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Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

nytimes.com

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Re: Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

#51

Post by giraffe_lady »

carom wrote: post #48
micromacrofoot wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're free to go on there and deride any white nationalists you see Yes but you can do this anywhere. There are a limited number of places where you can openly be a white nationalist without being banned, 4chan is one of them.

You can also be a communist. You can also be an open source maximalist. You can also be a gay dog furry. You can also be trans. You can also be extremely autistic. It is good to have a place where people can exist as themselves and be exposed to different ideas. I would wager that most people who go there are far more accepting than the general population.

What is it that you feel like you gain from being exposed to white nationalism?

Being unfazed by horrors isn't a virtue, having scarred your soul like this isn't something to be proud of. You should be uncomfortable talking to a nazi! You should be more than uncomfortable!

Re: Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

#52

Post by karmakurtisaani »

tomcam wrote: post #34
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Cannot disagree enough. I love having dinner with people who are different from me if civil discourse is available. However, I am a US citizen, where free speech is fairly highly valued. > "If you and 9 of your friends have a dinner with a Nazi, there are 11 Nazis around that table." It is risible that one would make that accusation, by the way.

There are a few useful concepts to wrap your head around when it comes to thinking about Nazis:

* The paradox of tolerance

* The white moderate by MLK

* A useful idiot (applies to ideologies in general)

Re: Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

#53

Post by flangola7 »

876978095789789 wrote: post #47
beebmam wrote: post #24

I think the accusation that 4chan is a far-right message board is accurate, and I believe that accusation can be supported by showing that 4chan's explicitly stated rules can be used to plausibly deny this accusation, while demonstrating that they're are not enforced (or selectively enforced). 4chan's Rule 3: "You will not post any of the following outside of /b/: Troll posts, Racism, Anthropomorphic ("furry") pornog…

[flagged]

We learned why you don't give anti-Semites the benefit of the doubt many decades ago. "It's just a joke" up until it isn't, and by then it's far too late.

The NZ mosque shooter's manifesto was almost literally one long 4chan meme thread. There were pages and pages of images and charts and memes that were (and still are) posted to 4chan every day. He openly stated he wasn't always racist and that /pol/ significantly changed his mind on the matter.

We take it serious because innocent people being murdered is serious.

Re: Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

#54

Post by 876978095789789 »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #49
876978095789789 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You ever hear that joke "if you're wearing a nazi costume it's not a costume?" Ironic far right shitposts are just far right shitposts.

I don't care. 4chan is one of the few large forums remaining on the internet where there's no downvoting, no flagging, and no dang-esque tone policers. I would be much more sad to see it go away than this place.

Re: Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

#55

Post by carom »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #51
carom wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also be a communist. You can also be an open source maximalist. You can also be a gay dog furry. You can also be trans. You can also be extremely autistic. It is good to have a place where people can exist as themselves and be exposed to different ideas. I would wager that most people who go there are far more accepting than the general population.

What is it that you feel like you gain from being exposed to white nationalism? Being unfazed by horrors isn't a virtue, having scarred your soul like this isn't something to be proud of. You should be uncomfortable talking to a nazi! You should be more than uncomfortable!

Someone might say the same thing about trans people. Should I be extremely uncomfortable talking to a trans person? Of course not. Many people think I should though.

As for white nationalists, when engaging in discussion with someone you disagree with you have the opportunity to change their mind.

We're all human. We won't always agree. I'm happy to meet everybody as human beings.

Re: Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

#56

Post by giraffe_lady »

876978095789789 wrote: post #54
giraffe_lady wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ever hear that joke "if you're wearing a nazi costume it's not a costume?" Ironic far right shitposts are just far right shitposts.

I don't care. 4chan is one of the few large forums remaining on the internet where there's no downvoting, no flagging, and no dang-esque tone policers. I would be much more sad to see it go away than this place.

Yeah I guess that's what it really comes down to. I am willing to make you sad to make it harder for nazis to organize and recruit.

Re: Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

#57

Post by nemothekid »

876978095789789 wrote: post #47
beebmam wrote: post #24

I think the accusation that 4chan is a far-right message board is accurate, and I believe that accusation can be supported by showing that 4chan's explicitly stated rules can be used to plausibly deny this accusation, while demonstrating that they're are not enforced (or selectively enforced). 4chan's Rule 3: "You will not post any of the following outside of /b/: Troll posts, Racism, Anthropomorphic ("furry") pornog…

[flagged]

>much of what's posted on 4chan is ironic, deliberately inflammatory

This hasn't been plausible, much less true, for 10 years. I don't know how anyone can look at, for example, Payton Gendron's manifesto and say it's ironic. Were the bullets he fired ironic as well?

There is an entire generation of users, who are probably the bulk of users now, who were never in on the "joke" (if there ever was one).

Re: Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

#58

Post by ben_w »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #18
ekam wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guilt by association makes no sense… would this also apply to eg, communists?

You know, the guilt by association kind of makes sense. Nazis have an ideology of violence/hate at their core - by being associated with Nazis, you tend to accept this. Therefore, it's ok to perceive you as one too. I can't say about communists, as there are so few around these days.

> I can't say about communists, as there are so few around these days.

I dated one. Her description was basically the "People's Front of Judea" scene in Life of Brian — they're all in their own tiny rabbit holes, completely convinced all the other tiny groups are pawns, puppets, or stooges of capitalism.

Re: Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

#59

Post by giraffe_lady »

carom wrote: post #55
giraffe_lady wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it that you feel like you gain from being exposed to white nationalism? Being unfazed by horrors isn't a virtue, having scarred your soul like this isn't something to be proud of. You should be uncomfortable talking to a nazi! You should be more than uncomfortable!

Someone might say the same thing about trans people. Should I be extremely uncomfortable talking to a trans person? Of course not. Many people think I should though. As for white nationalists, when engaging in discussion with someone you disagree with you have the opportunity to change their mind. We're all human. We won't always agree. I'm happy to meet everybody as human beings.

You don't have the opportunity to change their mind that's an illusion that works in their favor:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

When you do stuff like this all you are doing is giving them a platform, letting them do PR for their hideous causes. They can calmly discuss the very existence of a group of people and then exit when it suits them. A member of that group is, rightfully, unlikely to have that sort of calm intellectual distance from a conversation about their right to exist.

Re: Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

#60

Post by brucethemoose2 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #27
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they have never been "far right" in the way that the traditional racial supremacy kind of neo nazis are. If anything, they are good evidence for horseshoe theory, or perhaps invalidity of the left-right scale: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

/pol/ most certainly is that way. I've been on 4chan for more than 15 years and I research far right extremism professionally. /pol/ isn't the most right wing or extreme place on the internet, but claiming it's not like 'traditional racial supremacy [..] neo-nazis' is nonsense, that's 20-25% of /pol/ threads.

Touche, I am not a /pol/ regular. Glimpses of /b/ is about as far as I got, and the Nazism seemed more like trolling and baiting on the surface.
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