Comment by fiblye
9 years ago
Point A is something people don't realize they need to be careful with. The terms "racist" and "sexist" have been so overused and reduced to meaninglessness in the past few years, that true sexism and racism have been allowed to grow and become publicly visible. People can just brush off or even proudly own up to accusations because it's been so wrongly applied so often.
"Nazi" used to be a thing that people used to call politicians they didn't like online. Now everyone is calling everybody a nazi everywhere. It'll get to a "Who cares if they're a nazi?" point pretty quickly.
Yep and you lose (in a general sense) a convenient way of summarising a narrow and dangerous political ideology for a moments gratification in saying "Don't listen them, they are a Nazi".
I don't call someone a Nazi unless they are literally a Nazi, I don't call them a Fascist unless they are literally a Fascist and I don't call them a Communist because they think that maybe corporations shouldn't have the game rigged in their favour and own the pitch.
The part I really like is when I've been attacked by people with largely similar views to my own for sticking up for the rights of people to hold different views.
If you think your argument is stronger, then make the damn argument, don't resort to name calling and lazy "but he's a Foo and we all know that Foo's can never be right, stupid Foo's".
There are people on the hard-right in the UK I can't stand and there are some who have some valid points, you can accept the validity of some points without accepting the argument.
Also while I'm venting, I fucking hate "what aboutism", "Foo's have been doing <bad things>" "yeah but what about what the Bars did"...yeah both Foo and Bar can be cunts at the same time, We are talking about Foo in this instance, lets get to Bar's later.
My philosophy is "You have a right to think whatever you want, You don't have any rights to make me think it".
I'd rather have reasonable debate over a wide range of issues than furious debate over a narrow spectrum as Chomsky warned about in Manufacturing Consent (I think, I need to re-read that book).
> My philosophy is "You have a right to think whatever you want, You don't have any rights to make me think it".
Sure, but what happens when people thinking whatever they want are able to affect national policy, even if they aren't a majority? You get the Trump administration... or worse.
> I don't call someone a Nazi unless they are literally a Nazi
What's a "literal Nazi" to you then? A member of the historical NSDAP?
edit: Also, note while you're all talking to each other and patting yourself on the back about how you're so great at discussing ideas, none of you even tried answer my question: what more due process do you require? Do you disagree with the assessment?
This reminds me of a comment on HN I read recently, where someone said they had to insert a delay into a website so customers would think they're doing some really serious data crunching (which they did, but just too quickly for it to "feel" that way -- for people who don't know what's going on, at all).
Since no one answered your question about how much due process is needed, let me take a stab at it. To paraphrase the article, due process requires that the rules be known in advance, and that they be applied non-arbitrarily to each accused violator. I would also add that the rules should be as specific as possible, since vague terms like "hateful ideology" can be applied to almost anything controversial.
So for example, if an organization was going to censor certain political websites, they should specify precisely what is not allowed: Advocating socialism? The killing of non-combatants? etc.
If the rules are only going to be applied at the whims of the Twitter mob, then that should be posted in advance: "You will be in violation if you advocate for race-based killing AND there are at least 10,000 tweets in a single day condemning you."
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Pretty much or at least an organisation that adheres to all or the preponderance of the tenets of the ideology.
While I might suspect the Stormfronters would like to do that I don't know that they would, authoritarian fascists, sure, Nazi's not really.
Maybe it's because I like history and I've read a lot about WWII and the factors that led up to it but I'm careful with the world Nazi.
Been a race supremacist doesn't mean Nazi because logically a Black Panther would also be a Nazi then.
Been hard-right doesn't make you a Nazi because then the Republican party would be Nazi's.
Been pro-eugenics doesn't make you a Nazi because then the government of the UK, US and USSR where Nazi (in the early 20th century).
Been pro-nationalism doesn't make you a Nazi because then well half the governments on the planet would be Nazi's.
Been a race supremacist, hard right and pro-eugenics and nationalist just might.
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