It is especially troubling to have a community leader who equates speech with violence, even "hate" speech, which in that gist is clearly demonstrated to be completely subjective.
That is troubling, but I don't see how that equates to him "suppressing" anyone, if all he's done is voice his own opinions about those people. I haven't really followed the story, but was Steve part of the group that demanded Curtis be removed from StrageLoop?
I wasn't going to respond to this thread at all, but since you went to the trouble of using 100% of your comments on this account to post in this thread, and you're spreading this shenanigans, I'll copy what I said over at Lobste.rs:
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[This link] takes a thing I said on Twitter and uses it to say something I don’t mean.
My twitter reply re: violence is based on the tweet it’s replying to: general activity by groups who call themselves ‘antifa’. I thought my parent was making a false equivalence, but rather than arguing with them about this false equivalence, I decided to just say ‘cool’ and bow out, hence my response. I believe “antifa are just as violent as the fascists” is wrong on multiple levels, but I don’t really care to get into it here, to be honest.
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... and I still don't. That's all I'll be saying here about this.
Dude, you explicitly said you're "100% okay with [violence] personally"
You then said, "the only things fascists respond to is violence. Ignoring them or letting them attack you doesn't help."
You then linked to a Woody Allen video where he confidentially states a Nazi march in NYC should be attacked with "bricks and bats" rather than taking a civilized approach against them.
You explicitly endorsed violence against political groups you dislike several times, don't try to pretend like you didn't now..
It's the paradox of tolerance. Should a tolerant society tolerate intolerance? The fact that many think: "No we should not tolerate intolerance" is the apparant paradox.
It's not troubling at all, if you stop and look at it for a second - people aren't automatons.
Fascism is horrible thing in all it's form and sizes. Even if Steve blurted out that he agrees that the only way to fight fascism is with force (which I haven't divulged from the context, twitter is horrible for conveying meaning), it makes sense once you stop and consider it an emotional response and not an ideology of person that said it.
The troubling part is the equivalence between speech and violence. I fundamentally don't believe that information can be violent in any way. It can facilitate violence, surely (the plans to a nuclear bomb come to mind,) but it is never inherently violent because information in itself can do nothing.
> I fundamentally don't believe that information can be violent in any way.
Then congrats on never suffering verbal abuse. Words can hurt and information in itself can do a lot of things in a right(or wrong) context.
For example. You arrive in a communist hating community (let's pretend it's during the Red scare). Someone accuses you of being a communist. Witch hunt ensues.
Listen, downvote all you like, but it seems you never were on the wrong end of verbal abuse. Trust me a well sharpened remark, can be waaaaay more painful than a gut punch.
I never said witchhunt needed to end with violence. You can become black sheep, losing job, family, friends without a single follicles of your hair being torn. Your freedom could be taken, without you suffering any violence, e.g. house arrest.
Do you feel that mentioning the existence of slavery legitimizes it? Please do let me know. I won't bother with the rest as it had literally nothing to do with the topic, those examples were brought in as a rhetorical device to bolster what, on examination, was a totally unsupported accusation.
Moldbug did not simply "mention the existence of slavery."
He explicitly celebrated it. He talked about it being a natural order. He argued that "the innate character and intelligence of some is more suited to mastery than slavery."
This is pure, racist drivel. This is an evil way of thinking. There is a reason that racism, genocide, slavery are so abhorred in the modern world; they are poisonous ideas that have caused some of the largest atrocities history has known.
He is a fascist, arguing for a violent dictatorship, and arguing that slavery is a natural order. These are not mere rhetorical devices; this is the core of his argument. His entire argument is steeped in violence.
> Thus we may charge Carlyle not only with Hitler, but also with Stalin. Both dictators! You see what these dictators do.
> Of course, we are on equally safe ground in noting that both Hitler's party and Stalin's originated as political parties, and reading both genocidal maniacs as accidents of democracy.
I read Moldburg and I see an intelligent guy exposing the hypocrisies of politics left and right in an erudite, reasoned manner. I read yours and I see outright dumb slurs and lies.
Lovely. I have a problem with "communists in tech". Perhaps I should organize with my buddies on twitter and write angry emails to corporations that employ them, 'cos, durr hurr, it offends me!
And btw, this "legitimizes slavery" is bullshit. This is the article in question.
