https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/
"I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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Government censorship isn't just a ban on speech currently deemed to be hateful. It is also an endorsement of speech they currently believe to be political.
The problem should be wildly apparent when we realize that governments around the world have a long and colorful history of making "political speech" that is only later determined to be hateful.
Even "Good" presidents in our recent past have held positions that, in hindsight, are dehumanizing, abhorrent and vile. Our entire "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for example.
Our incoming president has indicated his intention to treat immigrants as enemy combatants. He plans to deport adults who were born and have lived their entire lives in the US if he determines their parents did not adequately prove their legal presence. He has determined that this racist position is "political speech".
Government has no fucking business deciding what is and is not protected speech.
One important caveat: there is a difference between "speech" and "violence". Threats may be spoken, but threats are not speech. Threats should be criminally prosecuted, not arbitrarily censored by the government.
History has demonstrated that such a government can never be guaranteed. Germany had it right when they banned Nazi speech? They banned other types of "hate" speech not all that much earlier. Nobody knows what kind of "hate" speech they will be trying to ban tomorrow, or a decade from now. All we do know is that the people will broadly support it, just as they do now, just as they did a hundred years ago.
I'm going to repeat this again: Even though they are spoken, threats are not a form of speech. Threats are "violence" and "censorship" is not the appropriate remedy for violence. People who issue threats should be prosecuted, not silenced.
The government should not be allowed to shortcut the criminal process and merely prevent such violent people from being able to discuss their violent intentions in public. They should either be prosecuted, or ignored.
There's also the fact that Germany's Nazi Speech ban is heavily criticized for not taking context into considerations, with various media getting on a blacklist solely for having a swastika, even if it was meant to be educational or shown as a demonstrably bad thing.
This is why so many WW2 games avoid showing the Nazi Flag, even if re-releases of games that previously did, because Germany won't hear of it.