I, on the contrary, believe that free speech absolutism is morally and intellectually lazy, naive, and wrong. Banning some speech is in fact necessary to preserve freedom.
Speech has real consequences, otherwise why would you consider it important to defend? Hate speech is a real problem. It is poisonous to society and results in real people getting killed for real. And no, the "marketplace of ideas" where you offer your own opinion to disprove lies is a hopelessly naive concept. That's not how the world works. In reality, people prefer to stay in echo chambers. And fascists laugh about how you're working towards making it easier for them to abolish all freedoms.
> When our enemies say: well, we gave you the freedom of opinion back then- yeah, you gave it to us, that's in no way evidence that we should return the favor! Your stupidity shall not be contagious! That you granted it to us is evidence of how dumb you are!
-- Joseph Goebbels, 1935
And no, there is no slippery slope here. Many European countries have well-designed, robust hate speech bans that have worked well for decades to protect freedom against those who would destroy it.
Speech has real consequences, otherwise why would you consider it important to defend? Hate speech is a real problem. It is poisonous to society and results in real people getting killed for real. And no, the "marketplace of ideas" where you offer your own opinion to disprove lies is a hopelessly naive concept. That's not how the world works. In reality, people prefer to stay in echo chambers. And fascists laugh about how you're working towards making it easier for them to abolish all freedoms.
> When our enemies say: well, we gave you the freedom of opinion back then- yeah, you gave it to us, that's in no way evidence that we should return the favor! Your stupidity shall not be contagious! That you granted it to us is evidence of how dumb you are!
-- Joseph Goebbels, 1935
And no, there is no slippery slope here. Many European countries have well-designed, robust hate speech bans that have worked well for decades to protect freedom against those who would destroy it.