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genrilz | 1 year ago

I think it's actually closer to "terrorists should go to prison". Terrorists and other criminals have broken a social contract, and a level of punishment that some approximation of society deems to be acceptable is extracted from the terrorists. This doesn't mean that terrorists don't/shouldn't have some rights. Similarly, thinking about tolerance as a social contract doesn't require stripping anyone who violates this contract of all of their rights.

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int_19h|1 year ago

FWIW I don't actually have a problem with Jones specifically getting in trouble over defamation after getting his day in court. What I have a problem with is the broad notion that it's generally okay to "not tolerate the intolerant" to the point of forcibly suppressing them. The paradox of tolerance is not really a paradox when we're talking about intolerant speech.

genrilz|1 year ago

I'm kind of worried about society deciding which speech is "intolerant", so I'm not completely on board with the idea of treating tolerance as a social contract. That being said, if we could stop a genocide merely by suppressing people's speech, I feel like that would probably be a worthwhile thing to do. That is to say, it feels like the least bad way to prevent a genocide.

Again, figuring out which speech is worth suppressing is a whole other can of worms.

EDIT: note that Jones did have his speech suppressed, and this was done because his speech was causing people to make death threats against the sandy hook parents. I feel like we could classify Jones's speech as intolerant against sandy hook parents, and the same logic applies as for any other type of intolerant speech.