Yeah, and this abdication of reasonable responsibility is best exemplified by the whole “Youtube kids” program. What’s presented as curated content is clearly being “curated” by algorithms, which is why David Icke conspiracy videos end up in the mix. That Youtube thinks their algorithms are sufficient is pretty outrageous.
YouTube hides The Atlantic's coverage of "Heil Trump" salutes at Nazi speech
Shuck
#24
Well, if American reactionaries can dismiss lefties and all people of color as “not American,” I think we can dismiss Nazis as “not American” even if they make up a third of the population.
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Timoth3y
#26
You miss the point. Making it illegal for YouTube to show these kinds of videos would make it harder to understand what assholes Spenser and his group are, and what danger they pose. Free speech is a good thing.
Now, YouTube is a private company, and if they want to set up content rules that ban hate speech they certainly can, but as this article points out it is damn hard for algorithms to tell the difference between hate speech and commentary on hate speech.
No one here is saying Spenser is a victem or a nice guy.
Wanderfound
#27
“Free speech” is a rather disputed concept.
Have you had a poke at this thread?
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tlwest
#28
If that’s how you parse my reservations about celebrating (well deserved) vigilante violence, then you have my condolences. I found Trump’s victory shattering as well.
victorhazzard
#29
Where did you get “making it illegal” from? And the only real way to know what these fucks are up to is to infiltrate them, hack their servers, follow them, and beat their ass.
3 Likes
rasmussen_bryan
#32
yes, but anyone who goes around saying hail to our supreme leader is even higher on the dorkiness scale than they are on the evil scale, and with these guys that’s impressive.
1 Like
Mindysan33
#33
Except for all the things they write, the massive library of historiography on nazis, white supremcacy, now and in history, and just about any other website that allows this sort of shite to pop up. What they want is no mystery nor ever has been, because they used in the mainstream of political and they’ve been well studied. Not everyone is going to listen to Spencer critically, with a knowledge of history. And it’s not like there won’t be people to stop talking about them in mainstream media in order to contexualize them. But on Youtube they are entirely decontextualized, and the algorithms are created in such a way to feed you MORE of that content instead of counter-content that helps the viewer to understand the history of these ideas.
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zathras
#34
That’s mighty convenient, isn’t it?
Here in Austria, we had this nice fiction that all the Nazis were German and that Austria was the first victim of Germany’s aggression (think “The Sound of Music”). That shared fiction kept us happy with our part in history until well in to the 80s. It turns out that it wasn’t true, but it was a great tool for avoiding responsibility.
I can understand that you might want to keep “American” as an inherently positive term, but that’s just plain old nationalism. It’s a nice “no true scotsman” argument that makes it looks like Americans are somehow inherently good by virtue of being American.
When in fact, “American” isn’t some badge of honor for people who live by to some “American values”. It’s the other way around - “American values” are exactly the values that “Americans” happen to live by.
If that means that you can’t feel proud to be American any more, too bad. But remember that other nations have idiots and assholes, too. (To other people, I’d give the advice to get off their asses and fix the problem, but I have no reason to think you personally need this advice from me).
I thought they were just defending The Atlantic’s right to free speech, their right to say “look at what those people are doing, they are Nazis, oppose them”.
When was it last used as a regular greeting in English?
The German equivalent “Heil” has been and still is a common greeting among friends in some parts of Austria, and Hitler happened to be from those parts. It’s completely non-existent in my part of Austria now, but it’s still in regular and completely unpolitical use among friends in some other parts.
One more thing to know about that greeting is that in German, “Heil” can also mean the imperative form of “to heal”. So the joke goes like this: Two psychiatrists meet. One says: “Heil Hitler”. The other responds: “You heal him”.
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strokeybeard
#35
Why would I? I think you’ve confused the arguments in the other thread. I do not, and have never, supported any right or far right position. I do, however, think that advocating violence against your political enemies is extremely problematic.
strokeybeard
#40
This is an either/or fallacy. Either you support antifa or you’re a nazi. It stank when Dubya did it (for invading Iraq or you support terrorists) and it still stinks now.
I can’t say I’m surprised that you tried it, it’s about the level of debate we’ve been getting on this subject. I suppose it’s much easier to shout ‘punch a nazi’ from the sidelines than it is to do any serious thinking about what this means and what consequences might flow from this. But then, it’s always easier to post a half-assed meme, I’m sure all the other keyboard warriors will be proud of you.
1 Like
gracchus
#45
I believe he’s referring to your ridiculous statement in the other thread that Spencer is not a Nazi (and presumably non-punchable by Nazi-punching standards) because he denies he is one:
I would assume the far-right position he’s claiming you enable is that there’s still some value for Western society in 2018 in hearing out right-wing ethnic cleansing enthusiasts and only engaging them with rational debate – appeasers historically get accused of helping out right-wing ethnic cleansing enthusiasts more than Nazi-punchers do.
The cartoon is pointing out the false equivalencies that some centrists engage in. It’s not claiming that the centrist would support either one group or the other, it’s claiming that the centrist chooses neither because he thinks they’re equally bad (which, of course, they aren’t).
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