3 ms·

> 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 some

by 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.

kerkeslager 6y ago
You're just ignoring my questions: 1. When has censorship been effective? 2. How does your censorship plan deal with subtle racism and dog whistles? And I'll add a question I haven't asked yet: 3. How do populations become and stay primed against open and earnest fascism/antisemitism/racism/etc. in your censorship plan? I don't think you have a leg to stand on if you can't answer these questions. The reason I'm asking the third question: I hear your point that I'm talking about exclusion rather than censorship, and I agree that racism becoming respectable in polite company would be much worse than what we have now. But I think you have to realize that the way we got to a point where racism isn't respectable in polite company is repeated, persistent confrontation of racism with the truth. The reason you and I know that black people aren't criminals, is that we both know the more nuanced truth. I know I didn't come up with that truth myself--I heard it from someone else, and I heard it in the context of confronting the racist trope that black people are criminals. I get the temptation to use censorship as a shortcut to remove subtle racism, but by doing that we're giving up something even more fundamental: the very debate that made racism not respectable in the first place. And make no mistake: racism isn't respectable in polite company in our little internet bubbles full of tech and startup people, but racism is absolutely respectable in many communities in our country and the world. If we're going to make racism not respectable in those places, censorship isn't going to work. We're going to have to have conversations that make that happen. If we let those conversations happen in public spaces, we can have those conversations in spaces that are friendly to us. But if we censor those conversations, then we just push those communities out, and then our only option is to go into those communities to have those conversations, which is much more difficult. And to be clear: censorship won't work in those communities, because we don't have the power to censor there.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > You're just ignoring my questions: > 1. When has censorship been effective? > 2. How does your censorship plan deal with subtle racism and dog whistles? > ...I don't think you have a leg to stand on if you can't answer these questions. How can I answer them directly, when I think they're based misunderstandings? For instance, I don't classify many of the things you seem to be talking about as "censorship" (e.g. banning /r/The_Donald from reddit) despite your persistent use of that term, nor have I offered up any "plans" of any kind, let alone "[my] censorship plan." > 3. How do populations become and stay primed against open and earnest fascism/antisemitism/racism/etc.... Education coupled with regular refreshers/responses as needed. If you want to teach kids anti-Nazism, it's not like you have to first invite an open and earnest Nazi to school to lecture the kids in class about how the Jews are subhuman and corrupt everything, etc. The anti-Nazi lesson can be taught directly.
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    I'll try to rephrase my first two questions to address your semantic concerns: 1. When has a silencing action similar to the banning of /r/The_Donald been effective in reducing bigotry and/or fascism? 2. Your criticism of free speech is that it allows people to post subtly racist memes and dog whistles, but you haven't presented an alternative. How do you plan to deal with subtle racism and dog whistles? I'm putting in an effort to use terminology that's amenable to you, so please put in an effort to understand my questions and answer them, rather than objecting to semantics. > > 3. How do populations become and stay primed against open and earnest fascism/antisemitism/racism/etc.... > Education coupled with regular refreshers/responses as needed. If you want to teach kids anti-Nazism, it's not like you have to first invite an open and earnest Nazi to school to lecture the kids in class about how the Jews are subhuman and corrupt everything, etc. The anti-Nazi lesson can be taught directly. Let's be clear: no one is proposing we bring earnest and open Nazis into schools. We're both on the same side: we both want to stop Nazis. So let's keep this on topic and avoid straw man arguments. The anti-Nazi lesson can be taught directly, but in that teaching, you have to teach people the Nazi ideology, otherwise they don't know what they're actually against. And you need to keep that up-to-date, otherwise people are defended against what Nazis were saying 10 years ago. Nazism changes and adapts and we have to adapt to fight it. And if we're constantly paying attention to and responding to what Nazis are saying now, that starts to look suspiciously like just having an uncensored conversation. If we don't do this, we run the risk of creating a generation of anti-fascists who can't recognize fascism if it doesn't have a swastika on it. This is already a problem: check out Dianne Feinstein, for example.

by ardy42 6y ago

kerkeslager 6y ago

You're just ignoring my questions: 1. When has censorship been effective? 2. How does your censorship plan deal with subtle racism and dog whistles? And I'll add a question I haven't asked yet: 3. How do populations become and stay primed against open and earnest fascism/antisemitism/racism/etc. in your censorship plan? I don't think you have a leg to stand on if you can't answer these questions. The reason I'm asking the third question: I hear your point that I'm talking about exclusion rather than censorship, and I agree that racism becoming respectable in polite company would be much worse than what we have now. But I think you have to realize that the way we got to a point where racism isn't respectable in polite company is repeated, persistent confrontation of racism with the truth. The reason you and I know that black people aren't criminals, is that we both know the more nuanced truth. I know I didn't come up with that truth myself--I heard it from someone else, and I heard it in the context of confronting the racist trope that black people are criminals. I get the temptation to use censorship as a shortcut to remove subtle racism, but by doing that we're giving up something even more fundamental: the very debate that made racism not respectable in the first place. And make no mistake: racism isn't respectable in polite company in our little internet bubbles full of tech and startup people, but racism is absolutely respectable in many communities in our country and the world. If we're going to make racism not respectable in those places, censorship isn't going to work. We're going to have to have conversations that make that happen. If we let those conversations happen in public spaces, we can have those conversations in spaces that are friendly to us. But if we censor those conversations, then we just push those communities out, and then our only option is to go into those communities to have those conversations, which is much more difficult. And to be clear: censorship won't work in those communities, because we don't have the power to censor there.

ardy42 6y ago
> You're just ignoring my questions: > 1. When has censorship been effective? > 2. How does your censorship plan deal with subtle racism and dog whistles? > ...I don't think you have a leg to stand on if you can't answer these questions. How can I answer them directly, when I think they're based misunderstandings? For instance, I don't classify many of the things you seem to be talking about as "censorship" (e.g. banning /r/The_Donald from reddit) despite your persistent use of that term, nor have I offered up any "plans" of any kind, let alone "[my] censorship plan." > 3. How do populations become and stay primed against open and earnest fascism/antisemitism/racism/etc.... Education coupled with regular refreshers/responses as needed. If you want to teach kids anti-Nazism, it's not like you have to first invite an open and earnest Nazi to school to lecture the kids in class about how the Jews are subhuman and corrupt everything, etc. The anti-Nazi lesson can be taught directly.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  I'll try to rephrase my first two questions to address your semantic concerns: 1. When has a silencing action similar to the banning of /r/The_Donald been effective in reducing bigotry and/or fascism? 2. Your criticism of free speech is that it allows people to post subtly racist memes and dog whistles, but you haven't presented an alternative. How do you plan to deal with subtle racism and dog whistles? I'm putting in an effort to use terminology that's amenable to you, so please put in an effort to understand my questions and answer them, rather than objecting to semantics. > > 3. How do populations become and stay primed against open and earnest fascism/antisemitism/racism/etc.... > Education coupled with regular refreshers/responses as needed. If you want to teach kids anti-Nazism, it's not like you have to first invite an open and earnest Nazi to school to lecture the kids in class about how the Jews are subhuman and corrupt everything, etc. The anti-Nazi lesson can be taught directly. Let's be clear: no one is proposing we bring earnest and open Nazis into schools. We're both on the same side: we both want to stop Nazis. So let's keep this on topic and avoid straw man arguments. The anti-Nazi lesson can be taught directly, but in that teaching, you have to teach people the Nazi ideology, otherwise they don't know what they're actually against. And you need to keep that up-to-date, otherwise people are defended against what Nazis were saying 10 years ago. Nazism changes and adapts and we have to adapt to fight it. And if we're constantly paying attention to and responding to what Nazis are saying now, that starts to look suspiciously like just having an uncensored conversation. If we don't do this, we run the risk of creating a generation of anti-fascists who can't recognize fascism if it doesn't have a swastika on it. This is already a problem: check out Dianne Feinstein, for example.