And how many people did those neonazis actually effect? How many more people saw that and immediately criticized the neonazis who wouldn't have seen them before?
The answer to your questions are very many, and some. The numbers are of course relative, but consider the following:
During the 1980's early internet, white supremacist groups were among the first[0] to being using the new medium for organization and information purposes. They used it then to publish among other things a list[1] of "race traitors" etc including name, address, phone number, promulgate misinformation, gaslighting established norms and history (ex: Holocaust Denialism), and develop strategies for what can really only be described as terrorist indoctrination in many respects.
Some of the group involved killed a man with automatic weapons and hijacked an armored car with millions in cash to finance a separatist uprising. One of these was Louis Beam[2] who was a quite violent seditionist, and developed the "lone wolf" militia cell structure which is familiar today. Beam used these telecommunication/internet networks to create and distribute a lot of white separatist information. His activity goes on and on, it is quite vile in all respects. He has been charged and acquitted of sedition.
In this academic piece by sociologist Chip Berlet[3], he recounts attempting to counteract the white supremacy BBS with an anti-racist BBS at an Anti-Klan symposium. The understanding of BBS was quite poor at the time. By the 1990's the white-supremacist BBS network had grown quite a bit, distributing newspapers and operating file transfer and messaging services into a national network of neonazi BBS including Stormfront[4], which is of course still in operation, and is quite influential. They successfully transitioned to the ordinary internet and also AOL, using them as very effective recruitment tools.
Neonazi/white supremacist/separatist/seditionist groups have used the internet very effectively pretty much from the beginning. Perhaps this is an effect of Johnathan Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory[5] as well as some kind of operationalized Poe's Law--race rallys thrive in protective shade. KKK marches and the like are routinely confronted by anti-racist counter-protests, but the current nature of online discourse continues to provide an asymmetric advantage to these types of activities. The old "Filter Bubble" doesn't lend many opportunities for normal people to insert themselves in the radicalization process...this could possibly be better than worse.
The literature on this is vast, exploring how a normal person can become radicalized into a racist white separatist is a strange rabbit hole to descend.
There exists a kind and inspiring man named Daryl Davis[6] who is pretty good at converting KKK/supremacists (he has many surprising success stories) away from this kind of behavior, but notice how his methodology requires a personal touch and much compassion. How many "more people saw that and immediately criticized the neonazis who wouldn't have seen them before?" is not a very good discriminator for this activity at all. Effectively, "None" is the real answer to your question.
The fact of the matter is that toxic memes and divisive trolling are consumed by people while on the can, idle-ly (or perhaps compulsevly) skimming social media and whatnot. The uncritical ingestion of this kind of thing simply habituates people to these kind of beliefs. I don't think a person who has fallen for this stuff is necessarily bad at first blush, and surely have many possibilities for redemption, but the effort required is really not the kind that is easily rallied.
It's a complicated notion, but it boils down to the fact that you have to fight Hate with Love.
Can you answer my questions? They paint a different story than what the NYT is telling you.
I'm being very sincere I want to get to the truth. If one person of a specific group does something bad and it gets mainstream news does the size of that group and overall impact it has increase? Of course not.
If there are less neonazis now than in the early days of the internet then doesn't that mean that having the ability to see their information actually exposed their bad ideas and allowed people to see them for what they actually are? Consider it.
I am struggling to see how this relates at all to how I have answered your rhetorical questions from before.
As you are well aware, it is a material thing how the structure of this kind of indoctrination occurs in society and this I have adequately described, albeit very briefly, as it has a long and colorful history.
I would like to answer your question in another fashion: Is Stormfront the KKK?
The argument that we should let neonazis/etc. parade their ideas around in public so that the world can see them for who they really are has become a lot less convincing because neonazis have refined their tactics (see e.g. "boots for suits"). They are not parading their hatred. Today they start with softer language, focusing on the supposed struggle of white people in America, how non-white people seem to be getting a leg up at the expense of white people, etc. Once they have drawn someone in, someone who for whatever reason found that the "great replacement" or "white genocide" theory resonated with them, they start to give the "explanation" for all the problems -- out of sight, away from people who might criticize them.
I personally would rather see disciplinary action akin to what's done in the military. Not that that isn't without its issues, but the machinery that makes it work is larger and more independent from the people being disciplined than what you get at the state and local law enforcement level.
Right now you have a damned if you do damned if you don't situation where police get 0 credit for saving thousands if not more lives, yet the one time they make a mistake their are immediately put on the chopping block. Recognizing what policing should look like and idealizing that would go a long way.
“But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” -- John Stuart Mill couldn't disagree more.
You're using the quote of someone who lived and died before the invention of the telephone, and also ignoring that he also advocated for a 'harm principle' (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle) which states "...that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection."
So you think we should completely ignore anyone who has said anything of substance before any arbitrary technology was invented or if they have any other opinion that you disagree with? We can safely cast theses people's opinions out as invalid? Is that not exactly what you are implying? Do you not see how absurd those implicit arguments are?
That's not to mention the fact that you are ignoring the amount of influence that man had on our political and economic systems which benefit your life in ways you probably haven't considered...
