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PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

mashable.com

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Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#141

Post by pdkl95 »

microcolonel wrote: post #80
jacquesm wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Proud Boys are not white supremacists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys

If you're referring to the sentence containing “several members have been affiliated with white supremacy”, it kinda doesn't jive with the fact that their highest leadership position is filled by an afro-cuban man, and the fact that there is no official or de-facto-official Proud Boys public communication of anything regarding white supremacy other than condemnation of it, nor any official or sanctioned actions taken…

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...

> There are three degrees of membership within the Proud Boys, and to become a first degree in the “pro-West fraternal organization” a prospective member simply has to declare “I am a western chauvinist, and I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.”

The Proud Boys describe themselves as a "Western chauvinist". White supremacists have used "western values" as code for "white" for a long time. Chauvinism is the belief in the superiority of a group. "Western chauvinist" literally means "white supremacist". If you don't believe me, read the many quotes in the SPLC article above.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#142

Post by glasss »

djsumdog wrote: post #89
kenforthewin wrote: post #35

If some of y'all put the time you spent into defending white supremacists and hate platforms in the name of free speech or independent thought instead into achieving a more just, anti-racist society we'd all be so much better off.

> If some of y'all put the time you spent into defending white supremacists and hate platforms And how do you define this? Have you ever once considered you could be wrong and they could be right? The freedom of speech is the freedom to disagree. It's the freedom to talk about things we know are unorthodox and offensive, and not fear prosecution from our government (In the context of US/constitution speech). At one t…

I understand the point you are making and think that normally there is merit to it.

However, I think it's important to point out there is a difference between saying "homosexuals and black people should have equal legal and societal rights" versus whatever language these people use to justify their beliefs in white supremacy.

>Have you ever once considered you could be wrong and they could be right?

No, I've never once considered the possibility that white supremacists could be right.

If eventually in 200 years the world believes that white supremacists were right and I'm on the wrong side of history, then I'll die being very, very wrong and I'm fine with that.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#143

Post by root_axis »

umvi wrote: post #99
ceejayoz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nationalizing Cloudflare seems like a bigger Constitutional crisis than private organizations choosing not to do business with the Proud Boys.

I was thinking more Comcast and other ISPs. I could easily see Twitter mobs pressuring Comcast to knock a self-hosted server offline if the server is hosting something the Twitter mob doesn't like.

Self-hosted servers are already against Comcast TOS, they tolerate them for casual use but any significant traffic is going to result in a service interruption.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#144

Post by vinceguidry »

djsumdog wrote: post #89
kenforthewin wrote: post #35

If some of y'all put the time you spent into defending white supremacists and hate platforms in the name of free speech or independent thought instead into achieving a more just, anti-racist society we'd all be so much better off.

> If some of y'all put the time you spent into defending white supremacists and hate platforms And how do you define this? Have you ever once considered you could be wrong and they could be right? The freedom of speech is the freedom to disagree. It's the freedom to talk about things we know are unorthodox and offensive, and not fear prosecution from our government (In the context of US/constitution speech). At one t…

Money isn't speech. Money is power.

If the Proud Boys want to set up their own media outlet, nobody's stopping them. They can do whatever they can to convince people that they're good folks.

However taking and spending money, that's not something anybody can do for any reason. We have lots of regulations on commerce, and unless there's very good reason for it, we don't force anyone to do business with anyone.

We force companies to hire and fire in non-discriminatory manners, again, because money is power, and discrimination is punching down, and we as a society don't like that.

In order to do this, we use the force of law. Adding a protected group to the categories of people that we cannot discriminate against requires legislative action. There's a public debate and legislators' votes go on record. We use legislation to regulate the aggregation and use of power.

The legal remedy for breaking that is a lawsuit. It's a long, drawn out process whose primary deterrent mechanism is punitive damages. Being the company that has to pay that black person millions of dollars because you decided they weren't worth hiring is not a fun time.

That's the way the system works. If Epik feels they have standing for a discrimination lawsuit against PayPal, I'm sure their lawyers have already it drawn up. Something tells me they won't.

The Proud Boys are just going to have to find someone else to handle their money.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#146

Post by [deleted] »

piva00 wrote: post #55
gedy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that now, but if the political winds change in future and progressive ideals and orgs are then labeled "hate speech", promoting violence, I suspect there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

If liberal ideals of fairness, equality and so on become considered "hate speech" I believe that the society suffering through that will have much bigger problems to tackle than companies' censorship. Both sides are not the same.

[deleted]

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#147

Post by rrdharan »

mmastrac wrote: post #66
patrickaljord wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because many of us consider freedom of speech to be more important than anti-racism for the simple reason that without freedom of speech, you lose everything, including anti-racism and all the rest.

That's not true at all. Canada has both strong anti-hate-speech laws and a far lesser (though still existant) problem with racism and racial justice overall than the US. Freedom of speech always has limits.

> a far lesser ... problem with racism and racial justice overall than the US

On what basis are you making that claim?

Asking as a Canadian-US dual citizen with 20+ years of lived non-white experience in both countries. I don't think these things are so easy to measure and my experience has largely been that every other country likes to pretend they have fewer race relations problems than the US and the claims largely rest on anecdata and media driven sentiment.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#148

Post by microcolonel »

pdkl95 wrote: post #141
microcolonel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're referring to the sentence containing “several members have been affiliated with white supremacy”, it kinda doesn't jive with the fact that their highest leadership position is filled by an afro-cuban man, and the fact that there is no official or de-facto-official Proud Boys public communication of anything regarding white supremacy other than condemnation of it, nor any official or sanctioned actions taken…

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou... > There are three degrees of membership within the Proud Boys, and to become a first degree in the “pro-West fraternal organization” a prospective member simply has to declare “I am a western chauvinist , and I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.” The Proud Boys describe themselves as a "Western chauvinist". White supremacists have used "w…

Firstly, the SPLC is a serial defamer and holds truth as a lower priority than essentially anything else. As a matter of principle, I won't defer to them on anything at this point.

> "Western chauvinist" literally means "white supremacist"

Only if you make several massive leaps in how words "are used". Has it occurred to you that the word "chauvinist" was chosen specifically to get a rise out of people who are overly sensitive to language?

If it's really about racial superiority, how do they countenance being led by a black man and composed of a great number of non-white people?

Then, if it's really about "white culture" (and I'm not really convinced it's thought of this way inside PB), then how is that white supremacy? Anyone can adopt a culture, and there are lots of "white" peoples in the world with objectively excellent and productive cultures worth being proud of; liking England or Norway doesn't make you a white supremacist. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, spells out explicitly that there are nations outside the West who have adopted the elements of culture that the Proud Boys are "chauvinist" about.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#149

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

mmastrac wrote: post #127
djsumdog wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If some of y'all put the time you spent into defending white supremacists and hate platforms And how do you define this? Have you ever once considered you could be wrong and they could be right? The freedom of speech is the freedom to disagree. It's the freedom to talk about things we know are unorthodox and offensive, and not fear prosecution from our government (In the context of US/constitution speech). At one t…

That's a clear slippery slope fallacy. You can clearly define and enshrine intolerance based on immutable physical characteristics into speech laws, as many countries have done (Canada, Germany, etc).

Sorry, this is not a "clear slippery slope fallacy".

A slippery slope fallacy is a claim about a series of events, with each even being more unlikely than the one before it. GP makes no claim of a series of events at all.

GP is merely pointing out that often, societal norms have been immoral, despite the "wisdom of the time" saying that challenging the norm is immoral. And society doesn't realize they were wrong until the normal has been challenged. By not allowing a society to challenge the norms, the norms may never change.

It is your example that is fallacious. You bring up Canada and Germany, even though we have no idea how good or bad of an impact those laws will have. And more importantly, how dangerous it is to even give a government power to restrict this sort of speech. We don't know the conclusion.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#150

Post by kitteh »

umvi wrote: post #99
ceejayoz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nationalizing Cloudflare seems like a bigger Constitutional crisis than private organizations choosing not to do business with the Proud Boys.

I was thinking more Comcast and other ISPs. I could easily see Twitter mobs pressuring Comcast to knock a self-hosted server offline if the server is hosting something the Twitter mob doesn't like.

Or ddosing a site offline.

Remember that only a handful of companies today have the infrastructure to handle large attacks.

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