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WordPress Bans Fascist Website Linked To Charlottesville Killer (fastcompany.com)
tedlistens writes: WordPress has said that it does not censor websites like that of self-proclaimed fascist group Vanguard America. But last night, the group's site was taken offline for violating the company's terms of service. The about-face was likely prompted by Vanguard's participation in last weekend's Unite the Right rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which James Alex Fields drove his car into a crowd, killing one person and injuring 19. Fields has claimed allegiance to Vanguard America; the group denies that Fields was a member. For WordPress to drop a site, even a fascist site, is a very big deal; the same is true of GoDaddy's and Google's decision to drop their registration of neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer (another site that GoDaddy previously said would be permitted on free speech grounds). WordPress hasn't explained the shift in its approach to the website: the company's user agreement and terms of service have not changed since Charlottesville. That policy, like that of other tech platforms, has long stood by strict neutrality and freedom of expression. That may now be changing.
Ok, suggestions for what label would be acceptable? Assholes is too broad a term.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...looking for other sites that violate the "terms of service".
inspire magazine telling how to derail trains is bad.
This is about free speech and not nazis or there ideas.
But a site saying the rich jews are putting the working man down is not on the same level. That is covered free speech. and just banning based it being about white power in general is taking there free speech away.
I call BS. There are plenty of platforms which like to spout that platitude, but have special rules when it comes to naked people. Other platforms disallow "adult content" altogether. Yet point out that a platform is supporting white supremacists, and the "free speech" card gets played.
Nudity is treated as more offensive than racism. Think about how messed up that is. We're only seeing this reaction from GoDaddy / WordPress now because there were full-on Nazis in Charlottesville.
It's just PR. It's not like corporations are people.
Does WordPress have anything in their terms of service about inciting violence, committing crimes, or breaking the law in general?
If Vanguard America hasn't distanced themselves from the actions of this alleged member, perhaps they could be classified as a terrorist organization? This isn't necessarily an issue of free speech any more than breaking the law is.
From the WordPress User Guidelines:
Directly threatening material.
Do not post direct and realistic threats of violence. That is, you cannot post a genuine call for violence—or death—against an individual person, or groups of persons. This doesn’t mean that we’ll remove all hyperbole or offensive language.
Voltaire got it right.
These neonazi fucks are fuckers and I hope their brand of idiocy fades from the world, but we should be careful about what we do about them. While it's true that the US 1st amendment does not protect you from private companies, and it's ALSO true that it does not guarantee you the right to use someone else's printing press, at some point just a few companies control most human communication, and that may be even more dangerous than government censorship (in the US - different tradeoffs apply elsewhere). If the government censors you for political reasons, you have a chance of recourse in the courts. If internet companies do, they are judge, jury, and executioner. Something becomes qualitatively different when the vast majority of people are using just a few centralized services.
The internet started out free: if people said something you didn't want to hear, you dropped them in your local killfile - but that choice happened at the individual level, not a company or government making the choice for millions or billions of people at once. Now, the Chinese, many middle eastern countries, Russia, etc, clamping down hard on what people can say online. And we're seeing western countries going the same way, even if the mechanism at play is private instead of public.
I understand: It's really, really easy to root against neo-nazis. They are about the second more despised target out there. "Of course these companies should shut down neo-nazis! Anyway they're private and don't have to serve people they don't want". But this isn't going to stop at neo-nazis, not in this world of "micro-offenses". The net WILL be cast wider and wider. The bar of unacceptable offense will be gradually lowered, and each step is going to make the next easier. (We already ban this other kind of speech...) Eventually it's going to come for you too. In many countries, for many people, it already has.
Think carefully before leaping on bandwagons, no matter how good they feel. Yes, neo-nazis are assholes, but let's be careful of how we shove on the internet. Like terrorism: if you radically alter your way of life because assholes flew planes into a building, the terrorists have won and you have lost. Let's not let the neo-nazis win.
Also from the WordPress User Guidelines:
Log in or piss off.
What? Are you high?
Fascism is an economic model and has nothing to do with Donald Trump or Nazis.
Really? Really???
"Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and control of industry and commerce, that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe."
"National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), more commonly known as Nazism, is the ideology and set of practices associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party, Nazi Germany, and other far-right groups. Sometimes characterised as a form of fascism that incorporates scientific racism and antisemitism, Nazism's development was influenced by German nationalism (especially Pan-Germanism), the Völkisch movement and the anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged during the Weimar Republic after Germany's defeat in First World War."
I'm sorry, but you absolutely do not get to paint this a color that pleases you.
Fascism does indeed have a few economic ideas in it, but that's only a very small part of what fascism actually is. Saying Fascism is nothing more than an economic policy is like saying a five course dinner is about the glass of water they serve alongside it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
action and google's and godaddy's, etc. just remember your position on this when GoHillary.com or BlackLivesMatter.org is taken down because the sites allow "hate speech" to be posted.
We can fine an endless supply of "hateful" speech, even speech calling for violence on the left, too. The KKK has no monopoly on that.
Black Lives Matter protester: 'Only good white man is a dead white man'.
New Black Panther Party (NBPP), whose leaders are known for anti-Semitic and anti-white tirades. Its late chairman, Khalid Abdul Muhammad, famously remarked: “There are no good crackers, and if you find one, kill him before he changes.”
Though she opposed [a proposed Constitutional anti-gay-marriage amendment], [Clinton] said that she believed that marriage was "a sacred bond between a man and a woman" and she took "umbrage at anyone who might suggest that those of us who worry about amending the Constitution are less committed to the sanctity of marriage, or to the fundamental bedrock principle that exists between a man and a woman." [Pretty hateful words, by today's LGBTTTQQIAA... standards].
"White folks was in caves while we were building empires. We taught philosophy and astrology [sic] and mathematics before Socrates and those Greek homos ever got around to it." Al Sharpton [A gay slur, a nationalist slur, and a racist comment, all in one!]
You cannot define "hate" speech to just include white-supremacist or other speech you disagree with. Because if you do, when power shifts or something bad happens, your speech is next. We didn't go and shut down any of the sites that James Hodgkinson was active on, and if Trump and the right had tried to do so, the media would--correctly, for once--said that would be wrong and a violation of free speech rights. We didn't go and shut down the mosque where Omar Mateen's anti-gay views were stoked by his religious indoctrination. It would have been wrong.
When the KKK and Nazi's want to expose themselves and their idiotic and repugnant ideas, it's not a good idea to create martyrs-to-the-cause of any of them nor answer them with violence. That just feeds them.
As for Trump... He hasn't explicitly said that he supports or admires fascism, but he's spoken often about how much he admires leaders and systems which function in a similar way.
I'll just quote from the wikipedia definition, to save you some clicks:
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.[8] Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society.[8] Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation.[9][10][11][12] Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.
Looks pretty peaceful to me. Nobody ran him over with a car. In fact, he was completely unharmed. Isn't this the kind of protest you spend hours on here defending?
As if you have a choice. The Alt-Left opens your wallet for you. And your children are theirs, your media, your employer, your barista, everyone you interact with all the time, everywhere, that doesn't think for themselves.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I expect a bit of both.
First there is an acknowledgement that these groups are more then just a random ranting hicks. But groups trying to push a well crafted narrative of fear that giving others equal rights will diminish their own rights, and hatred of the groups who are getting such rights and trying to show that they are not worth it. It is the responsibility of everyone to stand up against this groups in one way or an other. These groups use the same methods and logic that had created much of the foreign terrorist groups, and their growth to a point where they had destroyed countries came from a population that more or less just let it slide. Racism really has no place in business, as all it does it reduce your customer base and partners to work with.
Then there is a PR problem of being considered friendly to this group, this will attract more undesirables to your service, and effect your general perception. It could be like the Simpsons quote "Not Raciest but #1 with racist)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Kind of like the BLM guy who murdered 5 police?
"Yeah sure, he was at the rally, a member of three BLM Facebook groups, attended six meetings, followed us all on Twitter... But he's not one of us!"
"O ok lol," says media.
The only people that can't cope with multiple political parties are liberals that assume that anyone that doesn't follow their group think is some kind of Nazi.
The entire media narrative surrounding this event distils down to nothing more than that.
You either support the absurd whitewash being perpetrated by Reb state politicians or you're a Klansman.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Looks pretty peaceful to me. ... Isn't this the kind of protest you spend hours on here defending?
You mean the part where people were yelling, getting right into his face is peaceful? No wonder you're perfectly fine with this as they are.
So, since we're convicting without a trial. I'm sure that you're going to be shaming those anti-confederate protesters for their violence right? After all, holding you to your standard: Words are violence.
Om, nomnomnom...
If they actually threatened violence against him, yeah I am fine with them being arrested. What I saw in the video was mostly them saying "go home terrorist" and "fuck you" a lot. Again, I am fine with equal treatment for both sides, you are the one that is not. You pretend that "fuck you" is the same as "all jews should die and here is how it should be done." You are the one equating yelling in someone's face with running them over with a car. One is not like the other.
Orwell had a pretty good commentary on the definition of fascism. It's kind of a worthless label in that as Orwell points out it's been applied to just about every different political group and doesn't have much of a shared definition in common use.
Same as muslims calling for the execution of atheists and gays? Shut them down too?
How about BLM saying there are "too many white people"?
A business that is open to the general public must serve the general public. A bakery must sell to all customers and WordPress must sell to all customers.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
he did what you are supposed to do: never stop, keep driving no matter what
That's the stupidest thing I've read all week, and this has been a pretty good week for stupidity.
A bakery must sell to all customers and WordPress must sell to all customers.
This. We need to seriously have protections for the 1st amendment online (that is purely about speech) as we do with other protections in the 14th amendment.
The more I hear about the actions various progressive tech companies are taking online to speech they don't like (beyond nazis) the more I fear for the future for the internet and future of freedom of speech that is necessary for democracy.
The government won't be far behind with this pro-censorship sentiment as we have seen with the Charlottsville government illegally rescinding a right to protest and arbitrarily retracting the protection of law.
Why on Earth would you think that's even a question? Oh wait, you're probably one of those moronic right wing nutjobs who thinks "Not all Muslims are terrorists" = "We love Islam and agree with ISIS's interpretation of it!"
BLM has never said anything of the sort. BLM is a diverse coalition of people who are concerned that black people keep getting killed by the police for ridiculous reasons, and that there's too much apologism for such killings. You can probably find an individual member who has said something ridiculous, but the movement as a whole would disagree with it.
In general, no. Businesses can pick and choose who they serve as long as they don't discriminate against protected classes of people - essentially minorities who are historically and institutionally discriminated against for things beyond their reasonable control. You can implement policies banning libertarians, Marvel fans, Bronies, and people who like Hawaiian Pizza from your wedding cake store, you just can't ban gays for being gay.
If you actually listened to people who aren't RWNJs, you'd know all this. But you choose not to. Here's a thought though: last year, Hillary Clinton warned you that Donald Trump was attracting a large following among white supremacists. She said:
Most Republicans didn't merely refuse to heed her warning, but they lied about what she said and pretended she'd claimed all Republicans are racists, despite the fact she said nothing remotely similar to that, and even recognized that the other half of Trump's supporters were desperate people with legitimate grievances.
Clinton was right then, and HAD CONSERVATIVES HEEDED HER WARNING we'd not be in the horrific situation of having a President who panders to, and gives power, to Neo-Nazis, and who is in probability one himself.
Maybe, just maybe, you should start listening to what liberals, Democrats, and the left in general actually say, rather than pretending they're saying stupid things, inventing whole stupid opinions for them to have, just so you can feel better about yourself?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Apparently, Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad are hosting an event and it's being protested because "anti-semitism"... Gad Saad is jewish.
The madness doesn't end.
That's completely different than opening the wallets of every American to bail out the Banking Industry. Thanks Republicans, for being SOOOOOOO smart that you don't need my money! Oh, wait...
Before blaming that on Republicans, you should look at the facts: Democrats voted 172 to 63 in favor of the bailout, while Republicans voted 108 to 91 against it.
Mmm, immigrants and globalism are the root of all the world's problems
I can't say I saw GP say that they were.
Your sarcastic statement, however, is as patently false as the statement: Immigrants and globalism don't cause any problems.
Like most things, the truth is somewhere in between, and trying to pretend otherwise just makes people look like ignorant fools.
As I said, a weak conflation. A bakery might be required to offer service to people without discriminating against them based on their sex, race or sexuality. It doesn't mean a bakery can't throw you out on your ass because you want to hold a white power meeting in their building, or order a cake with racist symbols or words on it. Because they can.
No, the argument for the bakery was that they discriminated against a legally protect class (both under state and federal law).
There is no legal requirement for them (or anyone) to sell cakes to everyone who walks in the door. They just can't refuse based on the wannabe customer being a protected class.
If the bakery had just said "No" without explanation, or offered some other explanation, there would not have been an issue.
A bakery must sell to all customers and WordPress must sell to all customers.
A public facing business cannot discriminate against a protected class. Being an asshole is not a protected class.
I don't respond to AC's.
No. They must bake the cake regardless of the symbols. And you mixed things up- the bakery is not a meeting place so holding a meeting there - no matter the meeting is not part and parcel of what they're selling to the general public.
It is not up to Staples to decide whether or not they like what you're going to say before they sell you paper. Or Bic before selling a pen. Or Toshiba before selling you a laptop. Or Wordpress before selling you use of their CMS.
Else we can then say - why are you selling to Muslims who are promoting the death of gays and atheists? Or Christians who are promoting anti-abortion rallies. Or anything else people disagree with.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Ha. Ha. Ha.
So now some people are protected and some not. Some ideas are protected and some not.
By the way f**k fascists and f**k socialists and f**k racists - but a free society values free speech.
You realize these dipwads held get togethers for years and zero violence and zero coverage. Now, thanks to anti-free speech people like you they're all over the news. The f**king Streisand Affect all over again.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
first they came for Nazis, and i dont give a fuck, because fuck nazis. they can come for genocidal racists all they want.
Watch Ken Burns' "The Civil War" on PBS. Shelby Foote's insights are incredible. He has a trilogy of books that are wonderful too. He is(was) a master of Civil War history. One of his greatest insights was the small grammatical change that happened after the War. References to the US changed from "The United States are" to "The United States is". The US was seen as a collection of semi autonomous states. Many people felt more loyalty to their state than to the collection of states that made up the country. Lee was such a person. He resigned his commission in the U.S. Army to fight for Virginia. The Confederacy was ancillary to his loyalty.
The marching pace of progress in modern society is much different than 1861. At that point, we were only 71 years into the experiment of a "strong" central Federal government which was not all that strong anyway. People had more loyalty and ties to their home state than we do today.
Your "good ole boy" comment only shows your own ignorance of the facts involved. And I fail to understand at all what the Fugitive Slave Act had to do with the reputation or motivations of Lee. Are you alleging he had a hand in crafting it?
BLM has never said anything of the sort.
You're right, they said far worse. Like saying all "white people are sub-human" I've heard that before...coming from black supremacists. Very uh...diverse, so progressive. Gee, they're just like Margaret Sanger and her belief that blacks were sub-human need to be culled, and the perfect way to do that was via planned parenthood. Never mind her pro-eugenics stance or anything...
Clinton was right then, and HAD CONSERVATIVES HEEDED HER WARNING we'd not be in the horrific situation of having a President who panders to, and gives power, to Neo-Nazis, and who is in probability one himself.
You didn't even listen to him when he blamed both sides for the violence did you. You're so heavily invested in identity politics that you're willing to swallow whatever bullshit is shoved down your throat. You also likely believe that antifa is really the good guys, and really aren't just racists on the left.
Om, nomnomnom...
BLM and antifa have been using violence and arson for quite a while now, across the US and in Europe. Why are you suddenly concerned about violence now? Where have you been?
No, they must bake the cake if they would bake the same cake for others without basing their refusal upon the customer being a member of a protected class.
Here's a source backing my assertion. Where's a source backing yours?
inspire magazine telling how to derail trains is bad.
This is about free speech and not nazis or there ideas.
But a site saying the rich jews are putting the working man down is not on the same level. That is covered free speech. and just banning based it being about white power in general is taking there free speech away.
Funny how some alt-righters have no idea of what exactly free speech is.
You are allowed to say whatever you like, short of threats of violence. The Government isn't allowed to arrest you for it.
But we are allowed to react to what you said. It's probably heartbreaking for the Supremacists and Klan, but if you want to open a "Blood and Soil" website, no one is forced to host it. Your freedom of expression does not mean that I have to let you burn a cross on my lawn.
Buy your own servers, and host your own sites. Or move your sites offshore. Places in Russia will probably be happy to host them.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That's the opposite of a polite society.
Wordpress, and Google, are both pretty savvy about "narrative" (probably true for Go Daddy, too, but I don't know Go Daddy). Being savvy about narratives is part of their corporate cultures.
So what has changed between before the death of Heather and after it? The words on the websites had not changed significantly. The narratives are the same.
What changed is the inescapable recognition that the words had motivated 700+ loose nuts to pick up assault weapons and march on Charlotteville, and one loose nut to use a car as a lethal weapon.
There are limits to free speech. Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is beyond free speech protection. Getting a few dozen Good Old Boys drunk on mob hysteria, pointing them at some group and telling them "Let's you and them fight!" is also beyond the limits of free speech.
So that is what has changed. Go Daddy, Google, and Wordpress now recognize that they can be used as megaphones to incite violence, and that violates their TOSs as well as their collective corporate conscience.
There is a legion of white men between 30 and 60 years old who have been disenfranchised; the American Dream they had been promised is no more. Passed along from grade to grade during their school years since staying with their peers was more important than getting a solid education, their promised lifestyle of living like their Dad had, putting in forty hours a week on an assembly line until retirement but having their evenings for poker games and bowling leagues and their weekends for barbeques, has died with automation and computers. There is no way that America can send this vast horde back to school, there are simply too many of them to get them all retrained for today's decent jobs. This is a huge pol of anger and resentment that can be manipulated by persons who are unencumbered by ethical considerations, such as Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Springer, David Duke, Richard Spencer, and Donald Trump.
It is critical that web hosts, Twitter, and similar services that can act as megaphones recognize their potential for inciting violence and enforce their TOSs.
General Lee waged war against the US. He is the very definition of a traitor.
Traitors don't deserve statues.
Like George Washington? History is written by the winners.
"antifa" or anti-fascist groups wouldn't exist without the fascist groups. They wouldn't have even shown up to do counter-protests if the fascists didn't come to various locations. Everyone who says these things obviously support these fascist ideas, or at least that's how everyone around the planet perceives this false equivalency.
Arguing that white supremacist groups, pro-Nazi groups, etc should be able to perform their what is basically a "march for treason" either supports their goals or does not comprehend what these groups actually want to accomplish. Their very loud calls for a "white ethnostate" is a call for genocide, murder, and totalitarianism; there is no other way to accomplish this goal. IMHO anyone flying a Nazi flag is committing treason, as the Nazi were most certainly considered enemies of the USA since they declared war against us. Marching with their flag is "adheres to their enemies" and "providing them aid". Now, just "displaying" the Nazi flag is covered free speech, but these marches go far beyond just display.
I'm not even going to address BLM here, as that is a different conversation. I am just addressing the antifa vs fa problem.
The fact that your post is marked at 4, Insightful is disturbing. Mine will probably be marked down, which is equally disturbing.
I never said it's okay. I'm curious why there wasn't such fervor over the antics of BLM and antifa. I don't agree with supremacists on either side, and I recognize there are such on both sides. Why is that difficult to understand? What I'm asking is why is it that BLM and antifa don't get the same type of response? One person hit by a car and the media is all over it. Five cops shot dead, dozens of businesses torched, people assaulted, the media gives it some slight coverage if at all and moves onto something else in a day or two. There's a huge bias and it needs to be called out. The President saying there were two parties involved even got blow-back, and he was absolutely right.
You're making a "chicken and egg" argument. The problem is that antifa was not in response to white supremacists. It was in response to our new President being elected and a rejection of conservative/libertarian values. If you're not a liberal, you're a fascist or a racist or a bigot. That's their mantra. This whole white supremacy thing is a circus side show that the left fell for. It has nothing to do with what's been taking place over the last few years. We've had BLM torching entire city blocks, assaulting people, inciting the murder of police officers, more recently we have antifa doing similar things.. but only now does the media really start talking about violence. It's absurd.
Giving them the freedom to march is giving them freedom to recruit. When they recruit enough, they will attempt to enact these ideas. Their ideas are not some abstract thought game, some theoretical scenario.
They should be able to march and recruit out in the open, so there can be a backlash. If they are openly recruiting, it makes it easier to recruit opposition for them.
If they are driven underground, they'll still exist. They'll still recruit but there won't be that backlash.
Count myself lucky because I'm white, so I don't have to worry if they hit critical mass?
I'm not white. These assholes getting that critical mass is a worst case scenario for me. I believe in ideological consistency. If freedom of speech isn't for the worst among us, then it's not for any of us.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The woman died because a neo-Nazi fuckwit ran her over. There is no other reason no matter how much you try and whitewash it
Some people appear to think that providing a service is a carte blanche to use it for any purpose whatsoever with no say from the service provider. It isn't.
You're either standing against the mouth breathers waving Nazi flags and chanting "blood and soil," or you are WITH them.
Many sides... Lotta blame on many sides... Many fine people on all sides...
Nazi rally, nazi murderer, anti-nazi protesters, anti-nazi victims. Really, how much bravery does it take to pick the side opposing nazis? Declaring "nazis==bad" and "murderer==at fault" isn't exactly revolutionary. I don't care if the protesters were carrying clubs; surely DJT isn't suggesting this was self-defense... Even deriding the protesters as "alt-left" is upsetting. Opposing nazis doesn't make you "alt-anything". It makes you a decent human being.
MAGA!
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
There's a difference. Black Lives Matter does not advocate violence. Their goal is to reduce violence. BLM is not a black supremecist movement and does not advocate the removal of all other ethnicities from America.