If we’re not careful, they can both lead to authoritarianism.
What if we empower the government to censor our enemies, then our enemies take control of the government?
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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Anti-Fascism
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I’m going to assume that by “we” you mean antifascists and by “enemies” you mean fascists.
As a background: liberal philosopher Karl Popper has explained the paradox of tolerance. If you don’t understand why fascists should be silenced, then you’re lacking in basic antifascist history & theory.
If you had watched the video, you would understand that fascism is largely a tool of the capitalist class, the class that controls the capitalist state. We, meaning antifascists, are composed almost entirely of the working class, so we have very little ability to “empower” the bourgeois state to do anything, never mind to silence fascists. BBC: [Princeton] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. Worse still, since the capitalist class uses fascism as a weapon against the working class, and the capitalist class controls the state, we antifascists obviously have virtually no ability to use the state to silence fascists.
By “we” I mean citizens, by “enemies” I mean those with intolerant or hateful language.
Granting the government control of language is currently gaining momentum online. While I am adamantly against intolerance, I believe we should meet speech with speech, rather than censorship.
Once the government has legal authority for censorship, we’re just one corrupt leader away from a dictatorship.