I understand the arguments for giving nazis free speech, and indeed, at least as far as the us state is concerned, I’m in favor of it being content-neutrally restrained from infringing on political advocacy of almost any kind
but I can’t get too high and mighty about this, because it isn’t my bottom line. if I thought that nazism had a chance of taking real political power I’d endorse it being banned, its leaders extrajudicially shot in the middle of the night, and before rather than after it got too large
what’s the worst that can come of abandoning free speech? let’s say a corrupt authoritarian government with policies I don’t like. Is this a price worth paying if it were the price? yeah, sure. Dollfuß is obviously better than Hitler, Carol is obviously better than Codreanu, Horthy obviously better than Szalasi, etc. obviously we can and should want to aim higher but the whole “banning nazis makes you as bad as nazis” thing doesn’t even apply among right-wing dictatorships, and “how much risk is too much?” is obviously a hard to quantify and partially empirical question
my counterpoint to any argument from “how much worse could it be?” is “you are not imaginative enough”.
that’s true, but trivially so for all decision horns, isn’t it?
if you make a law that says “literally zero human rights apply to any nazi, because nazis are uniquely bad”, the first thing everyone will start doing is try to expand the definition of “nazi”.
your theoretical question is “just get rid of freedom of speech, how bad can it be?“ and my response is “really fucking bad my dude”.
imagine: the worst possible authoritarian government but they’re not calling themselves nazis.
yes, worse than nazis. Hitler had to rely on people snitching who is and isn’t a Jew. the American government knows the exact shade of my nipples
okay, my phrasing earlier “what’s the worst that can happen?” obviously invited this kind of response.
it would be better to speak of the worst plausible consequences that flow from accepting strong versions of the pro-free-speech argument: hence, a government that is extremely corrupt, authoritarian, etc. it having a teleological drive to be as bad as possible is compatible with this but much less a foreseeable consequence; and we can see this by the fact that strong free speech protections are relatively rare but fantastical dystopias are even rarer.
I’m drawing a path from no free speech to fantastical dystopias for a reason here. Taking away free speech is specifically a catalyst because it prevents people from criticizing other authoritarian policies that get implemented. Authoritarianism opens the door to more authoritarianism.
And, unlike imminent Nazi takeovers of entire countries, this is actually happening.
It’s why I don’t trust any kind of Communism that doesn’t start with a small voluntary settlement and expand outwards nonviolently because people just like it that much.
Revolutionary Communists don’t believe in free speech, not just in the sense of free speech as a human right, but even in the sense of “removing free speech is exceptionally dangerous”. The first thing that will happen is the forcible shutting down of all outside criticism, which will lead to the shutting down of real internal criticism. Freed from feedback to prevent it from going off the rails, whatever Communist body was created to bring about the Revolution will then do terrible things.
