two rules I often see stated on here: “you can’t have just a little censorship” and “you can’t have just a little fascism”

…are things that go hand in hand, but in a complex, contradictory way

because yes, censorship and fascism are deeply intertwined when they’re in action.

and both fascism and censorship are things that, in real life, very often begin as a slow creep, a slippery slope that begins with things deemed reasonable

but this process, the gradual shade from acceptable to not– is where the two rules start to become incompatible.

because the usual, supposedly-simple argument, in both cases, is “nip it in the bud before it gets bad.”

kick out the Nazis even when they’re behaving themselves– the moment you see a Nazi symbol or dogwhistle of any kind– because if you don’t, they’ll eventually take over your space and feel free to practice their bigoted violence uninhibited

shut down conversations about banning fiction that deals with the most disgusting dark themes– because the moment you agree to ban that, you’ve opened the door to banning all dark themes, all queer themes, all sexual themes, eventually everything that isn’t Hays-code squeaky clean

the former I usually see in reference to something like a bar or restaurant, but often used as an analogy to talk about online spaces.

the latter I see in reference to libraries and reading curricula, but mostly fanfic repositories like AO3.

The difference between the types of venues may be what makes an action feasible in one but not another.

But, much of the wider social space on the internet has characteristics of both a bar or social hangout and a text repository… and it is not always clear whether the former or latter policy should apply.

And they are often not compatible.

If AO3 followed the former (kicking out fascists at the first sign)… it could not follow the latter (stopping censorship at first sign).

Because then it would be trying to ban any works that expressed fascistic beliefs on the part of the writer.

And there certainly ARE works of fiction that do that! There are some works where it could not possibly be more clear that the writer’s message and personal belief is bigotry against a marginalized group. There are works of fiction that would have looked perfectly at home in a curriculum of propaganda in actual Nazi Germany. There are works of fiction that were there.

Removing those works on a case-by-case basis may be a feasible decision to make when, for example, curating books for a store or library or a class reading list.

And there, it may just be a textbook example of resolving the paradox of tolerance.

Because on such a manageable scale, you may be able to say with good confidence, in a handful of individual cases: “this work has broken the contract of tolerance; it does not respect our values of tolerance and therefore we will not tolerate it in return”

But if you try to ban such works on a wide, internet-sized scale… in a place with thousands or millions of posts a day, trying to streamline it into a systemic process that follows consistent rules?

…Then the creep toward censorship WILL begin.

And it will bring with it something like the creep toward fascism.

Because where do you draw the line? How do you define works that are glorifications of prejudice and should be erased?

Can the storyline not show any acts of prejudice at all? Or only by characters clearly identified as villains? Or only if punished by the narrative?

….and what are the definitions of all those things– prejudice, villain, punishment?

This just is not feasible on AO3, or any online platform where millions of new posts would have to be evaluated in real time, each day, as they’re created and uploaded.

The impossibility of drawing clear lines will inevitably mean that either the efforts don’t go far enough, or they go too far– something gets banned which the majority of reasonable people would not want banned, and would in fact consider the banning to be a frightening sign of censorship.

we’ve seen how quickly a small bubble of activists can decide that something– a term, an idea, a specific work of fiction or art– is irredeemably bigoted against a group that… may be largely unaware and unconcerned with that question in most spaces outside that bubble, and may not even have any members represented inside it.

this has happened many times, in recent history

and one fact I see stated very often, in online activism, is this:

Whenever you decree that there’s any type of person who must be removed, without question… to the point that even questioning it, or asking for proof, makes you suspect by association?

then all a tyrant has to do is tell you that whoever they don’t like is that type of person.

it’s a commonly shared insight. we do mostly understand this now.

but the disconnect, the very unfortunate complication, is that this also applies to categories of person like “bigot” or “fascist.”

Even the most obviously bigoted and fascistic tyrants, in real life, will often deny that those words apply to them. And will sometimes stoop to using those words, and all the associated power, to attack anyone else who tries to challenge them.

because they KNOW that just calling someone that, regardless of facts, can mobilize people against them.

…Which, in my experience, most people in activist spaces online are still afraid to acknowledge.

because the suspect-by-association thing is VERY real.

so… if you’re talking about internet communication in general, in terms of the policies on a huge social platform…and you’re referring to both censorship and fascism as slippery slopes that should be nipped in the bud…

I am always somewhat concerned that you haven’t thought very much about the implications of that.

…As always, though, one big problem is that the implications make everything VERY complicated.

they mean that there is NO easy answer to “what should we even do about this.”

…Which is another reason it doesn’t get talked about. People don’t like talking about things that they don’t know a good solution to.

I think it is very important to talk about certain problems being unsolvable, though. Or at least about not having a known, universal, always-good way to solve them.

…If only to avoid the worse outcome: where literally every discussion of a problem is claiming it has a simple solution, and the only debate is over which one of two simple solutions.

(and they’re both horrifically wrong, but any time you counter one of them with “it’s more complicated than that,” you get interpreted as advocating for the other).

Don’t know if avoiding that outcome is ever actually possible.

But I still want to try. And, like it or not, this means occasionally I talk about Unsolvable Problems– or Only Problems, No Solutions.