> Because it forces the rotten core of the ideas to the forefront.
it seems to me it would do the opposite. it simply requires that one pursue the same goal in a more polite manner, to avoid being put in prison for one's words. ideas and intents can be rendered in a vast array of ways.
> By criminalizing specific icons of hate, you can rob those who would build a following from using them as a rallying point.
i don't see how. all this means is that people will use allusions, metaphors or otherwise use substitutes for that 'icon', whatever it is. or even just endorse similar policies, concepts or other things. or instead of being against x, they'll be for y. etc.
the real way to "stop" ideas (rather, the way to sway the majority of people) is showing why an idea isn't great and presenting a better idea. with logic and reason.
This is incorrect. Logic and reason have value, of course, but most people are emotional animals rather than pure rationalists. The trick of political demagoguery is is to activate those emotions and then rhetorically direct them. This is why laws against incitement and suchlike generally require the potential harm to be imminent.
It's one thing for someone to say 'really, I think out_group_X bears liability for certain faults of society,' which is unpleasant to hear but not directly threatening insofar as it's refutable. It's another to be at the locus of a mob with people stating their intention to kill you in the immediate or near future.
> Logic and reason have value, of course, but most people are emotional animals rather than pure rationalists.
there isn't an either/or situation... people are both. and people must obviously be sufficiently rational, a sufficient amount of the time, because civilization exists and society progresses.
you don't get to the moon and back if your species is nothing but bloody barbarians.
> incitement
this discussion seems to veer all over the place. fascism, hate speech, incitement, etc. are all different things, but also have a variety of definitions; often so fuzzily defined that two identical acts could be read differently by two different judges.
'hate speech' (whatever that really means) is largely legal in the US, but incitement that demonstrates imminent harm is not.
even with legal hate speech, the US isn't a genocidal warzone. because that's not how genocide works.
It is an either/or situation. I said people are emotional animals rather than pure rationalists, who would by definition not be subject to irrational impulses. It is not a contrast between pure rationality or irrationality, but pure rationality vs partial rationality.
I'm not sure what point the rest of your comment is seeking to make, other than that you don't like my point of view.
then it seems like word games around a useless dichotomy. if "emotional animals" includes rationality then my point stands. based on how you seem to be stressing the words, i don't know what "pure rationalists" is supposed to mean.
> I'm not sure what point the rest of your comment is seeking to make, other than that you don't like my point of view.
you blithely inserted another concept to the thread, which is what prompted my comment. your point of view isn't clear enough for me to have formed much of an opinion.
No it doesn't. 'Pure rationalists' means people who purely rational and never irrational, and I find it hard to believe you couldn't work that out for yourself.
The vast majority of people are not pure rationalists, and a good many of them (though I don't know exactly what proportion) are easily swayed by emotional stimuli rather than logic and reason alone. If you place all your reliance on logic and reason then you are likely to experience an unpleasant surprise because it's possible for bad actors to shape the behavior of large numbers of people in non-rational ways.
Logic and reason work on you. I'm saying that you are overestimating their persuasive power because of an (apparent) assumption that either they work equally well on everyone else, or that irrational people are generally incompetent. Sadly, neither is true. Think of religious fundamentalists whose core premises may seem irrational to you but who are nevertheless competent to act in the world and impact others, eg through terrorism.
you seemed to say that no people are 'pure rationalists' ("people are emotional animals rather than pure rationalists"). but now you seem to say some people can embody this idea of apparent perfection.
there are extremely few people who exhibit chronic irrational behavior. of those who do, many tend to be institutionalized due to (at least in part) their mental health needs.
being rational doesn't mean you're a cold vulkan logician, and it doesn't mean you're always 'correct' or free of faulty reasoning or other issues. people don't usually get math problems wrong due to irrationality, for example. the average healthy person has their moments, but over time behaves rationally.
i'm not suggesting every single person that exists will be swayed by your reasoning. mostly because to properly sway your most ardent of opponents takes a lot of work, as you usually have to start at a low level, defining terms, identifying assumptions, establish a foundation you can both agree upon, and then build up. (this assumes your reasoning is solid in the first place.)
we can observe the world as a whole: the world is getting better all the time. there is less violence in the world than now than at any point in recorded history (see Pinker; The Better Angels of Our Nature). extreme poverty is much less common than it used to be. there are pockets of conflict, but the world isn't submerged in an eternal sea of chaos.
religious fundamentalists aren't necessarily irrational. many are highly educated and fully functional people, some with phds. if you actually talk to such people, you'll generally find they're operating with different axioms than you are.
to me, i almost feel that you're trying to rationalize grounds for conflict and justify the avoidance of dialogue. if you caricature people you disagree with as emotional animals that simply can't be reasoned with... what does this imply about your options for engaging with them? what does this imply about their options for engaging with you?
it seems to me it would do the opposite. it simply requires that one pursue the same goal in a more polite manner, to avoid being put in prison for one's words. ideas and intents can be rendered in a vast array of ways.
> By criminalizing specific icons of hate, you can rob those who would build a following from using them as a rallying point.
i don't see how. all this means is that people will use allusions, metaphors or otherwise use substitutes for that 'icon', whatever it is. or even just endorse similar policies, concepts or other things. or instead of being against x, they'll be for y. etc.
the real way to "stop" ideas (rather, the way to sway the majority of people) is showing why an idea isn't great and presenting a better idea. with logic and reason.