Water Dog wrote:To a great extent that's what Trump is. He's the guy who's representing a segment of the population that feels like their voice has been censored in various ways. And now what's going on, the exact same crap. We're doing it again. No lessons learned. The behavior from the left and the media over the past two years is increasing the divisions even further. People are way more suspicious of the media than ever before.
I guess that even the racists and conspiracy mongers need their safe spaces, or they’ll get their feelings hurt and will lash out, which will then be everyone else’s fault.
Water Dog wrote:To a great extent that's what Trump is. He's the guy who's representing a segment of the population that feels like their voice has been censored in various ways. And now what's going on, the exact same ____. We're doing it again. No lessons learned. The behavior from the left and the media over the past two years is increasing the divisions even further. People are way more suspicious of the media than ever before.
I guess that even the racists and conspiracy mongers need their safe spaces, or they’ll get their feelings hurt and will lash out, which will then be everyone else’s fault.
The only way you can defuse Trump's appeal is by the media spending all its time debating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories with xenophobes and fascists. It's political science.
What constantly amazes me is how the modern right decries victim mentality when it comes to folks who aren't white or feminists, when their own culture is one giant victim mentality. And because they are being victimized, they blame others for their own actions. it's a complete caricature of the Republican party i've known for most of my life.
The modern right is a product of decades of right-wing media. The central message of Rush Limbaugh et al is "you should be afraid" and "you should be resentful of black folks, of brown folks, and of liberals." Again, while they accuse liberals of engaging in the politics of resentment, it's what they actually do en masse.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
I think the answer to awful speech is more speech denouncing the awful speech, not outlawing speech certain groups don't like. Besides, I think people can see right through what a lot of these nut jobs are peddling and we don't need some net nanny telling us what to think or what we can or cannot say. Doesn't the MAD board like to ban speech it doesn't like?
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
Exiled wrote:I think the answer to awful speech is more speech denouncing the awful speech, not outlawing speech certain groups don't like. Besides, I think people can see right through what a lot of these nut jobs are peddling and we don't need some net nanny telling us what to think or what we can or cannot say. Doesn't the MAD board like to ban speech it doesn't like?
The problem with this idea is that the folks likely to act on the hate speech aren't likely to encounter any of the speech countering their views because they've been conditioned to believe everything except their Right Wing sources is lies. The first step of any cult is to convince the followers that everyone else is lying and only you are telling them the truth.
So why bother listening to the other side at all? More counter-speech in the free-speech arena isn't going to solve the problem at all if all the violent types aren't listening. It is very much like how Mormonism has conditioned millions of Mormons to shun anything that resembles criticism of the Church because it is "anti-Mormon." On the political level, "Liberal" is the equivalent to that. This is two decades of FOX News indoctrination coming to fruition...that nothing from the media can be trusted. Unless it is from them, of course.
Water Dog wrote:You're right, I didn't send much time on gab. I was responding to EAllusion's one-sided description of the situation, as if revoking the free speech of these people is justified.
It is justified when it is hate speech. That you blurted out GAB is just another example of you shooting yourself in the foot.
We do suspend, queue, and ban people for engaging in threatening behavior or inciting the same, yes. Overall, this board is significantly more tightly regulated than Twitter is. Twitter is a virtual free-for-all. Almost every single post I see moderated would fly on Twitter.
The central conceit here is that conservatives, or even bigots, are being banned for the mere expression of their point of view. That’s not true. Alex Jones was banned for an abusive behavior violation after repeatedly getting away with it. He wasn’t banned simply for having Alex Jones views.
This is the comments section about Green Bay Packers' Ty Montgomery disregarding his coach's direction to take a knee in order to give Rodgers two minutes and one timeout for a last drive against the Rams (he fumbled a kickoff return):
Social media totally distorts how we all view one another, how we communicate, and how we react to vitriol. This in the new norm, and it applies to every aspect of public discourse now.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Kevin Graham wrote: The first step of any cult is to convince the followers that everyone else is lying and only you are telling them the truth.
This can be a problem with the left as well when support of team left in order to thwart the crazies on team right gets in the way of the issues. [I am a disappointed Obama supporter who thought he was going to stop the wars, prosecute war crimes and bankers, and give us a healthcare bill not written by the insurance companies] Also, sometimes even the devil tells the truth and should be allowed to do so.
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
Incidentally, if your concern is limiting the influence of racist conspiracy theories, you are far better off not giving them an audience. Giving an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory the appearance of legitimate debate to a large audience does more to spread it than debating it does to limit it. That’s just bad strategy. If abstract commitment to airing all views is your interest, that’s ostensibly noble, but why is hearing someone argue for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories so important that it deserves limited attentional resources over the endless list of other things that could be said?
