Shutting down a political group's Facebook page is not the same thing as shutting down the group.
Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
401–410 of 550 posts
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#402For any non-Brits, the SWP is the main left of Labour party in Britain. As a student in the 80s I remember them as an earnest, way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'. They're the kind of people that come up to you in the street with leaflets about some atrocity in Africa and shout "Would you murder…
"Antifa" is more of a self applied label; you can certainly see antifa logos at demos. The SWP are Trotskyist, in the sense of "March through the institutions". If you're doing anything left wing they will turn up and try to make it about them, take over organization positions, etc. The SWP are mostly your boring old lefty uncle, with a side of institutional rape apologia: https://www.gender-agenda.org.uk/not-my-comr…
Sinn Fein had literal terrorists as members and were proscribed by government. This is the exact opposite of what has been seen in relation to the deplatforming on social media sites.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#403First they came for the Trumpists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trumpist. Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. (to be continued apparently!)
Yes but the Trumpist part is nuanced. Armed people storming political organisations after the call of the ousted person who holds the power of the state, while expecting martial law and denying election results with claims convincing no-one but themselves is when people say somebody should take care these people. It's fundamentally different from people exploring or even advocationg for economical models like communi…
"The Communists" in Niemöller's "First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist" [1] were not "the people advocating for economical models", but (in his eyes) violent revolutionists who set the parliament building on fire.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#404For any non-Brits, the SWP is the main left of Labour party in Britain. As a student in the 80s I remember them as an earnest, way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'. They're the kind of people that come up to you in the street with leaflets about some atrocity in Africa and shout "Would you murder…
"Antifa" is more of a self applied label; you can certainly see antifa logos at demos. The SWP are Trotskyist, in the sense of "March through the institutions". If you're doing anything left wing they will turn up and try to make it about them, take over organization positions, etc. The SWP are mostly your boring old lefty uncle, with a side of institutional rape apologia: https://www.gender-agenda.org.uk/not-my-comr…
I didn't mean to make a strong Antifa link, I just thought it's something non-Brits would understand as a point of comparison in terms of general activities rather than specific tactics or aggressiveness. e.g. SWP was heavily involved in the Ant-Nazi League in the 70s back when the National Front was more of a thing in the UK.
The SWP types I knew back in the 80s probably are your boring old lefty uncle these days. That's how out of date I am, although there were still excited young SWP activists pushing leaflets and selling the paper on Deptford High Street in the early 2000s. That's well before the rape crisis though.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well if it's stupid, and not evil, they weren't making a decision, right?
They were making a decision, but it’s not malice because they’re incapable of foreseeing the outcomes of their decisions. In either case, they shouldn’t be in charge of anything important.
> they shouldn’t be in charge of anything important
And in this case, it appears that they aren’t.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
>How is this not foreign political interference? America doesn't "interfere" in elections, it gently persuades people to follow the true democratic path. Truthfully, it is nothing more than American exceptionalism. Even as our nation spent years outraged over Russian interference, we continued both private and public interference in elections worldwide.
Gentle? Is that how we describe 10,000lb bombs over Baghdad?
They aren't using nukes.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#407How is this not foreign political interference? The UK media has been preaching to us about dangers of Russian election interference for years at this point, but simultaneously they seem completely unconcerned that a handful of wealthy Americans how the power to censor popular media outlets, entire political movements and political activists at a whim. The SWP is massive. I don't know for sure, but I suspect they had…
The SWP is not massive. It's never been massive. Current paid-up membership is maybe four figures.
It's considered eccentric, comically cliched, ineffectual, and frankly irrelevant by virtually everyone on the British left.
It's the very definition of fringe.
Which is why banning the SWP sets a very bad example. Especially when there are far more dangerous organisations on the British far right which Facebook seems happy to host.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even as our nation spent years outraged over Russian interference Only a minority of the country was (supposedly) outraged about the mostly non-existent Russian interference. Most of the US knew it was bullshit the entire time, the Russians had near zero impact on the prior election (amazing how they didn't somehow swing this latest election, given their apparent god-like powers, despite how close it was). Trump's…
What I find remarkable is that all the claims of russian/chinese/iranian interferences in US elections suddenly stopped when it became clear Biden won, and we switched to “it’s a perfect election”. It seems that Trump’s warning of not interfering into US elections have worked and the said countries complied. And we were told only weeks before voting day of evidences of those interferences, so I assume they also compl…
Claims that the last US election was fair were stated well before it was clear Biden won.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, there isn't a shortage of digital communication, but they are responsible for a large proportion of that communication and they hold the power of tilting democracies by choice of those in charge of the company or by seemingly random bearucratic decisions made by their employees. They are a medium of information distribution. If certain phone companies decide to not put through calls years ago in an effort to sw…
There was an argument to be made to treat phone companies like common carriers, I’m not entirely sure that was the best way to handle them, but it happened, and it was a good argument nonetheless, or at least well argued. Social media isn’t like that at all. Social media proliferates and in different forms and it does so internationally with popular and unpopular opinions easily spreading like wildfire. I have no pro…
> socialists
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Not just you either.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#410It's a positive thing for these ejections to be across the political spectrum, because it makes the demand for distributed moderation come from across the political spectrum. I hope that demand congeals on support for an open blogging protocol, such that people can very easily post once and direct it to multiple platforms or any listener. If this becomes popular enough, and posts aren't owned by a particular platform…
Nah, I don’t want a platform for Nazis or white supremecists or paedophiles or heroine dealers. If that makes me a bad person in other people’s eyes then I’m fine with that.