Free speech for everyone?

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

What do you think about free speech for everyone including fascists?
I've been googling for opinions and found some interesting articles, some contradictory even between the left.
On one hand, fascist are scum and we should make everything we can to make their life harder. They can also gather support by convincing people with their populist racist propaganda and gain power from disappointed false conscious workers. And I don't know why we should tolerate intolerants.
On the other hand, prohibiting their free speech does not solve the problem, the racism and xenophobia is still there, is it better than it's hidden or exposed for potential ridicule? There are also many fascists, specially young that forgo fascism when they grow for left wing politics, including socialism, maybe being open to debate is better than repressing their feelings?

http://thoughtcatalog.com/joshua-goldberg/2014/08/why-hate-speech-laws-have-more-in-common-with-fascism-than-democracy/ this one is anti hate speech laws. (not left wing)

Strict government regulation of speech is the only thing stopping another Holocaust” is actually a very common argument in Europe and the Commonwealth, but it’s a highly ironic one when one considers that Weimar Germany did, in fact, have “hate speech” laws (and convictions), that the Nazis were banned in the 1920s, that Adolf Hitler had been arrested (which, of course, only made him stronger), and that there was absolutely no freedom of speech whatsoever in Nazi Germany. In fact, if there had been freedom of speech in Nazi Germany, it would have been much easier for people to have stopped the Holocaust from happening (or, at the very least, from continuing).
https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/39807/Should+fascists+be+allowed+freedom+of+speech%3F against freedom of speech for fascists
http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1045/did-free-speech-allow-the-nazis-to-come-to-power/ pro free speech for fascists and a direct reply to the above article.
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp-us/education/antifascism/madisonsquare.htm against freedom of speech for fascists

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/12144506/Pegida-demonstrators-chased-through-Dublin-by-protesters.html
I can't deny this video gave me a big satisfaction, but are these tactics good? Is personal satisfaction from acts such as these worth it if it alienates more people form our cause (assuming it does).

[Alan OldStudent]

The way to fight fascist speech is with antifascist speech. The way to fight fascist action is with antifascist action. The way to end the threat of fascism is to end capitalism.

[cyu]

I see fascism, like a police force, or a hierarchical military, as elements of the current system used to maintain itself.

Post-revolution, even I see it withering away, because there is no longer a use for it. I assume we also won't need to guillotine any heads of state or CEOs in a post-revolutionary steady state :lol:

(I assume there will always be some crackpot trying to bring back hierarchical corporations with CEOs in the future, but people would just tend to laugh them off. The internet has already put us in a transition state in which all sorts of groups are forming with very different structure than the ones we're used to. What kind of organization would we call a twitter feed or someone's FB friends? They are very informal, then have a greater impact than many formal structures in our lives.

...well, just to be pedantic... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory )

[Rudolf]

Free speech is about the relation of the state with its citizens. That is the state does not arbitrarily restrict the speech of its subjects. I fully endorse this even for fascists. The state censoring people is only in the interests of the state, dominant factions of the bourgeoisie or for the sake of capital accumulation generally. Calling on the state to ban stuff is for fools, not socialists. Having said that i fully endorse the working class violently confronting fascists every time they speak.

So my position is simple: resist the state's restrictions to free speech, free association etc while cracking open the skulls of fascists and pushing them off our streets.

[QueerVanguard]

Freezepeach is just a bourgeois abstraction, used as a weapon for reactionaries to get away with racism, sexism, LGBTQphobia and anti-proletarian hogshit. No platform for these worms, ever.

[Zoop]

Prepare to be bombarded with insipid Chomsky quotes.

Anyway, no, free speech is not universally applicable. I do not extend liberty to fascists and their ilk. I do not pretend to be fair and impartial. I have love for my comrades, and seething cruelty for my enemies. The free speech lackeys who think this contradicts anarchist principles are moronic. They are incapable of distinguishing between libertarian violence and authoritarian violence. Both are only indistinguishable by the most myopic and superficial analysis.

The state has no business dealing with these things. I do not want the state to restrict free expression, for obvious reasons. It is supremely stupid to do so.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I think its more important to hinder their "right" to public assembly than their speech.

Whether or not they really have a "right" to free speech is one discussion, but so is whether or not censorship actually works, or to what degree it works.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

The problem with using the 'free speech' argument went it comes to confronting fascists in the streets is that it misunderstands the reason why fascists hold rallies in the first place.

Fascists and Nazis do not hold rallies in order to 'express their views' or 'bring attention to their issues'. Everyone already knows what these assholes believe.

No, the reason Nazis and Fascists hold rallies is for one reason and one reason alone: intimidation.

They gather and hold these big rallies solely for the purpose of striking fear into the hearts of the minorities and groups they specifically single out for mass extermination. Had they the power, they would willfully and without guilt murder all those they have marked for death.

Sure, let them publish their little books. Let them have their cute little websites and articles.

But if they decide to gather en masse, then there will be no mercy.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Brandon - exactly - thats why I was raising the issue of assembly. We need to prevent them from assembling, because this is where they gain most of their power as a movement. Censorship might work tactically in certain situations, but it runs the risk of legitimating their views. However, they must be confronted when they rally. Rallying is not the same kind of political act as speech, since it is a form of establishing physical power. When fascists use that power they can use it to intimidate or commit acts of violence. We know full well from our own protests how violence, vandalism and mass action can be used to intimidate or threaten ruling interests. Even when we're not violent, there is the implicit threat of its possibility. Well, fascists bring that violence onto the poor, minorities, other oppressed groups. We should not let some bourgeois 18th century notion of freedom of assembly protect such actions.

[Rudolf]

I think its more important to hinder their "right" to public assembly than their speech.

Whether or not they really have a "right" to free speech is one discussion, but so is whether or not censorship actually works, or to what degree it works.


Should be careful as this sounds like you want the law to do with 'free' assembly to be revoked which will be used more against us than the fash. The working class must be the ones stopping fascists organising not the state or its agents.

[Rafiq]

Fighting for 'free speech' in modern contexts is simply reactionary. Fighting for the repealing of, for example, laws against holocaust denial are abjectly reactionary, no matter how you guise your intentions under the banner of beautiful phrases. When you standards are bellow those in place by the bourgeois state regarding such issues - you are are a reactionary. What a disgusting fucking position. If a Fascist is coming to speak locally, and there is a controversy - those who want to disallow the Fascist from having a voice, and those who defend him on grounds of 'free speech', you are telling me - you partisans of 'free speech', you are telling me you will take the latter side? Nobody gives a fuck about your stupid fucking hollow and philistine principles - YOU ARE TAKING A SIDE here, and you're not on ours. Nobody cares about how you sell it - how you articulate it to yourself. Under the banner of free speech, you align yourself with filth, reaction and darkness.

The fight for freedom of speech was never a fight out of some universal principle. The point was that such laws, in the past, enabled socialists to educate, agitate and organize without penalty.

We oppose the unconditional right to freedom of speech. We are for freedom of speech only insofar as it relates to tactical considerations. A Turk and an Iranian fighting for freedom of speech, for example, will never be the same as a European, or an American on a university campus fighting for it. Because even though the phrases are in common, the actual concrete struggles that surround an Iranian fighting for freedom of speech, and a holocaust denier fighting for one, are DIFFERENT. To ossify 'freedom of speech' as some eternal principle, is pure crass stupidity - it means nothing, it only means something insofar as it relates to real, concrete controversies.

We must oppose attempts to erode public political standards, under the banner of 'free speech'. Woe to the philistines like Chomsky, who out of 'principle' defend the reaction and filth. Yes - words must incur bruises. Yes, words are not just words, yes, partisanship and ones position is not a matter of an innocent and arbitrary 'opinion', they relate to real controversies at the level of real conditions of life.

We won our 'freedom of speech' through strength and power alone, not through appeasing the trans-social space of discourse with beautiful words and eternal principles. We got our right to agitate through power, and through power alone. And with that same strength and power we must mercilessly crush, attack, and confront everywhere reaction and filth whether it expresses itself through words or through action.

The philistines might ask:

"But in our common political space, is it not necessary that everyone has their own say?"

And we will tell the philistines: This is not our common political space, for we are Communists and we know which side we're on. If you're unsure of which side you're on, and your political views make pretense to this common space of politics, i.e. as though they are interchangeable and can be mixed and matched with those of a Fascist, because both relate to the same space of practical inclination, YOU ARE NOT a Communist. We DO NOT have the same practical inclinations as the Fascist. We do not have the 'same intentions' but merely different ways in which we see those through. ONLY WITHIN THE CONTEXT of partisan uniformity - can we speak of the right to expression, this must purely be tactically controversial. No platform for the reaction, the vultures, we have nothing to say to the motherfuckers, for all we are concerned no fate is too cruel for them.

The Fascist ideologue for us, whether he calls himself a 'Libertarian' or something else, is for us no different from an animal. They do not share our space of collective reason. You do not attempt to revive rotten fruit - you throw it away. We have nothing to say to their irk, only the masses who follow them are of our concern.

[Bala Perdida]

Basically just a natural rule of thumb. Go ahead. Say whatever you want. Even if it doesn't sit right with the climate go ahead and say it. See what happens. There's probably not gonna be anyone who stops you from straight up saying anything, just how much of it you get away with saying before someone stops you. If you're prepared to hold your ground that's on you, if you can't let this be a warning. This applies everywhere, free speech and freedom in general just aren't real.

[ComradeAllende]

I don't like the idea of using the state to punish other people's speech (even if they're fascists). But instead of harping about whether or not censorship is a great idea or not in the abstract, I'd like to offer a few questions for everyone involved.

For those who support free speech for all, including fascists, bigots, and reactionaries:

1.) How would you discern between threatening speech and non-threatening speech? If a fascist group proposes to march on a city supporting segregation or some other policy, and that city has a large minority population, could that fascist group be cracked down on?

2.) If, during the inevitable conflict between socialists and capitalists/reactionaries, reactionary literature is printed within areas held by the workers' movement, how would you respond? Historically, free speech has been suspended in the name of "national security", usually to the detriment of pacifists, socialists, etc. But socialism is attempting to push beyond the capitalist vision and, if I may be sentimental, "expand the realm of the possible". Should we emulate the old bourgeois regimes and censor anti-socialist speech in our own areas? Or should we let it circulate unless there is credible proof of a threat to our movement?

To those who support banning reactionary speech:

1.) How do you define "reactionary" speech? Does it include bigoted political statements about minorities? Does criticism of the socialist regime count as "reactionary"? How about someone (a generic bourgeois liberal, for instance) who does not necessarily oppose the worker's movement but offers a critique of Marxist tenets and/or socialist policies? Or criticism within the socialist movement with regards to theoretical interpretations and policies?

2.) How does one censor reactionary speech? This assumes that the socialist movement has seized power, but the reactionary movements are supposed to "wither away" after the working class' triumph. Or do we censor reactionary speech during the revolutionary struggle, purging reactionaries and their supporters within areas we control and engaging them head-on in the streets when they demonstrate en masse?

3.) What are the logistical sides of cracking down on the fascists? Should we have a special militia to defend our demonstrations and crack some fascist skulls in the streets, like the KPD did in Weimar Germany? Or should we train the mass movement to defend itself and go on the offense, like the YPG in Rojava or the International Brigades in Republican Spain?

[Luís Henrique]

Let's not fool ourselves. When the right talks about "free speech" they don't mean free speech, they mean "speech free of consequences".

Luís Henrique

[The Idler]

Free speech as proven itself as much more effective at combating fascist ideas than any other method.
Socialist Standard covered related concepts to this in the current issue here
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2016/no-1338-february-2016/no-platform-safe-spaces

[MarxSchmarx]

If bourgeois govts can ban fascist speech, they can ban leftist speech too.

In fact the bourgeoisie do precisely this in places like poland with its ban on "totalitarian" symbols.

[Luís Henrique]

If bourgeois govts can ban fascist speech, they can ban leftist speech too.

Sure. It doesn't follow that if they do not ban fascist speech they won't ban leftist speech. They still can ban what they see fit, the bourgeois States have the monopoly of legitimate violence. So the problem is not a merely legal one.

Luís Henrique

[cyu]

the bourgeois States have the monopoly of legitimate violence

Kind of a tangent, but this reminds me, either no violence should be considered legitimate, all violence should be considered legitimate, or people already distinguish them, without bringing "the state" into the equation. If the latter, then "the state" has already withered away.

[I'm starting to think the fabled communist revolution isn't coming, but is already in progress around the world, but it will happen more by degrees than by mass event. This isn't to say leftists shouldn't continue to work towards, agitate, make threats, and perhaps even kill for revolution, we are the dancers necessary for our hivemind to learn a new dance. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/you-have-a-hive-mind ]

[AnarchoSXE]

In my opinion, I don't mind having a political debate with capitalists or even state boot lickers, but when it comes to fascists, there should be no tolerance for anyone advocating genocide. If its hidden underground there's less chance of its disease spreading. When they are allowed to talk freely to the public is when it becomes more dangerous. Take Trump for example, when he began running for president, I laughed and thought WTF, American people aren't this shitty they'll never vote for him. But even fascist speakers as low on the IQ scale as Trump, seem to have a way to convince (white) people they're the victims and get their support. It could have the same effect for any extreme right wing speaker. They forfeited any 'right' to free speech when they embraced an ideology that is based on exterminating millions of people.

[RainbowRevolution]

Free speech is like any other right, non-absolutist. There's a range within which free speech is most certainly good and healthy for a population, but too much or too little is unhealthy. Like pretty much anything in life to be honest.

For example, having good debate and constructive dialogue is certainly a good thing to have, but having personal attacks against people, or groups of people, or speech that constitutes harassment to people in their day-to-day life is not constructive at all, in fact it just tears people down and serves to isolate them further from society.

It is true that hate speech laws do not necessarily 'stop' the problem, but they do stop such ideological positions (such as homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, et cetera), and particularly the harassment or disrespect that their propagation can entail, from effecting the day-to-day lives of the people who'd otherwise be effected by them, and clearly show the people that treatment of people in such a way isn't appropriate.

Its necessary to have limits on free speech, and particularly to have hate speech laws, because hate speech and discriminatory speech is something which fundamentally undermines the sense of community and social cohesion among people, as well as contributes to negative mental health as a consequences as those who are exposed to it. It is fundamentally important to the well-being of both society, and individuals and groups of individuals in society, to restrict free speech in some ways, such as strict anti-hate speech laws.