4 ms·

The dude plays footsie with white supremacists. https://www.mediaite.com/tech/elon-musk-skewered-for-posting-they-want-your-extinction-after-robert-e-lee-statue

by frob 3y ago

The dude plays footsie with white supremacists. https://www.mediaite.com/tech/elon-musk-skewered-for-posting-they-want-your-extinction-after-robert-e-lee-statue-melted-down/ https://www.mediaite.com/tech/elon-musk-skewered-for-posting.... One of his first act upon taking over Twitter was to reinstate white supremacists. I don't know if he is a full white supremacist, but he really seems to like them. And that type of person is getting none of my respect or money.

fsloth 3y ago
Afaik the linked case of the melting of statue of Lee is more complicated than that. After US civil war north attempted to demolish and rebuild the institutions in the secenniost southern states https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era In a way the melting of the statue can be viewed as a continuation of the northern purges of southern institutions. Twitter/X is crap for nuanced discussion, but a facet of the US history is the tendency of the east coast to crusade over the sensibilities of the other states in a form perceived (rightly or not) as puritan zeal. And as I understand it, not all of the cases are hardly as obvious as the abolishment of slavery. I’m not from US so I might be completely off base though! I don’t follow the white supremacist scene so this might very well be a dog whistle from all I know.
- lettergram 3y ago
  +1 for it being nuanced, after moving to the south it really was not clear how much this is true. The statue was the embodiment of a heritage / culture. There were bad parts of that culture, but so is there in every culture. However, rarely do we support obliterating other cultures. I'm going to walk through the logic of the people I've met in the south (not necessarily my own opinions). The south was under military occupation for years after the civil war. The north sent teachers from the north to "re-educate" the south. Many of the farms were destroyed and unmaintainable due to the war, deaths, famines, and removal of slaves. Many southerners were not allowed to hold office until there was a pardon issued. They almost had a second civil war in 1877 due to a disputed election - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877 Part of the compromise on the 1877 disputed election was that they removed "reconstruction". In many ways, the south felt a genocide was committed. Their culture, society, wealth, etc was taken from them. We can argue it was justice due to them holding slaves or rebelling, but they left the union peacefully in their minds and wanted to be left alone. Fast forward to today -- the US government has consistently regulated every primary export of the south (intentionally or otherwise). Cotton, alcohol, tobacco, coal, oil, etc have all been systematically regulated. I've witnessed first hand the large swaths of the south that had their communities destroyed by these regulations (most of them). Further, their state governments constantly derided for the last 150 years. Opioids and obesity are also much more impactful (imo unrelated to the government) in the south the opioid epidemic (which is still raging) completely decimated the communities. The dispensary rates are also WAY higher in former confederate states than anywhere else. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html When you combine massive regulation, loss of jobs, obesity, etc it's clear why many southerners look to their heritage when they once had pride in their community, state, country, etc. At the end of the day, the people of the south have slowly seen their culture collapse over the decades and the melting of the statue was kind of the death of it. The burning of their institutions, melting of their statues, and erasure from the history books.
  - techdmn 3y ago
    It seems a little crass to say "it felt like a genocide" considering the horrors of slavery. Similar thoughts regarding erasure from history, given the amount of controversy around whether or not schools should be able to discuss the horrors of slavery.
    - fsloth 3y ago
      ”Genocide” does not mean simply killing, the full definition is broader that. The definition includes ”genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: … (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;” I.e. just eradicating a national identity from a group of people suffices. This is the main reason Ukraine can be considered a genocidal war, for example, to eradicate the Ukrainan state and identity. Similarly it’s not implausible to view the reconstruction period as an attempt to do some culture- and state eradication in the slaver states. Nobody is defending the horrors of slavery. But, state institutions were demolished, a specific cultural identity was attempted to be eradicated. I’ve never visited US south of Colorado but just by reading about it the feeling of genocide comes strong. World is not black or white. Was eradicating the institution of slavery right? Hell yes. Was it right to attempt a bit of genocide on the side? I have personally no frigging clue. I do know it took to 1960’s to complete the process of allowing full citizenship rights with civil rights movement so clearly some things had to settle for over a century. To maintain rule based order we must be committed to view events via the same objective interpretation. The same north-led US was pretty good in genociding the native american nations decades the civil war ended. Just achieving one good thing (ending slavery) does not give a state free pass on all the other things. We (as the western world) try to improve by admitting our failures and trying to do better. This requires first admitting fallibility, and naming things correctly. The current zeitgeist tries to view the world via the infantile manichean lens of victimhood (of pure goodness) and oppression (pure evil). This is a very narrow ethical model, and seldom applicable towars any beneficial goal. Things are complicated. The same state that fought and bled to end slavery also committed multiple genocides during the same historical period. Was reconstruction period an actual genocide? Probably not. Did it use the same methods one would use to implement change that can be categorized as genocide? I’m pretty sure, yes. A point I would like to be argued: I guess it' fair to say that From point of eradicating culture, melting Lee's statue would be comparable to melting a statue of Sitting Bull. Both are representatives of hostile nations towards US, both of which were eradicated. But are there any arguments against this point of view? [0] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_Bull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_Bull
- CryptoBanker 3y ago
  @lettergram, it's not that nuanced. The culture you speak of that you would love to protect literally revolves around the dehumanization of other races
  - marcusverus 3y ago
    The only reason the frame the war as a matter of Southern morality is to distract from its actual stated purpose and to shame a conquered people into silence via revisionist moral smokescreen. The North invaded the South to "preserve the union", and only emancipated the slaves as a "lever" toward that end.[0] The South fought back because it was invaded by a foreign power--one which sought subjugate the South and force its inclusion in the American Empire, contrary to the will of the southern people. This is simply a matter of fact. The men who fought off the invader will always be Southern heroes, and rightfully so. The pretense that it is immoral to defend a revolution while also engaging in slavery is, coming from the land which claims Washington and Jefferson as its greatest heroes, so utterly hypocritical that it's hard to consider it to be a good faith argument. Because it's not. It's moral blackmail. [0]Abe admitted as much in a letter: "My enemies say I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. It is & will be carried on so long as I am President for the sole purpose of restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion without using the Emancipation lever as I have done. Freedom has given us the control of 200,000 able bodied men, born & raised on southern soil. It will give us more yet... My enemies condemn my emancipation policy. Let them prove by the history of this war, that we can restore the Union without it."
    - fsloth 3y ago
      Regarding Abe’s motivations - Abe was one super-canny player (lawyer who read Euclid for fun and spiritual sustenance). I would read anything he wrote as a piece intended to persuade an audience. My point is an audience reading a single quote from a letter from him should not take it at face value. I don’t argue your points as such. In the moral calculus of history slavery needed to end. But there were other motives involved for sure.
      - 3y ago
- huytersd 3y ago
  It’s not complicated. If “culture” is glorifying slavers then that culture should be burned.
  - fsloth 3y ago
    I think one still needs to acknowledge that cultural eradication is painfull to those whose culture is eradicated. If this is necessary, then the basic courtesy would be to acknowledge the pain with empathy. ”Your ancestors were all fucking slavers so we are going to grind their memory to dust” is not really it. Cultural eradication is always traumatic. You can’t heal the wounds by just saying to the victims ”your culture was evil anyway”. Regardless if the culture objectively speaking was based on evil. The trauma will still be caused. The question is not ”who is right and who is wrong” but how we view and analyze actions. In general ”the end justifies the means so we really don’t care about civilian collateral” thinking is not considered anymore healthy way to do politics.
- frob 3y ago
  You are completely off base. Everything you said is a smokescreen and a retroactive narrative built by the KKK and white supremacists between the 1920s and 1960s. The case is very simple: the South fought to keep Black people as slaves. The leaders of the confederacy lead the movement to keep black humans as enslaved property. They lost. The South put up statues of them during reconstruction and Jim crow as part of a system of legalized white supremacy to subjugate Black Americans through systematic terrorism, rape, torture, and brutality. Monuments to these leaders are celebrations of the rape, torture, and enslavement of Black people. It's really quite simple.

by frob 3y ago

fsloth 3y ago

Afaik the linked case of the melting of statue of Lee is more complicated than that. After US civil war north attempted to demolish and rebuild the institutions in the secenniost southern states https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era In a way the melting of the statue can be viewed as a continuation of the northern purges of southern institutions. Twitter/X is crap for nuanced discussion, but a facet of the US history is the tendency of the east coast to crusade over the sensibilities of the other states in a form perceived (rightly or not) as puritan zeal. And as I understand it, not all of the cases are hardly as obvious as the abolishment of slavery. I’m not from US so I might be completely off base though! I don’t follow the white supremacist scene so this might very well be a dog whistle from all I know.

lettergram 3y ago
+1 for it being nuanced, after moving to the south it really was not clear how much this is true. The statue was the embodiment of a heritage / culture. There were bad parts of that culture, but so is there in every culture. However, rarely do we support obliterating other cultures. I'm going to walk through the logic of the people I've met in the south (not necessarily my own opinions). The south was under military occupation for years after the civil war. The north sent teachers from the north to "re-educate" the south. Many of the farms were destroyed and unmaintainable due to the war, deaths, famines, and removal of slaves. Many southerners were not allowed to hold office until there was a pardon issued. They almost had a second civil war in 1877 due to a disputed election - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877 Part of the compromise on the 1877 disputed election was that they removed "reconstruction". In many ways, the south felt a genocide was committed. Their culture, society, wealth, etc was taken from them. We can argue it was justice due to them holding slaves or rebelling, but they left the union peacefully in their minds and wanted to be left alone. Fast forward to today -- the US government has consistently regulated every primary export of the south (intentionally or otherwise). Cotton, alcohol, tobacco, coal, oil, etc have all been systematically regulated. I've witnessed first hand the large swaths of the south that had their communities destroyed by these regulations (most of them). Further, their state governments constantly derided for the last 150 years. Opioids and obesity are also much more impactful (imo unrelated to the government) in the south the opioid epidemic (which is still raging) completely decimated the communities. The dispensary rates are also WAY higher in former confederate states than anywhere else. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html When you combine massive regulation, loss of jobs, obesity, etc it's clear why many southerners look to their heritage when they once had pride in their community, state, country, etc. At the end of the day, the people of the south have slowly seen their culture collapse over the decades and the melting of the statue was kind of the death of it. The burning of their institutions, melting of their statues, and erasure from the history books.
- techdmn 3y ago
  It seems a little crass to say "it felt like a genocide" considering the horrors of slavery. Similar thoughts regarding erasure from history, given the amount of controversy around whether or not schools should be able to discuss the horrors of slavery.
  - fsloth 3y ago
    ”Genocide” does not mean simply killing, the full definition is broader that. The definition includes ”genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: … (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;” I.e. just eradicating a national identity from a group of people suffices. This is the main reason Ukraine can be considered a genocidal war, for example, to eradicate the Ukrainan state and identity. Similarly it’s not implausible to view the reconstruction period as an attempt to do some culture- and state eradication in the slaver states. Nobody is defending the horrors of slavery. But, state institutions were demolished, a specific cultural identity was attempted to be eradicated. I’ve never visited US south of Colorado but just by reading about it the feeling of genocide comes strong. World is not black or white. Was eradicating the institution of slavery right? Hell yes. Was it right to attempt a bit of genocide on the side? I have personally no frigging clue. I do know it took to 1960’s to complete the process of allowing full citizenship rights with civil rights movement so clearly some things had to settle for over a century. To maintain rule based order we must be committed to view events via the same objective interpretation. The same north-led US was pretty good in genociding the native american nations decades the civil war ended. Just achieving one good thing (ending slavery) does not give a state free pass on all the other things. We (as the western world) try to improve by admitting our failures and trying to do better. This requires first admitting fallibility, and naming things correctly. The current zeitgeist tries to view the world via the infantile manichean lens of victimhood (of pure goodness) and oppression (pure evil). This is a very narrow ethical model, and seldom applicable towars any beneficial goal. Things are complicated. The same state that fought and bled to end slavery also committed multiple genocides during the same historical period. Was reconstruction period an actual genocide? Probably not. Did it use the same methods one would use to implement change that can be categorized as genocide? I’m pretty sure, yes. A point I would like to be argued: I guess it' fair to say that From point of eradicating culture, melting Lee's statue would be comparable to melting a statue of Sitting Bull. Both are representatives of hostile nations towards US, both of which were eradicated. But are there any arguments against this point of view? [0] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_Bull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_Bull
CryptoBanker 3y ago
@lettergram, it's not that nuanced. The culture you speak of that you would love to protect literally revolves around the dehumanization of other races
- marcusverus 3y ago
  The only reason the frame the war as a matter of Southern morality is to distract from its actual stated purpose and to shame a conquered people into silence via revisionist moral smokescreen. The North invaded the South to "preserve the union", and only emancipated the slaves as a "lever" toward that end.[0] The South fought back because it was invaded by a foreign power--one which sought subjugate the South and force its inclusion in the American Empire, contrary to the will of the southern people. This is simply a matter of fact. The men who fought off the invader will always be Southern heroes, and rightfully so. The pretense that it is immoral to defend a revolution while also engaging in slavery is, coming from the land which claims Washington and Jefferson as its greatest heroes, so utterly hypocritical that it's hard to consider it to be a good faith argument. Because it's not. It's moral blackmail. [0]Abe admitted as much in a letter: "My enemies say I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. It is & will be carried on so long as I am President for the sole purpose of restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion without using the Emancipation lever as I have done. Freedom has given us the control of 200,000 able bodied men, born & raised on southern soil. It will give us more yet... My enemies condemn my emancipation policy. Let them prove by the history of this war, that we can restore the Union without it."
  - fsloth 3y ago
    Regarding Abe’s motivations - Abe was one super-canny player (lawyer who read Euclid for fun and spiritual sustenance). I would read anything he wrote as a piece intended to persuade an audience. My point is an audience reading a single quote from a letter from him should not take it at face value. I don’t argue your points as such. In the moral calculus of history slavery needed to end. But there were other motives involved for sure.
    - 3y ago
huytersd 3y ago
It’s not complicated. If “culture” is glorifying slavers then that culture should be burned.
- fsloth 3y ago
  I think one still needs to acknowledge that cultural eradication is painfull to those whose culture is eradicated. If this is necessary, then the basic courtesy would be to acknowledge the pain with empathy. ”Your ancestors were all fucking slavers so we are going to grind their memory to dust” is not really it. Cultural eradication is always traumatic. You can’t heal the wounds by just saying to the victims ”your culture was evil anyway”. Regardless if the culture objectively speaking was based on evil. The trauma will still be caused. The question is not ”who is right and who is wrong” but how we view and analyze actions. In general ”the end justifies the means so we really don’t care about civilian collateral” thinking is not considered anymore healthy way to do politics.
frob 3y ago
You are completely off base. Everything you said is a smokescreen and a retroactive narrative built by the KKK and white supremacists between the 1920s and 1960s. The case is very simple: the South fought to keep Black people as slaves. The leaders of the confederacy lead the movement to keep black humans as enslaved property. They lost. The South put up statues of them during reconstruction and Jim crow as part of a system of legalized white supremacy to subjugate Black Americans through systematic terrorism, rape, torture, and brutality. Monuments to these leaders are celebrations of the rape, torture, and enslavement of Black people. It's really quite simple.