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You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

freddiedeboer.substack.com

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Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#301

Post by XorNot »

tsimionescu wrote: post #225
XorNot wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical infrastructure has never been regarded as a public platform. No one has been prevented from buying their own internet connection or DNS names and running their own site over the "common carrier" status internet backbone infrastructure. It's just a lot less useful when your goal is radicalization and you need to hit the widest possible audience to get conversions.

Is that guaranteed? Parler has found that the machines their code ran on could be taken away for having bad opinions. I'm not a defender of fascists, if anything I lean towards being happy when their megaphone is taken away, even when they receive the occasional punch, but the precedent this has set with the power of these companies is frightening for anyone. What if Amazon will refuse to do with business with people…

Amazon contracts haven't changed, they always have had the right to drop you for any reason.

Amazon is not a common carrier: the cloud, other people's data centers, have no legal requirement to be neutral about what runs on them (and it's not even clear how this would work given the difference between compute and communications).

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#302

Post by [deleted] »

XorNot wrote: post #186
anm89 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this as someone who doesn't identify with the right or really care about any of these politics at all. Go google of a picture of the Minneapolis police department engulfed in flames shooting out 50 feet over the top. That was certainly a strongly predominantly left driven action.

The Minneapolis police department was set on fire by a "Boogaloo Boi". ... Ivan Harrison Hunter, a Texas rightwing extremist, bragged about helping to set the fire then was seen shooting 13 rounds at the building ... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/texas-boogaloo...

[deleted]

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#303

Post by ThrustVectoring »

dmingod666 wrote: post #17

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…

It absolutely does work. A little bit, at first, when you have broad consensus backing you - but it does work. People will begrudgingly change their behavior for relatively minor things, and the change in the use rate of racial epithets in public reflects that.

The problem is that A) this process is more useful for advancing within the ideological block than for advancing the ideology's goals, and B) there's a "Laffer Curve" of sorts for paying "moral taxes" in following behavioral norms. The internal dynamics of a movement is going to set the level by true-believer dynamics where outrageously high demands are acceded to, while the general public is going to respond to that level of demand of "well, if you think I'm a bad person for saying 'Latino" instead of 'Latinx', that's your problem".

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#304

Post by runarberg »

clusterfish wrote: post #219
XorNot wrote: post #152

So, what is extreme left to you? Which groups, existent groups, are they? This whole line of discussion seems to consist of some rich false equivalency being mediated by presuming the existence of equivalent opposing forces and then making them appear equal in size and threat by not talking about who they actually are.

They're the same racists on the left and the right extremes. It's just, we had decades of wars and (justified) propaganda that thoroughly discredited fascism and their style of racism so it's easy to see how the right extremes is bad. What the extreme left is doing on the other hand is a more modern variation of racism and totalitarianism. It's ostensibly driven by noble concepts like social justice but in reality de…

[flagged]

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#305

Post by mindcandy »

lighttannotwite wrote: post #279
DanHulton wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is no "genuine honest neutrality" behind those phrases. They're shibboleths. They're commonly understood slogans, used to indicate what side you're on (or at least what side you're opposed to) while SOUNDING innocent. The people who know, will KNOW what you mean when you say them. (And in the incredibly unlikely situation where you'd somehow been exposed to enough of the discourse to come up with these…

> they're still terrible concepts that have been roundly denounced on their own merits Hol' up, "it is ok to be white," is a terrible concept denounced on its own merits? Lol ok It's a good thing that under Critical Theory, since race is a social construction (that's why Black is supposed to be capitalized, because it refers to the construction, not the color) there's no reason besides being "roundly denounced" (whic…

You are falling into the trap that was explicitly set up by trolls. If it was not well known to be explicitly set up by trolls, "it is ok to be white” would be a fine, boring statement.

But, it has been established that chan trolls came together to figure out a slogan that they could use to stir up heated arguments exactly like you are making. They settled on "it is ok to be white" and started using it to troll people into saying things that can be interpreted as hating white people. Then the arguments based on misunderstanding start and trolls laugh at you while they feed on your outrage and frustration.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#306

Post by drooby »

ravenstine wrote: post #295
dmingod666 wrote: post #17

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…

Not only would they disagree with you, but their strategy actually works. Leftists, "wokeness", and social justice wouldn't be the hot topics they've been if the strategy of leftists weren't effective. In terms of "adults", they are few and far between. There will always be biological adults, but so many adults are emotionally stunted that it's difficult for me to give them the title. Just as domestically raised cats…

You might have to define “works”.

There was a raid on the capitol. Racial tension is at its highest point in decades. Domestic terrorism is on the rise.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#307

Post by throwaway53453 »

lighttannotwite wrote: post #279
DanHulton wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is no "genuine honest neutrality" behind those phrases. They're shibboleths. They're commonly understood slogans, used to indicate what side you're on (or at least what side you're opposed to) while SOUNDING innocent. The people who know, will KNOW what you mean when you say them. (And in the incredibly unlikely situation where you'd somehow been exposed to enough of the discourse to come up with these…

> they're still terrible concepts that have been roundly denounced on their own merits Hol' up, "it is ok to be white," is a terrible concept denounced on its own merits? Lol ok It's a good thing that under Critical Theory, since race is a social construction (that's why Black is supposed to be capitalized, because it refers to the construction, not the color) there's no reason besides being "roundly denounced" (whic…

God help the mixed race people who have it from both the left and right...

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#308

Post by peytn »

watwut wrote: post #273
TeMPOraL wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the other way around: these phrases are neutral observations and reasonable opinions, perhaps reasonable reactions to insanity of well-known political slogans - importantly, it's something a random person can come up independently, without reading the exact words first. But at some point, these phrases rapidly become politicized, and this catches a lot of people off guard. You voice your thoughts, fully expectin…

There was no "all lives matter" until there was "black lives matter" and people wanted to say they don't like the message. It is quite dishonest to claim that this phrase is neutral and not a political slogan.

It’s a restatement of the first and most widely-known principle of the Unitarian Universalist Association [1]. I think that is why it resonates with many people.

Those people are then caught off-guard when they use the phrase and find themselves labeled “racist.”

I just don’t see how the vilification of a specific phrasing of a common sentiment moves us forward. To me it feels like playing power games with words.

[1]: https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles/1st

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#309

Post by anm89 »

XorNot wrote: post #186
anm89 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this as someone who doesn't identify with the right or really care about any of these politics at all. Go google of a picture of the Minneapolis police department engulfed in flames shooting out 50 feet over the top. That was certainly a strongly predominantly left driven action.

The Minneapolis police department was set on fire by a "Boogaloo Boi". ... Ivan Harrison Hunter, a Texas rightwing extremist, bragged about helping to set the fire then was seen shooting 13 rounds at the building ... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/texas-boogaloo...

There are about 500 people in those pictures. The fact that a right wing person got arrested means nothing. The George Floyd protests weren't right wing.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#310

Post by alexfromapex »

ravenstine wrote: post #295
dmingod666 wrote: post #17

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…

Not only would they disagree with you, but their strategy actually works. Leftists, "wokeness", and social justice wouldn't be the hot topics they've been if the strategy of leftists weren't effective. In terms of "adults", they are few and far between. There will always be biological adults, but so many adults are emotionally stunted that it's difficult for me to give them the title. Just as domestically raised cats…

Their strategies may “work” in the short-term but I think short-term thinking is really damaging the long-term progress for the US political sphere. The reason the founders decided to emphatically form the “United States” is because we are stronger working together than as factions or tribes.
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