> Looking back at the rise of fascism and the Holocaust in her 1951 book...
She learned the wrong lessons from her study of the rise of fascism. The correct lesson is 'if you botch the economy badly enough, voters will explore every option to try and get some relief'. Including voting in Nazis. The Nazis (with a parallel to Trump) are a sign of some large group feeling profound economic distress and being rather unhappy with politics as usual.
And there is a basic premise in the middle of that article that you quote: that the author is morally pure enough to determine what is good and bad in the marketplace of ideas. That possibility was tested extensively in the 20th century. There isn't anyone who can do that. They tried lots of people, none of them worked out. If we create a method for anointing some truths reliable and some 'twisted' then it is going to become controlled by corrupt people and then do more harm than good. Free speech is by far the most reliable way of identifying bad ideas as bad.
>Free speech is by far the most reliable way of identifying bad ideas as bad.
... but you just spent an entire paragraph arguing that it's impossible for any person to distinguish between good and bad in the marketplace of ideas, and that all attempts inevitably do more harm than good.
How then would it be possible to identify bad ideas given freedom of speech? Surely any attempt to do so would suffer the same bad consequences.
There is a spectrum of reliability. A panel of experts deciding on truth or fakeness of news is on the bad end of the spectrum, everyone figuring out what they think is most likely true is further towards the good end of the spectrum.
But nowhere on the spectrum is good enough to uncritically trust news you read on the internet. That can't be achieved. There is a choice of misinformation - either that approved by an eventally corrupt panel of experts, or those approved by the opinions of People of Average Intelligence, or that approved by people you personally like.
Truth isn't the result of consensus, it's the result of knowledge. "everyone figuring out what they think is most likely true" leads to millions of people being propagandized into believing 5G towers cause coronavirus.
On average, the panel of experts is still going to be more reliable.
She learned the wrong lessons from her study of the rise of fascism. The correct lesson is 'if you botch the economy badly enough, voters will explore every option to try and get some relief'. Including voting in Nazis. The Nazis (with a parallel to Trump) are a sign of some large group feeling profound economic distress and being rather unhappy with politics as usual.
And there is a basic premise in the middle of that article that you quote: that the author is morally pure enough to determine what is good and bad in the marketplace of ideas. That possibility was tested extensively in the 20th century. There isn't anyone who can do that. They tried lots of people, none of them worked out. If we create a method for anointing some truths reliable and some 'twisted' then it is going to become controlled by corrupt people and then do more harm than good. Free speech is by far the most reliable way of identifying bad ideas as bad.