@Background Pony #6955
Thank you for a civil conversation. I’m
really trying to get work done before bed, but you’re making it hard (no complaints, haha). I’ll try to keep this brief.
Imo, there is a
really big ethical difference between ‘making enemies’, so to speak, with a racial group, vs a property-ownership group. The difference is that you can disavow your wealth – you cannot disavow your race. You see this as a bad thing due to the risk of extortion, but from the other side, this means that
anyone can ally with your cause. I am not interested in making enemies; to the extent possible, I want wealthy folks to be happy and willing to divest themselves from part of that wealth, knowing that doing so will make other people’s lives better. To the extent that they do not… yes, we intend to implement this through taxation. Not in any way considered extreme, compared to the history of the US, mind you – for much of US history, taxes on the very wealthy have been
much higher than they are now, and I don’t even think we need to approach those levels of taxation to accomplish many left-wing goals.
And I want to be clear – I would be considered wealthy by many people in the US. Not the 1%, but definitely the top 10%. I fully expect – and
want – my political party to tax me more. Not to curry favor from anyone, but so that that money can do more good than I would be able to do with it individually.
But this is getting a bit off topic ;). Coming back to the root of the issue, in a non-governmental forum like this, I am 100% okay with the banning of content promoting/normalizing real, hateful ideologies, to the degree that those hateful ideologies promote stuff in the vein of genocide or murder. I don’t care whether it’s right wing, left wing, nihilist, religious, whatever – imo, it has no place on a site like this. Heck, despite the fact that I think standard, run-of-the-mill ‘incels’ act detestably, I’m OK with that stuff not being bannable, so long as it’s not furthering some real-world cause dedicated to killing or raping women.
And I don’t think your slippery slope argument holds. There’s a big difference between “save the earth” and “1488”. Sure, an ecoterrorist could use “save the earth”, but so could a much more moderate person who just wants people to recycle more. “1488” is
very clear in its meaning and its relationship to Nazism; it’s bannable. If someone were to go around saying “kill the humans to feed the trees,” and that was like, actually a
thing that some ecoterrorist group was trying to promote, then sure, ban that too.
I want to be clear about something else. I’m fine with Nazis existing on the site. We can’t police people, only behaviors. If someone on this board is a Nazi, and all they do is post nice pictures of Fluttershy being cute… who cares? If they’re trying to recruit, and they’re crypto enough that the mods don’t notice, then they’re crypto enough that most people don’t notice, which means they’re crypto enough that this site isn’t a good place to recruit people. Success!
I’m jumping around a bit; I’m sorry. Trying to hit these points as efficiently as possible ;)
As for the alt-right holding power in the US: Donald Trump has appointed Stephen Miller, Sebastian Gorka, and Steve Bannon to his administration, all of whom have connections to the alt-right, as defined by both Wikipedia and Steve Bannon himself. Alt-right media firmly supported Trump in the 2016 elections. The Republican needs to weigh their alt-right constituents’ views when deciding what actions to take, and how to run for office. I consider that to be ‘holding power’.
As for assuming other folks’ experiences, perhaps I was a bit crude in my explanation. My point was to illustrate that I have biases, despite having grown up in a culture that was all about equality. Those growing up in different cultures will naturally have different perspectives, different levels and types of bias, etc. Even if I’m right in the middle of the spectrum of ‘extreme bias’ to ‘very little bias’, that means there are a significant number of people in the US with a significant amount of bias, some of whom may be primed enough to accept low-level Nazi propaganda.
As for the Voltaire quote, I 100% agree with it. Thing is, it seems like in the real world, it’s criticizing cops, or white people, or Trump that’s most likely to end with physical violence, depending on who’s around to hear it. I don’t really care if banning a neo-Nazi gives them the giggles; I care about the ultimate impact of the action on this community, because that’s who the moderators and admins are supposed to be managing this site for.
(opens duplicate of page in new tab, reads plethora of responses, and responses to responses)
sigh. And this is why you guys will likely ‘win’. I am completely and utterly burned out. Not because I don’t think I have a compelling argument, but because it’s so hard to make detailed, coherent, reasonable arguments, that people will read, that actually have an impact,
fast enough to not fall behind in the conversation.
You’ve all overrun the conversation, not by any fault of anyone, but simply by the nature of a single-threaded forum and a bit more stamina than the rest of us. I’ve never been so exhausted by an internet argument, and I’ve been in a good few.
Thanks again to that background pony for a response with a meaty, thoughtful argument. Would love to have a chance to chat in realtime with you; your arguments are solid, and really got me thinking.
