3 ms·

What is anything? Before we can have a conversation, I need a formal definition of every word you intend to use

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
The issue is that "hate group" is a motte and bailey. If you ask people what it is, they say it's the KKK. But the KKK has like four living members who were all born before the discovery of penicillin. And then no one can give you any definition they're actually willing to see consistently applied. You can come up with things like "the group advocates violence" but you can find a member of any sufficiently large group who does that, so a consistent application would have you classifying environmentalists and feminists and so on as hate groups. What people really want is to ban any group where they can find any member advocating violence and that group has a disfavored ideology. But it's the latter which is doing all the work, and nobody is willing to admit that because "we want an excuse to ban anyone who disagrees with our ideology" is saying the quiet part out loud.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  "Hate Group" is a group that has a significant portion designed to explicitly hate a protected class. Where "protected class" is the ambiguous part in my experience. But "protected class" includes the disabled, black people, asians, women, etc. etc. Democrats hating Republicans and Republicans hating Democrats doesn't count, because neither group is a protected class. Nazis count, because Nazis hated Jews, and Jews are a religion and religion is a protected class. --------------- The point of debate is "protected class" in my experience. IE: White people asking to have the same protections as Black people. Or Mens right activists asking for men to be a protected class like Women are.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    I don't think "protected class" really gets you out of it. Suppose you have a group dedicated to enforcing immigration laws. There are plenty of non-racist reasons to want to do this, but there are also racist reasons to want to do it, so racists may join that organization and support their goals. And then they'll turn around and be racists and say racist things and cause opponents to point at them as representatives of the organization. But that kind of organization isn't a religion or a military with a chain of command that can excommunicate anyone or threaten them with a court martial if they don't stop being a racist. It's just a bunch of people who share the same goal for what may be very different reasons. So what is someone supposed to do to prevent their group from being labeled a "hate group" if all they want is to e.g. keep cheap labor from suppressing local wages? Because it's the same problem the other way. If you're #MeToo and some of the "members" of your really not very centralized "organization" are man-hating extremists, you have no great way to expel them. So are you still in favor of collective punishment?
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      BLM had to actively fight against Black Bloc and prevent them from joining up with BLM protesters. Welcome to group dynamics. Yeah, it sucks. Hateful people try to join righteous causes. You have to absolutely censor them and cut them out of the group. -------- Why do you think Martin Luther King Jr. is so revered? Because there were Black Panthers marching with AK rifles using bombs to blow up their political rivals. They had to march in a way that proved that they were pro-peace and anti-violence, even if it meant forming an political rivalry (possibly political enemy) with the Black Panthers.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        Now you're talking about in-person meetups where the groups have numerical superiority over some troublemakers and can exercise control over a physical space. That doesn't work on some social media platform where anyone can claim to be a member of your group while acting a fool, and everything happens live. If some idiots show up with explosives to your peaceful protest you can boot them out before anyone sees them. If some idiots start threatening people while claiming they're with you on the internet, you don't control what they say on their own accounts and you only see them at the same time as the opponents who want to use it as an excuse to ban your group.
        dragontamer 3y ago
        > If some idiots start threatening people while claiming they're with you on the internet Exercise your moderation powers and ban and/or shadowban them. Online groups have moderation tools, even 4chan has moderators who step in when Doxxers show up. Go on, try to advocate for violence here on Hacker News. You'll get [flagged] pretty quickly. That's why moderators exist. I get that its against your philosophy to use moderation tools on the internet. But its a necessary evil. You must enforce the cultural identity of the groups you lead, lest they turn into online hate groups rather quickly. It happens even to the best of us. Civil Rights era protesters had to deal with it. BLM had to deal with it today. Etc. etc. Its well known.

The issue is that "hate group" is a motte and bailey. If you ask people what it is, they say it's the KKK. But the KKK has like four living members who were all born before the discovery of penicillin. And then no one can give you any definition they're actually willing to see consistently applied. You can come up with things like "the group advocates violence" but you can find a member of any sufficiently large group who does that, so a consistent application would have you classifying environmentalists and feminists and so on as hate groups. What people really want is to ban any group where they can find any member advocating violence and that group has a disfavored ideology. But it's the latter which is doing all the work, and nobody is willing to admit that because "we want an excuse to ban anyone who disagrees with our ideology" is saying the quiet part out loud.

dragontamer 3y ago
"Hate Group" is a group that has a significant portion designed to explicitly hate a protected class. Where "protected class" is the ambiguous part in my experience. But "protected class" includes the disabled, black people, asians, women, etc. etc. Democrats hating Republicans and Republicans hating Democrats doesn't count, because neither group is a protected class. Nazis count, because Nazis hated Jews, and Jews are a religion and religion is a protected class. --------------- The point of debate is "protected class" in my experience. IE: White people asking to have the same protections as Black people. Or Mens right activists asking for men to be a protected class like Women are.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  I don't think "protected class" really gets you out of it. Suppose you have a group dedicated to enforcing immigration laws. There are plenty of non-racist reasons to want to do this, but there are also racist reasons to want to do it, so racists may join that organization and support their goals. And then they'll turn around and be racists and say racist things and cause opponents to point at them as representatives of the organization. But that kind of organization isn't a religion or a military with a chain of command that can excommunicate anyone or threaten them with a court martial if they don't stop being a racist. It's just a bunch of people who share the same goal for what may be very different reasons. So what is someone supposed to do to prevent their group from being labeled a "hate group" if all they want is to e.g. keep cheap labor from suppressing local wages? Because it's the same problem the other way. If you're #MeToo and some of the "members" of your really not very centralized "organization" are man-hating extremists, you have no great way to expel them. So are you still in favor of collective punishment?
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    BLM had to actively fight against Black Bloc and prevent them from joining up with BLM protesters. Welcome to group dynamics. Yeah, it sucks. Hateful people try to join righteous causes. You have to absolutely censor them and cut them out of the group. -------- Why do you think Martin Luther King Jr. is so revered? Because there were Black Panthers marching with AK rifles using bombs to blow up their political rivals. They had to march in a way that proved that they were pro-peace and anti-violence, even if it meant forming an political rivalry (possibly political enemy) with the Black Panthers.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Now you're talking about in-person meetups where the groups have numerical superiority over some troublemakers and can exercise control over a physical space. That doesn't work on some social media platform where anyone can claim to be a member of your group while acting a fool, and everything happens live. If some idiots show up with explosives to your peaceful protest you can boot them out before anyone sees them. If some idiots start threatening people while claiming they're with you on the internet, you don't control what they say on their own accounts and you only see them at the same time as the opponents who want to use it as an excuse to ban your group.
      - dragontamer 3y ago
        > If some idiots start threatening people while claiming they're with you on the internet Exercise your moderation powers and ban and/or shadowban them. Online groups have moderation tools, even 4chan has moderators who step in when Doxxers show up. Go on, try to advocate for violence here on Hacker News. You'll get [flagged] pretty quickly. That's why moderators exist. I get that its against your philosophy to use moderation tools on the internet. But its a necessary evil. You must enforce the cultural identity of the groups you lead, lest they turn into online hate groups rather quickly. It happens even to the best of us. Civil Rights era protesters had to deal with it. BLM had to deal with it today. Etc. etc. Its well known.