Following this banned content and this discussion: provide that “fascism-communism equivalence” and “horse-shoe theory” serve only to legitimize fascists, would you (@all) find clearer adding to the policy that this kind of content is not welcome on this instance?
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There is room for plenty of healthy discussion without entertaining arguments as idiotic as “the Nazis were actually leftists.” The user deserved the ban. Perhaps you can reform some people who’s brains are this poisoned, but there is a balancing act between dignifying these beliefs with a response and fostering a community where no one feels threatened or excluded. It boils down to the paradox of tolerance, and it raises the question of what the objective of this community is. Personally, I’d rather have marginalized folks feel welcome than relitigate the merits of fascism.
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It is a matter to decide whether we can afford to welcome in the public discourse the ideas that these literally-two people, bearing in mind that we expose the community to nazi scum and in the end marginalize the already-marginalized folks. I think those literally-two people have all the tools to educate themselves on the subject in a safe environment for their growth, whereas the existence of marginalized folks is already at stake.
I see no harm asking people do their homework if they can afford to do their homework. If they don’t, it is at best intellectual laziness and it is safe to avoid spending time in explaining why their idea is stigmatized.
Slighty related: free sexism consulting, a concept that can be generalized.
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Thank you. This very nicely summarizes the concerns that also I have with a strictly-no-horseshoe-theory policy.
The highlights were clear to me, very sorry if my wordings may have suggested the opposite. :(((
The rest is cool, Germany included. ;)
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See below and redirect them to materials they can affordably study.
Thanks for the feedback. I do not agree and I try to argue.
First of all, bigotry is a no-go for this instance. Secondly, horse-shoe theory is propaganda.
secondly: propaganda
I know this story since it was told by relatives of mine too and I suspect it goes far beyond anybody’s relatives. Horse-shoe theory is blatant anti-progressivist propaganda made up by conservatives and double-edging libs:
So, in the time one distinguishes oneself from sorta historical scoundrel, the nazis-conservatives alliance spills over, conservatives promote their anti-social agenda, and nazis do the dirty work. In this way, each others present their reciprocal support less demeaning.
Why the association fallacy does not backfire against conservatives may be suggested in this video (the specific case can be generalized).
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As third, alt-right & friends currently use horse-shoe theory as crowbar in online communities. It is hard to distinguish the crowbar discussions from discussions in good faith but the false negative cases (one is understood as non-fascist being fascist) is more dangerous than false positive ones (one is understood as fascist being non-fascist). All in all, an account is an account is an account so banning it when one can make a new one (even w/o an e-mail) is not a loss for the community.
Last, if a long-running account which is undoubtedly in good faith asks for clarification, there should be a way to handle it. A master post, a FAQ, even the Code of Conduct itself can give some insight why the theory is out of discussion here. In this way, when one looks for explanation, also they can realize why that kind of content is not welcome here, mainly because the concept is used to deliver harmful contents and politics.
Is it necessarily propaganda? Genuine question. I have not heard of the horseshoe theory by name before - full disclosure: I have no formal education in politics, have never read any significant political work, however I do like to discuss political ideas. I remember years ago discussing this same idea at school with friends, where we said that it seemed to be like a ring rather than a straight line, and if you go far enough in one direction, you end up in the same place as if you went far enough in the opposite direction.
Obviously we were young and naive, but there was no propaganda here, no bad faith. Rather it was merely an observation we had made independently based on the shallow treatment of the subject we had received through school.
Having just read about the horseshoe theory on rational wiki, I can see how it has been abused by right-of-centre people to dismiss left wing ideas. However that doesn’t mean that everyone who sees some kind of equivalence between extreme right and extreme left is doing so in order to push that particular agenda.
At least not consciously, surely?
(I lost my long post so I try to be concise :)
I skip the part about how horseshoe theory is used with circularity.
I just briefly add that the “circularity” of the theory is used both by centrists to eventually dismiss any difference btw. nazism and communism/anarchism/etc., and by red-brown/nazbols/querfront/third-position personalities to poison the weel
)
Thanks for the feedback! Intention has never been in question because - luckily, and hopefully - is inscrutable. Hence, actions and responsibility count.
The topic is community policies and the question is: how to prevent a safe/r community environment to be disrupted, and how the policies can help this goal.
Actors can sinergically engineer this environment with harsh and tendentious communication. The ones who benefit environments with harsh and tendentious communication are the fittest, who are likely to be the privileged people plenty of time, attention, patience, awareness, studies, gab, … resources in general. The society many lives mirrors these conditions, hence one might expect with significant confidence the same ((hegemonic?)[https://lemmy.ml/post/35363/comment/8102]) dynamics of marginalization overflows the community if no one sets the margins.
If I’m understanding you right, then I think it might be better for this case to have a less specific rule. So the rule might say, “propaganda - viz the deliberate misrepresentation of facts or theories to promote your political beliefs - is not allowed here and will result in your account being banned. An example of such would be pushing the horseshoe theory to undermine socialist or communist discussion”
Additionally the policy should involve a series of warnings in all but really egregious cases.
I do understand the problem caused by these bad actors, but one of their aims is to aggravate division and prevent free and constructive discussion and I think we should take care to ensure they do not succeed in that.
I put an upvote but I do not agree.
I do not get the last paragraph since we are discussing exactly about that. Is that a rethorical repeating or am I missing something? The question is whether/how policies can help to reach that goal.
About degrees of warning: they are already in the CoC.
keeping this here because someone said i shouldn’t have deleted it, frankly i deleted it because i don’t really wanna argue about this, i only talk about politics in a community i’ve been in for upwards of 2 years, and even there i don’t enjoy discussing it. I don’t even know why i made this comment in the first place. And I understand this platform has a lot of leftists (probably a vast majority) and they wouldn’t like nazis or whatever here. So… Please ignore what I said. Pre-deletion message is below this.
Yeah, like is said on https://minds.com:
That is, banning people who disagree with you is worthless and will not change their minds, and like you said, will probably make their negative belief stronger.
I heard about that site from Daryl Davis, I think on his episode of The Joe Rogan Experience (I don’t usually watch him, I’ve seen like 2 vids from him, daryl davis and edward snowden)
If you don’t know who that is, he’s the black musician who converted 200+ KKK members (some indirectly, some as a direct result of him talking to them over a long period of time)
I have a feeling the viability of someone being able to do this on a consistent basis is way overblown. One issue is that if it was viable, a movement like this would have gained serious momentum. I don’t like using this argument because it discredits pioneers of new movements, but it is worth mentioning because Nazism, neo-Nazism, the KKK, etc. are not new problems. They have existed for centuries and attempts to tolerate them, coddle them, and change their minds has done nothing but allowed them to fester.
In fact, the rhetoric of Daryl Davis is nothing new. It is a pattern that has that bared its face again and again with the liberal whitewashing and fetishisation of non-violence with MLK, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, etc. We are asked to use the power of friendship and love while fascists arm themselves and at no point have any intention of having a discussion in good faith.
When someone has an upside down understanding of history where they say that Communist and Fascists are the same, it is better not to engage them. Let them spew their shit elsewhere.
edit: you shouldn’t have deleted your post. i think it was a good point but i just wanted to present my thoughts on it.
Okay, I just undeleted it.
I thought this platform allowed you to view deleted comments though.
I usually don’t get involved in politics outside of a select discord server where I’ve known the community for around 2 years. So when I saw a reply I just deleted the comment because I didn’t really want to argue.
And that edit explains why I got multiple emails about this, I assumed they were replies to your reply though.
I believe this is only if the moderators remove your comment. If you delete your own comments/posts/account, they do not appear in the mod log.
Hmm okay. I guess since there’s an undelete button I assumed that meant that it was still accessible. But I guess that’s probably not the best idea in case they shared personal info they don’t want out there.
That is a faulty premise to begin with. Social media platforms are not a Daryl Davis situation. The scope is not about changing the minds of the few facist users this way. You certainly will not accomplish this by carving out a wide berth for them to operate. In giving them unfettered theater to normalize their propaganda they will radicalize far more than you can change the minds of a few Klan members. It’s a net negative. That’s probably one of their most effective MO. It’s the really the essence of what we’ve been observing on the web.
There’s no need to dance around these silly charades because it’s just another pry bar.
If someone wants to take it upon themselves to personally chat with a neo-Nazi and be a Daryl Davis then that’s their prerogative. If you snoop their private communications and banish them off the internet entirely then maybe we start to have an equivalence to what you propose.
Yeah, the key to what daryl did was probably that it was in person and he has a lot of patience, and it was done over a long period of time.
Anyway, please ignore what I said earlier, I don’t really like discussing politics and I don’t really know why I made that comment in the first place. I deleted it for that reason but undeleted it after u/ksynwa told me i shouldn’t have deleted it. I should have added something to the original comment when I did that.