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Why not ban all racist nationalism entirely? What is unique about white nationalism versus Chinese nationalism in China, or black nationalism in South Africa? T

Why not ban all racist nationalism entirely? What is unique about white nationalism versus Chinese nationalism in China, or black nationalism in South Africa? There are many racist movements all around the world. Only banning white nationalism is giving fuel to the white nationalist belief that whites are being unfairly targeted. That's not something we should encourage IMO.

miguelmota 8y ago
One step at a time. Facebook is based in the US so it makes sense to tackle problems occurring in the US first.
philwelch 8y ago
The notion is that the history of European colonialism and imperialism "justifies" black and Chinese nationalism as a countermeasure to white supremacy. There's a "punching up" vs. "punching down" model that pretty much explains most "hypocrisy" on this issue. For instance, even subtle hints of anti-Semitism expressed by white Westerners (e.g. being anti-George Soros in particular) are condemned far more vehemently than anti-Semitism expressed by black people or Muslims, because of the perception that Jews, being perceived as predominantly white and Westernized themselves, are more privileged than blacks and Muslims but less privileged than white Gentiles. I don't agree with this mentality myself because the tides can turn a lot faster than your ideological model of privilege and oppression can change to reflect it, but it's similar to the ideas that are commonly expressed on the left and serves as a decent predictive model of their attitudes.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Facebook found specifically that such power dynamics are exceedingly contextual, though the role of Western European culture as effectively globally predominant puts an additional burden on anyone arguing for Western European superiority. Radiolab covered this recently: Post No Evil | Radiolab | Duration: 1:11:45 | Published: Fri, 17 Aug 2018 07:20:00 -0400 | Episode: http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/post-no-evil/ http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/post-no-evil/ Media: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/radiolab_podcast/radiolab_podcast18postnoevil.mp3 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/radi... Podcast: https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/152249110 https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/152249110 Back in 2008 Facebook began writing a document. It was a constitution of sorts, laying out what could and what couldn’t be posted on the site. Back then, the rules were simple, outlawing nudity and...
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  Just because white nationalists are white, doesn't mean that they've received any kind of largesse because of it. If you look at the demographics of white nationalists, it will be largely overrepresented by poor whites from marginalized, backwater communities.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Oh, for sure. Let's talk about the word "cracker". In the US, it's a derogatory term for white people that was coined by black people. The etymology is that a "cracker" was a white man who was hired by the plantation owner to crack the whip at the black slaves. Even in white society, these "crackers" were pretty much what we'd call "white trash"--they had effectively zero social status, received no largesse, and lived in poverty themselves. Literally the only thing they had going for them was that they were white, which meant they were the ones cracking the whips and not having the whips cracked at them. Which only made them all the more eager to crack the whips and do the dirty work of oppressing black people. Being white was literally the only thing these people had to be "proud" of. And so, the most evil people weren't necessarily the plantation owners (who were evil in a detached, hypocritical way), but rather the crackers (who were evil in a directly hateful, sadistic sense). A plantation owner could come around to the idea that slavery was wrong, as Washington and Jefferson did, and merely live in a state of complicated hypocrisy. A cracker is a pure mass of utter racial animus. The same dynamic remained after the abolition of slavery, and it's the same dynamic that you describe.
  - beat 8y ago
    I don't think you understand the concept of "privilege" very well. Privilege is basically the logical inverse of discrimination. If driving while black means getting pulled over more (discrimination), then driving while white means not getting pulled over more (privilege). Hope this clarifies how even poor whites are "privileged".
- antt 8y ago
  >The notion is that the history of European colonialism and imperialism "justifies" black and Chinese nationalism as a countermeasure to white supremacy. One could equally well point the the anti-colonial resistance in the Balkans and the Caucuses against Ottoman imperialism. The result of which were massacres and genocides up until 1925. You could still buy white sex slaves in Istanbul in 1915: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#Decline_and_suppression_of_Ottoman_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#...
pesmhey 8y ago
Agreed. There isn’t necessarily a strong black or Chinese nationalism movement in the US, but it does make sense to target the behavior of ethnic nationalism as opposed to any specific brand of it. It’s: ‘We don’t like it when individual ethnic groups in our multi-ethnic empire presume to have privileged rights over all the others’ Vs. ‘We don’t like it when just white people do it.’
staticautomatic 8y ago
At a high level this is fine but it doesn't address the issue of what kinds of nationalist content are ban-worthy.
mrtesthah 8y ago
Chinese nationalism probably should be banned in China (but not the US) for the same reason that white nationalism should be banned in the US: the racial designations "white" and "black" are completely arbitrary terms, not grounded in any scientific fact, and are social constructs based around an in-group (whites) wielding political, economic, and cultural power over an out-group (blacks). "Irish" is an ethnicity. "Lithuanian" is an ethnicity. "White", on other hand, is most definitely not an ethnicity, and identifying as such implicitly supports the present racist status quo, because the white in-group already wields overwhelming power in American society[1]. White nationalism asserts that only those Americans who identify as white are "real Americans", and therefore explicitly advocates for the exercise of white cultural and political dominance at the expense of all other out-groups. And at its most extreme, it advocates genocide as a means of accomplishing its vision. 1. http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/reports/cerd.pdf http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/reports/cerd.pdf
- SamReidHughes 8y ago
  It's taxonomically arbitrary but not completely arbitrary, and in fact is grounded in scientific fact.
  - mrtesthah 8y ago
    The terms attempt to classify people based on an arbitrary collection of visually distinct phenotypes rather than fundamental genotypes -- however, the One-drop Rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule) works only on the basis of the latter. This inconsistency alone makes the terms scientifically irreconcilable.
    - SamReidHughes 8y ago
      Well, that straw man is obviously useless, which is why the bad old days had an intense vocabulary for all the different proportions of mixed race. Research today shows that people's classifications generally lines up with genetic ancestry. So, for example, doctors are well served to judge racial/genetic makeup by appearance when diagnosing and treating patients. Likewise, if you want to make an ethnostate or the opposite, it's certainly a useful concept. (American immigration laws by design do the opposite, using national quotas as a proxy for race.)
dymk 8y ago
"White nationalism" is just a rebranded, softer term for "white supremacy". The word "nationalism" itself doens't mean just nationalism, it means literal Nazi ideologies that might not be present in other forms of nationalism. I'm personally a fan of them taking a more fine-comb approach to banning certain forms of expression on the platform, rather than just saying blanket "The idea of nationalism is banned".
oyvey 8y ago
>Only banning white nationalism is giving fuel to the white nationalist belief that whites are being unfairly targeted. That's not something we should encourage IMO. Well its easy to believe in something that is simply true.

miguelmota 8y ago

One step at a time. Facebook is based in the US so it makes sense to tackle problems occurring in the US first.

philwelch 8y ago

The notion is that the history of European colonialism and imperialism "justifies" black and Chinese nationalism as a countermeasure to white supremacy. There's a "punching up" vs. "punching down" model that pretty much explains most "hypocrisy" on this issue. For instance, even subtle hints of anti-Semitism expressed by white Westerners (e.g. being anti-George Soros in particular) are condemned far more vehemently than anti-Semitism expressed by black people or Muslims, because of the perception that Jews, being perceived as predominantly white and Westernized themselves, are more privileged than blacks and Muslims but less privileged than white Gentiles. I don't agree with this mentality myself because the tides can turn a lot faster than your ideological model of privilege and oppression can change to reflect it, but it's similar to the ideas that are commonly expressed on the left and serves as a decent predictive model of their attitudes.

dredmorbius 8y ago
Facebook found specifically that such power dynamics are exceedingly contextual, though the role of Western European culture as effectively globally predominant puts an additional burden on anyone arguing for Western European superiority. Radiolab covered this recently: Post No Evil | Radiolab | Duration: 1:11:45 | Published: Fri, 17 Aug 2018 07:20:00 -0400 | Episode: http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/post-no-evil/ http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/post-no-evil/ Media: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/radiolab_podcast/radiolab_podcast18postnoevil.mp3 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/radi... Podcast: https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/152249110 https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/152249110 Back in 2008 Facebook began writing a document. It was a constitution of sorts, laying out what could and what couldn’t be posted on the site. Back then, the rules were simple, outlawing nudity and...
oh_sigh 8y ago
Just because white nationalists are white, doesn't mean that they've received any kind of largesse because of it. If you look at the demographics of white nationalists, it will be largely overrepresented by poor whites from marginalized, backwater communities.
- philwelch 8y ago
  Oh, for sure. Let's talk about the word "cracker". In the US, it's a derogatory term for white people that was coined by black people. The etymology is that a "cracker" was a white man who was hired by the plantation owner to crack the whip at the black slaves. Even in white society, these "crackers" were pretty much what we'd call "white trash"--they had effectively zero social status, received no largesse, and lived in poverty themselves. Literally the only thing they had going for them was that they were white, which meant they were the ones cracking the whips and not having the whips cracked at them. Which only made them all the more eager to crack the whips and do the dirty work of oppressing black people. Being white was literally the only thing these people had to be "proud" of. And so, the most evil people weren't necessarily the plantation owners (who were evil in a detached, hypocritical way), but rather the crackers (who were evil in a directly hateful, sadistic sense). A plantation owner could come around to the idea that slavery was wrong, as Washington and Jefferson did, and merely live in a state of complicated hypocrisy. A cracker is a pure mass of utter racial animus. The same dynamic remained after the abolition of slavery, and it's the same dynamic that you describe.
- beat 8y ago
  I don't think you understand the concept of "privilege" very well. Privilege is basically the logical inverse of discrimination. If driving while black means getting pulled over more (discrimination), then driving while white means not getting pulled over more (privilege). Hope this clarifies how even poor whites are "privileged".
antt 8y ago
>The notion is that the history of European colonialism and imperialism "justifies" black and Chinese nationalism as a countermeasure to white supremacy. One could equally well point the the anti-colonial resistance in the Balkans and the Caucuses against Ottoman imperialism. The result of which were massacres and genocides up until 1925. You could still buy white sex slaves in Istanbul in 1915: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#Decline_and_suppression_of_Ottoman_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#...

pesmhey 8y ago

Agreed. There isn’t necessarily a strong black or Chinese nationalism movement in the US, but it does make sense to target the behavior of ethnic nationalism as opposed to any specific brand of it. It’s: ‘We don’t like it when individual ethnic groups in our multi-ethnic empire presume to have privileged rights over all the others’ Vs. ‘We don’t like it when just white people do it.’

staticautomatic 8y ago

At a high level this is fine but it doesn't address the issue of what kinds of nationalist content are ban-worthy.

mrtesthah 8y ago

Chinese nationalism probably should be banned in China (but not the US) for the same reason that white nationalism should be banned in the US: the racial designations "white" and "black" are completely arbitrary terms, not grounded in any scientific fact, and are social constructs based around an in-group (whites) wielding political, economic, and cultural power over an out-group (blacks). "Irish" is an ethnicity. "Lithuanian" is an ethnicity. "White", on other hand, is most definitely not an ethnicity, and identifying as such implicitly supports the present racist status quo, because the white in-group already wields overwhelming power in American society[1]. White nationalism asserts that only those Americans who identify as white are "real Americans", and therefore explicitly advocates for the exercise of white cultural and political dominance at the expense of all other out-groups. And at its most extreme, it advocates genocide as a means of accomplishing its vision. 1. http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/reports/cerd.pdf http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/reports/cerd.pdf

SamReidHughes 8y ago
It's taxonomically arbitrary but not completely arbitrary, and in fact is grounded in scientific fact.
- mrtesthah 8y ago
  The terms attempt to classify people based on an arbitrary collection of visually distinct phenotypes rather than fundamental genotypes -- however, the One-drop Rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule) works only on the basis of the latter. This inconsistency alone makes the terms scientifically irreconcilable.
  - SamReidHughes 8y ago
    Well, that straw man is obviously useless, which is why the bad old days had an intense vocabulary for all the different proportions of mixed race. Research today shows that people's classifications generally lines up with genetic ancestry. So, for example, doctors are well served to judge racial/genetic makeup by appearance when diagnosing and treating patients. Likewise, if you want to make an ethnostate or the opposite, it's certainly a useful concept. (American immigration laws by design do the opposite, using national quotas as a proxy for race.)

dymk 8y ago

"White nationalism" is just a rebranded, softer term for "white supremacy". The word "nationalism" itself doens't mean just nationalism, it means literal Nazi ideologies that might not be present in other forms of nationalism. I'm personally a fan of them taking a more fine-comb approach to banning certain forms of expression on the platform, rather than just saying blanket "The idea of nationalism is banned".

oyvey 8y ago

>Only banning white nationalism is giving fuel to the white nationalist belief that whites are being unfairly targeted. That's not something we should encourage IMO. Well its easy to believe in something that is simply true.