tldr: you want the good stuff read 4. you want to actually get the good stuff read all this.

1: Just because one wants to speak does not require others hear them. If many people agree they don’t want to hear you, that’s not censorship. It’s society telling an antisocial person in a gentle way their opinions are unacceptable.

However, the person claiming they are being denied an audience then ups the stakes. Instead of being ignored on their soapbox, they grab the megaphones of newspapers, radio, TV.

It’s curious to consider that the promotion of the antisocial, either by algorithms that explicitly promote controversy or by the gatekeepers to the printing press and the broadcast studio, isn’t considered censorship of those who instead hold the seemingly bonkers view that treating people with respect does not mean treating their ideas that advocate inflicting pain on others and self respectfully, which necessitates exclusion of the person holding those antisocial views unless they alter their views to something socially acceptable.

I will point out there latter concept isn’t just fundamental to how human communities have worked for millennia. It’s identifiable as a means other species with high sociality operate. Bonobo society excludes individuals that act antisocially with return only permitted if they actually behave.

This does concede, though, that there’s an obvious hack to the concept of shaping up or shipping out.

Some hold antisocial views and merely act like they don’t in public. “Private vice and public virtue” is a well known concept. In public, they say all the right things for their social circle, but privately they don’t follow their own rules.

The “homophobic legislator who has a publicly accessible history proving his actual preference for the intimate companionship of those of the same gender” can be found in Congress as well as Hungary’s fanatically anti-queer ruling party. It takes no imagination to think of clerics who talk about protecting children at the public ceremony then violate children in their private offices, whether said cleric is named Priest, Pastor, Rabbi, Imam, Sri.

This also explains a phenomenon evident in modern polling. There is complaint by conservatives that polling is useless because polls don’t sync with results of the vote.

A person I know who has remarkable demonstrable accuracy in predicting poll results around the world (they called 49/50 states in the 2020 election and bang on 77 Labor seats with 52% 2PP in the 2022 Australian election) calls this “The Shy Tory Effect.”

Modern viewpoints that have become linked with conservative political parties are understood to be antisocial. Publicly, some who espouse antisocial beliefs either claim to be apolitical or they say they support progressive ideas. In the privacy of the polling place, though, where none know one’s true intention, they vote for the Tory that supports their actual beliefs.

2: I didn’t say he does it too. I said he actually does what others allege nobodies like this random chick do and I counter by saying I will entertain an actual rebuttal.

Today I’m bored though so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

3: Responsibility of being held accountable is simple.

If one chooses to advocate ideas that inflict pain on others and self, one should be excluded unless those antisocial ideas are renounced.

Millions of words published, printed, and transcribed going back millennia already exist on variants of this principal one finds central to philosophy and religion.

Wil Wheaton summarized this succinctly: “Don’t be a dick.”

The great philosophizers Ted “Theodore” Logan and Bill S. Preston, Esq. mused, “Be excellent to each other.”

Anons that advocate antisocial views are tolerable as long as the options to ignore the anon or to unmask the anon are reasonably available whenif necessary.

Visiting 4chan is a choice an individual can make. 4chan is the incubator of memes for this exact reason: anonymity allows those who come up with an idea to share it at the cost of instantly and irrevocably losing control over the idea.

A billionaire using shell companies and think tanks to advocate antisocial views on every platform while staying obfuscated via the legal fictions in between, that’s dangerous especially in a place that foolishly says money is speech.

(It is worth noting that Stevens’ 90 page dissent on Citizens United was prescient in accurately predicting the horrific fallout from that decision, including the current popular opinion SCOTUS is illegitimate. Law students may see it as footnote but philosophers should see it as a master class on logic.)

4: I don’t mind discussing things with anyone that holds any view other than a view that is diametrically opposed to my existence if they actually want to talk.

An antiziganist holds a foundational opinion that Roma should not exist. They believe in extermination of Roma. This person’s entire being is dedicated to that proposition. What does it profit Roma to engage this person?

That’s a very narrow window, though. Most people that hold antisocial views are not absolutists or zealots.

They can be reasoned with though the caveat that this is dancing a waltz backwards and in heels across a live minefield must be mentioned.

The misogynist self-indoctrinated those antisocial views on women and on who they are told is their political enemy, “the Left,” who they are told wants to inflict pain on them so they must inflict pain on them.

You would think that would preclude a person who calls herself a leftist from speaking to that person. That’s logical, right? Why would a leftist chick talk to someone who hates lefties and women and lefty women?

Lol nope. Try again.

I don’t talk to them. They talk to me.

I just act with genuine sincerity from the position of choosing to not inflict harm on others and self in all spheres of life.

I don’t attack people. Attacking people looks easy but is hard.

I consider myself violently nonviolent, though, because I am at war against ideas that advocate inflicting pain on others.

Attacking ideas looks hard but is obscenely easy.

All one needs to do is demonstrate a counterexample that challenges the premises underpinning the hateful view.

Sometimes one reflects, points to the mirror, and realizes the counterexample just needs to be.. you.

Writers call this concept, “show, don’t tell.”

I engage in deradicalization for fun. I know it’s a weird hobby, but my life is an exercise in absurdity to begin with, so I roll with it.

The most important lesson anyone going into derad needs to know is that no one can force change into another person’s mind if they acknowledge agency.

That is a contradictory concept and it’s toxic.

It also explains that certain style by those who spread hate online: they pay lip service to agency but did not believe others have it.

The alt-right YouTuber starts by saying, “I’m just sharing my opinion..” but leaves unsaid: …and I expect you to latch onto it, sheeple.

Public virtue, private vice. Shy Tory effect. Hey look, callbacks.

It’s almost like these are the same thing wearing different masks.

Turns out they are. They are all bullshit per the Frankfurt definition.

All one needs to do to counter is approach with sincerity and genuine openness and invest the time. (And actively avoid amygdala hijack. And have discipline that makes a drill instructor look like a slovenly civvie. But that’s in the advanced courses, which are conveniently available for the low low price of zero dollars for a limited time only, offer expires upon your expiration.)

If it takes me 48 hours of vulnerable, open conversations to help someone realize that, “wait, those ideas i supported, they are not what i actually believe,” and chose to give them up, beats any paycheque in my eyes.

…even if it makes it a challenge to feed the bills and pay the cat. Hours work for me but the pay is nonexistent.