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You can’t prove I meant X

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Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#51

Post by _v7gu »

Kaiyou wrote: post #9
pjc50 wrote: post #7

Two modern equivalents of this kind of thing are the use of euphemisms to bypass Chinese censorship: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Main_Page and the ever-mutating set of "dog whistles" used by the far right ("fourteen words" etc.) The historical background of the 1700s I'm a bit vague on, but it was crucial for the development of Parliamentary government in the UK through a long series of succession crises from…

Ever since I've looked up what the fourteen words are, I'm both struggling to understand why they are controversial and associated with the far right. They seem pretty reasonable and on par with the "It's okay to be white" campaign.

Pretty basic signaling: people I don't like like it, so I don't like it. They are basically giving horrible people too much control over their thoughts.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#52

Post by i_am_nomad »

0xff00ffee wrote: post #17
Kaiyou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since I've looked up what the fourteen words are, I'm both struggling to understand why they are controversial and associated with the far right. They seem pretty reasonable and on par with the "It's okay to be white" campaign.

> "It's okay to be white" campaign. Are you saying this is reasonable? EDIT: Here come the downvotes. You can't prove I meant X... oh the irony.

I perceive the "It's okay to be white" slogan as a very moderate and constructive reaction to the propagation and even normalization of anti-white messages and memes. And I specifically mean anti-white as an ethnic hatred, not as part of an equality and justice argument. For example, see the "Karen" meme, which besides its horrible sexism, specifically focuses on white women.

Middle-class white people have increasingly witnessed a media and a left-wing political coalition that can vilify them with impunity for gain, be that entertainment value or the easy political cohesion that hate can generate. So, I'd argue it's important to make room for and accept the very tepid and nonthreatening "It's okay to be white." Because if we don't, what follows that will be less palatable.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#53

Post by meheleventyone »

Kaiyou wrote: post #50
meheleventyone wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a future for "your own children" it's a future for "white children" generally that needs to be "secured" (from whom?) spoken in the context of white supremacy. If it was "I want a nice future for my own children" that would be uncontroversial.

There's no difference between your own children and white children, if you are white, is there? Generally speaking, the future is something that needs securing. If you don't secure your future, you might not have any. One way to secure your future is by learning a valuable skill another one is to marry into a wealthy family. There doesn't have to be a boogeyman threatening your future. Just missing out on opportuniti…

You'd probably do better not avoiding the elephant sized context in the room here. It makes your replies look deeply disingenuous.

To answer your point if I'm white there is still 50% of the equation that might not be. So my children are not necessarily "white" nor would the be considered so by white supremacists. My children might be adopted. My children might have some sort of genetic disorder that causes skin pigmentation changes. I might deeply consider my cats to be my children. Which is without even considering the deeper implications of whether it is simple to define "whiteness".

There are plenty of reasons why my own children and "white children" might not be part of the same set.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#54

Post by pjc50 »

cafard wrote: post #11
pjc50 wrote: post #7

Two modern equivalents of this kind of thing are the use of euphemisms to bypass Chinese censorship: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Main_Page and the ever-mutating set of "dog whistles" used by the far right ("fourteen words" etc.) The historical background of the 1700s I'm a bit vague on, but it was crucial for the development of Parliamentary government in the UK through a long series of succession crises from…

Not foreign was negotiable: wasn't George III the first of the Hanovers more comfortable in English than in German?

Yes, it was negotiable, but that negotiation was the politics of the time; the Hanovers making concessions to Parliament to retain their acceptance, while being variably popular with the actual public, and unpopular with some of the polemic writers under discussion in the article.

The massive Hanoverian propaganda effort of George IV is written all over Edinburgh street names.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#55

Post by [deleted] »

glaugh wrote: post #43
dkarl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course whether charity is applied or not is all about the presumed social fault lines in the situation. For example, in the U.S. right now, if you say, "The expert predictions about the coronavirus are all over the place and changing every day," it's an uncontroversial statement when everyone's politics are assumed to be the same. Among liberals, it will be interpreted as meaning that the coronavirus is extrem…

This is a nicely crafted example. Human communication is so densely laden with nuance and context and subtext that it takes soooo much work and a dose of generosity to have a real conversation that doesn’t spin off into something useless. In a technical context you can define things clearly, but in a political context it’s just too hard, there are so many things that mean different things to different people. My atte…

[deleted]

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#56

Post by monocasa »

1996 wrote: post #48
hawkice wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange tattoo example (and Google-able). Boggles my mind why someone would want to identify so strongly with Nazis, but obviously I strongly agree that we should receive those signals. What a bunch of idiots.

This is exactly why we need to learn these signals - to recognize people who so strongly want to identify, with something that would seem strange or benine to the uninitiated. About a celtic cross and 1488 written below, someone in this thread said they can't "tell that much about a person based on an accessory." I believe it is a grave mistake to ignore such extremely strong signals, especially the person seems aggr…

That person is also defending the 14 words, saying "it's ok to be white", and throwing around phrases like "white genocide".

I'm pretty sure they're just a straight up white nationalist.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#57

Post by monocasa »

Kaiyou wrote: post #50
meheleventyone wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a future for "your own children" it's a future for "white children" generally that needs to be "secured" (from whom?) spoken in the context of white supremacy. If it was "I want a nice future for my own children" that would be uncontroversial.

There's no difference between your own children and white children, if you are white, is there? Generally speaking, the future is something that needs securing. If you don't secure your future, you might not have any. One way to secure your future is by learning a valuable skill another one is to marry into a wealthy family. There doesn't have to be a boogeyman threatening your future. Just missing out on opportuniti…

Does it apply to your children's children? What if they're not white?

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#58

Post by pjc50 »

Veen wrote: post #4

> "this sentence could mean y as well as x so you can’t prove I meant x" It's interesting that a lot of online debate and media commentary uses the opposite technique: > "this sentence could—with varying degrees of plausibility—mean bad thing y as well as good thing x, so you can't prove you didn't really mean to say the bad thing." The principle of anti-charity.

There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, and the people you're discussing with are too, you can have better discussions.

If you're operating in an environment like the internet where you can more or less guarantee that there will be one comment based on the the worst possible interpretation of what you said, being charitable in advance just makes things worse for you. You're playing "cooperate" with an endless stream of "defectors". Trolling has always been "defect" in this environment.

Hence the value in having more closed environments for discussion. HN is open enough that people can make throwaway accounts and use them for valid points, and closed enough that the more obvious trolls get downvote-hammered quickly.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#59

Post by michaelt »

baud147258 wrote: post #45
1996 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ("fourteen words" etc.) This is signaling through lingo (keywords), very different from this article, yet also worth studying during this lockdown. If I simply replied "88 bro", the average reader may not click, and think I was just saying I was born in 1988, like you, and we are maybe "birth year brothers". Yet to the initiated, it would signal that I have some very special political ideas! Once you have started l…

I get the 88 thing, but not the blood type tatooed 8 inches above the elbow, care to explain?

"SS blood group tattoos (German: Blutgruppentätowierung) were worn by members of the Waffen-SS in Nazi Germany during World War II to identify the individual's blood type. [...] It was a small black ink tattoo located on the underside of the left arm, [...] placed roughly 20 cm (8 inches) above the elbow."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_blood_group_tattoo

I have no idea whether it's popular with modern neo-nazis.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#60

Post by 0xff00ffee »

Kaiyou wrote: post #32
0xff00ffee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. it takes like 20 minutes to communicate the context and how this isn't so innocuous as it looks. I've had to explain this to my aging boomer parents, and they still don't buy it. It is truly a subversive phrase because it takes control of the argument from a place that requires, IMO, a lot of basics to be explained and/or challenged... which most people don't want to sit through. It's like a self-generating min…

I don't think you can construct "It's okay to be white" as something wrong, because it's just inherently correct. It worries me, that you even try to find something wrong the the slogan.

You have a dozen comments in this thread asking "Why is it racist" questions about obviously racist things. You're close to being reported.
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