Comment by vkou
9 years ago
The Pirate Bay and Lizard Squad aren't an existential threat to our society. Neither is ISIS. Fascism and white supremacy is.
9 years ago
The Pirate Bay and Lizard Squad aren't an existential threat to our society. Neither is ISIS. Fascism and white supremacy is.
That's just hyperbolic. An ideology that has as few individuals as white supremacy does is hardly an existential crisis. Unless, of course, there is reason to believe more people will be pushed to white supremacy in the future, which is proposterous. For what reason would more and more people be pushed to extreme ends of identity politics? Truly a mystery.
Let's say you're right.
I'd think that isolating this group is a poor strategy.
Look at terrorist camps in Pakistan where children are indoctrinated from a young age with radical ideas.
Is the solution here to build a wall or to improve education and spread new ideas?
The truth is that you can never build a high enough wall.
"We often meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it."
who said it had to be either or. It can be both.
This is where the analogy breaks down though. If we reach a place where the internet itself is fragmented, then I will no longer be able to access trash like the Daily Stormer, and the child of a radical will no longer be able to access the content that I see.
At this point, the wall will be too high to effectively toss education / ideas over, the internet being the primary form of communication.
So you think we should be debating the nazis about whether or not we should consider genocide?
The problem is that there aren't two sides here. Even engaging, at all, legitimizes the notion that this type of idea is up for debate. It's not.
We can try to stem the flow of people into radicalization and extremism. Guess how that's done? By shifting the window of acceptable rhetoric--ie, ignoring their offered ideas and debate--until it's very clearly not within social bounds to be a nazi. And we're trying to do that.
But to engage with the nazis themselves, no. We need to make it such that espousing those ideas--visibly being a neonazi, running hate sites like the daily stormer--means being lonely, isolated, and powerless. And by showing that when nazis try to pry their way in, they will be hurt, there will be violence, and nobody will be sympathetic. Make it so nobody will join them, ever. and we do that by stamping out their propaganda, by not allowing a single resource to be used by them.
> engaging, at all, legitimizes the notion that this type of idea is up for debate. It's not.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
All ideas are up for debate.
> shifting the window of acceptable rhetoric
I agree
> ignoring their offered ideas and debate
This has no bearing on the people whose ideas you are ignoring, it merely reinforces the notion of an acceptable idea within the already existing good-idea-population. So no.
> they will be hurt, there will be violence, and nobody will be sympathetic
So, espousing violence against a group of people. Here the group of people are defined by the fact that they use violence to achieve their means.
Surely, you are not defining this group by their beliefs of racial superiority, as you would not say the same thing if they were merely writing nonviolent blog posts, would you?
* Your anger and hatred have led you to become the very thing that you set out to hate. *
You should be very scared of the world you're creating. I know I am.
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