5 ms·

> The only difference now is that we can't confront fascism with the truth any more. How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been? Especia

by ardy42 6y ago

> The only difference now is that we can't confront fascism with the truth any more. How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been? Especially on the web? My impression is that fascist/racist ideas aren't spread in open debates where the truth matters, but indirectly: through deniable memes and dog whistles initially, then slowly, as people's innate defenses are lowered, through many stages of more and more open exposition. > Ironically, by using the tools of the fascist against them we've implicitly admitted that the fascist is right. When we censor, we're saying that our ideas should be determined by who has the power to enforce censorship, not by compassion and truth. I think you're conflating censorship with exclusion, which every functioning social group needs to engage in to some degree. Also, comparisons at very abstract levels aren't very enlightening in this case. You really have to get into the details to make a true comparison.

kerkeslager 6y ago
> How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been? When white people were afraid of black violence, Martin Luther King showed them black people peacefully hand in hand with ministers in their Sunday best, walking toward Selma and remaining nonviolent even as they were met with violence. When straight people saw gay people as dangerous deviants, Harvey Milk showed them gay people in their families, jobs, and neighborhoods, behaving like the normal people they are. I personally grew up in a church that taught homophobia--my own opinions were fundamentally changed by one of my friends coming out in high school. Ask yourself your own question: when has censorship ever been effective?[1] I'd argue that, among other things the election of Trump is partly a backlash against attempts to control speech by the left. It's no mistake that a big part of the pro-Trump narrative was just that he "spoke his mind". [1] Whenever I ask this question, people always respond by pointing to one study which showed banning a few hate subreddits decreased hate speech on Reddit, so I'll preemptively respond to that by saying that there's absolutely no evidence that bigots on Reddit didn't simply move to Voat at that time.
- ardy42 6y ago
  Those were IRL things that happened before people even had computers in their homes. We're talking about modern-day web forums. How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been, when the fascist is not being upfront about it, but rather posting hundreds of subtly racist memes and dog whistles to reddit?
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    > Those were IRL things that happened before people had computers in their homes. We're talking about modern-day web forums. The internet is an IRL thing, and these things also happened before electric cars. Unless you have some reason to think people's reaction to the truth is somehow fundamentally different on the internet than on TV or newspaper, I really don't see what your point is. > How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been, when the fascist is not being upfront about it, but rather posting hundreds of subtly racist memes and dog whistles to reddit? Is there a reason you can't post memes with the truth? Anti-racist memes work just fine. In a similar vein, infographics have been extremely effective. The internet is one of the best tools for spreading the truth in existence. Subtly racist memes and dog whistles are created by censorship. If a person believed "black people are criminals" without censorship, they wouldn't bother with dog whistles, they would just say, "black people are criminals". How effective do you really think censorship is if the entire point of subtlety and dog whistles is to get around censorship? And if someone says "Black people are criminals", I can respond with, "While black people are convicted of crimes at a higher per-capita rate than white people, this is a result of poverty: black people and white people at similar income levels commit similar numbers of crimes." What do you do when someone posts a subtly racist meme that hints that black people commit more crimes? Censor harder? The solution you're proposing takes us to a place where racists just agree on what codewords mean what in their own private spaces, say whatever they want in public using their secret codewords, and call us crazy if we figure it out and censor them.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > The internet is an IRL thing, and these things also happened before electric cars. Unless you have some reason to think people's reaction to the truth is somehow fundamentally different on the internet than on TV or newspaper, I really don't see what your point is. The internet is a fundamentally different communications mechanism than TV or newspapers. Reasoning about internet forum social dynamics using pre-computer examples, is like reasoning about modern infantry tactics citing victories from ancient Greek history. A hoplite phalanx would be annihilated by a WWII German infantry battalion. > Subtly racist memes and dog whistles are created by censorship. If a person believed "black people are criminals" without censorship, they would just, "black people are criminals". How effective do you really think censorship is if the entire point of subtlety and dog whistles is to get around censorship? Sorry, no. You're conflating censorship with exclusion again. "Censorship" didn't create those things; they were created by the widespread rejection and condemnation of the underlying racist ideas and the racist people who hold them. Earnest, up-front advocacy of racism isn't going to be effective in a population that's been primed to identify and reject it, so racists setup recruiting funnels with obscured entrances to spread their ideology by radicalizing people more slowly. That situation won't change, and the racists won't abandon their subtly racist memes and dog whistles, unless racism becomes respectable in polite company, which would be much worse than what we have now.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  It is worth noting that MLK was not popular in his time: > Back in the 1960s, when King was actually leading protests, just 36 percent of white Americans thought he was helping “the Negro cause of civil rights,” according to historical polling data compiled by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. In a 1966 Gallup poll, more than 60 percent of the public rated King more negatively than positively. > After King was assassinated, two-thirds of Americans said their strongest reaction to his death had been sadness, anger, shame or fear, another survey found. Another 31 percent, however, said they “felt he brought it on himself.” Harvey Milk was also not necessarily popular amongst Americans, and a few years after his death we would have total mainstream paranoia about AIDS. The end of the US's majority disapproval of gay marriage only came about in 2010. [1] [0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/in-1968-nearly-a-third-of-americans-said-mlk-brought-his-killing-on-himself_n_5ac51373e4b0aacd15b7d37b https://www.huffpost.com/entry/in-1968-nearly-a-third-of-ame... [1] https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/ https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    Is that worth noting? Why? Change isn't a popularity contest. If King changed views on black voting rights from 20% for to 40% for, that's a pretty massive change.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      Part of what makes authoritarian behavior so dangerous is that they don't need a majority to cause a lot of damage, just a very sizable group. You want to stamp it out quickly before a lot of damage is done, and "fighting fascism with the truth" generally takes time on a generational scale. It is worth noting that the election before Hitler was made chancellor, the Nazis actually lost 14% of their seats in the Reichstag, yet they were still powerful enough to eventually come to power.
      - kerkeslager 6y ago
        You're playing very fast and loose with terminology here. Fascism is a form of authoritarianism, but not all authoritarianism is fascism. Censorship is authoritarian. We were talking about fascists before you joined the conversation, but if you're going to swap the terms here and start worrying about authoritarianism, neither side is innocent there, and taking a "stamp it out quickly" stance is inherently an authoritarian position, not an anti-authoritarian position. > It is worth noting that the election before Hitler was made chancellor, the Nazis actually lost 14% of their seats in the Reichstag, yet they were still powerful enough to eventually come to power. Yes, but that's a fairly useless fact if you don't have any explanation for why that happened.

by ardy42 6y ago

kerkeslager 6y ago

> How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been? When white people were afraid of black violence, Martin Luther King showed them black people peacefully hand in hand with ministers in their Sunday best, walking toward Selma and remaining nonviolent even as they were met with violence. When straight people saw gay people as dangerous deviants, Harvey Milk showed them gay people in their families, jobs, and neighborhoods, behaving like the normal people they are. I personally grew up in a church that taught homophobia--my own opinions were fundamentally changed by one of my friends coming out in high school. Ask yourself your own question: when has censorship ever been effective?[1] I'd argue that, among other things the election of Trump is partly a backlash against attempts to control speech by the left. It's no mistake that a big part of the pro-Trump narrative was just that he "spoke his mind". [1] Whenever I ask this question, people always respond by pointing to one study which showed banning a few hate subreddits decreased hate speech on Reddit, so I'll preemptively respond to that by saying that there's absolutely no evidence that bigots on Reddit didn't simply move to Voat at that time.

ardy42 6y ago
Those were IRL things that happened before people even had computers in their homes. We're talking about modern-day web forums. How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been, when the fascist is not being upfront about it, but rather posting hundreds of subtly racist memes and dog whistles to reddit?
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  > Those were IRL things that happened before people had computers in their homes. We're talking about modern-day web forums. The internet is an IRL thing, and these things also happened before electric cars. Unless you have some reason to think people's reaction to the truth is somehow fundamentally different on the internet than on TV or newspaper, I really don't see what your point is. > How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been, when the fascist is not being upfront about it, but rather posting hundreds of subtly racist memes and dog whistles to reddit? Is there a reason you can't post memes with the truth? Anti-racist memes work just fine. In a similar vein, infographics have been extremely effective. The internet is one of the best tools for spreading the truth in existence. Subtly racist memes and dog whistles are created by censorship. If a person believed "black people are criminals" without censorship, they wouldn't bother with dog whistles, they would just say, "black people are criminals". How effective do you really think censorship is if the entire point of subtlety and dog whistles is to get around censorship? And if someone says "Black people are criminals", I can respond with, "While black people are convicted of crimes at a higher per-capita rate than white people, this is a result of poverty: black people and white people at similar income levels commit similar numbers of crimes." What do you do when someone posts a subtly racist meme that hints that black people commit more crimes? Censor harder? The solution you're proposing takes us to a place where racists just agree on what codewords mean what in their own private spaces, say whatever they want in public using their secret codewords, and call us crazy if we figure it out and censor them.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > The internet is an IRL thing, and these things also happened before electric cars. Unless you have some reason to think people's reaction to the truth is somehow fundamentally different on the internet than on TV or newspaper, I really don't see what your point is. The internet is a fundamentally different communications mechanism than TV or newspapers. Reasoning about internet forum social dynamics using pre-computer examples, is like reasoning about modern infantry tactics citing victories from ancient Greek history. A hoplite phalanx would be annihilated by a WWII German infantry battalion. > Subtly racist memes and dog whistles are created by censorship. If a person believed "black people are criminals" without censorship, they would just, "black people are criminals". How effective do you really think censorship is if the entire point of subtlety and dog whistles is to get around censorship? Sorry, no. You're conflating censorship with exclusion again. "Censorship" didn't create those things; they were created by the widespread rejection and condemnation of the underlying racist ideas and the racist people who hold them. Earnest, up-front advocacy of racism isn't going to be effective in a population that's been primed to identify and reject it, so racists setup recruiting funnels with obscured entrances to spread their ideology by radicalizing people more slowly. That situation won't change, and the racists won't abandon their subtly racist memes and dog whistles, unless racism becomes respectable in polite company, which would be much worse than what we have now.
bobthepanda 6y ago
It is worth noting that MLK was not popular in his time: > Back in the 1960s, when King was actually leading protests, just 36 percent of white Americans thought he was helping “the Negro cause of civil rights,” according to historical polling data compiled by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. In a 1966 Gallup poll, more than 60 percent of the public rated King more negatively than positively. > After King was assassinated, two-thirds of Americans said their strongest reaction to his death had been sadness, anger, shame or fear, another survey found. Another 31 percent, however, said they “felt he brought it on himself.” Harvey Milk was also not necessarily popular amongst Americans, and a few years after his death we would have total mainstream paranoia about AIDS. The end of the US's majority disapproval of gay marriage only came about in 2010. [1] [0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/in-1968-nearly-a-third-of-americans-said-mlk-brought-his-killing-on-himself_n_5ac51373e4b0aacd15b7d37b https://www.huffpost.com/entry/in-1968-nearly-a-third-of-ame... [1] https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/ https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  Is that worth noting? Why? Change isn't a popularity contest. If King changed views on black voting rights from 20% for to 40% for, that's a pretty massive change.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Part of what makes authoritarian behavior so dangerous is that they don't need a majority to cause a lot of damage, just a very sizable group. You want to stamp it out quickly before a lot of damage is done, and "fighting fascism with the truth" generally takes time on a generational scale. It is worth noting that the election before Hitler was made chancellor, the Nazis actually lost 14% of their seats in the Reichstag, yet they were still powerful enough to eventually come to power.
    - kerkeslager 6y ago
      You're playing very fast and loose with terminology here. Fascism is a form of authoritarianism, but not all authoritarianism is fascism. Censorship is authoritarian. We were talking about fascists before you joined the conversation, but if you're going to swap the terms here and start worrying about authoritarianism, neither side is innocent there, and taking a "stamp it out quickly" stance is inherently an authoritarian position, not an anti-authoritarian position. > It is worth noting that the election before Hitler was made chancellor, the Nazis actually lost 14% of their seats in the Reichstag, yet they were still powerful enough to eventually come to power. Yes, but that's a fairly useless fact if you don't have any explanation for why that happened.