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> Change that occurs through fear of your power can only last as long as your power. Lasting change is only possible by actually changing hearts and minds.

Exactly. And you're not going to change hearts and minds by silencing dissent and enforcing speech codes, as progressives are wont to do these days.

>And you're not going to change hearts and minds by silencing dissent and enforcing speech codes, as progressives are wont to do these days.

This is just demonstrably untrue. For nearly a century the Soviet Union succeeded by doing exactly that. They had international support from the progressive types too.

Ask anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union about that one. The vast majority of people could see through the propaganda - even supposed party loyalists - but they understood the consequences of failing to toe the line. There wasn't a sudden moment of collective enlightenment that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, just a gradual breaking of a taboo. Imposition of an ideology through coercion is remarkably durable, right until it isn't.
And if you were in a large corporate environment, you could see through the bullshit as well. It is just a CLM (career limiting move) to call it out, so everyone gives it lip service.
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You're moving the goal posts to try and tar your opponents with the "communist" brush. The Soviet definition of "silencing dissent" was far more extreme and violent (prison, death) than what the grandparent's comment is referring to.
silencing dissent and enforcing speech codes, as progressives are wont to do

The Republicans in charge of two school districts near me have been trying to organize book burnings for the last two years.

Get back to me when it's the Democrats.

That's almost certainly a lie...but weird things happen.

I keep hearing about Republican book bans, but I've only heard they don't want certain books to be available to children in schools, not that they should be banned in general. Compare this with liberals who got some Dr. Seuss and other books cancelled and removed from Amazon etc.

It's seems like both sides attempt to decrease accessibility to literature that they find objectional, but neither has achieved an actual ban.

>In February 2021 some religious communities in the United States have started holding book burning ceremonies to garner attention and publicly denounce heretical beliefs. In Tennessee pastor Greg Locke has held sermons over the incineration of books like Harry Potter and Twilight.[86] This trend of calling for the burning of books one's ideology conflicts with has continued into the political sphere. Two members of a Virginia school board Rabih Abuismail, and Kirk Twigg, have condoned the burning of recently banned books to keep their ideas out of the minds of the public.[87][88] In September 2023, Missouri State Senator and gubernatorial candidate Bill Eigel showed off a flamethrower at a campaign event and vowed to burn "woke pornographic books [...] on the front lawn of the governor's mansion" if elected.[89]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning

I guess if you think this is fine then that's what you think.

It is fully within their right to demonstrate their beliefs via book burning or other legal means. What they did not do is achieve a book ban. And the "recently banned books" they are referring to were removed from schools, not 'banned' in the general sense.

It's not about "what I think is fine." It's about equal rights to speech.

> And you're not going to change hearts and minds by silencing dissent and enforcing speech codes, as progressives are wont to do these days.

Donald Trump was re-elected. He has said that we should deport pro-palestinian protestors on college campuses and has sued multiple news outlets, both on tv and in paper, for their coverage during the election season. It's really hard to find any political figure who is more aggressively targeting speech he doesn't like than Trump.

Shouting people down and canceling them is never a way to persuade people your cause is just.
The goal is not to persuade them but to sideline them; to prevent them to propagating their viewpoint.
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Both the progressives I know and the conservatives I know are pretty tolerant of dissenting speech in that they disagree with it but don't advocate for it to be silenced.

But at the same time, both the progressives and the conservatives who are active on political social media (take your pick of platform) are very likely to actively attempt to silence the opposition and punish them for speaking.

It's less a political divide and more that most people are still tolerant of dissenting speech, so the people you know in person will tend to be tolerant. There's a loud minority that's vocal on the internet on both sides that advocates for silencing others.

If it's mostly only online then why did left leaning papers self censor, on the orders of their rich owners?

Which side is often going to court (and losing) to dispute facts (like election integrity or sexual assault allegations)?

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The sense I get is that those on the far right are worse than those on the far left, but those on the moderate left are much worse than those on the moderate right, to the point of being nearly insufferable.