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Kanye West is banned from Twitter. So obviously any definition of free speech absolutism doesn't include him.
Snark aside - and the anti Elon crowd is quite snarky - the whole free speech for people in meltdown or not quite mentally stable is interesting question. My approach to human rights have often been - approve of them as long as I get to define who the humans are. So it turns out that my approach to free speech is that while I will go to extremes to protect the free, I don't consider the incoherent ramblings of a drunken hobo as speech.
On the other hand while it is easy to say "Cut his access to the social networks until he has cool down, so he stop hurting himself" and probably it is the best thing to do - I can see how a policy of for your own good can be used to cull all the edgy content.
I am free speech maximalist (note that's different from absolutist) and I would have shut Kayne West down.
Twitter provides a platform for much more free speech than, say, the NYT or Reddit.
Famous people posting swastikas on Twitter -- the steelman version of his picture is that he's telling Jewish people they should forgive Nazis, which seems to be a totally nonsensical position -- is a great way to get the platform shut down.
In this instance, removing one person's ability preserves the platform's availability for many others.
If advocacy for Jewish forgiveness of Nazis leads to the shutdown of the platform. That's not exactly an argument that Jewish people don't have outsized influence, only that we shouldn't talk about it.
No one is arguing that Jews don't have an outsized influence in some cases. It's the narrative that forms from that statement. The issue is people taking that statement and assuming that Jews must be using this outsized influence for evil, bad reasons. One statement is true, the other is baseless conspiracy.
It's like pointing out that white men have had an outsized influence on US power because most US presidents were white men. This is a true statement. Saying that white men are engaged in a conspiracy to maliciously keep and wield their power over everyone else is an unfounded conspiracy.
Lastly, one of these 'facts' has led to a deadly historical event and the other hasn't. We can't forget about context when talking about this.
Noticing the outsized influence of Jews in some cases when they tend to represent a very small minority of the population, and noticing 'white' men have been most of the presidents during periods where people of European ancestry represented significant portions of the population is fundamentally different.
You're arguing the over representation of Jews in some cases led to a deadly historical event?
No, I'm arguing that the line of reasoning that starts with 'jews have an outsized influenced' has resulted in pretty heinous outcomes.
I think men is also a key term here - why hasn't there ever been a woman president in hundreds of years while making up 50% of the population? We know the answer to that question. So what about the Jews? We also know the answer to that question too. There's a ton of history that explains why some industries have a higher percentage of jews. The real history is very different than any mainstream conspiracy explanation.
You're arguing that talking openly about the outsized Jewish influence has led to historically poor outcomes for Jews?
Are those the only options, outsized influence or death?
At the moment the US is one elderly man away from the first lady president. I'm not sure it would be an improvement.
Are you suggesting ethnic or gender nepotism as the reason for the white male presidents?
Are those the only options, outsized influence or death?
My point is very simple: Talking about the outsized influence of Jews has led to very bad things in the past. No, talking about it again does not mean that the holocaust will happen again. I'm not sure where you got that. All I was saying is that we ought to be more careful when talking about this issue because of the issues it has caused in the past.
My point here was to simply show you that outsized influence doesn't always have a nefarious, conspiratorial narrative. Sometimes there's a clear path that shows how groups came to be.
Is in-group preference or ethnic / cultural nepotism nefarious or conspiratorial?
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