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Originally posted by paiktis22
Arian, yes but since you admit that the educational system is biased against nazism then you admit that there is intervantion.
What is then the difference between educational intervantion on a system of thought and political intervantion on what rallies are permited
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Ok, fair question.
One of my best friends is a teacher. He teaches in a private high school for children with learning disabilities & behavior issues. He has a student who thinks the SS were heroic soldiers - he seems to really think that war is glorious and the SS, being fanatical, were therefore great & glorious soldiers. The bit about killing Jews he ignores (yeah, that was bad, but...). He isn't actually a neo-nazi, in that he apparently has no hatred for Jews, but he is really enamoured of war and death. Yikes! So Tom (my friend) has been trying to convince him otherwise. He brought in the film Gallipoli (not just for this kid, but for numerous others who seemed to think war was glorious) and showed the last 1/2 of it - the part where the Aussies get slaughtered charging the Turkish trenches. He's debated the issue with this kid, and continues to try to reach him. I haven't discussed it with Tom for a while, so I don't know the current status, but he wasn't succeeding at first. It may well turn out that this kid will not change his mind.
This is what Ecthelion, I think, means by education is weak. There are some students who will end up rejecting the "biased" message that our schools teach - that the Nazis were murdering bastards whose ideology should be rejected. That's true. However, the alternative is brainwashing - the extreme solution to this problem. We (USA) reject that.
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The difference between fighting extremism with education (biased, yes) and with political restrictions is that the educational approach attempts to convince people that extremism is dangerous should be avoided, whereas policical restriction attempts to prevent people from hearing the extremists.
The theory behind my preferred approach is that educated people will most likely reject the extremists' rants. I think it's best to allow them to do so, without trying to protect them from these fringe groups. I worry that the political restriction method is that it could backfire - by trying to protect "the masses" from these people's messages of hate through undemocratic means (restriction of the right of free speech and assembly), the government may undermine democracy. This can only assist the extremists.
By the way, just in case there is any confusion on this issue, Arrian has no connection to Aryan. Arrian was a Greek, paiktis, though he was a Roman citizen. Anyway, I chose the name without even considering the possibility that people might think it a crude attempt to be "aryan" without spelling it that way. Naive, I suppose, as I have already been accused of it once. Anyway, no offense if you already knew who Arrian was, I just wanted to be clear about it.
-Arrian