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[–]StillLessons 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I appreciate being on a site where this kind of material can be displayed. I don't spend any time in my life thinking about or talking to people about the Holocaust and whether or not it is accurate, but to treat conversation about this material as reason in-and-of-itself for a person to be shunned and (in some countries) potentially imprisoned is a massive slap in the face to the concept of "an open society". Our societies are anything but open when certain subjects are considered officially taboo and not to be discussed.

I'm even fine with keeping the discussion of child exploitation legally and organizationally open. Doing so keeps the people discussing this kind of crap out in the open. When they discuss shit like this, they will discover that on an individual basis, they are taking a serious risk because parents are not going to react well, and that kind of individual reaction is entirely appropriate when people see an existential threat to their children.

Having organizations (including "private - in name only" corporations) and governments deciding what individuals are and are not allowed to talk about is absolutely destructive. In the end, those organizations end up using their censorship power to allow their supporters the most heinous of behaviors while punishing individual citizens harshly for the equivalent of complaining about parking tickets. It's tyranny, and it's what we are fighting today.