> It turns out, private companies exist in a mostly-shared culture and often have similar ideas about how to behave. Currently -- thank god -- deplatforming blatant bigots is generally agreed upon as A Good Thing. No conspiracy here, just good sense.
It currently is recognized as a good thing, but it wasn't before. Before the consensus was "I may disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." That said, a consensus cannot be defended simply because it has previously existed.
> Seriously? White supremacists are now "individuals who promote stability"?
I'm talking about people who opposed defunding the police. In a healthy society, people who supported defunding the police would have been fired from their jobs and sanctioned, but the opposite has happened. 'White supremacy' has been redefined to include fundamental state structures that are required for the functioning of society.
> I mean, yeah, the US has always believed that. The country had basically two starting points, after all: stealing the natives' land, and then later on destroying property as part of a protest.
The United States does not need to justify its existence. Almost every nation in existence today was formed on the backs of millions of deaths, and most of the natives died through communicable disease that was inevitably spread once any european landed on the North American shores. The only major mistakes the United States ever made were 1) allowing the establishment of slavery in North America and 2) trying to spread 'freedom and democracy' around the world.
Otherwise, the United States is responsible for almost all fundamental technology that the developed world employs and may (hopefully) be responsible for spreading human life to another planet. If the latter happens, then that alone justifies the sins of the United States.
No, I'm not saying you are imagining. I suspect (not state) that you are biased, and describe the issue larger than what it is.
> I provided a link to lots of articles about white supremacy in the US. It is you who have provided no counter-evidence.
And I can give you a link to Google, when you can find anything.
You just provided a link with the list of white supremacist organisations. Nobody denies these organisation exists.
But there is no proof that "white supremacists" have significant power. They look like small marginal groups with no money and no real power. Like religious sects.
> It's not like none of us know what a white supremacist is -- we've all seen their rhetoric, have dismissed it, and no longer feel inclined to re-litigate the issue.
I actually don't think a lot of people know what a white supremacist is after seeing who has been slapped with that label in the past few years. The rhetoric around a lot of these issues is very disingenuous these days.
So while you're correct that white supremacy is an argument or philosophy that is easily dismissed, but who gets that label is very contentious indeed even though it seems like it should be straightforward.
>It’s American culture which includes everyone that wants to participate. I don’t know why you associate that with white supremacy.
I'm not associating American culture with white supremacy. You are using the exact same rhetoric that white supremacists use. I don't know if you are just trolling me, if you are a legitimate white supremacist, or if you are just completely ignorant of your rhetoric.
In case it is the latter, I will be clear and direct and tell you that white supremacists use the same terms and phrases you use about "interlopers" waging "war" against and "destroying liberal western tradition and culture". If you aren't one, you really should be more mindful about how you speak on this subject. There are ways to convey your views without coming off like a bigot trying to watch their words which is exactly what you sound like in these last few comments.
> Have you ever met someone who believed in The Great Replacement or White Genocide? Its basically a conspiracy theory: these people are not rational anymore. No amount of arguing can convince them otherwise.
What is your plan for these people then? Kill them? Put them in reeducation camps? Deport them?
Like it or not, these people exist and they're not going anywhere. We can either:
1) be intolerant towards them, thus making them form their own communities and grow more and more extreme because they're surrounded by like minded people.
2) be tolerant towards them, and try to change their beliefs.
Do you think that thes people are more likely to change their views if the rest of society is intolerant towards them and the only people they talk to are other white nationalist? Or if society does act treat them with tolerance, and they interact with more non-white-nationalists.
If we treat them with intolerance, then the only community they will find is with other white nationalists. If we do this, the problem is going to get worse and there are going to be more attacks.
> I have seen zero proposed solutions or ways of combating the rise of white supremacists
No, you have only missed them. The solution is exactly free speech and more of it. These days people are often suppressed when they voice a concern that touches certain topics, i.e. immigration, religion and particularly Islam, anti-semitism, rapid changes of demographics and many more. Media oppression and flat out censorship do not make a stop to the opinions they try to suppress. They just drive them away, to hidden forums, to non-mainstream platforms, to dark web.
So instead of shunning white supremacists from media - tolerate them on and challenge them with arguments, explain how they are wrong, educate them, ridicule their nonsense; but never censor them.
> I'm going to go ahead and say it's ok to deny the concerns of white supremacists
All of their concerns? I'm sure you realize that people don't pick up an ideology like that unless it looks like their society isn't functioning.
White supremacy is an answer in search of a question, and the question need not (and ought not) be posed.
We shouldn't be ignoring the concerns of the radical Communists either; that doesn't mean we all should become Communists and repeat the atrocities of Stalin. Likewise, we don't need to become National Socialists in order to ease the pains that make them turn to the ideology.
You point to racist policies. These can very well have a racist motivation behind them, some certainly do. But they aren't from a culture, there are specific racist actors behind them.
I believe the strategy to be afraid of "tools" white supremacists might happen to use is infantile. Real and convinced white supremacists are rare, so far so good. If every action you take is informed by fear, it won't lead to solid decisions.
> the racists and white supremacists take over because the only thing anyone is allowed to do to stop them is to politely and civilly debate them.
There are 300,000,000 million Americans each with his or her own free will and ability to determine right from wrong. So you're saying they are just sheep and do things blindly?
The real changes, the ones that lasted generations, the things that made America truly great, were done because free speech convinced people to change their minds.
>This might be more convincing if Nazism and white surpemacy weren't themselves entirely predicated on violence.
If people were generally accurate about who is and isn't a Nazi or White Supremacist, this line of thinking might have merit (i.e., the idea that some types of thinking are inherently violent and must be suppressed at the level of speech, but of course who decides that?). But, observing political discourse over the past few years, people are not generally anywhere close to accurate about who is a Nazi or a White Supremacist. So what instead happens is a lot of people who aren't Nazis or White Supremacists get punched and milkshaked as collateral damage, and perhaps they are the majority of the damage.
As a followup, a person could reasonably contend that Socialism and Communism are entirely predicated on violence. They certainly have huge body counts, and consistently. And then you have people who think that Capitalism is predicated on violence. And suddenly everyone is punching everybody and we stop talking to each other, all because you wanted to punch a Nazi.
> Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful.
...you realize where this goes, right?
Like -- suppose you're right; and suppose you're given the power to suppress all such harmful discussions. You apply it. No more such discussion. Great.
Now suppose this occurs but in fact you're wrong. We must then ask: How would you find out that you're wrong?
Well, in such a case, you probably wouldn't. I guess you might find out when the chickens, whatever they are, finally came home to roost. But ideally one wants to find out before then. Better hope the chickens are merely bad rather than catastrophic, seeing as you've been doing absolutely no planning for this case. And hopefully they come sooner rather than later.
(And that's assuming you're a reasonable person who would actually admit error at that point; see below.)
I mean, really... illiberalism, it always goes the same way. You think it's discussion that's harmful? Have you seen the alternative? Because, I mean, examples abound, and how it goes is pretty clear. You're talking about going down a path dominated by humanity's worst tribal instincts. I should hope that's not what you want -- but that's where that path leads. By the time the far-off disaster occurs, do you think it'll be people like you, who are capable of thinking clearly but just think certain discussions should be suppressed, who are going to be running the show? No, it'll the people who are the least reflective, the most tribal, the most doublethinky.
Liberalism, free speech, when working properly, is supposed to work as a negative feedback loop. If you're wrong, you find out. Someone contradicts you, supplies arguments, and then you can consider them and see whether they might be right. As a lot of people have noted, it... doesn't exactly always succeed at this. But suppression of speech... hoo boy, that fails so much harder. That's how you get positive feedback loops. As the professed beliefs of the group get further and further from reality, simultaneously the requirements that you agree, the punishments for disagreeing, get stricter and harsher. You sure as hell don't find the truth that way.
Truth, now... I notice that's something you didn't even mention at all. Because some of the points made in that memo, are, as best as people can currently tell, true. You haven't made any claims about to truth or falsity, only about harmfulness. But do you think the harmfulness of the claims in that memo exceed the harmfulness of shitty civilizational epistemic practices? (Nature can't be fooled, as they say!)
Like, OK, bad epistemic practices might not seem that bad, might seem like a worthwhile tradeoff, if you imagine suppression of specific facts or claims or discussions as an isolated thing. Maybe we don't need to know literally everything. But that's not how it goes. Free speech, liberalism, these are ideas that are unnatural to people, they had to be learned, and they are constantly seeking ways to slip them off or and go back to full-on tribalism (or pervert them in service of it). You may want suppression of particular claims... you will get the bad old days. The positive-feedback loop of doom.
Claims don't exist in isolation, after all; claims have relations between them. You can't just suppress one claim, because people will rederive it from other claims. And if the claim you suppress happens to be correct? Then people will definitely rederive it. So either surrounding claims have to go, or the process of inference itself has to go. Likely both. In fact definitely the latter; you can peel off surrounding claims all you want but eventually you'll have to attack inference itself. And hey, it happens already that people are constantly eager to do that anyway! They only need a little push... and then oops, there's your positive feedback loop. Once you encourage people to use bad methods, they'll use them to reach all sorts of bad conclusions... I expect many of them will surprise you!
(And what is the scope of this suppression? Shall the hidden truth be kept alive in the academy, say, with a strict cordon, so that the facts may be known by the chosen few but never applied outside where it might be necessary? Shall those who wish to learn a subject have to first learn only the public parts, and then apply to join, to learn the hidden secrets? Or shall it extend even to them? Is the pursuit of truth itself something that must simply be forbidden?)
It's a dark road you're suggesting here -- and not a new one; an old one, an ancient one, one whose failures we know very well. I'll take whatever harmfulness the truth might pose over that any day. I don't think it can really hold a candle to that."
Recent experience would say: not a whole lot. Well, maybe elect them president. You know, real scary stuff for the white supremacists.
> Except the vast majority of people who are iffy about what's going on aren't supremacists of any sort.
So is your entire complaint that, in truth, you believe in the goals that BLM has, you just are really miffed by their characterization of you as a "white supremacist", which carries too negative a connotation, and because of that you just can't bring yourself to support them?
I mean it's really easy to acknowledge that one benefits from white supremacy. I do, all the time. That doesn't inherently make me a bad person, it makes me a (white) person who lives in a society. That I happen to benefit from the same structures that put other people down, on its own, doesn't impact my moral character. What I do with that knowledge though, now that does.
> First, you're creating such a stark false dichotomy that it's hard not to wonder if it's somehow deliberate.
Perhaps you might enlighten us as to why this is a false dichotomy, and what other options there are.
> Second
You cannot run a company that perpetuates white supremacy without implicitly supporting that white supremacy, whether you know it or not. I've already been clearly told that malice and intent are not required.
Or are you genuinely going to make the case that "someone who supports white supremacy" is not interchangeable with "white supremacist?" I'm not interested in debating your personal redefinitions of terms.
>For instance, consider white supremacy: if you give people a choice between social groups and make them feel welcome, they can use simple, self-serving logic to join the one that meets their needs. White supremacy doesn't help white people, rationally, it's just stupid, except for very convoluted goals.
Doesn't the fact that white supremacists groups still get members contradict your idea here that people won't join them?
>Just because I believe that the government is an immoral actor or believe in 'conspiracy theories' like 9-11 being an inside job does not make me a white supremacist.
True. But anti-feminism, white supremacy and the beliefs being described are fundamentally, conspiracy theories, and the culture of conspiracy theory does tend to embrace these ideologies. The sets may not overlap perfectly, but they do overlap.
It's not hard to find someone who believes that 9/11 was an inside job and who also blames it on a Jewish conspiracy. That sort of thing is so common as to be banal.
> Look at the rise of white fascism in America. It grew out of the free-speech open dialogue wild west internet (4chan, 8chan etc) and became so radical that it's racked up quite a body count thus far.
This is incredibly misinformed. White fascism in the US predates the internet[1].
> For me and many others, [white supremacy] has a much broader definition.
I call this the Humpty Dumpty theory of language [1]. The term "white supremacy" already has a well-established definition: the belief that white people are genetically superior to non-white people and therefore white people should dominate society [2]. I would give you the benefit of the doubt that you were unaware of this, but that is manifestly not the case. You just decided to use your own definition, and to do so tacitly. I think that is reprehensible. Imagine if someone called you (say) a rapist and then tried to justify that by saying, "I suspect your definition of rapist is different than mine." Yes, my definition (a.k.a. the dictionary definition) of "white supremacist" is different than your postmodern SJW version. That doesn't make what you said any less pejorative.
And yes, I'm a white European male living in a culture that has been largely shaped and is currently still dominated by other white European males. And yes, there are a lot of white European males out there doing all kinds of fucked up things. There's not much I can do about that. If you think that I should be ashamed because I have a Y chromosome and my skin is white then you are no better than the people who say the same thing about women and black people.
> We all must work to unravel it.
Why must we do that? Personally, I think it's enough if we treat our fellow humans with respect and judge them by what they say and do rather than their skin color or gender or ethnic and cultural background. But apparently even that is too much to expect in some quarters.
> This suggest the problem is my lack of ability to understand, when the problem is there is no longer a common definition.
The only misunderstanding seems to be yours. We can clearly identify white nationalists as actual Nazis, no redefinition required.
> Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and corporations.
No one is saying that corporations can't censor things. I am saying that this is not censorship. Facebook deplatforming you is not the same as censoring you.
> maybe the principle is race after all?
The only thing we're discussing here is the deplatforming of white nationalist content from Facebook. Bringing other races or religions and their extremism in is totally tangential at best, and actively disingenuous at worst.
> Are you well read on the topic, or is this just a casual opinion that sounds about right?
There are many examples in the news recently. Here's one I read just the other day: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/trumps-rh... White nationalist speech creates hate crimes; the correlation appears clear to me. Of course, it also seems logical to me without any sources, so sources are just a nice bonus.
> Can you think of any possible undesirable reactions (regardless of the soundness of the logic underlying the motivation) to this type of policy?
Essentially your argument seems to boil down to: we shouldn't create good policies because crazy extremists might have bad reactions to them. But crazy extremists have bad reactions to everything. We should be trying to deplatform and deconvert extremists instead of catering to their sensitive tastes. If that offends them and causes them to lash out, that is unfortunate, but they'll do that anyway. At least if they do it to this there might be less of them in the future.
> If everything is random, why even bother with policies like this, or any at all?
While you can't control how people react to what you do, you can do what you believe is right and hope it has a good outcome in the future. Facebook apparently agrees with me.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary, corporate policies, and by critical theorists.
> Who's intention? The 'racism redefiners'? If they're a large group, how can they all have a unified intention? Is there some manifesto you can point to, or something that exposes the 'intention'?
Critical theorist leftists who started the racism hysteria.
> Flavours
Yeah, that's a better term for it.
> do you have any evidence to show that this is a commonly held view?
We're in the middle of a culture war that's been going on for years. Controversy means there are many people on both sides.
> Let's leave aside that the racist roots behind many political groups (e.g. Klan, Nazis) go back decades if not way into the 19th century.
We're not talking about the Klan or the Nazis, both of those groups are effectively defunct. We're talking about modern white supremacists, which are a different breed.
> Your argument here is like saying that a rise in domestic violence is being spurred by feminist ideas.
My belief is that people tend to react predictably to certain ways of being treated, that includes the adoption of extremism. Where do you think extremism comes from?
> No one is making racists more extreme.
That claim is patently false, racial tensions have risen DRAMATICALLY over the past decade. Stefan Molyneux might be an example, he started off as a sort of libertarian philosopher and slowly adopted more and more extreme views as of the past few years.
> Firstly, to consolidate power, the far-leftists would need to be in power.
The dominant culture is far-left and controls academia, mainstream news, the major tech corporations, and many (most?) Democratic representatives.
I haven't replied to your other assertions because you seem to be reading a lot into who I am and what I stand for that you have no way of realistically knowing.
"Please explain why identifying the work of white supremacists and similar pustules as their work, and suggesting that decent people should not help them make that work "
That's really easy.
The statement 'America is a meritocracy' is not remotely a phrase or statement supporting White Supremacy.
The fact any reasonable person would try to put such an innocuous statement in the camp of 'White Supremacy' makes me afraid.
>“hate groups” exist in the USA because this is a free country. In places without our commitment to freedom and human rights those type of groups would have been suppressed by the government.
Looking at the history of the KKK, for instance, I find this assertion frankly laughable. The KKK flourished then withered as a pretty direct measure of its government support, not because of some worthy indifference to the organisation. And if you stand up against them, as the Panthers did, well even the NRA will suddenly support gun control.
It currently is recognized as a good thing, but it wasn't before. Before the consensus was "I may disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." That said, a consensus cannot be defended simply because it has previously existed.
> Seriously? White supremacists are now "individuals who promote stability"?
I'm talking about people who opposed defunding the police. In a healthy society, people who supported defunding the police would have been fired from their jobs and sanctioned, but the opposite has happened. 'White supremacy' has been redefined to include fundamental state structures that are required for the functioning of society.
> I mean, yeah, the US has always believed that. The country had basically two starting points, after all: stealing the natives' land, and then later on destroying property as part of a protest.
The United States does not need to justify its existence. Almost every nation in existence today was formed on the backs of millions of deaths, and most of the natives died through communicable disease that was inevitably spread once any european landed on the North American shores. The only major mistakes the United States ever made were 1) allowing the establishment of slavery in North America and 2) trying to spread 'freedom and democracy' around the world.
Otherwise, the United States is responsible for almost all fundamental technology that the developed world employs and may (hopefully) be responsible for spreading human life to another planet. If the latter happens, then that alone justifies the sins of the United States.
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