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?
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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.'"
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?
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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?
If the French never won America would be a monarchy run by a King named George - hang on - you may be right.
While I'm not nearly conversant enough in modern French sociology to debate the finer points, I feel the need to point out that individual incidents that make the news are not enough to make a blanket claim as to the every day state of affairs, or justification for characterizing an entire segment of a society. Your line of reasoning would seem to indicate that your stance is more closely defined as bigotry instead of carefully considered concern.
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.
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.
What's happening in the Netherlands? I've been living here for the last 3 years and haven't noticed any massive changes ... perhaps I'm reading the wrong newspapers, eh?