I get your point, but it is not correct. It is not true that the only way to prevent bigotry is to change hearts and minds. That is, the only way to stop bigotry is to stop it from existing, but it is not the only way for it to stop harming other people, which is generally the main concern. I don't care what Himu thinks about gay people as long as he is not acting on it, which includes speech. We allowed him to say shit here, how did that help him change his mind? Who sat down with him and changed his mind? Is he the kind of person that will change his mind given evidence or just double down and make posts along the lines 'if you are all upset it means I'm doing it right'? Another example is incels. Just because banning incel communities does not fix these people's views on women or their self-esteem, it does not mean it doesn't stop them from egging each other on and making the situation worse. What is the evidence that suppressing speech further radicalizes people? You seem to be deducing that isolating them just prevents opportunities to change hearts and minds, which is true, but it only works on the assumption that changing hearts and minds is the ultimate goal and anything short of that doesn't solve bigoty. The issue with open communication is that is rarely works, and it works far less than the amount that bigoted communities recruit new members, leading to large communities that are easily insular and safe from criticism and more harm than good. This is also not to mention that the best way to prevent bigotry is to prevent them from becoming one in the first place, which is more likely to happen if such people can not be easily exposed to cush communities.
I mean... this isn't a simple topic and there aren't any easy answers, so I'm going to unpack some unspoken assumptions, and try and talk in generalities rather than specifics because ultimately when you're talking about things like bigotry / racism / sexism / homophobia etc you're talking about specific (toxic) ideologies, and how they can be dismantled entirely, which - first unspoken assumption to unpack - is an impossible goal.
You can't 'kill' an ideology. We still have flat earthers ffs and we can literally send a man into space to observe that is not true.
At best you can limit them to extremists, and second unspoken assumption is that no, you can't convince
everybody of something, no matter how true it is or persuasive you are.
So two flaws to humanity are; you can't get everybody 'in line' ideologically, and you can't ever 'kill' an ideology completely.
Given that, any attempts to erase human thought to achieve either of the above is ultimately doomed to failure, and the unspoken acknowledgement of this is people who think they can do this will keep doubling down and getting more extreme themselves in an attempt to do so; again, history is littered with repressive regimes desperate not to allow an ideology to flourish, and the perverse outcome that the more they try and stamp it out the more it does flourish.
If you start taking about 'forbidden' knowledge that 'they' don't want you to know 'the truth' about you give those people more power, not less. You make - what is ultimately a banal little evil - into some alluring secret power 'the elite' are trying to stop, and automatically positioning them as plucky underdogs.
Thats where the principle of free speech comes in; there have been a lot of studies that the only way to deradicalise people is to get them asking
their own questions.
If you're telling people who
are asking questions to go fuck off and be with the rest of the scumbags, where are they getting their answers? And again, this does not (and can not) account for people who are deliberately 'bad faith' actors, or ideologues or zealots - but the people around them who might otherwise fall for their bullshit might eventually start asking their own questions when a lot of good questions or logical inconsistencies continue to be glossed over by those self same zealots and ideologues.
Most people don't want to be in an endless tiresome shitty culture war, but sending people off into their own bubbles to ferment isn't the way to de-escalate.
In fact, I would postulate that actively driving people off to form their 'own' communities unmonitored because larger communities decided they don't want to deal with their bullshit actively increases the power of the extremists over those communities, as they have actual adversity to overcome and form bonds under.
