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Hi everyone, I’m writing this under my byline alone, but you can consider it an official company statement about how we are striving to make Substack Notes a good place for civil discourse. I’m writing this in the first person because I want you to understand that these are my genuine beliefs and that they come from a human and not some empty corporate machine. This subject—how do we maintain good speech norms on internet media platforms in the 21st century—is a tricky one, and I don’t think an…

Hamish, I still think this response (and Substack’s) is deeply rooted in the perspective of someone whose experience of the internet is not defined by harassment. Yes, people push back at you, and Chris, and might even base that response in your identity, but is of a substantively different character than what has become the status quo for so many people navigating these spaces — for Black people, for trans people, for Jewish people, for women, for people who are a target not because of what th…

I am half-Jewish and had relatives at Auschwitz. I get cannonaded by Holocaust deniers in the comments (only a few at Substack but more virulent ones at other sites where my work is republished) every time I reference that period of history, some pretty vicious.

You know what I do? I ignore them and move on. I used to try to talk sense to…

As the grandson of a concentration camp survivor I utterly disagree with your free speech absolutism. The gas chambers were born on the pages of Mein Kampf.

In addition to reading They Thought They Were Free, Defying Hitler, and Ordinary Men, I highly recommend you watch Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav’s documentary series featuring interviews with Holocaust survivors and family members from around the world to understand why guarding free speech as if our lives depended on it is our best def…

No seriously how do you think that Mein Kampf didn’t abuse free speech? Or how Hitlers rants at his trial were a complete abuse of both free speech and the legal system? Fascists use free speech to get into power and then limit it because any speech is a threat. Words are just words. The good and the truth are not privileged in reception…

One does not "abuse" free speech. For that to happen, free speech would have to be a privilege rather than a fundamental right.

We have an inalienable right to speak freely, to speak and think as we will. This right is a gift to us from God. It does not flow from the benevolence either of Man or of Man's government.

That does not make our speech or our thoughts intrinsically virtuous, or even require that we limit ourselves to virtuous speech and virtuous thoughts. Virtuous people will have virtu…

Of course one does. If I write that X should be killed then that is abuse. Simple example that you will attempt to special argument or syllogism out of by proving that my saying X should be killed is not free speech. It is. It’s also incitement. Limited by law. As Mein Kampf should have been and is in properly functioning democracies.

If you write X should be killed that is not abuse.

Your entire argument collapses thereafter.

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Apr 26, 2023
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