It’s not impossible for a general-interest site to take a stand against white supremacy or a regime that supports it, by the way. This just came to my attention.
Here’s the full text:
The following policy announcement is the result of over a year of serious debate by the moderation team. The decision is as close to unanimous as we ever get. It will not be the subject of further debate. We have fully considered the downsides and ultimately decided we have to stay true to our values. We will not pretend that evil isn’t evil, or that it becomes a legitimate difference of political opinion if you put a suit and tie on it.
We are banning support of Donald Trump or his administration on the RPGnet forums. This is because his public comments, policies, and the makeup of his administration are so wholly incompatible with our values that formal political neutrality is not tenable. We can be welcoming to (for example) persons of every ethnicity who want to talk about games, or we can allow support for open white supremacy. Not both. Below will be an outline of the policy and a very incomplete set of citations.
We have a community here that we’ve built carefully over time, and support for elected hate groups aren’t welcome here. We can’t save the world, but we can protect and care for the small patch that is this board.
Policy outline:
- We are banning support of the administration of President Trump. You can still post on RPG.net even if you do in fact support the administration — you just can’t talk about it here.
- We are absolutely not endorsing the Democrats nor are we banning all Republicans.
- We are certainly not banning conservative politics, or anything on the spectrum of reasonable political viewpoints. We assert that hate groups and intolerance are categorically different from other types of political positions, and that confusing the two legitimizes bigotry and hatred.
- We are not going to have a purge — we will not be banning people for past support. Though if your profile picture is yourself in a MAGA hat, this might be a good time to change it.
- We will not permit witch-hunts, progressive loyalty-testing, or attempting to bait another into admitting support for President Trump in order to get them banned. The mod staff will deal harshly with attempts to weaponize this policy.
- It is not open season on conservatives, and revenge fantasies against Trump and Trump supporters are still against the rules.
Policy Citations:
- Racism and rhetorical alliance with white supremacist groups. This is a fairly thorough collection of citations in itself, not just a single tweet.
https://twitter.com/JuliusGoat/statu…764966912?s=19- Hostility to transgender persons. [https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-…untry-n923266]
- Attempting to ban transgender servicemembers from the military [https://www.sfchronicle.com/lgbt/art…-13086811.php]
- He is personally hostile to both individual reporters and the very idea of a free press. [ https://www.motherjones.com/politics…media-threats/ ]
- He mocks the disabled. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX9reO3QnUA ]
- He mocked a sexual assault victim, to applause from his supporters. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m00qAeFHaQ ]
- For the record, “Globalists” is almost always code for “Jews,” particularly if it’s in concert with anything about Soros. [ https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis…ling-for-unity ]
- When confronted with the fact that his rhetoric may be encouraging domestic terrorism, he has indicated he should maybe encourage it more, and has implied the press has it coming. [ https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trum…hreats-1190263 ]
- He is attempting to stoke fear and violence in other arenas, as well. [ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w…-a8512406.html ]
- It is clear from context that his embrace of “nationalism” is a dog-whistled love note to white nationalists.
- There are components of his immigration policy that cannot be supported by persons of good conscience. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_…aration_policy ]
- Further reading on this and all of the above topics are freely available from any reputable news site. [ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/…ration-n895006 ]
[to be clear, I am not implying that BoingBoing should or needs to implement such a policy. Il Douche’s supporters and apologists already can’t hang here for very long, and the staff’s principles on the subject are already well known]
