Slashdot Mirror
Political Strife Erupts in Second Life
covert.c writes "A real-life drama in the political world has spilled over into the virtual, as the Second Life headquarters of France's controversial Front National political party fell to violent protesters. The anti-FN activists, who had armed themselves with slogans, placards and weapons, leveled the digital buildings occupied by Front National. Second Life is often home to established political and social movements. It seems logical that opposing forces would also choose to make SL their stage."
Since when do MMO players need politics as an excuse for grief play?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Wait, we're the French Front National? I thought we were the National French Front. Oh, that's him over there is it? Splitter!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's pixels on a fucking screen. It's not a life, second or otherwise.
If you're going to be outraged, at least be consistent and mourn the thousands of times I've died at the hands of twink campers in World of Warcraft.
This space available.
You need a third life to get away from the politics.
Wikipedia makes them look like a sort of "wind back the clock" party. I'm amazed that they were even willing to have a headquarters in second life. They seem to be very protectionist and provincial. Their general delegate was suspended from his professorial position for five years for historical revisionism. The founded had to pay 1.2M francs (~200k Euros) for the same sort of thing, claiming the Germans' occupation "hadn't been so inhumane". (I don't agree with this lack of freedom of speech in France, but they're kind of a nasty country anyway, with cops wearing masks so they can't be identfied in court and the like.) I mean, Le Pen would actually like to evict all non-european immigrants from France. I don't think doing your best to evict them from second life is actually wrong. FN has basically declared war, and at the same time diluted the name of my favorite Belgian arms manufacturer. I say string 'em up! (digitally)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yup, in the left's worldview you are allowed to be any race, color, gender identity, etc. If you keep it in the closet and swear that it doesn't actually influence your behaviour you can even have a religion. But deviate from the accepted policy positions of the left and watch how little tolerance they have for that. They will violently suppress the slightest deviation from orthodox socialism.
Compare this with the other story posted today where US leftists are aiming to revoke the 1st Amendment in their continuing efforts to suppress political dissent during campaigns, reign in unregulated bloggers, the earlier story where they want to force changes in FCC rules to eliminate dissent on the airwaves, etc.
To a "progressive" diversity is looking as different as you want while thinking alike. Tolerance is a codeword for oppression. And of course "progressive" itself is a codeword for a retreat into failed 20th Century *isms. If anything Orwell was too optimistic.
Democrat delenda est
Really, do politics boil down to left and right? A single axis of political belief? Don't you think that's a little bit simplistic?
Deleted
Good point. Next time you hear some damned hippie complaining about NSA wiretapping, abu ghraib, guantanimo bay, and the loss of habeus corpus, make sure to come back at them by pointing to this outrageous violent attack.
This space available.
Of course life is just a collection of atoms in an untidy heap.
That said, I hate getting ganked.
Who in France would not wish to turn back the clock?
Every night, over 100 cars are burned by the immigrants who will be the new France. The birthrate is below replacement rate. 43% of all children in France are born to unwed mothers.
France is quietly fighting an intifada in les banlieux (sp?), and France is losing. You might say that France is a quagmire.
If you like France the way it was, I recommend that you visit soon, and take lots of pictures. The France to come will be a Muslim nation. Some people like it that way. The Paristinians certainly would. Those who prefer the former and vanishing culture of France would like to turn back the clock.
This is hardly anti-Islamic sentiment, although it is anti-Islamist. Mods and replies, please draw the distinction before you accuse me of something terrible. There are plenty of Islamic nations out there, but only Islamists feel that France should also become such a place.
Are MMO games even allowed under Shari'a?
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
The FN must have given up and left. You can't 'level the digital buildings'. There's very little, if anything, you can do to other peoples objects in SL, and certainly not on their own land. The landowner or the person in charge of the land group must not have been there, paying attention, or clued in to his own power to disable object rezzing, disable scripts, disable push, disable flight, ban, freeze, eject, etc etc. And that's just the built-in land tools, and not even getting into third-party security systems, which would be more difficult to overwhelm with numbers than a human op (The comparison of an SL parcel owner to an IRC op is apt in terms of power over their domain).
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
How do you figure its always the left that resorts to violence? quite a claim you're making there. I won't deny that there are leftist groups who resort to violence, but there are also right wing groups which do the same. They are called extremists. They are on both sides of the scale.
As for the right to free speech. You should look up where it came from. It's a liberal principle. If it's from either side of the scale it would be more right than left.
Furthermore stating someone isn't allowed to speak because it doesn't fit in with your own views is politics 1 on 1
Absolutely. And paranoids on the right are correct - there is a global leftist conspiracy. We receive our orders from the Party on a daily basis, and follow them to the letter. Good news, too - you'll be the first up against the firing squads come the glorious revolution.
To me, the news story was about a pseudo-fascist political group in France trying to leap on to the bandwagon of publicity about Second Life, before being chased off their server in a typically amusing manner by a bunch of online griefers. However, assorted Slashdotters appear to take this as evidence of some kind of hateful leftist conspiracy, intent on stifling free speech and dissent on the internet.
Oh noes!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Hmm. It's not really a left vs. right issue. I think that protests against the FN are really about drawing attention to the nature of the FN.
Neo-Nazi organisations like the FN and the BNP in Britain have come up with a "respectable" face. Now they are patriots. It's all about conserving traditional values, a return to the way things were at some magical point in history when things were Good. Traditional justice, small government, support for local business, more policing - who wouldn't want that?
But there's much more to it than that. Underneath, the same people are involved, and they want the same thing - power. Power like the kind of power Hitler had. And their bigoted views are lurking just out of sight: Send the darkies home, fight back against the Muslims (terrorists, dontchaknow). Holocaust? What holocaust?
Some people will support them because they are genuine bigots. But I believe that most people are basically good, not intrinsically racist. It is these people who should understand the true nature of the FN before they make the mistake of voting for them.
Everyone, whether liberal, conservative, or socialist, should speak out against fascist ideas. Your political viewpoint doesn't matter: no-one wants a dictator.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Anyone else noticed quite a big jump in news stories just about the recent year or so about Second Life, despite still having a quite small highly active user base compared to World of Warcraft and the likes? Either it's somehow popular to report on this "unusual" game (personally I find it quite boring, although the stories are fun for laughs), journalists find the game "futuristic" in the sense of what it's doing ("Oooh, look, we found out news about this cool game where you can protest for/against the UN or whatever!"), or there's the tin foil theory with many Second Life gamers submitting story material to news sites, posting it in blogs, etc to generate coverage.
Personally, I don't really see the big deal. Some huge geeks started using a game as a platform for politics debates? What's new, really. People stand out in towns in WoW, Guild Wars, and other games and sometimes get into hot "religion and politics" debates. It's just more of the same, only that due to how Second Life works, they can take a more "practical" stance on it with crappy designed graphics looking like something out of the early nineties to help their cause.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"Just what is the FN's "final solution" for the Islamic question?"
Let's hope it's better than Islam's "solution" for infidels. Is there a world wide war of incompatible cultures? Islam vs. the Western World? If it is war how show a cultural war be fought?
We are all just people.
What, allowing them freedom to practice their own religion and protection by the Islamic government? Even Iran lets the Jewish MPs in office, and swear on the torah or bible.
Quit your FUD.
If the French never won America would be a monarchy run by a King named George - hang on - you may be right.
"One of the greatest debates within the Muslim Ummah, one that causes division within the Islamic nation and that is often used by the enemies of Islam as a means of ascribing brutality to our religion is centered on the methods by which Islam was propagated throughout the globe. Was Islam spread by the sword? The quick answer to this question is a resounding yes and in this article, we hope to set the record straight using the evidence from the Qur'an and the Sunnah, the practice of the Guided Caliphs and the consensus of the righteous scholars of the Ummah, inshaAllah. While the evidences in this article are by no means exhaustive, inshaAllah they will be adequate to lay this matter to rest...The Prophet (pbuh) said to Abu Hurariah: "You (Muslims) are the best of people for mankind. You bring them in chains to accept Islam so that they end up in paradise (if they fully adhere to it and Allah accepts their deeds). " http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php? article=107152&list=/home.php
This is more the part of Islam that concerns me.
We are all just people.
Sorry, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." We will have to be content with second.
You raise an interesting question.
If Second Life is a role playing game, then the attackers are just playing a different side.
So: when a real political organization establishes a presence in a game as themselves, do they get the same protections for their virtual activities (including speech) that they do for their real activities? If people silence them and destroy their assets in the game is it the same as taking the same actions outside the game?
I'd say no. There is a difference between actions in a virtual world and the real one, even if the parties are the same and the motivations are the same and the actions are parallel. What matters in the virtual world is the terms of service. If the attackers did not violate the terms of service set by the provider, then they were within their rights, which are completely defined by the provider. If you don't like it, you go to a different provider.
You have no such choice of real worlds.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
US leftists are aiming to revoke the 1st Amendment
Please back this up with a link, troll. How exactly do you revoke the 1st Amendment?
I thought it was the Supreme Court's job along with Bush's to erode the Bill of Rights? Why would Bush let the Leftists do his job?
I didn't realize that the only two options were ultra-right-wing racist Westerners and ultra-right-wing racist Islamists. I could have sworn there were other choices of how we run our societies and governments.
... and then they built the supercollider.
As horrible and disgusting as this sounds, tis is something that I almost understand the why, but not much after.
;least both parties feel that they can stand for what they believe in. Thats the good thing, and no-one got hurt in the process. hmmmm Maybe someone should build a White-House, so we Canadians can come and burn it down again.
There were a number of rogue nations, and groups, like the KKK, Hitlers youth, etc. etc. The recently held a conference in a mid-eastern state (Iran I believe). They were there to discuss the idea that the holocaust never happened.
They were in this country, to say that because of their Countries laws surrounding denying that this ever happened, or even to talk about in the streets, is trampling on their rights to free speech.
Like I said, I can understand why they are thinking like that. It stems that some ideas are better then others. I wonder if this is becoming like anything else that the more they try to tighten these people, the more these people will fight back.
I can understand why Germany is afraid of these white-supremacy ideas. The trouble is that you might force them underground even more, where you can't see them. Any time you arrest someone for something they thought, they become a martyr (in that sort of way).
I don't want hate speech either, but as long as it isn't acted on, there shouldn't be any reason to step on it.
In the game world is a reflection of what we do here. In some games, yah its nothing but fun. In others people are destroying what you created. But at
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
The troops at Kent State.
The Klan.
Timothy McVeigh.
Abu Ghraib.
Abortion clinic bombers.
Yup, all radical leftists!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
jihadunspun, a right-wing site, is disregarded by most Muslims. They're incorrect. Forcible conversion is NOT allowed in Islam, since the Quran says "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256). God does not accept insincere conversions, so forced ones do not count.
Besides, India was ruled by Muslims for centuries, but is 85% Hindu today. No mass-forcible conversion ever took place. Spain was ruled by Moors (Muslims) for 700 years, yet allowed Jewish people greater freedom of religion than Christian Europe did, giving them synagogues and allowing them in university. It was known as the "Golden Age of Judaism" by historians, and only ended when the Spanish Inquisition kicked both Jews and Muslims out of Spain. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, and no Arab or Muslim army ever reached it, the millions converted through non-violence and missionaries and trading with Muslims.
The terrorists are pretty bad in a lot of ways, but they're not demanding conversion or death. Don't forget how they killed hundreds of Muslims on 9/11.
Yeah, I only have a Half Life.