place where normal people thought they held the answers. But, if you can't be trusted to listen to why the Nazis were put into power and not skip to the atrocities, why would I think you'd understand why our politic and society is the way it is.
I find that when discussing politics with an American, I want to say "you know what I fucking mean" more than when discussing with a European. Americans tend to attack the surface meaning of what you say rather than the actual meaning.
A clear example of this is if you take fringe idiot politicians who say populist stuff and have zero workable policies. In the UK, they're a fringe political group like UKIP. In the US, one was just voted president. Here was a guy with a famous history of scamming (indeed, he was the poster child for it), making obvious and contradictory promises he couldn't keep even if he wanted to, and with no detail as to how. His whole platform was telling people the superficial stuff they wanted to hear. How did he do? Almost half of the voters individually voted for him, in a strong voter turnout. The only thing missing from his obvious scam was twirling a waxed moustache, and still nearly half of American voters went out voluntarily and voted for him.
Weird, that doesn't sound like the events of Brexit, at all. Oh well. Have fun being superior, I think I'm done with this pissing contest. You can win. I don't care..... Cheers, I guess =)
Yea I agree. It's really weird that white supremacists are 'literally nazis' in the eyes of many Americans. Did the meaning of that word change recently?
Indeed it has; even the OED recognises this sense:
"c. colloq. Used to indicate that some (frequently conventional) metaphorical or hyperbolical expression is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense: ‘virtually, as good as’; (also) ‘completely, utterly, absolutely’.
Now one of the most common uses, although often considered irregular in standard English since it reverses the original sense of literally (‘not figuratively or metaphorically’)."
I don't really think semantics of literally matter in this case. In Charlottesville people were attending a "Unite the Right" event with actual Nazis .... If you are uniting with Nazis you're becoming a Nazi.
Here in the USA, calling someone a Nazi does not at all suggest they are a member of some well-organized noveau-NSDAP. Even the swastika-waving type are understood to be trying to upset and frighten folks.
In fact, given the American love for sarcasm and hyperbole, and lack of an actual historical Nazi party of any note, it seems to me less likely for one to interpret the label literally.
The Daily Stormer is literally named after a Nazi propaganda newspaper[1]. Describing the web site's viewpoint as "Nazi" or "fascist" isn't even an insult -- it's a plain fact.
While I agree Nazi is an reasonable label to apply to these guys, the way the word is thrown around these days makes this argument worrying to me personally. I have seen people called Nazis simply because they are pro life. Considering cloudflare allegedly hosts Islamic extremist content I really wonder where the line is.
"It's not in CloudFlare's philosophy to just take down sites because management doesn't agree with the content, Prince said. Some hosting companies exercise tight control about what can be served, but his firm doesn't want that kind of power."
Do you have a source for this? I've seen it claimed on this tread but I haven't seen evidence of it actually happening. Did they have a cloudflare logo on their homepage or something?
How about ISIS?
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-opisis-cloudflare-refuses...
Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot?
They killed _millions_ for arbitrary reasons. What about them?
What about them? How were they not fascists, for all practical purposes?
I guess not all murderers and murderous philosophies are created equal, huh?
> How were they not fascists, for all practical purposes?
What does fascists even mean these days?
Real fascists wounded my grandfather and he pushed them back all the way to Berlin. My teacher wintessed German soldiers raping and dismembering their childhood friend.
It seems these days I see a lot of "everyone I don't like is a fascist". Trump is a fascist, the barista this morning who made me a late instead of a cappuccino is a fascist, etc. Pol Pot committed terrible attrocities that doesn't make him a fascist, he was Communist.
How about literal neonazis waving swastikas, calling for violence to exterminate Jews and blacks? Ones literally identify with Nazi facists.
Do you not accept a line where free speech threatening violence harms other free individuals? This isn't a thought excercise, the Daily Stormer is a group calling for the extermination of people based on race and religion.
"Do you not accept a line where free speech threatening violence harms other free individuals? "
I don't.
I rather have people saying out loud, that they want to kill me, than saying it it in private and then just doing it ... so I - and others (like police) know whats going on, and can prepare for them.
If you forbid things to be said out loud, they will just boil hiddenly, until they explode.
how about the purpose of self-identification rather than convenient relabeling that i'm sure has nothing to do with your political allegiances?
Convenient relabeling? I beg your pardon? Aren't you just conveniently making up shit right now?
Wow, yeah, this article should be higher up. Choice quotes, from the same guy, regarding taking down ISIS sites:
Speaking with IBTimes UK, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, Matthew Prince, said that his company would not be blocking its service to websites listed, as it would mean submitting to "mob rule".
"Individuals have decided that there is content they disagree with but the right way to deal with this is to follow the established law enforcement procedures. There is no society on Earth that tolerates mob rule because the mob is fickle," Prince said.
...
"We're the plumbers of the internet," Prince said. "We make the pipes work but it's not right for us to inspect what is or isn't going through the pipes. If companies like ours or ISPs (internet service providers) start censoring there would be an uproar. It would lead us down a path of internet censors and controls akin to a country like China."
Must have been in a pretty bad mood.
They already do, with TOR.
They can die in a gutter, for all I care. They made their line, with the political dissenters, the quiet, and the the hidden. But you know, blame the "bad people" and the "abusers".
What about ISIS are they citizens of the US?
> There are few things worse than nazis. Just make sure your content is better than fascist propaganda and you should be good.
One man's fascist propaganda is another man's social revolution.
This is the thing everyone forgets about the Nazis: they genuinely thought they were the good guys.
The difference is that they thought they were the "good guys" and that other, lower humans, were ruining mankind's gene pool. They pushed for separating those classes of people, and then to kill a portion of them since segregation/"concentration" camps weren't enough.
That's not at all equivalent to other types of discussions we are having today about the economy, the environment, and education.
I think you've lost the plot here. We're talking about who gets to decide what content gets to stay on the internet and what gets booted off.
I guess completely out of context your comment may mean something else to you. In the context of this thread it seems like you're saying that there are other "social revolutions" that could be squashed because of content restrictions that are defended based on this incident.
If you're just saying that some company could be controlled by a "Nazi" and they may restrict their services, I get that. I don't think it's a "slippery slope" type of argument though.
I'm saying that it's often hard to tell the difference between a positive social revolution and a repugnant one. Every social revolution is repugnant to someone, otherwise it wouldn't be a revolution. I am willing to defend your right to say things I find repugnant in order to preserve my right to say things you -- or more to the point, the CEO of my ISP -- may find repugnant.
Just for the record, I find the nazis and the neo-nazis repugnant. I'm a descendant of holocaust survivors, so seeing swastikas being paraded down the street in America hits very close to home for me. And I have no problem shutting down incitements to violence. But that's not what happened here. The Daily Stormer was taken off the air because of an alleged false claim that they made about their CDN. That is a very dangerous precedent.
I think you have: it's pretty fucking clear what information should and shouldn't need help to be distributed. These hosts of this site could throw their page up on a home computer right now and it would be widely accessible to whomever wanted to see it. Nobody's under any obligation to make it safe (SSL certs), convenient (domain registrars) or available (bombardment security), especially when it's something so abhorrent.
If you want to be a hateful little shit, go right ahead, but don't expect a helpful hand. That's the "plot" here, friend.
> it's pretty fucking clear what information should and shouldn't need help to be distributed
Unfortunately, no, it's not. And BTW, the CEO of CloudFlare agrees with me:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15034304
> If you want to be a hateful little shit
In my opinion that sort of language is inappropriate. Does that mean that if I were in a position to do so, I should be allowed to silence you?
Everybody always thinks they are the good guys - that's what ideologies are for.
Yeah, like Communists right?
Stalin and Mao killed far more people then the Nazis, but I'll be down voted and banned because my opinion doesn't fit your ideological narrative.
This is assuming I even am allowed to post my view at all.
Fact.
Still to me blocking nazi comtent is even more obvious since their violence is even closer linked to their ideology.
that is not very clear, since "communism" can mean many different rhings. And in the way of Pol porlt and co. it was clearly linked to violence
Well, ISIS has a large internet presence.
To me, actual terrorists actually committing terrorism is far worse than bratty idiots throwing the N-word around on an internet forum
FBI and DHS assess that white supremacist extremists were responsible for more attacks than any other domestic extremist movement, from 2000 to 2016.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3924852-White-Suprem...
More attacks or more fatalities? This is a silly metric. 9-11 was a single attack.
9/11 was a foreign sourced attack, this assessment is about domestic extremism.
Most right wing politicians in the west have been called Nazis at one time or another.
Very few of those folks held up torches in public chanting an English version of a Nazi slogan. Even fewer still walk in public rallies waving Nazi flags, or hop in cars and run down counter-protesters.
So maybe I this case the general public can distinguish between literal and figurative fascism. The Daily Stormer supported acts of violence committed by the former, not the later.
As a member of neither continent, I find it beyond bizarre that in Europe, they're perfectly capable of determining from context whether someone called a 'nazi' is just having a slur thrown against them, or is actually a follower of the ideology, whereas in America they can't seem to tell the difference. Some yobbo calling a senator a nazi doesn't literally mean the senator is one, whereas people that wave nazi flags, openly promote nazi policies, and wander around giving the nazi salute are a different kettle of fish.
It's like that in America, what things are called is more important than what they are. Obviously there are plenty of Americans perfectly capable of understanding context, but they don't seem to be in control of the political narrative.
You know, I was going to spit venom back, discussing the European in fighting and greed post WWI for putting those goose stepping morons in a place where normal people thought they held the answers. But, if you can't be trusted to listen to why the Nazis were put into power and not skip to the atrocities, why would I think you'd understand why our politic and society is the way it is.
I find that when discussing politics with an American, I want to say "you know what I fucking mean" more than when discussing with a European. Americans tend to attack the surface meaning of what you say rather than the actual meaning.
A clear example of this is if you take fringe idiot politicians who say populist stuff and have zero workable policies. In the UK, they're a fringe political group like UKIP. In the US, one was just voted president. Here was a guy with a famous history of scamming (indeed, he was the poster child for it), making obvious and contradictory promises he couldn't keep even if he wanted to, and with no detail as to how. His whole platform was telling people the superficial stuff they wanted to hear. How did he do? Almost half of the voters individually voted for him, in a strong voter turnout. The only thing missing from his obvious scam was twirling a waxed moustache, and still nearly half of American voters went out voluntarily and voted for him.
Weird, that doesn't sound like the events of Brexit, at all. Oh well. Have fun being superior, I think I'm done with this pissing contest. You can win. I don't care..... Cheers, I guess =)
Yea I agree. It's really weird that white supremacists are 'literally nazis' in the eyes of many Americans. Did the meaning of that word change recently?
I do think that the word "literally" has changed for many people recently and now means "figuratively" to them.
Indeed it has; even the OED recognises this sense:
"c. colloq. Used to indicate that some (frequently conventional) metaphorical or hyperbolical expression is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense: ‘virtually, as good as’; (also) ‘completely, utterly, absolutely’.
Now one of the most common uses, although often considered irregular in standard English since it reverses the original sense of literally (‘not figuratively or metaphorically’)."
(http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/109061)
The earliest example given, incidentally, is from way back in 1769.
I don't really think semantics of literally matter in this case. In Charlottesville people were attending a "Unite the Right" event with actual Nazis .... If you are uniting with Nazis you're becoming a Nazi.
Here in the USA, calling someone a Nazi does not at all suggest they are a member of some well-organized noveau-NSDAP. Even the swastika-waving type are understood to be trying to upset and frighten folks.
In fact, given the American love for sarcasm and hyperbole, and lack of an actual historical Nazi party of any note, it seems to me less likely for one to interpret the label literally.
The Daily Stormer is literally named after a Nazi propaganda newspaper[1]. Describing the web site's viewpoint as "Nazi" or "fascist" isn't even an insult -- it's a plain fact.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer
While I agree Nazi is an reasonable label to apply to these guys, the way the word is thrown around these days makes this argument worrying to me personally. I have seen people called Nazis simply because they are pro life. Considering cloudflare allegedly hosts Islamic extremist content I really wonder where the line is.
"It's not in CloudFlare's philosophy to just take down sites because management doesn't agree with the content, Prince said. Some hosting companies exercise tight control about what can be served, but his firm doesn't want that kind of power."
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/18/cloudflare_ceo_rubb...
Apparently the line is crossed when the site says Cloudflare literally supports their ideology.
Do you have a source for this? I've seen it claimed on this tread but I haven't seen evidence of it actually happening. Did they have a cloudflare logo on their homepage or something?
The source is the linked article. I said "apparently" because I have no other source (nor inclination to search for one).
"Nazi" is a slang term used to refer to a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. In that sense it is an insult rather than a fact.
that may be true. But in light of the no true scotsman argument, perhaps we should re-evaluate whom calls themselves nazis.
I'd be perfectly fine banning whom calls themselves nazis.
perhaps I'd be bad about running the 'pipes' of the internet.... oh wait. I do.
the thing is where does it end, once cencorship started ..
Famous last words before you get silenced.