On Holocaust Deniers, Lolita Hentai and Censorship

I think that those who advocate for censorship ought to be given a taste of their own medicine and be censored into oblivion until they will squirm and beg for freedom of speech. I am afraid unless this is done they will never be able to grasp such a simple point.

What I like to point out to those moral busybodies is there are those find their tripe as harmful as they think that pictures in a comic book are harmful and many who find their beliefs just as if not more disgusting than lolita-themed hentai or holocaust denial.

I know that this may sound ridiculous to those seeking to censor others when public opinion is against that thing that they want to ban but if I were them I wouldn’t rely on the mob as much as the mob will turn on you. This is the reason that freedom of speech is there to protect the minority opinion no matter how reprehensible the majority finds it. And if an artist is deprived the freedom to draw little children in sexual situations or a writer denied the right to pen an article denying an historical fact then the gates are opened for public opinion to simply decide which things can see the light of the day and it might just so happen that something you think will be unpopular unless if you have any individual opinions.

I am not saying that you should support Holocaust denial or that you should draw lolita-themed pornography but both of those things should be tolerated, people should be free to do these things.

Below is an exchange I had with another user on my old blog:

TWK: I think this is a pretty complex issue…while censorship is problematic itself, as you point out, harm is done through hate rhetoric. We know that is inspired people to cause violence. As much as people would argue otherwise, I would say the same about lolita hentai in poisoning people by feeding desires that further a decline in some people who would consume it. I haven’t thought a ton about this issue, but I wonder how you address those types of results, especially when it comes to the two example you give, for the people affected, children and Jews, are the earlier a group that needs protection and the latter one that has had the most outrageous violence done to them than has ever existed, and remains a hated group throughout the entire world – even, and especially, in the most “civilized” places on the planet.

Hououin Kyouma: Those groups need protection but they do not need protection from speech or pictures. It is protection from violence that they need. As for the argument that consuming lolita hentai leads to them doing crimes, I could easily as well say that they may instead use the lolita hentai as a substitute to child porn or worse thus preventing violence, these things are not quantifiable at any rate.

As for ‘hate rhetoric’, what constitutes ‘hate rhetoric’ is arbitrary and so is what constitutes ‘harm’ caused by speech. Someone else most certainly finds your views to be hateful and harmful to society, of course you could argue that they are wrong and that you are right but that could only be done in a place with freedom of speech.

It is a bit of an understatement to say that censorship is ‘problematic’, in fact many of the places where violence towards groups of people is conducted is done in places with censorship. In Nazi Germany, large portions of the population were unaware of the Holocaust happening at all because of censorship. In Bangladesh atheist bloggers are killed for voicing their mind. In the Soviet Union thousands were sent to Gulags and I don’t need to speak of the level of propaganda and lying that went on there. In North Korea most people thought they lived in the best country on earth as millions were dying of starvation. I am sorry but censorship clearly has a worse track record than anything done by ‘hate rhetoric’, if you think that the hate rhetoric is wrong then you can at least argue against it and expose it freely where there is free speech.