7 ms·

Ravelry, a Popular Knitting Site, Bans Pro-Trump Content

24 points by mcenedella 7y ago

0815test 7y ago
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20259012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20259012
- Ar-Curunir 7y ago
  Lol what an absolute cesspool of centrist comments.
  - dang 7y ago
    Maybe so, but would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
wil999 7y ago
Another example of the politicisation of everything.... I remember a time when politics was not discussed in polite company.
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
  I'm not sure which way you're going with that comment. Ravelry seems to be saying "we are polite company, keep your politics off our knitting site, thx". If anything, it's de-politicisation.
  - InvaderFizz 7y ago
    Did I miss something? The linked article looks to me to say that Pro-Trump views are not allowed to be expressed. Not that politics has no place in their community. If anything this is escalating the problem by silencing the opposition and further entrenching both sides.
    - eesmith 7y ago
      Escalating what problem? Their policy is at https://www.ravelry.com/content/no-trump https://www.ravelry.com/content/no-trump . Their argument is "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy." So by "both sides" it seems like you mean the one side in favor of white supremacy, and the other side not in favor of white supremacy? Why should a knitting site allow support for open white supremacy?
      - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
        That's a bit of a mental leap. I'm no fan of the guy at all but saying that support for Trump == support for white supremacy simply isn't true. If their issue is with white supremacy why not ban that specifically?
        eesmith 7y ago
        They apparently have banned open discussion of white supremacy, and listed support for the Trump administration as a specific example. I'm sure they'll come up with more, if needed. I disagree with your "simply isn't true." At best, it's "complicatedly isn't true." But I think it's really true. He's a white supremacist, surrounded by white supremacists, product of a country and culture based on white supremacy. Rather than write up a description, I'll vouch for: 1) https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/donald-trumps-ties-to-alt-right-white-supremacists-are-extensive.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/donald-trumps-ti... from 2017 listing some of his and his administration's connections to the broad category of white supremacy, including his birtherism. 2) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/trump-embraces-white-supremacy/579745/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/trump-e... from early 2019 describes more connections, including "his attempts to expel undocumented immigrants who pose no threat to public safety, and their American family members; his elevation of an ostentatious partisan to the Supreme Court; his implementation of a policy of child abuse as a deterrent to illegal immigration; his abandonment of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria; his Justice Department’s green-lighting of police abuses; his attempts to weaken the political power of minorities targeted by his policies; and other acts of state violence and disapproval against religious and ethnic minorities too numerous to name. ... all of them follow the underlying logic ... that extremism in pursuit of white power is no vice, and defending the rights of those who threaten that power is no virtue." (Similar points made at https://newrepublic.com/article/144390/trumps-white-supremacist-economic-agenda https://newrepublic.com/article/144390/trumps-white-supremac... ) Here's a question - what would Trump and the Trump administration need to do for you to think it supports white supremacy? Why do we have children in concentration camps, repeating the tragedies of the Japanese concentration camps of the 1940s and the Native American concentration camps?
- eesmith 7y ago
  When was this time? Who were the people who followed this practice? Isn't this policy inherently conservative, in that it ignores any desire for political change? Does it mean that the abolitionists and suffragettes were not polite? Because they sometimes were not. It's part of how they got change.
RickJWagner 7y ago
Shameful. It's fine to disagree with President Trump. It's fine to disagree with Democrats, too. Having an opinion is your right. But to slander and lie, and try to influence people in this way is just wrong. Let's be honest. President Trump has brought record low unemployment, rising wages, and justice reform to African Americans. His support among American Blacks has risen, not fallen. He is doing some good. Yet there are people like this. They weaponize racism, ignoring it within any party but the one they demonize. They turn racism from something useless into something they can use. This is what is truly 'deplorable'.
- mcphage 7y ago
  > They turn racism from something useless into something they can use. This is what is truly 'deplorable'. No, I'm pretty sure it's putting kids into concentration camps that's deplorable. Nice try though.
  - s9w 7y ago
    Seeing the word concentration tramp unironically being used in a current world is obscene. Where did that even come from? That cropped fake photo on twitter?
    - eesmith 7y ago
      https://www.newsweek.com/concentration-camps-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-trump-border-1444843 https://www.newsweek.com/concentration-camps-alexandria-ocas... > "Concentration camps are considered by experts as 'the mass detention of civilians without trial.' Even without photos, we know there is mass detention of civilians without trial. Do you deny that? What term do you want to use? From the same link: > We don't say 'prisons' because prisons are a part of the formal legal system," Lester Andrist, a sociologist who has studied indefinite detention, tweeted. Or would you prefer "internment camp", like we used for Japanese Americans? From the same link: > "I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again," the Takei tweeted. The Takei family was interned in Arkansas and California in the 1940s. Or perhaps you want to reserve 'concentration camp' only for the Nazi death camps? From the same link: > Federico Finchelstein, a historian at the New York-based New School, agreed that the progressive congresswoman is right to call the ICE facilities concentration camps. > "As [a] historian of fascism & [the] Holocaust, I would also call these centers concentration camps," Finchelstein tweeted. "As a Jewish person who lost family in [the] Holocaust, I regret that some Republicans use memory of the Holocaust to defend racist policies of Trumpism." From https://beta.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/20/concentration-camps-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-japanese-americans/?outputType=amp https://beta.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/20/concentrat... : > A 1998 Ellis Island exhibit drew outcry from the Jewish community and others after the Japanese American National Museum titled it, “America’s Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese American Experience.” To the museum’s curators — and to many historians and leading Japanese American organizations today — “internment” or “relocation camps” were euphemisms for the reality of what Japanese Americans endured. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Supreme Court justices, the museum noted, had both referred to the Japanese American camps as concentration camps. > ... Ultimately, Jewish and Japanese American groups held meetings to reach an understanding, Schiffrin reported. The exhibit’s title stayed, but with one long footnote on the flier, making clear that it was not an attempt to directly compare the Japanese-American camps to Nazi camps.
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DougN7 7y ago
I remember HN getting up in arms about free speech when porn was banned from some sites, and a few years earlier when rape fantasy was banned from another (sorry, poor memory so I don’t remember more details). But banning pro-Trump is fine. Where are the SJWs now? Trump is an idiot, but this reveals some true bias in this (HN) community. It’s disappointing.
- eesmith 7y ago
  "Where are the SJWs now?" ?? Pardon? Usually the complaint is about SJWs who point out that a site should be free to set their own policies and decide to ban porn, rape fantasies, and white supremacist beliefs. They then get chastised for being "politically correct" and wanting to "censor". Opposing that SJW belief are the free speech absolutists who insist that no site should set policies restricting comment practices. Which appears to be the policy you think should happen.
  - DougN7 7y ago
    OK, let's test this. This site banning pro-abortion would be OK? My point is the left is fine banning the right on moral grounds, but if the right bans the left then it's bigotry, free speech suppression, and a different set of morals. Of course the inverse is also true (right gladly bans the left). It's all hypocrisy - that's what I'm calling out.
    - eesmith 7y ago
      Yes. Completely okay. That's completely in line with my opinion that the organizers of a site have the freedom to associate with whomever they wish - and reject whom they don't wish. Why's that a problem? And, most assuredly, I am on the left. Edit: and an example comment of mine from 2 years ago where I assert that the right to reject people/speech from a private group is just as important as the right to free speech https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15420491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15420491 .
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24 points by mcenedella 7y ago

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20259012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20259012

Ar-Curunir 7y ago
Lol what an absolute cesspool of centrist comments.
- dang 7y ago
  Maybe so, but would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

Another example of the politicisation of everything.... I remember a time when politics was not discussed in polite company.

SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
I'm not sure which way you're going with that comment. Ravelry seems to be saying "we are polite company, keep your politics off our knitting site, thx". If anything, it's de-politicisation.
- InvaderFizz 7y ago
  Did I miss something? The linked article looks to me to say that Pro-Trump views are not allowed to be expressed. Not that politics has no place in their community. If anything this is escalating the problem by silencing the opposition and further entrenching both sides.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    Escalating what problem? Their policy is at https://www.ravelry.com/content/no-trump https://www.ravelry.com/content/no-trump . Their argument is "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy." So by "both sides" it seems like you mean the one side in favor of white supremacy, and the other side not in favor of white supremacy? Why should a knitting site allow support for open white supremacy?
    - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
      That's a bit of a mental leap. I'm no fan of the guy at all but saying that support for Trump == support for white supremacy simply isn't true. If their issue is with white supremacy why not ban that specifically?
      - eesmith 7y ago
        They apparently have banned open discussion of white supremacy, and listed support for the Trump administration as a specific example. I'm sure they'll come up with more, if needed. I disagree with your "simply isn't true." At best, it's "complicatedly isn't true." But I think it's really true. He's a white supremacist, surrounded by white supremacists, product of a country and culture based on white supremacy. Rather than write up a description, I'll vouch for: 1) https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/donald-trumps-ties-to-alt-right-white-supremacists-are-extensive.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/donald-trumps-ti... from 2017 listing some of his and his administration's connections to the broad category of white supremacy, including his birtherism. 2) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/trump-embraces-white-supremacy/579745/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/trump-e... from early 2019 describes more connections, including "his attempts to expel undocumented immigrants who pose no threat to public safety, and their American family members; his elevation of an ostentatious partisan to the Supreme Court; his implementation of a policy of child abuse as a deterrent to illegal immigration; his abandonment of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria; his Justice Department’s green-lighting of police abuses; his attempts to weaken the political power of minorities targeted by his policies; and other acts of state violence and disapproval against religious and ethnic minorities too numerous to name. ... all of them follow the underlying logic ... that extremism in pursuit of white power is no vice, and defending the rights of those who threaten that power is no virtue." (Similar points made at https://newrepublic.com/article/144390/trumps-white-supremacist-economic-agenda https://newrepublic.com/article/144390/trumps-white-supremac... ) Here's a question - what would Trump and the Trump administration need to do for you to think it supports white supremacy? Why do we have children in concentration camps, repeating the tragedies of the Japanese concentration camps of the 1940s and the Native American concentration camps?
eesmith 7y ago
When was this time? Who were the people who followed this practice? Isn't this policy inherently conservative, in that it ignores any desire for political change? Does it mean that the abolitionists and suffragettes were not polite? Because they sometimes were not. It's part of how they got change.

RickJWagner 7y ago

Shameful. It's fine to disagree with President Trump. It's fine to disagree with Democrats, too. Having an opinion is your right. But to slander and lie, and try to influence people in this way is just wrong. Let's be honest. President Trump has brought record low unemployment, rising wages, and justice reform to African Americans. His support among American Blacks has risen, not fallen. He is doing some good. Yet there are people like this. They weaponize racism, ignoring it within any party but the one they demonize. They turn racism from something useless into something they can use. This is what is truly 'deplorable'.

mcphage 7y ago
> They turn racism from something useless into something they can use. This is what is truly 'deplorable'. No, I'm pretty sure it's putting kids into concentration camps that's deplorable. Nice try though.
- s9w 7y ago
  Seeing the word concentration tramp unironically being used in a current world is obscene. Where did that even come from? That cropped fake photo on twitter?
  - eesmith 7y ago
    https://www.newsweek.com/concentration-camps-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-trump-border-1444843 https://www.newsweek.com/concentration-camps-alexandria-ocas... > "Concentration camps are considered by experts as 'the mass detention of civilians without trial.' Even without photos, we know there is mass detention of civilians without trial. Do you deny that? What term do you want to use? From the same link: > We don't say 'prisons' because prisons are a part of the formal legal system," Lester Andrist, a sociologist who has studied indefinite detention, tweeted. Or would you prefer "internment camp", like we used for Japanese Americans? From the same link: > "I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again," the Takei tweeted. The Takei family was interned in Arkansas and California in the 1940s. Or perhaps you want to reserve 'concentration camp' only for the Nazi death camps? From the same link: > Federico Finchelstein, a historian at the New York-based New School, agreed that the progressive congresswoman is right to call the ICE facilities concentration camps. > "As [a] historian of fascism & [the] Holocaust, I would also call these centers concentration camps," Finchelstein tweeted. "As a Jewish person who lost family in [the] Holocaust, I regret that some Republicans use memory of the Holocaust to defend racist policies of Trumpism." From https://beta.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/20/concentration-camps-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-japanese-americans/?outputType=amp https://beta.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/20/concentrat... : > A 1998 Ellis Island exhibit drew outcry from the Jewish community and others after the Japanese American National Museum titled it, “America’s Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese American Experience.” To the museum’s curators — and to many historians and leading Japanese American organizations today — “internment” or “relocation camps” were euphemisms for the reality of what Japanese Americans endured. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Supreme Court justices, the museum noted, had both referred to the Japanese American camps as concentration camps. > ... Ultimately, Jewish and Japanese American groups held meetings to reach an understanding, Schiffrin reported. The exhibit’s title stayed, but with one long footnote on the flier, making clear that it was not an attempt to directly compare the Japanese-American camps to Nazi camps.

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DougN7 7y ago

I remember HN getting up in arms about free speech when porn was banned from some sites, and a few years earlier when rape fantasy was banned from another (sorry, poor memory so I don’t remember more details). But banning pro-Trump is fine. Where are the SJWs now? Trump is an idiot, but this reveals some true bias in this (HN) community. It’s disappointing.

eesmith 7y ago
"Where are the SJWs now?" ?? Pardon? Usually the complaint is about SJWs who point out that a site should be free to set their own policies and decide to ban porn, rape fantasies, and white supremacist beliefs. They then get chastised for being "politically correct" and wanting to "censor". Opposing that SJW belief are the free speech absolutists who insist that no site should set policies restricting comment practices. Which appears to be the policy you think should happen.
- DougN7 7y ago
  OK, let's test this. This site banning pro-abortion would be OK? My point is the left is fine banning the right on moral grounds, but if the right bans the left then it's bigotry, free speech suppression, and a different set of morals. Of course the inverse is also true (right gladly bans the left). It's all hypocrisy - that's what I'm calling out.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    Yes. Completely okay. That's completely in line with my opinion that the organizers of a site have the freedom to associate with whomever they wish - and reject whom they don't wish. Why's that a problem? And, most assuredly, I am on the left. Edit: and an example comment of mine from 2 years ago where I assert that the right to reject people/speech from a private group is just as important as the right to free speech https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15420491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15420491 .

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