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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

#431

Post by baddox »

beaner wrote: post #268
klmadfejno wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW the founding fathers did not want to be idolized and probably would not like the idea of Rushmore. I'm not sure I see why its outrageous to think that people want to remove statues honoring pieces of history they think ought not be honored. On the face of it, nothing is owed to the past and society does evolve. I don't feel particularly strong on preserving or removing imagery of George Washington from public ar…

History is important because it lets us see ourselves in the arc of time and be more cognizant of how and why we arrived at the present moment. When we idolize figures who we believe did good things, we project a guide line from the past into the future for ourselves to follow. When we erase history, we lose this guidance and direction. It's no mistake that the mob is responsible for the destruction, because a lack o…

> History is important because it lets us see ourselves in the arc of time and be more cognizant of how and why we arrived at the present moment.

I think that framing minimizes the extent to which we can and do choose how we portray history in order to choose how we see ourselves.

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

#432

Post by drtillberg »

Hamuko wrote: post #318
lopmotr wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imperial Japan was extremely cruel to the people in the places it invaded - which was a lot. Human experimentation, massacring civilians, torture, comfort women. They were basically the Nazis of Asia. They also didn't apologize for it, still glorify their brutal heroes and teach disinformation about it to their schoolkids. Chinese people still have a strong anti-Japanese feeling.

I don't exactly consider dropping two atomic bombs on top of hundreds of thousands of civilians an act of kindness. Americans also don't exactly apologize for their acts, still glorify their brutal heroes (and even people who fought against their own country). There's probably a whole laundry list of war crimes (and things that really should be war crimes) that the US has committed. And there are a lot of anti-Americ…

So maybe we ban all references to nations of individuals that have in the past committed war crimes? Even the limited to recent history, the list is sort of long[1], but African nations seem to be well represented. As a convenient shorthand, maybe we just ban the African continent altogether?

/sarc

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_t...

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

#433

Post by kjeetgill »

user982 wrote: post #384
Spivak wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see lots of people on the internet making the 4 year argument, and I have to admit it's a snappy quip, but I don't think the point is made entirely in good faith. I really do see it being flown as a symbol of rural and/or southern pride that is informed by, but largely disconnected from, the civil war other than as a historical symbol that broadly represents an opposition between rural folk and urbanites. I mean it…

The Nazi flag was in much longer actual use than the Confederate flags. If anything, the Nazi flag has a more legitimate "heritage" defense than the Confederate one.

I think you're missing the angle the parents bringing to the table:

The flag was flown as the symbol of the actual Confederacy for a short time sure, because the Confederacy itself was short lived. But it's been flown as a symbol of southern pride for a long time since then.

And traditions need only span one's own lifetime to be meaningful.

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

#434

Post by softwaredoug »

henriquez wrote: post #421
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.

Slavery was not the primary factor of conflict in the Civil War. Both Union and Confederate states owned slaves and engaged in slave trade. Conflating the Confederate flag with racism or white supremacy is a popular, but historically ignorant viewpoint.

It was the cause.

The election of Lincoln and John Browns raid were threatening to the south exactly because of their threat to slavery. The south was not only paranoid of a slave uprising, but also owned people was the bulk of their wealth.

I think this skeptics SE is pretty good summary:

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16275/was-slave...

And the Cornerstone Speech by the VP of the confederacy:

> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.

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

#435

Post by jcranmer »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #360
filleduchaos wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder that the Confederate battle flag was in use for less than five years and solely as an icon of a conflict that was very much about the (rather racist) keeping of chattel slaves. Before trotting out the "it's a symbol of heritage" line, ask yourself exactly what that heritage is.

Have you never been to a southern state? It's been flown ever since the war and has been detached from the war and attached to southern identity. It's part of the culture here.

Have you never been to rural NY? The Confederate flag flies all over the place there, and I rather suspect that very few of those flying it are doing so because of Southern heritage.

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

#436

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

surfpel wrote: post #273
banana_maker wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A line has to be drawn somewhere. The swastika was a very popular symbol, and remains popular outside nazis. The swastika shouldn't (and really can't) be banned, but the Nazi usage of it should be. The confederate flag had a bunch of variants and the popular version seen today was only used after as a symbol of hate. Should be banned. The rising sun flag is just one variation of a couple themes used throughout Japane…

Seems rather disrespectful to be making this kind of argument considering the scale involved. Roughly 22 million people died in Asia as a result of the Japanese occupation preceding and during the Second World War. That's just shy of triple the dead of the Holocaust and 4.5 times the number of slaves in the US in 1860.

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

#437

Post by morley »

henriquez wrote: post #421
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.

Slavery was not the primary factor of conflict in the Civil War. Both Union and Confederate states owned slaves and engaged in slave trade. Conflating the Confederate flag with racism or white supremacy is a popular, but historically ignorant viewpoint.

There's the old saying that if you know nothing about it, the Civil War was about slavery; if you know a little about it, it was about state's rights; and if you know a lot about it, it was about slavery.

The "states rights" trope was a deliberate attempt of a few Southern, revisionist historians to blunt their racist past. The truth is that the South seceded because their states wanted the right to hold slaves.

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

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

#438

Post by Natsu »

norswap wrote: post #411
tedunangst wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the reverse even remotely close to true? If MS allowed confederate flags on cars, would the bigoted idea underground disappear?

I don't think "taking underground" is the right metaphor, but it intensifies polarization, and makes these people feel persecuted. It's not that they care about the flag that much for most of them. It's that suddenly, it's not even allowed anymore and they don't agree with that. Frankly, I couldn't care less about the confederate flag, but the thought process here is very relatable. And then these people vote. People…

Somehow this reminds me a lot of the "don't stuff beans up your nose" rule on Wikipedia.

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

#439

Post by baddox »

beaner wrote: post #419
rickbutton wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any resources to link, sorry. The weird-power-dynamic-Lincoln statue with the freed black man aside, I generally agree on statutes of the founding fathers. I doubt a statue of Washington was erected in honor of his support for slavery. In the greater context of what is happening in America right now, tearing down statues of Washington isn't necessarily about Washington himself. Instead, it is about chall…

Respectfully, without a place to read about the intimidation tactic of statues, I'm not sure that I put much weight in it. An alternative explanation on the timing could for example be that people in the majority in those communities sensed that the tides of public opinion were shifting, and they felt a strong desire to reach backward and preserve the past that they had fought for, which they felt like they were now…

> I think a lot of people are smart enough to know that there is a difference between representing "an ideal version of America," and specific ideals that individuals represented. Washington for example largely representing the fight for independence; Roosevelt standing for social justice; Lincoln for freedom and equality - not American utopia.

There are mainstream politicians and political commentators who explicitly say that racism used to be a big problem in the United States but that it simply does not exist any more. I suspect it's a very common belief.

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

#440

Post by protomyth »

naruvimama wrote: post #417
jeegsy wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming that swastikas have much more universal unpopularity than the confederacy flag. Heck, in 2020, MS just voted to remove confederate symbol from the state flag. SO I dont think the comparison is all there. My concern with these sort of deplatforming moves while understandable, is they tend to drive these bigoted ideas underground. So maybe they cant express it publicly but boy, do they find other ways to d…

Swastika is yet another example of "western universalism", it has a relatively recent negative connotation in Europe & US. Whereas for Asians, native Americans & for much of the ancient world it has entirely different meanings.

Yeah, there are a couple of tipis that go up every year that get comments from the damn ignorant. What can I expect from people looking for outrage?
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