How many free speech advocates have you discussed this sort of thing with?

I've known many and haven't met a single one that would support gunning down protestors, even if those protestors happened to differ politically with the free speech advocate.

To that end, free speech does not find its advocates solely on one side of the political spectrum. The whole point of free speech is that without it, violence is the only solution.

I don't support killing protesters.

I just don't understand why certain speech shouldn't be a crime if it's violence that is leading to actual deaths. You have a strange commitment to our particular Constitution for a communist revolutionary.

You called free speech advocates "bad faith actors", because you posited that they won't comment on, or would silently agree with protestors getting shot and killed. If you find or know someone like that, they are, by definition, not an advocate for free speech, despite what they might say.

I don't know where you're getting the idea that free speech advocates have some ominous intersection with people who support cops in instances where black men are killed, this seems like a misdirection to me, and a highly specific one at that. What's your point here?

And again, youre implying free speech advocates don't mind when protestors are murdered - you're free to have arguments with people you've imagined that you understand, but it doesn't do much to illuminate or reinforce your point of view to others.

@ elph

It's just strange since you seem like you're appealing to consequentialist logic for silencing Nazis online yet I feel these same arguments could be and in fact are made to defend hate speech laws as well.

I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. It really depends on your priorities. I can see the utility in both TOS and hate speech laws. And I see no inclination that in Europe they're descending down the slippery slope to authoritarianism through these sorts of laws so aside from the first amendment I guess I don't understand why it would be any different here.

I wonder if elphenor thought of that when he was making this exact point about self-proclaimed free speech advocates.

Fair enough. It's worth pointing out that these bad faith actors are not proper characterizations of what advocacy for free speech is. And I think (correct me if you think I'm wrong) that these bad-faith actors are a minority in what would constitute as people who advocate for free speech.

I'll have to take your word on the Gamergate stuff, I'm not familiar with that.

Cheeky. To elph's credit, this is probably what he meant. But he didn't call them "self-proclaimed free speech advocates" - he didn't make that delineation at all. As a result, it sounded like conflation.

whats been going on in washington state and oregon what are the crying about now ..???

I mean didn't he pretty much make his name off of that? I don't think he's struggling.

Plus you have the Klan and Neo Nazis able to demonstrate in public with police protection... I think it's fairly easy to make a consequentialist case that this also is ultimately harmful.

Yes it's more potent to use online platforms but that just reinforces the idea that censoring people through corporate TOS is more powerful and more effective than doing so through hate speech laws, not that hate speech laws are necessarily beyond the pale.

Also, since hate crimes already exist as a category in the United States it seems the skepticism over whether the government is competent at identifying hateful ideolgies could apply to that as well.