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MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

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Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#331

Post by user982 »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #310
rsynnott wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume Microsoft never allowed, say, swastikas. There's no reasonable expectation that you are able to spread racist propaganda in a car racing game (or for that matter in an actual car race; I think those tend to have very strict rules around decoration). I can see an _argument_ that Twitter, say, should be forced to pander to racists. I don't buy that argument, mind you, but I can at least see the thought process…

The Nazi flag is inarguably racist propaganda. The Confederate flag, however, has for decades been a symbol of southern pride for many people. I read somewhere recently that over 40% see it as a symbol of heritage more than racism.

Pride in what?

Heritage of what?

The South has hundreds of years of history. Why are the 4 years of the Confederacy so celebrated?

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#332

Post by rsynnott »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #310
rsynnott wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume Microsoft never allowed, say, swastikas. There's no reasonable expectation that you are able to spread racist propaganda in a car racing game (or for that matter in an actual car race; I think those tend to have very strict rules around decoration). I can see an _argument_ that Twitter, say, should be forced to pander to racists. I don't buy that argument, mind you, but I can at least see the thought process…

The Nazi flag is inarguably racist propaganda. The Confederate flag, however, has for decades been a symbol of southern pride for many people. I read somewhere recently that over 40% see it as a symbol of heritage more than racism.

I'm sure if you did a poll in Germany you'd find a non-zero percentage of people who'd answer something similar RE the Nazi flag, with the right wording. Nothing like 40%; that particular variety of lost-cause-ism isn't as common as the confederate stuff in the US, but, there are certainly people who would claim that it was something more benign than it is generally perceived.

That's why it's illegal in Germany in the first place; if there was universal acceptance that it was an obscenity there wouldn't be much purpose in banning it.

Another issue, of course, is that teaching about the US civil war, and general cultural treatment of it, has been, and in some cases still is, far more dishonest than teaching about World War 2 in Germany. Note that in this thread there are people questioning whether it was about slavery. The initiators on the confederate side would not have questioned that, they could hardly have been more clear that it was. There's a huge amount of mainstream cultural baggage glorifying the confederacy and important confederate figures in a way that there isn't about the Nazis (with the possible exception of some rather creepy Rommel apologia that shows up sometime).

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#333

Post by aidenn0 »

banana_maker wrote: post #179
surfpel wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rising sun flag was adopted before the turn of the century many years before the war. The confederate and nazi flags were used explicitly for those hateful movements (post civil war racism and nazis). These are quite different.

While it's true that it was adopted in 1870, it was adopted as the war flag of the Imperial Japanese Army. The same one that committed horrific atrocities to Korea and China. Then it stopped being used after Japan surrendered in WWII. To many Koreans (and likely Chinese) the wartime version of the rising sun flag is exactly the same as the Nazi flag if not worse. The anglosphere tends to gloss over the brutal behavio…

It's a question of how narrowly the flag is tied to the hateful movement.

Should the UK retire the Union Jack because of what they did in India? The Nazi imagery is very closely associated with the specific group that committed the atrocities rather than Germany in general. The UK flag is less so. IMO, the rising sun flag is somewhere in-between, having been in use over a slightly more heterogenous time than the Nazi symbols, bit less so than the Union Jack.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#334

Post by slg »

shultays wrote: post #265

Interestingly hammer and sickle is not in the list

The list specifically says "including but not limited to". If you are implying that there is a leftist slant to their rules, I would point to the examples of banned offensive phrases that includes the anti-police "FTP" and "ACAB".

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#335

Post by daenz »

generalk wrote: post #312
daenz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then I control it and can deny the free speech of others. That's not what I'm asking for.

Sure. If I own a website or a newspaper or the patch of ground in front of my house, I get to decide what information goes there. Are you arguing that there should be some legal provision that says anyone can publish anything on your website, or newspaper, or ground, and you don't get a say in it? That seems unreasonable.

I am arguing for a space online that is publicly owned, maintained by the government, easily accessible by your average person, with the same very few restrictions on free speech that exist in the real world.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#336

Post by acdha »

jstanley wrote: post #294
softwaredoug wrote: post #281

I don’t see how you can make a good faith argument the confederate flag is any different from a swastika. Both represent institutions built solely for racist motives and the subjugation of another race.

But, it's just a picture. If you want to put a swastika on your car, the punishment should be that you made yourself look stupid, not that you get banned from the game!

This assumes that people are acting in good faith. If someone uses a swastika it’s unlikely that they are otherwise a positive contribution to the community.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#337

Post by ryandrake »

soraminazuki wrote: post #221

While it's emotionally pleasing to see racists being kicked out of online platforms, another side of me feels wary of these tactics. For starters, being deplatformed from major online players today would have serious consequences. Although it's true that these platforms are "private property," the entire society has become too reliant on them to be seen that way. I think it's dangerous when platforms function like a…

Today it's racists--fine. Hell with em.

If you're young, you have many years ahead of you. A lot of time for culture and norms to keep changing and evolving. I guarantee that one day, you're going to wake up as an old person, and something that you like that's innocuous today will have been deemed terrible and hateful by a future generation. Maybe even for good reasons. You'll be kicked off platforms, called ignorant, and shunned for being associated with this now-controversial thing. It's going to be confusing. You're going to feel as though the world has gone off in some crazy direction and left you behind.

I'm not saying have empathy for racists. But maybe we could try to put ourselves into the shoes of someone for whom time and culture are moving too fast and imagine how disorienting and confusing what's going on today might be for them. I'd guess that these people might want to lash out at the rest of the world who suddenly seem to be against them. Or turn inward into hermits and avoid society. I don't really understand it, but I'm still young enough to keep up with all this change. But I feel I'll be left behind eventually. It'll probably happen to us all.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#338

Post by [deleted] »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #189
mikepurvis wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYT opinion page is hardly a barometer of broad public consensus— see the recent scandal of the Tom Cotton "send in the military" piece.

I'm not sure I follow. Opinion polls at the time showed that a significant majority of the public wanted the military sent in.

[deleted]

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#339

Post by CrazyStat »

jefftk wrote: post #236
dragonwriter wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting that the Japanese rising sun flag is mentioned alongside the swastika and the stars and bars; The stars and bars, while also a Confederate symbol, is not really a notorious hate symbol; the Confederate flags that are notorious hate symbols are the “battle flag” (flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, also used as the union of the second and third national flags; square), and the second Confederate Naval…

> The stars and bars, while also a Confederate symbol, is not really a notorious hate symbol Confusingly, people often use "the Confederate Flag" and "the stars and bars" to refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_flag_of_the_Confed... While technically both terms refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Confederate_S... (and earlier variants) many people don't know that; look how many of th…

I think it'a fair at this point to say "the Confederate flag" refers to the battle flag (or the naval jack with the same design).

Language is a living thing.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#340

Post by oldmanhorton »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #310
rsynnott wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume Microsoft never allowed, say, swastikas. There's no reasonable expectation that you are able to spread racist propaganda in a car racing game (or for that matter in an actual car race; I think those tend to have very strict rules around decoration). I can see an _argument_ that Twitter, say, should be forced to pander to racists. I don't buy that argument, mind you, but I can at least see the thought process…

The Nazi flag is inarguably racist propaganda. The Confederate flag, however, has for decades been a symbol of southern pride for many people. I read somewhere recently that over 40% see it as a symbol of heritage more than racism.

And I'm sure some Germans felt (and perhaps even still feel) that the nazi flag is a symbol of German pride? The pride that they feel for that part of their heritage is still unmistakably antisemitic and hate-filled. I would argue that the number of Germans who feel that way is so much less than the number of southerners who feel that way only because of just how strong and universally nazism was rolled back. In the south after the Civil War, things stayed far more similar to how they had been pre- and mid-war
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