The Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide didn’t happen because of absolute free speech. Quite on the contrary: freedom of speech was heavily suppressed
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crackajack@reddthat.com 1 year ago
The questioning is stupid. There is no nuance on the categorisation of frequency because “always” and “sometimes” are put together. They do not mean the same thing! “Always” means “all the time”, “sometimes” means “on occasions”. I am an advocate for free speech as much as the next person, but there is limit to that right because history has shown what can happen if free speech is absolute-- which led us the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. Therefore, “sometimes” you COULD shout down someone depending on the content being spouted. So, on a case by case basis, “on occasions” you could shout down someone.
As another poster pointed out, the company who made the survey is conducted by conservative group, FIRE, which is Koch-funded so obviously there is clear bias in the framing of the survey.
YouSuckLikeLatte@lemmy.world 1 year ago
crackajack@reddthat.com 1 year ago
Hatred had been allowed to flourish in the run up to both genocides and eventual stifling of free speech, precisely because the undemocratic forces took advantage of freedom of speech to gain power themselves and then stifle any dissent.
The Rwandan genocide in relation to media and free speech is slightly different. It is the government affiliated radio station that encouraged to hate the Tutsis by constantly calling them cockroaches. Interestingly, there was a debate in the US government at the time to block radio signals from the radio station, but decided not to for “commitment to freedom of speech”.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The paradox of tolerance: The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant.
aidan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hatred didn’t flourish because of freedom of speech, hatred flourished because of normalized violence and censorship of opposition. Even the German communist party attacked Jews for some time.
crackajack@reddthat.com 1 year ago
Good point.
Staccato@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah this is an example of “lying with graphs 101”.
The data probably didn’t fit the narrative when they separate “always” and “sometimes”
Gamey@feddit.de 1 year ago
You freedome ends where someone elses starts, otherwhise noone except you will be free, I don’t get why Americans often have such a hard time with that!
crackajack@reddthat.com 1 year ago
The US never, in its history, had a collective trauma of unstifled free speech that led to any mass hate speech which then led to genocide. That’s why many Americans are absolutists. But considering the Jan 6 capitol attack two years ago, being instigated by the words of Donald Trump, I think sooner or later a worse incident will come eventually. And the country will come reckoning with their absolutist approach to free speech.
uint8_t@feddit.de 1 year ago
never led to genocide?? how about indigenous people?
crackajack@reddthat.com 1 year ago
I’m not trying to dismiss or diminish the oppression that happened to Native Americans, blacks and other minorities in the US, but abuse of free speech hasn’t really been a factor into it-- not that I could think of. There have still been people who voiced out against the oppression and those people weren’t silenced or killed for doing so (aside from those who suffered from mob justice, which is different to government-sanctioned killings like the Holocaust).
Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
I think the issue comes down to collective trauma and lack of free speech by the oppressed.
The massacre of the native peoples, horrors of slavery and resulting civil war, Jim Crow era in the south, the war on drugs, and the war on terror are all genocides in their own right, but the voices of the oppressed have been silenced in history books and mass media under the guise of ‘keeping the peace’ or promoting unity, while the people who facilitate(d) these things continue(d) to play a role in shaping national discourse.
(Say nothing of ‘lesser’ national traumas, such as prohibition, the race riots of the 50’s and 60’s, the intentional lack of healthcare for the gay community during the height of the AIDS epidemic, and the ongoing class war that’s being executed through education access and cuts to social programs.)
The U.S. has never looked inward, or if it has, it has largely chosen to ignore the lessons that could be learned.
I think that even if there were a nationally traumatizing event of the sort that transformed Germany, the U.S. would gleefully skip past it to repeat the same mistakes.
I believe the issue is not lack of opportunity to learn, but a resistance to learning and a refusal to, as it were, e pluribus unum.
aidan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No one has a freedom from someone saying something mean about them
qyron@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Hear hear!