Censorship of hate speech is an unconditional surrender to hate.

[True Blue Door]

47. The scholarship on the subject is massive because the need to find humanizing details

in so massive a horror is overwhelming.

Never has a nation had to be so thoroughly sifted for evidence of its basic humanity, and what came up were essentially anecdotes: People here and there helped Jews, others here and there said "Fuck Hitler" and got shot for it, a few small groups printed leaflets and got thrown away or shot or sent to the Eastern front for it.

And then in the midst of Germany's collapsing fortunes a decade and 10-20 million corpses late, some military officers finally got on board the humanity train, and suddenly there's a "German Resistance" because Hitler proved too insane even for bona fide fascists.

My only point in even bringing up the subject was to say that Germany was a rare case where censorship was proven to be a medical necessity, the way that immuno-compromised patients have to be carefully isolated from infections. The analogy extends in both directions: Societies that are healthy need routine exposure to psychotic ideas so they can recognize what they are and dismiss them, developing intellectual immunity.

Even Germany itself may some day be able to develop such immunities; trust itself and be trusted by other nations again on the same level as countries that never did that. But it will still be a while. As for the United States, free speech that includes the rights of bigots has by and large been a virtuous cycle.