I can’t believe that Blacknavy is not totally wrong here.  For one thing, he inadvertently revealed the self-serving myopia of Europeans and Americans on a topic dear to my heart:  The freedom of speech.


You picked the wrong example.  Conspiracy theories about 9/11 are not the canary in your free-speech coal mine.

You can test your own freedom by stating this publicly, under your real name:


Or better, by outright supporting Hitler.

Have fun with that.  Even in America, where freedom of speech is theoretically guaranteed by the First Amendment, in practice you would be targeted by pseudo-legal, extra-legal, and/or outright illegal means...


...which may include not only accusations of mental illness, but Soviet-style involuntary use of the psychiatric system to de facto imprison you without criminal charges—plus drug you until you really do become crazy.  The pathologization of ideas is pure poison to the freedom of speech.

More likely, however, you will just become permanently unemployed blacklisted as unemployable regardless of work performance or behaviour at work—plus subject to Antifa types of personal violence while the police look the other way, etc., etc.

The freedom of speech requires that ideas be met with ideas.  If there is any idea that is de facto forbidden to express, then it is by definition a thoughtcrime.  Whereas if an idea is so wrong that it should be unthinkable, then surely it can be replied to with better ideas—without any type of violent coercion against those who express it.  That is simple logic, and the underpinning of a profound principle.

The alternative is that this free-speech thing doesn’t actually work, because the vast majority of people are manifestly incapable of thinking for themselves; thus, they need officially approved ideas protected by an authoritarian government against the deceitful propaganda of mass-manipulators.  And that would be an argument for... Hitler.  Actually, it is more or less a big part of what he said on the topic.


A meritorious observation overall—and one that few will even think, much less say.

I disagree insofar as I don’t think that Turkey is anything even remotely approximating a free country; Europe is overall better in that regard.  But Europe is not “free”, either—not even nearly; and in practice, America is overall worse.  America is a dystopia of near-total mass thought control, which preaches about its domestic “freedoms” with the same hypocrisy as with which it preaches the “liberation” of foreign countries whose people did ask for the American world-police to bomb them into “freedom”.  Frankly, I would prefer to deal with honest tyrants who wave their iron fists upfront, than to deal with the American government.

The reality:  You are free to do what we tell you.  You are free to think what we tell you.  You are free to choose between Coke and Pepsi.  YOU ARE FREE TO OBEY.

---

Yesterday, I half-drafted a reply on this thread re various historical issues.  I withheld it in the belief that even the slightest attempt to untangle this mess was not worth bumping one of the stupidest of stupid threads that this forum has seen in a long time.  Well, that is always a mistake.

I just had to hit the free-speech issue here, in the hope of making people in Europe and America stop patting themselves on the back, and think about how free they really aren’t.  If time permits (certainly not now), then I may take a stab at some of the other mess here.  Though I doubt it would make any difference.