But again, who cares if someone else or a group of people think something you find to be crazy? If they act on it that's totally different, but we have laws for that already.
I get that crazy ideas can spread, but what is the actual concern? Are you worried about people believing the ideas, or people acting on them? If the latter, are you worried about them acting in ways that aren't already illegal?
Some of them with wild ideas do things like try to storm the capitol on thought processes riddled with ridiculous ideas. I'm not an American, but watching that is scary. The same problem exists in other places and people believe absolutely wild things unquestioningly and act on them on a daily basis, sometimes harmlessly, sometimes very harmfully.
I am an American though was actually living in Europe when the capital was stormed. I was scared watching that in the middle of the night, and also confused as to how anyone pushing through barriers and doors were going through without being shot.
At least in the US though, speech is protected specifically from government censorship. Facebook can censor whatever they want, but the government can't take part in it at all. Historically, American culture has stood strongly behind free speech and we're very uncomfortable with the idea of punishing a person for what they say. Once you act on an idea that's a different story, but we have laws that already cover that.
> I was scared watching that in the middle of the night,
It sounds to me like you should lower your caffeine intake. Nobody sober-minded watching that on TV should have felt scared; it was obviously a mob of clowns goofing around, not an insurrectionist army.
> and also confused as to how anyone pushing through barriers and doors were going through without being shot.
Because it was obvious to everyone that it was just a mob of clowns goofing around, not an insurrectionist army. The tiny minority that got violent and probed too far got violently dealt with though.
> Historically, American culture has stood strongly behind free speech and we're very uncomfortable with the idea of punishing a person for what they say.
One funny thing to tie this with is that Congress is literally "the People's House". It would be a very American interpretation of things to say that anyone should have the right to protest at/in the Capitol. Those Congress critters shouldn't have run away and hid as if they're dictators holing up in the bunker when the peasant have surrounded the royal palace; they should have met the non-violent rioters and talked with them. Their job is to represent those people that are angry out there!
And, optically, that would have been a win-win for all of us: either they bravely diffuse the situation and get respect OR they get assaulted, in which case the "OMG INSURRECTIONIST" rhetoric would prove to be actually warranted.
Oh, also, another deeply American valence is revolution. Take for that what you will. ;D
We have a very different understanding of the potential fallout from a takeover of the US Congress. Its easy to write them off as clowns now, but in the moment how is they known? Those people didn't go through security checks and it wasn't known what they may have been carrying with them.
What would have happened if they got into Congressional chambers? Or got their hands on congressmen? PR the VP? We simply don't know.
It wasn't caffeine that scared me. It was the potential for a civil war. That seems outlandish now that we know was Jan 7th looked like. But honestly, can you say it wouldn't have happened should they have reached Pence or Pelosi?
I don't like either of those politicians, or government in general. But its a for agile house of cards, and a mob of people forcing their way into the capital building while all of Congress is in session is a terrible sign. I don't know how you write that off as a clown show, and I don't know what tipped you off to that being a clown show rather than something potentially more serious. Maybe I just missed it.
Anti-vaxxers putting the greater population at risk.
Storming pizza parlors.
Protesting election results in violent and extreme ways.
Coalesced crazy is dangerous, full stop. Stupid ideas being dragged out into the sunlight used to work but these folk are being fed nothing but crazy by the algorithms of social media, so it stopped working.
Those dangers already have legal solutions without regulating speech though. Talking about some conspiracy theories isn't, and shouldn't be, a crime. Acting on them, say by trespassing or commuting acts of violence are already illegal. Depending on what authorities can prove, conspiracy to commit certain acts is already a crime.
Regulating social media isn't a solution, and definitely not the solution. For one thing, if the state officially took a role in regulating speech on social media they would be bound by constitutional powers.
You could actually see censorship on social media sites decrease when they are required to respect individuals' rights to free speech and protection from government censorship. Why do you think they currently do it quietly and behind closed doors? As long as the government isn't openly censoring us on social media the censorship isn't unconstitutional. As soon as its government regulated we will see supreme court rulings likely deciding that the government censoring speech online is unconstitutional and a violation of the first amendment.
One recent example is QAnon and its popularity throughout the Republican party, all the way up to the former president. Once a crazy idea reaches critical mass and gains political power, legality becomes irrelevant. Nazism was similarly insane and conspiratorial, and we all know what happened there.
The Nazi Party wasn't particularly popular in Germany until the great depression, but I've never seen it described as having been viewed as insane or conspiratorial by Germans of the time.
Regardless of the often overused WWII analogies, how would banning voter rights work in your example of QAnon and the Republican Party? Would you want to see anyone believing QAnon conspiracies banned from voting, even if you are correct that the ideology has taken over much of the Republican Party? I'm not sure that banning most voters in one of two parties we have would go over well, nor would it leave us with a democracy or much of an election process.
> The Nazi Party wasn't particularly popular in Germany until the great depression, but I've never seen it described as having been viewed as insane or conspiratorial by Germans of the time.
Some of the core beliefs underpinning Nazism were based on bizarre occultism and antisemitic conspiracy theories. I suppose people simply ignored or brushed off what they didn't like, much as they do with QAnon politicians today.
> Regardless of the often overused WWII analogies, how would banning voter rights work in your example of QAnon and the Republican Party?
I never said anything about banning voters. I was just lamenting how easily the crazies can coalesce and gather power these days. Don't know what the solution is. Maybe we're just doomed.
With regards to potential solutions, I think it really comes down to fighting for a system we believe is sustainable long term and resilient to bad ideas floating around the population. To me that means doubling down on many of the core ideals of the American system, throwing out where we've gone wrong, and doubling down on free speech.
Ultimately all we can do is trust that the system is designed to withstand. If we don't think the system can work without breaking our own rules to "do the right thing" then what are we really doing? As long as people can speak their minds and hash out disagreements in public we're all better off. When ideas that may end up being dangerous are forced to stay behind closed doors we really have a problem.
Yep, just realized I got comments threads crossed here. Ignore the banning voters question, sorry about that!
My understanding of the history of how the Nazi Party took power is a bit different than what you're describing, curious what you may have seen that I haven't. My understanding is that the party was always based on racist ideology but that it only went antisemitic in the 30s around the time Hitler gained power.
Sorry again about the voting question, that's very confusing when I got the context wrong here!
