Censorship and the Nazi bar
Jul. 18th, 2023 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayI recently read an interesting book: What's Our Problem?, by Tim Urban. His basic thesis (grossly oversimplified) is that modern society has become too tribal, and would benefit from becoming more analytical. This is a thesis I agree with, but I found our points of disagreement interesting.
Urban is basically a left-leaning person, addressing a presumed left-leaning audience, so he finds it easy to demonstrate this dogmatic attitude happening on the American right. He spends a much larger amount of the book demonstrating similar behavior on the American left, which makes sense. His presumed audience is going to be much harder to convince of problems with the right than of similar problems with the left. Being on the left myself, I had some strong negative emotional reactions to these chapters. But, in the spirit of the book, I examined those reactions carefully to see if they were *just* emotional, or whether I had any substantive issues.
Urban presents many esamples of what he refers to as "Social Justice Fundamentalism", which can be summed up as regarding certain speech acts as completely taboo, to the extent that people's careers have been ruined by uttering such speech, and this has exerted a significant chilling effect on rational debate. This is the "cancel culture" that many complain about, and I reluctantly cede that it is a real phenomenon.
But I noticed a pattern in all the many, many examples that Urban provided. None of these taboo ideas were *new* ideas. They had all been quite solidly discredited by rational debate already. Most of them were simply factually false. There were some where it was possible to argue a kernel of truth. But the one thing these ideas all had in common was Nazi bars.
Ok, that's a bit of a non-sequitur, let me back up. In 2020, Michael B. Taeger related an anecdote that went viral, and is worth sharing here in full:
There are a lot of "reasonable arguments" which, taken to their logical conclusions, end in slavery, war, and genocide. They *sound* good on the surface, but history has clearly shown where they lead. If we don't want our society to become a "Nazi bar", we need to say, "No. Get out," when people start espousing Nazi ideas.
What Urban describes as Social Justice Fundamentalism, I would liken to an immune system. When it detects markers of an infection, it attempts to wipe them out. Like an immune system, it's not always correct. It can miss new mutations of old pathogens. In the other direction, it can have false positives, leading to things like allergic reactions. And, like an immune system, without it, society would soon sicken and die.
There are two sorts of people who espouse "Nazi bar" ideas: "terrible, awful people" (often literal Nazis), and people who don't understand where these ideas inevitably lead. I am chagrined to admit that I have, at times, been one of these foolish people. Neither of these types of people is seriously interested in rational debate. The Nazis are attempting to get ideas which they know are widely regarded as evil to slip past our collective immune system. And the helpful idiots are parroting the Nazis because the Nazis are very skilled propagandists, and have ensured that the *surface level* of all their proposals sounds reasonable, and the idiots haven't done the work to realize what's underneath.
While I am generally in favor of the principle that debate on all topics should be allowed, I am far from an absolutist on the topic. Some ideas are known to be toxic. As a society, we encourage scientific rresearch, but we also regulate it. You're not legally allowed to study dangerous contagions except in a lab which meets stringent safety requirements. You're not allowed to do research on human beings without obeying strict ethical guidelines. And so on. I think that there are some ideas which should only be allowed to be debated in "safe" circumstances -- emphatically *not* in public speeches!
Is this not censorship? What about free speech? A lot of people I respect are free speech "absolutists". Only, when you get down to it, no one turns out to be completely absolutist. Everyone agrees that speech which presents a credible threat of causing immediate harm shouldn't be allowed. American courts, however, have historically been extremely guarded about how to define "immediate" and "credible". Which, sadly, has led to the development of stochastic terrorism. Politicians now know that if they say legally allowable things like "All [people X] should be killed" often enough, then eventually some of their followers will take it as an instruction and start shooting.
I have, in the past, decried the ability of people (especially politicians) to get away with lying without suffering any legal consequences. I have suggested some ways in which consequences might be applied through legislation. A person I repsect (Steven Brust) reacted strongly against this (the idea triggered his personal immune system). He said (paraphrased badly), "Any government body which defines truth will imevitably be turned back upon progressives, and used as a tool of oppression." Which I could not, at the time, see any flaw in, though I suspected that there *was* one. And now I think I see it.
Nazis are to democracy as capitalism is to socialism. When capitalism is not checked by strong government corporate regulation, money accumulates in a very few hands, and a power differential is established which is very hard to dislodge, and which immiserates the common people. What was once a marketplace becomes a company store. In just such a way, in the absence of government *media* regulation, the marketplace of ideas can break down, and be dominated by powerful men, to the detriment of everyone else.
Would evil men attempt to weaponize legal restrictions on speech? Of course they would. But they are *already* weaponizing free speech, and have gotten very skilled at it. In creating law, one should of course consider how that law would be interpreted by someone antithetical to your own values. But that doesn't mean that new laws are necessarily bad.
To sum up: Cancel culture is an ad hoc, imperfect method of keeping damaging ideas from infecting public discourse. We could do better, possibly through legislation.
Urban is basically a left-leaning person, addressing a presumed left-leaning audience, so he finds it easy to demonstrate this dogmatic attitude happening on the American right. He spends a much larger amount of the book demonstrating similar behavior on the American left, which makes sense. His presumed audience is going to be much harder to convince of problems with the right than of similar problems with the left. Being on the left myself, I had some strong negative emotional reactions to these chapters. But, in the spirit of the book, I examined those reactions carefully to see if they were *just* emotional, or whether I had any substantive issues.
Urban presents many esamples of what he refers to as "Social Justice Fundamentalism", which can be summed up as regarding certain speech acts as completely taboo, to the extent that people's careers have been ruined by uttering such speech, and this has exerted a significant chilling effect on rational debate. This is the "cancel culture" that many complain about, and I reluctantly cede that it is a real phenomenon.
But I noticed a pattern in all the many, many examples that Urban provided. None of these taboo ideas were *new* ideas. They had all been quite solidly discredited by rational debate already. Most of them were simply factually false. There were some where it was possible to argue a kernel of truth. But the one thing these ideas all had in common was Nazi bars.
Ok, that's a bit of a non-sequitur, let me back up. In 2020, Michael B. Taeger related an anecdote that went viral, and is worth sharing here in full:
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."
Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."
And i was like, ohok and he continues.
"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.
And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."
And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.
There are a lot of "reasonable arguments" which, taken to their logical conclusions, end in slavery, war, and genocide. They *sound* good on the surface, but history has clearly shown where they lead. If we don't want our society to become a "Nazi bar", we need to say, "No. Get out," when people start espousing Nazi ideas.
What Urban describes as Social Justice Fundamentalism, I would liken to an immune system. When it detects markers of an infection, it attempts to wipe them out. Like an immune system, it's not always correct. It can miss new mutations of old pathogens. In the other direction, it can have false positives, leading to things like allergic reactions. And, like an immune system, without it, society would soon sicken and die.
There are two sorts of people who espouse "Nazi bar" ideas: "terrible, awful people" (often literal Nazis), and people who don't understand where these ideas inevitably lead. I am chagrined to admit that I have, at times, been one of these foolish people. Neither of these types of people is seriously interested in rational debate. The Nazis are attempting to get ideas which they know are widely regarded as evil to slip past our collective immune system. And the helpful idiots are parroting the Nazis because the Nazis are very skilled propagandists, and have ensured that the *surface level* of all their proposals sounds reasonable, and the idiots haven't done the work to realize what's underneath.
While I am generally in favor of the principle that debate on all topics should be allowed, I am far from an absolutist on the topic. Some ideas are known to be toxic. As a society, we encourage scientific rresearch, but we also regulate it. You're not legally allowed to study dangerous contagions except in a lab which meets stringent safety requirements. You're not allowed to do research on human beings without obeying strict ethical guidelines. And so on. I think that there are some ideas which should only be allowed to be debated in "safe" circumstances -- emphatically *not* in public speeches!
Is this not censorship? What about free speech? A lot of people I respect are free speech "absolutists". Only, when you get down to it, no one turns out to be completely absolutist. Everyone agrees that speech which presents a credible threat of causing immediate harm shouldn't be allowed. American courts, however, have historically been extremely guarded about how to define "immediate" and "credible". Which, sadly, has led to the development of stochastic terrorism. Politicians now know that if they say legally allowable things like "All [people X] should be killed" often enough, then eventually some of their followers will take it as an instruction and start shooting.
I have, in the past, decried the ability of people (especially politicians) to get away with lying without suffering any legal consequences. I have suggested some ways in which consequences might be applied through legislation. A person I repsect (Steven Brust) reacted strongly against this (the idea triggered his personal immune system). He said (paraphrased badly), "Any government body which defines truth will imevitably be turned back upon progressives, and used as a tool of oppression." Which I could not, at the time, see any flaw in, though I suspected that there *was* one. And now I think I see it.
Nazis are to democracy as capitalism is to socialism. When capitalism is not checked by strong government corporate regulation, money accumulates in a very few hands, and a power differential is established which is very hard to dislodge, and which immiserates the common people. What was once a marketplace becomes a company store. In just such a way, in the absence of government *media* regulation, the marketplace of ideas can break down, and be dominated by powerful men, to the detriment of everyone else.
Would evil men attempt to weaponize legal restrictions on speech? Of course they would. But they are *already* weaponizing free speech, and have gotten very skilled at it. In creating law, one should of course consider how that law would be interpreted by someone antithetical to your own values. But that doesn't mean that new laws are necessarily bad.
To sum up: Cancel culture is an ad hoc, imperfect method of keeping damaging ideas from infecting public discourse. We could do better, possibly through legislation.