Twitter Bans, Removes Verified Status of White Supremacists (thedailybeast.com)

After updating the rules of its verification program on Wednesday, Twitter has begun banning and removing verified check marks from white supremacist accounts. For example, white supremacists Richard Spencer and Charlottesville "Unite The Right" protest creator Jason Kessler had their verified statuses revoked today. The Daily Beast reports: The verified check mark was meant to denote "that an account of public interest is authentic," the company said in a series of tweets on Wednesday, but that "verification has long been perceived as an endorsement." "This perception became worse when we opened up verification for public submissions and verified people who we in no way endorse," a company spokesperson tweeted. Users can now lose their blue checkmarks for "inciting or engaging in harassment of others," "promoting hate and/or violence against, or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease," supporting people who promote those ideas, and a slew of other reasons.

Comments

The moral of the story

[wjcofkc]

Oh fuck it.

Re:The moral of the story

[interkin3tic]

No, the moral of the story is best summed up by XKCD

Re: The moral of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Antifa needs to go too.

Hell, get rid of the Amish also.

Re:The moral of the story

[qwerty shrdlu]

And also here: https://xkcd.com/1357/

Re:The moral of the story

[Mashiki]

That always was a shit comic and for good reasons.

Re:The moral of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you implying that white supremacists have a problem making their voices heard and that their message is unknown to a lot of people, because that is what you are implying with posting that comic under this story.
It is still relevant though, it is a pretty common tactic among fascists to drown out messages they don't like by shouting over it.

Re:The moral of the story

[king neckbeard]

I'd say that's what twitter is TRYING to do, but what they are REALLY doing is feeding into the persecution complexes of the alt-right.

Re:The moral of the story

[gbjbaanb]

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
-- George Orwell

Unfortunately, the fascists here are the "liberal" of the left, like Twitter who has now determined that an old "this is a real person" flag has become a "this is a person we approve of" flag. ie exactly the opposite of what Twitter was trying to do.

Re:The moral of the story

[Mashiki]

I'd say that's what twitter is TRYING to do, but what they are REALLY doing is feeding into the persecution complexes of the alt-right.

The alt-right doesn't have to believe that it has a persecution complex. There is a persecution of ideas, viewpoints and discussion against not only them but of a variety of groups that don't fit within the progressive victimization sphere. The people outside of that sphere? Well it's alt-right(and alt-lite) sure, it's also conservatives, gamers, progressive muslims, gun owners, believe that gender is a binary, that trannies are mentally ill, and pretty much anyone else that they feel steps out of line with their orthodoxy.

Gab.ai, minds.com, and so on didn't come into existence in a vacuum. They came into existence because there are groups of people being silenced for wrong-think, wrong-speech, and whatever else. And the mindset in progressive circles right now seems to be: Silence them, and if you can't silence them, go after their income and/or families. This also doesn't endear them to anyone when they start screeching that if you don't believe whatever we tell you to believe you're a racist, sexist, misogynist, and also a neo-nazi. FYI: Believing in free speech being an absolute right is enough to make you a nazi in their books.

Re:The moral of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking the first three panels from someone else's comic without giving them credit, and then pretty clearly ripping off their style to tell your own message is a dirtbag thing to do.

Re:The moral of the story

[AmiMoJo]

The comic you linked to is full of obvious errors. For example, it quotes John Stewart Mill, but completely misses the point he was making. He wasn't arguing that Twitter should not ban anyone ever because it's the new town square public forum, he was arguing for anonymous speech and for the availability of safe spaces where people could express unpopular views.

Basically Mill was an advocate of 4chan and privacy.

The other obvious flaw is that it says we risk leaving who can speak to who can shout the loudest, while also advocating that everyone be given a free megaphone. Mill understood this, his argument was not that everyone should get their own column in The Times, it was that as an individual one should seek to consider all points of view and arguments. In fact, he recognized that publications specializing in certain ideas were necessary to fully develop them, because otherwise you end up constantly defending the basics and never get to discuss the detail with like-minded people in a safe environment.

Re:The moral of the story

[GameboyRMH]

Well it's alt-right(and alt-lite) sure, it's also conservatives, gamers, progressive muslims, gun owners,

Oh fuck this, gamers in general will not be lumped into the basket of deplorables over one incident involving a bunch of fedora-wearing MRA neckbeards who happen to play videogames. This shit will not stand, the sheer percentage of female gamers these days ensures it.

Progressive Muslims are also extremely wary of the same problem and would gladly tell you where you can shove this idea.

Gab.ai, minds.com, and so on

"So on" being the Daily Stormer and other hate sites. These aren't a new phenomenon. Mainstream sites should not attempt to cater to these userbases. Let them remain in the deepest darkest corners of the Internet, I say.

Re:The moral of the story

[mjwx]

That always was a shit comic and for good reasons.

And other bollocks. Throwing in a bunch of quotes randomly combined with a complete misunderstanding of British history is not a rebuttal. The XKCD was not against free speech, it was pointing out that just because it's not illegal to say does not entitle you to a platform, let alone any platform you like. Also freedom without responsibility is anarchy, the same is true with free speech, free speech has never protected you from criticism.

People trying to defend racism (yes, white supremacists are racists, placing one race as superior to another... let alone all others is the dictionary definition of racism) are the ones who are destroying free speech. They are using this as a thought terminating cliche to silence criticism. White Supremacists are not some hard done by minority group fighting for equal rights or recognition, they are fighting to suppress equal rights for other groups they don't like. Using free speech to defend them from critics is devaluing free speech. Free speech does not mean what you say is right, it just means it is not illegal to say it. Using the free speech excuse to silence critics, especially valid critics, reduces freedom.

I'm a firm believer in playing the devils advocate, but one must always consider the nature of the devil for which one advocates for. Knowing who you are defending is key in defending it successfully. Often using the wrong defence harms you more than not defending them in the first place. Finally, using free speech as a defence is the worst possible argument, falling back on free speech means that the most compelling defence you have for what you said is that it is literally not illegal to say it.

Re:The moral of the story

[Mashiki]

Which ones? Or is this a Trumpian "a lot of people are saying"?

Why don't you check out http://thefire.org/ and http://campusreform.org/ both who've been recording this type of garbage pouring out of academia for the last decade.

Re:The moral of the story

[Mashiki]

. Also helps explain why they didn't make a peep when Trump called for bringing back the fairness doctrine in all but name.

You weren't paying attention then, because if you were then you'd already know that people were automatically arguing against that as soon as he said it. That was right in the "trump heavy" subs, forums and so on. They're easy to find, you shouldn't have any problems. But if you're sucking your news from a couple of sources, I can see how you'd miss that. Just like how the media is all over Judge Moore, and not saying anything about the Menendez trial. I mean that literally. You know that he actually *did* pay for underage prostitutes, it's right there in the docket.

Re:The moral of the story

[Mashiki]

This is the point where you have a cultural divide and you don't understand how things differ from the UK to North America. See over here, we've already been down this route. That when a "private place" is used by the public, and promoted by that private ownership, it still retains that private ownership but charter and fundamental freedoms also apply. Meaning that a company can't censor/remove another person because it has become a "speakers corner."

Re:The moral of the story

[GameboyRMH]

I don't spend my time in /r/TheDonald, but I speak with all too many on the far-right and you're the first to make a peep about it, even when I point out that I haven't heard any complaints. But now that you've expressed your opposition to bringing back the fairness doctrine, what's your plan for barring websites and newspapers from censoring content they don't wish to carry, and does it go both ways? Will liberal articles have to be allowed on Breitbart? Leftist comments in /r/TheDonald?

Re:The moral of the story

[AmiMoJo]

Can you give us an example of a private space that has become forced into a public "speakers corner", with the company owning it unable to control the content any longer?

Re:The moral of the story

[GameboyRMH]

BTW, the reason Menendez isn't in the news is that he's on trial and not running for office, and that the accusations are nowhere near as solid as you suggest.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new...

There is a double standard with Roy Moore though. There were similar accusations against Donald Trump and the media didn't care much back then, and doesn't care now. Time to just accept that US politics is cool with alleged pedophiles, I say.

Re:The moral of the story

[Mashiki]

Can you give us an example of a private space that has become forced into a public "speakers corner", with the company owning it unable to control the content any longer?

Did you try your own backyard? What do you think speakers corner came from. You can also read this here. There's also a couple of cases from the 1960's relating directly to this, but I can't remember the case name at the moment. You can also look up "ag gag" for similar cases. This may or maynot apply as well to some places, i.e. the "mall of america" is an example because the protests were in a building, thus the 1st didn't apply. You can also read People v. DiGuida(around 50 pages) for more insight, note the annotations as well. There's a few hundred of those and are required reading.

Re:The moral of the story

[Mashiki]

Will liberal articles have to be allowed on Breitbart? Leftist comments in /r/TheDonald?

Breitbart already does that and has for years. Guess you learn something new every day right? Go ask the mods for /r/thedonald, likely yes as long as it relates to Trump. Remember that sub is a circle-jerk. As a flip /r/conservative does allow leftist comments, however /r/latestagecapitalism and /r/communism and so on do not allow right-wing comments, or anything that deviates from the party line.

Re:The moral of the story

[Mashiki]

BTW, the reason Menendez isn't in the news is that he's on trial and not running for office, and that the accusations are nowhere near as solid as you suggest.

Right, he's a sitting senator.

There is a double standard with Roy Moore though. There were similar accusations against Donald Trump and the media didn't care much back then, and doesn't care now. Time to just accept that US politics is cool with alleged pedophiles, I say.

What do you mean the media didn't care? There was literal wall-to-wall coverage, for days. The only double standard though is that democrats regularly get a pass by the media, while they're all over republicans the instant something happens. Need a comparison? Weiner, and Yee. The latter one, was running guns to narcos while pushing to restrict guns.

Re:The moral of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

But then again you've been plenty vocal in the past to attack people for wrongthink, so I guess we can just wait until it's your turn right?

I'm not much inclined to listen to whining about being attacked for wrongthink from someone who has spent a lot of time on this topic denouncing communist "traitors". Left-wing ideas have been wrongthink for the past 50 years. Get out of the kitchen if you can't take the heat.

Re:The moral of the story

[GameboyRMH]

OK, so how does this differ from the Fairness Doctrine?

Re:The moral of the story

[interkin3tic]

Leftists get a blue check mark taken away from racists. They can still tweet, just without an emoji.

The right wing in control of all levels of our government make sure scientists can't report that climate change is happening because coal companies don't like it.

Clearly this country is being destroyed by leftist fascists...

Re:The moral of the story

[AmiMoJo]

My backyard has not been forced to become a public speakers corner.

In People v. DiGuida, the final judgement of the supreme court was that the grocery store didn't have any obligation to let him use it to speak or circulate his petition:

"For the reasons set out above, we hold that Dominick's use of the criminal trespass to land statute to exclude defendant from its property did not violate defendant's rights under the free speech or the free and equal elections provisions of the *349 Illinois Constitution."

https://law.justia.com/cases/i...

Do you have one, just one, SPECIFIC example of a commercial space that was forced to become a public speaker's corner? Don't tell me to google something, give me a specific name.

Re:The moral of the story

[Green Mountain Bot]

Twitter isn't a common carrier.

Re:The moral of the story

[AmiMoJo]

Interesting, so you oppose Mashiki's desire to force private companies to speak on people's behalf. Furthermore it's been tried in the past and was seen as a bad thing. I'll remember to bring up the Fairness Doctrine next time he posts that comic.

Re:The moral of the story

[Mashiki]

Too bad that you don't understand the difference between the two, you also missed the fundamental part of that court case. Remember that the fairness doctrine dealt with "airwaves" not physical locations.

Re:The moral of the story

[Mashiki]

Do you know the difference between airwaves and a street corner?

Re:The moral of the story

[GameboyRMH]

I'm not interested in word games. From what I understand you're proposing that the government should force private companies to allow a certain range of viewpoints to be expressed on their platforms. If that's what you're proposing, how do the proposed rules differ from the Fairness Doctrine?

Re:The moral of the story

[david_thornley]

Why don't you learn a teeny bit about fascism? Fascist regimes often do censor, but lots of other ones do also. It isn't a synonym for censorship or repression or something you don't like.

Also, it looks to me like political groups don't like free speech. The most worrying suppression of free speech right now is taking place in the scientific areas of the Federal Government, and that's not liberals doing it.

Re:The moral of the story

[sexconker]

He was always one.

Re:The moral of the story

[Aighearach]

I'm sure twitter supports the "free speech" of the people they ban from their private service.

There is a giant "underpants gnome" in that comic where it jumps from understanding the difference between government and business, to at end not understanding the difference and seeming to want to nationalize twitter as "infrastructure" because they're a popular publisher. That isn't what the Supreme Court was deciding when they said that distribution is part of speech; they were talking about distribution by people who would agree to distribute for you! They were saying the government can't interfere with distribution if they don't like the content.

Re:The moral of the story

[Aighearach]

Oh fuck this, gamers in general will not be lumped into the basket of deplorables over one incident

No, they were(note tense) lumped into the same basket as all the other deplorables who say the same shit over a whole bunch of incidents and the widespread claims from the gamer community that rejecting deplorable behavior was somehow an attack on gamers.

"Gamers" who aren't deplorable stopped being gamers, and went back to being humans who enjoy playing games.

Re:The moral of the story

[whyyisthissohard]

Here is something you parroting idiots should try to realize:
When the constitution was drafted, people actually did a lot of talking in public places. People weren't the drones you see today scurrying through parking lots among hundreds of people they don't know and will never talk to to get their business done and to return to their comfy echo chambers as soon as possible.
Public space was a well-used forum. People used to stop and talk to each other, even if they didn't know each other.

The founders made this law so that the most well-used forum was a platform for anyone to say whatever they felt was necessary. That is the spirit of the First Amendment.

It perhaps took for granted the sense of community that has been totally uprooted in our society today by economics (read: the engineering by the banks).

Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.

Tiptoeing around using the word "hater" doesn't mean that's not exactly what you're saying against "white supremacists" who all have the same argument as the strawman version of them you have in your head. You are seriously carrying on a conversation with an imaginary ideal of your opponent. Who and what are you even responding to? The comic? Which is now suddenly a "white supremacist" manifestation of some kind?

Re:The moral of the story

[tbannist]

You're a brainless animal. Literally and truly, you are not a human being.

That's the way to convince people to change, tell them they're "crazy rabid animals", and then rant about your superiority.

Re:The moral of the story

[mi]

Interesting, so you oppose Mashiki's desire [...]

What it is I oppose is irrelevant. What matters is that you asked for citations of when owners of private property were told, how they can and can not use it for the Greater Good [TM]. And I gave you to examples. And not just any examples, but ones relevant to the issue at hand — when the property in question was/is used for speech.

Re: The moral of the story

[mi]

I will make it a point to mod you down every chance I get

Haterz gonna hate, I suppose.

Re:The moral of the story

[tbannist]

Meanwhile, the so called "Net Neutrality" is the same thing by another name.

Why are you posting to Slashdot since you clearly know nothing about technology? Net neutrality has nothing to do with the Fairness Doctrine, which was a right to respond to criticism on radio. Net neutrality is about forbidding corporations from charging their users more money to reach certain destinations on the internet or to use certain services. Once your data leaves their network, it shouldn't be any of their god damn business where it goes.

Re:The moral of the story

[iMadeGhostzilla]

The problem is how do you tell who is racist. We've seen that term heavily abused last year as a political weapon. (It didn't work because voting is private.) The only way I can see making that decision is taking a person to court under the accusation of hate speech, and let the elected arbitrators in the society decide. Otherwise you are making a judgement call, and who is to say that your judgement is better than others'. Now granted if it is your company, you are free to silence someone, and if you want to influence the owner of the company to silence someone you are also free to do so. We just can't call that process free speech, it's merely one's personal preferences attempted to be imposed on others by means of technology, wealth, influence and so on.

Re:The moral of the story

[whyyisthissohard]

We're not looking to make them change. We're looking to put them down once and for all.

Re:The moral of the story

[Aighearach]

The Fairness Doctrine was not about private spaces, it regulated the public airwaves. It was an FCC regulation that only applied to people making a licensed public broadcast!

Who are these Democrats that want it back, or are you just lying? As a Democrat you're the first I've heard about it, and you don't even sound like you're a Democrat, so how is it you know I want things I don't want?

As an aside, Ayn Rand was opposed to the Fairness Doctrine as implemented, but she advocated adopting it in public universities; requiring 5 minutes at the end of lectures for opposing views!

Re:The moral of the story

[AutodidactLabrat]

.. Ayn Rand was opposed to the Fairness Doctrine ...

All while demanding obeisance from her clique of fools, with dissenters ridiculed in public for dissent
Seems her "liberty" was always at odds with everyone else's.

Re:The moral of the story

[mi]

The Fairness Doctrine was not about private spaces

It controlled, what private companies could say. The airways being "public" is irrelevant.

Who are these Democrats that want it back, or are you just lying?

From the link I gave earlier:

Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), and John Kerry (D-MA): It's time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) I would want this station and all stations to have to present a balanced perspective and different points of view. U.S. Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA) I’ll work on bringing it back. I still believe in it. It should and will affect everyone Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) ...we gotta get the Fairness Doctrine back in law again.

As a Democrat you're the first I've heard about it

So, you are Democrat, because you want abortion and marijuana to be legal... But, now that I've disabused you of your ignorance a little bit, you are going to call your lawmakers and express your disapproval of any and all efforts to reintroduce the Doctrine, right? And apologize for publicly questioning my integrity, right? Right?..

Ayn Rand [...] requiring 5 minutes at the end of lectures for opposing views!

That may be a good policy for teaching students... That is a different topic.

Re:The moral of the story

[tbannist]

We're not looking to make them change. We're looking to put them down once and for all.

That's good to know, after all nothing says civilized people like murdering everyone who doesn't agree with you.

Re:The moral of the story

[whyyisthissohard]

It worked for the allies in WW2.
But the revolution I'm talking about is different.

It's not a matter of who disagrees, it's a matter of who follows a coherent and sound train of thought to reach their conclusions. After that it's a judgement of how well a person upholds a way of life that is in accordance with the natural order - which is rather more complicated to explain.
If they have an unsound mind, they have to be destroyed in case their insanity spreads to the innocent. If they have a sound mind and are purposed to evil, they must be destroyed in case they gain power over the innocent.
These conclusions follow directly from natural law - 'survival of the fittest' on its face, but actually there are limits of "fitness" - a trait that appears to contribute to fitness, when enhanced too greatly, becomes unfit due to the fact that it destroys all of what it consumes. Unsoundness of thought and mind is unfit in any case, evil is 'too fit' and causes collapse of everything it touches.

The allies fought for monolithic plutocracy and the enslavement of the entire world under the banking system. They are the reason the global ecosystem is failing. They are the reason for terrorism. They are the reason for "civil rights" that only extend to affirm the manufactured consensus. They are the reason for the soulless consumerism and the destruction of culture.
It is their greed and blind self interest and the willingness of their subhuman drones to brainlessly advocate for them by the motivations of bribery and psychological manipulation that we must end....or else we all die....it seems rather likely that most life on Earth will die also.
Even if the plutocracy re-engineers the ecosystem and saves the world, YOU are a replaceable component of this antisocial economy. To these people, these plutocrats, who you serve, you might as well be a machine

It's them or us.

Re:The moral of the story

[gbjbaanb]

No, they don't. That the troubling thing - all they care about now is attacking their political enemy. And they do this directly, but also indirectly by promoting an environment that is anathema to them, eg Islamification - the left and progressives will be hurt the most if Sharia law ever gets implemented, but they are the ones screeching the loudest to allow it to happen. Blindly setting an agenda of enablement for some truly horrific things to take place, with impunity.

Watch this, its a history of a UK guy who is vilified, here he talks about what drove him to become like he is. It isn't some innate racism that makes him hate extremists and decide to do something about it - it was that he saw the extremists committing crimes and the police and authorities basically looking the other way (for fear of being called racist themselves).

Re:The moral of the story

[tbannist]

You know, that sounds a bit like Pol Pot's ideology.

Re:The moral of the story

[whyyisthissohard]

"POL POT....processing....equates to BAD BOY" what a coincidence that he was a political enemy of your nanny. No room for unthinking animals in the new world. Either your masters will kill you or we will. You're toast, lemming.

Re:The moral of the story

[tbannist]

Not really unexpected. Your philosophy is so right and true that anyone who questions it must die... If you ever got your wish, you'd die in the shadow of a mountain of corpses muttering about disloyalty and wrong-thinkers.

Re:The moral of the story

[whyyisthissohard]

My "philosophy" is natural law. So yeah, anyone who questions it does die, as a matter of physics. It's just a question of when.

Re:The moral of the story

[Aighearach]

No, no, no, no, and no.

No I'm not going to read your screed. You said that crap about "private companies" when the issue is "public airwaves." It doesn't matter who the fuck the company is, the public airwaves are not something they own, it is not their private property! Free speech is not a right of publishing graffiti on the public square, it is the right to publish your own words with your own press or a press that agreed to your use.

You say that is irrelevant, well you don't care about the Constitution and I'm not going to read another word of your crap past that. It being public airwaves is the whole subject!

Re:The moral of the story

[mi]

No I'm not going to read your screed.

You had me at the "no, no, no" :-)

You say that is irrelevant, well you don't care about the Constitution

I care very much about the Constitution, but the document makes no mention of radio. It does, however, mention speech without any allusions whatsoever to "public" ownership of the air necessary to transmit the audio between the speaker's mouth an the audience's ears.

Left up to you, you'd claim, the public ownership of this air gives the government a right to control what's being said over it. Indeed, you just said so: the public airwaves are not something they own.

And, indeed, they don't. But they still are — ought to be — allowed to transmit over them whatever speech they want and the "Fairness Doctrine" (which you, a Democrat, noisily disowned earlier) violated that right for decades.

Re:The moral of the story

[Aighearach]

If you can't tell the difference between a press that you own, and the public airwaves that have to be shared, and you can't find any difference between them in the 1st Amendment, then you don't actually have any idea how you feel about the Constitution because you don't know what it is or what it says!

Re:The moral of the story

[mi]

A public airwaves-using TV-company has the same rights to free speech, that the public airwaves-using Aighearach and mi do. Whether Aigherach and mi communicate over audible frequencies, or via Internet makes us no different — as far as the First Amendment is concerned — from the KKKapitalists and Nazis communicating via radio spectrum.

The government may be entitled to control, where we say things or how loud we are, but it can not control, what we say (or, by extension, what we choose to not say).

That said, your anger is amusing. Clearly in the wrong, you vent at the person setting you straight...

Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Anonymous Coward]

whining about how they're being persecuted for hating people.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[bursch-X]

Probably one would be pointing out your wrong spelling of "opportunity"? What? Grammar Nazis aren't Nazis anymore?

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, for a start, let's see...how about running a girl over with a fucking car, you jackass.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[MightyMartian]

Yeah, killing tens of millions of people, including six million Jews systematically murdered, invading neighboring nations, making war on the English-speaking world, along with other assorted war crimes like human experimentation, slave labor, and so forth.

Frankly, I'm not sure why being a Nazi has suddenly become this protected status. There was a time when most of these goons hid in homemade fortresses and got their "literature" in plain brown wrappers.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we ban communists, too then? Their crimes are worse.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll just leave this here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[sycodon]

It does need to be pointed out that Nazis were pretty light weight when it comes to mass murder.

You want real mass murder? Check out Stalin and Moa. Now those guys had it down.

BTW...Communists.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[ScentCone]

Well, that was horrible. Not nearly as bad as what socialists have done, of course, and are still doing to millions of people every day. But you're OK with large movements that are actually, systematically oppressing and killing people, just not with some idiots in bathrobes carrying tiki torches. Leftists in black masks being ACTUAL brown shirts and beating people on college campuses for walking to an event, that's OK, though, right? Right. Because you LIKE totalitarian thugs, as long as their YOUR totalitarian thugs.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Z80a]

Well, mostly of the actually sane people just argue that there are left extremists that label everyone they dislike as nazi, and might abuse this to stomp on em.
Of course, there are some retards that do label themselves as Nazis, and those need to be mocked and ridiculed for supporting such stupid ideas (and truth be told, it's not even that hard given how ridiculous most of em are).
The one thing you should NOT do is to turn nazis into martyrs or "the edgy thing you do to look cool if compared to the whiney moral panickers", as this only creates more nazis and might even make the movement actually serious.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[war4peace]

They are but they lost their Verified Grammar Status...

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[ShanghaiBill]

You want real mass murder? Check out Stalin and Moa.

You are comparing apples and oranges. Although Mao killed more people than either Stalin or Hitler, the vast majority of those deaths were from economic incompetence rather than intentional malice. They died from a man made famine, not in death camps or gulags.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[AmiMoJo]

The alt-right has spent years infiltrating the GOP and manipulating opinion to make far right / supremacist views more acceptable and mainstream.

Look at the reaction to Charlottesville. You might have expected widespread, unequivocal condemnation... But POTUS came out in support of the Nazis. At least they failed to completely take over the GOP and have been left with an ineffective government that is tearing itself apart as the traditional conservatives try to reclaim their party.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[admin7087]

Sure, go ahead. You have my blessing.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[admin7087]

So many US soldiers died fighting against Nazis, commentaries like yours are just nuts.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how the video conveniently doesn't show what the driver was driving away from. You can only see some of them coming running when the camera turns. All that has been quietly buried in the news, as usual, and any mention of it is tagged as "fake news".

You Neo-Nazis have to coordinate your conspiracy theories better. The fine gentleman right above your post has an entirely different conspiracy theory that contradicts yours. Both are very lame, but at least make sure your messaging is coordinated. Just look at the mainstream GOP to see how it is done, you bunch of amateurs.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Z80a]

You're creating more of em with this kind of attitude. When you keep moral panicking on the TV about "OMG THE TERRIBLE NAZIS", you will give a lot of kids the wrong idea.
Before the extreme left started doing all this retarded stuff, we used to just mock the retards pretending to be nazis and it worked brilliantly, keeping the numbers really, really low.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[ShanghaiBill]

Executions, forced labor, and purges

In China, these were mostly within the political class. Stalin and Hitler tried to exterminate entire ethnic groups.

The famine of 1966 was Mao just getting warmed up.

The famine of 1966 killed only 2 million. Heck, even Pol Pot killed more than that. The "Great Leap Forward" famine of 1959-61 killed far, far more, and was caused almost entirely by incompetence.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Chas]

Yes. Because never mind leftists attacking government officials, rioting, causing massive property damage, beating people down, etc.

Because one dumbass killed someone, everything else is forgiven. Right?

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Z80a]

I'm simply pointing out that this way of dealing with the extreme right is not working, It was small before people were using those methods, and now its quite darn big.
So something wrong is being done if the goal is to keep the thing small.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[angel'o'sphere]

Most communists involved in crimes are already dead.
So what is the point?

Want to ban all white americans because they killed most of the native americans 300 - 200 years ago?

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[admin7087]

In my opinion you're confusing cause and effect. They are big now because you didn't stop them earlier. Don't get me wrong,I perfectly understand why you don't want to stop them - Freedom of Speech is a high value and I'm more on the side of the US than other countries in that respect. But there is a catch. The problem is that the Internet has given radicals plenty of forums to collude and these allow them to grow. This doesn't just apply to radical right-wing, of course, it's a problem with all radical opinions: radical right, radical left, radical religious zealots, ISIS, sovereign citizens. Plenty of idiots out there.

I'm also not claiming that there is an easy solution. Everybody should be entitled to their opinion. But the way US society is being polarized and played by small minorities right now has something to do with the majority not speaking out against them, and it's always like that - the majority of decent and centered people never speak out, they have better things to do. It's fine to be for freedom of speech, but there should be limits. You don't have to fight for the rights of white supremacists, for the same reason as you don't have to fight for the "freedom of speech" of pedophiles. After all, we're not talking about state censorship here, we're talking about private companies not supporting certain fringe groups. Consider being less tolerant to people who are not tolerant themselves.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Z80a]

I want to stop the nazis from growing, but i don't think the methods being applied would work.
All that banning those people from the twitter do for example is just to give the nazis a talking point of "see how the lefties control the media"?
The narrative i see they use is that "the lefties controlling the media want to genocide the whites", and they let several tabloid lefty loony shit like saloon to do the job for em, saying that "this is what the WHOLE media actually thinks".

Re:Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[gbjbaanb]

the irony is that they *are* being persecuted by people who hate them.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Anonymous Coward]

"Basically, what we're going to do, once we take over the show..."

Having watched over my life what has actually happened to every single country after you "took over the show", I am skeptical about your chances of a successful outcome.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[AmiMoJo]

where hanging the Union Jack would likely get you a visit from the police.

Speaking of koolaid... That's demonstrable bullshit. The fucking Queen flies it, the government flies it, numerous people fly it. It's our national flag, why the hell would the police visit you for displaying it?

Who told you this? Brietbart? Infowars?

strange how the left is suddenly very pro-war, and cheering Trump on for more of it...

Even the Republicans are trying to steer him away from starting a new war. Where are you getting this nonsense? Specifically who is calling for war?

What he said was: "There are good people on both sides" and he "condemned the violence on both sides."

And you can't see why people are slightly alarmed that he didn't specifically, unconditionally condemn the literal Nazis with their swastikas and their "blood and soil" chants, and literal murder? Especially when he instead tried to draw some kind of equivalence between the counter-protesters and the literal Nazis?

These are people who explicitly support an ideology that murdered 6 million people, genocide on an industrial scale. An ideology build on a foundation of white supremacy and racial purity, that started one of the worst wars in human history to force it on everyone.

And all Trump can say is that there were bad people on both sides. Even "I disagree with their policy of genocide" was too much for him.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[William Baric]

Racism and "far right movements" are clearly on the rise everywhere in the West. As a result, the left is becoming more and more "far left". So the most probable outcome of this division is civil wars everywhere in the West resulting in the extermination of most "minorities", the destruction of Western civilization, followed by the world being divided between China and Islam. Of course, that is if the US can go through a civil war without any group taking control of nukes and using them against their perceived enemies.

As you said, enjoy the show.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Mashiki]

You've got it backwards there. The left and far left have pushed on regular people to the point where left-wing politicians and academia have told, implied, and shamed people in general not to take pride in their country, culture, and so on. Then went on blaming them that all the ills in the world are their fault and so on. The backlash is growing because the left created their own enemy. That ranges in everything from those 'minorities' getting preferential treatment in the judicial system, to those minorities given a free pass to rape young girls for decades(see rotherham in the UK and other cities there). And the police being 'afraid of being labeled racist' as the reason that they did nothing. Or turning around and charging the rape victim with a hate crime, while letting her attacker go free.

If you don't think this is the way that it happened, you only need to look at media. With the various "cultural appropriation" garbage, or buildings being scrubbed of historical names because 'reasons' of whatever they might be. Political correctness was the start of this, people put up with it for a long time. But even people who are browbeaten, because they can't do something for "fear of being labeled a racist" will eventually have enough.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[e_pluribus_funk]

One alt-reicher ran over a girl with a fucking car (incidentally, she died of a heart attack, not from injuries sustained from the car hitting her). Incidentally, one Bernista shot up a Congressional baseball practice and intentionally targeted Republican congressmen. It's pretty interesting comparing the levels of outrage from the two different events.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[e_pluribus_funk]

>The famine of 1966 killed only 2 million

Let that sink in folks, Communists view 2 million deaths as no big deal.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[LocalH]

It doesn't help that, whether trolling or not, there are actually people who openly say they want to genocide the whites, overtly or effectively. From a comment found on this very page (emphasis mine):

Yeah look i hear what you are saying, but the reality is that you and the rest of the "white race" are doomed to extinction as we interbreed you out of existence.

Basically, what we're going to do, once we take over the show, which will be soon, is establish a new camp white-ray at Guantanamo Bay and put all the traitors and anti-american Trump-voting filth like you in there for a very long time.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[sycodon]

You Have no idea , What Communists , Have done..

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got it backwards there. The left and far left have pushed on regular people to the point where left-wing politicians and academia have told, implied, and shamed people in general not to take pride in their country, culture, and so on.

No, you have it backwards. The Right, and the Far Right, have pushed on regular people to the point where right-wing politicians demagoguery have told, implied, and shamed people in general not to criticize their country, culture, and so on, as anything less than fervent pride is wretched base calumny.

Patriotism has been corrupted by the most vilest act of all.

Of course, there are problems with the nature of pride, not to mention your own support for the suppression of Cornish, Jersey, Manx, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, and other identities.

Then went on blaming them that all the ills in the world are their fault and so on. The backlash is growing because the left created their own enemy.

Again, backwards, the right then went on stoking up the fires of outrage and hysteria, to get the mob of people chanting their denunciations en masse. It's easy to provoke, people are easily misled by the forces of anger and hatred. That way somebody ELSE is to blame.

Common psychology really, responsibility is hard to apply for yourself, easy to apply to others.

That ranges in everything from those 'minorities' getting preferential treatment in the judicial system, to those minorities given a free pass to rape young girls for decades(see rotherham in the UK and other cities there). And the police being 'afraid of being labeled racist' as the reason that they did nothing. Or turning around and charging the rape victim with a hate crime, while letting her attacker go free.

Yes, we know the British police aren't a hotbed of racism and bigotry, they don't cover up crimes, they don't blame the innocent, nope.

And I didn't even bring up their misconduct in Northern Ireland.

If you don't think this is the way that it happened, you only need to look at media.

If you don't realize how the right-wing is making things up, you need to look at them with a more critical eye.

With the various "cultural appropriation" garbage, or buildings being scrubbed of historical names because 'reasons' of whatever they might be.

Are you still upset that people keep telling you that your cuisine isn't genuinely authentic British, but a hodgepodge of varying intersecting influences?

Or are you upset that people no longer want to be associated with tobacconists? You never protested when things were being renamed as tributes to Thatcher. Curious that. Very curious.

Political correctness was the start of this, people put up with it for a long time. But even people who are browbeaten, because they can't do something for "fear of being labeled a racist" will eventually have enough.

LOL, the "politically correct" attitude among the right is why they're smashing Keurigs and threatening anybody who cancels commercial time on their preferred media outlets. Meanwhile, the actual people who are browbeaten, the exploited and abused, you don't care about, and won't even spend one word of thought for them.

It's always funny when the right-wing stalwarts complain about "PC" though, when they're the most demanding tha

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[AmiMoJo]

Did you miss the case where police were told not to have the union jack on their uniform because "it might upset some communities" as well?

No, but maybe you did... https://www.theguardian.com/po...

Because unlike you, I don't believe speech should be censored. I believe that no matter how abhorrent their views are, they should speak them and people should be allowed to see exactly how bad those views are. I believe that the line for free speech stops when there's an actionable threat, not before.

I believe that too. I've told you that fore, but you still keep on telling me I don't.

Where we differ is that you want Twitter to broadcast that speech, where as I support their right to not publish on your behalf.

antifa(that's actual communists FYI)

Citation needed on that one. If I were being unkind I'd suggest you are only trying to pretend they are communists because communism gives you a whataboutism for how bad the Nazis were.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Mashiki]

No, but maybe you did

Obviously, since that wasn't the only case now was it. In fact it's a repeated history of a busybody telling people that they can't do something because it might offend those 'minorities'.

I believe that too. I've told you that fore, but you still keep on telling me I don't.

I seem to remember you being in support of hate speech laws. That means you don't.

Where we differ is that you want Twitter to broadcast that speech, where as I support their right to not publish on your behalf.

Remember that part where a medium becomes so large that it influences public discourse?

Citation needed on that one. If I were being unkind I'd suggest you are only trying to pretend they are communists because communism gives you a whataboutism for how bad the Nazis were.

You want the original? Where they were backed by the KPD? And they'll claim that they're carrying on the tradition, or do you want to go look up their various manifestos, and tie-in's with groups like BAMN. Or you can go look at indymedia and their devout proclamation that they're acting as communist agitators. Or perhaps you'd just prefer the current german classification. Hate to break it to you, but they're right there. The standard useful idiot communists. The ones that try to crash society, and the first ones killed by the new regime when their usefulness is spent. The only difference between antifa and a nazi is the "ism."

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[david_thornley]

What you mean is that people, primarily the left, told some of you assholes to stop being assholes, and assholes are pushing back, having elected a prime specimen of one of their own. They also are forming their own alt-reality because they don't like the real world.

If you actually take a look at US statistics, the judicial system is not friendly to minorities. Police are not in general as friendly to minorities as to whites. The current poster child for getting slapped on the wrist for rape is white. People are defending the right of people to rape 14-year-olds because the rapist has political beliefs they like*. There's been attempts at boycotting a company for taking a stand against raping teenagers.

*I'm not expressing an opinion on exactly what Roy Moore did. I'm expressing an opinion over the reaction to the allegations, which is not to defend Moore by saying "he didn't do it", but by trivializing the act of rape.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[david_thornley]

Check out murder rates. Both Nazi Germany and Militarist Japan exceeded the communists at the rate of murder. The only reason the Commies did so "well" in the final statistics is that they weren't as rabid so they lasted longer.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[AmiMoJo]

So your argument is that because communist groups were involved in the Antifa movement during the rise of Nazism, that means Antifa today, nearly 100 years later, are also communists. After presenting a photo without context or explanation and a long Wikipedia article, suggest looking at indymedia but don't bother linking to the proclamation, link to a German site which I translated and doesn't say anything about them being communists, and finish off with a link to the openly anti-communist Epoch Times.

Another classic Mashiki conspiracy theory.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[david_thornley]

There were a lot of Nazis in Germany at the time that were generally against murder. Most Germans ignored the evidence of the Holocaust.

People who call themselves Nazis nowadays embrace those things. They think it's great that Hitler killed six million Jews, and want his work completed. They're worse than the originals.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[david_thornley]

My father took part in a large and organized anti-fascist demonstration that didn't bother with permits. His early death was probably partly due to the conditions he endured as a prisoner of war (and he was the sort of prisoner the Germans treated relatively well). I'm cool with what my father did.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[david_thornley]

Interbreeding isn't genocide. Wiping out Trump supporters because they're Trump supporters isn't genocide.

There's violent assholes all around the fringes. The problem we're having now is that some of them elected someone who favors them.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[david_thornley]

Conservatives got tired of the bullshit and kicked the neo-cons out,

No, the neocons took over the Republican party. The conservatives no longer really have a party, which I consider unfortunate.

But where oh where did those neo-cons run to? Oh right over to the left.

Would you care to name names of neocons who changed from right-wing to left-wing? Or is "neocon" a demon that possesses different people?

strange how the left is suddenly very pro-war, and cheering Trump on for more of it...

Strange that you'd get the impression that anything like that is anywhere near true. Leftists aren't cheering Trump on for anything, and they aren't pushing for war. We generally don't like war, and we really don't like Trump. You've obviously confused us with some other group that we reject. Fortunately, the only people who won't read what you said and realize you're bonkers are already in the alt-right.

What he said was: "There are good people on both sides"

Hint: No Nazis are good people. There were Nazis back when that were actually fairly good people (one was quite active in protecting Chinese during the Rape of Nanking), and tried to ignore what was going on. Being a Nazi nowadays means accepting what Hitler did and glorying in it. Good people don't do that.

If Trump had just unequivocally come out against Nazis, it would have been different. It really shouldn't be difficult to condemn Nazis.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[david_thornley]

You mean all those democrats who were cheering him on when he bombed Syria?

All who Democrats who were cheering Trump on when he bombed Syria? I must have missed that.

You really have no idea what's going on with north korea though do you?

I know enough to know that poking at them is a Bad Idea. Let China deal with them. They've got influence, and it's in their best interests to keep things well short of active war.

That's the ideology that murdered 100m people on an industrial scale, and built their foundation based on an ideology of the state.

The Fascists (including the very similar militaristic Japanese regime) didn't do bad at all in megamurders, particularly considering the relatively short time they had. Also, Communist ideology was never about the state. It was about the class. The state was to wither away and become unnecessary in the Communist utopia. Obviously, the Communists didn't follow this in practice, but you're getting the ideology confused with Fascism and similar movements.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[whyyisthissohard]

WHY is this modded insightful? It's completely OFFTOPIC. White supremacists = Nazis? Wrong. Very very wrong. You haven't even established that you're talking about "white supremacists". That's just the label thrown on these people by the publisher.

This is the problem with your hysteria. You excuse yourself from a logical progression of thought and then start doing worse than the Nazis you so love to bemoan.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[HornWumpus]

Pol Pot achieved the highest % of population genocided and did it in a few years. Not a true general statement.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[HornWumpus]

You're hanging your argument on a few books full of fallacies (Marx's work). We are hanging our argument on the history of the 20th century.

That makes you _wrong_ (theory always loses to practice), Fascism and Communism are 'hating cousins'. They are fighting over the same political territory.

All real world flavors of Marxism contain a key unfixable flaw. Excessive concentration of power, which then corrupts. Game over.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[butchersong]

Are you implying that that the original Nazis are still kicking around?

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[iMadeGhostzilla]

These Democrats:

'Even some Obama administration veterans praised Trump’s action. “President Donald J. Trump was right to strike at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of mass destruction, the nerve agent sarin, against its own people,” Antony Blinken, a deputy secretary of state under Obama, wrote in The New York Times.' (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/opinion/after-the-missiles-we-need-smart-diplomacy.html)

Washington Post: "Continued bombing by Assad shows limits of single U.S. attack" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/continued-bombing-by-assad-shows-limits-of-single-us-attack/2017/04/08/1c70cb1a-1c83-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?utm_term=.918c02caa31b)

"Trump was also praised by prominent Democrats, like New York Senator Charles Schumer and California Representative Nancy Pelosi, who said Trump’s actions were “proportional” and “the right thing to do.”" -- http://www.washingtonexaminer....

"Hillary Clinton called for Donald Trump to 'take out' Assad airfields hours before air strikes" -- https://www.usnews.com/news/to...

She rebuked him for warning Russians beforehand (which quite likely reduced the casualties).

Honest question, did you really not know this?

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Aighearach]

Misrepresenting people's politics is not very persuasive; though I'm sure people who already agreed with you will nod their heads at your words.

The pendulum will yet swing, and when it does, those so extreme they deny even the existence of opposing views will be swept away.

"The Left" is surely capable of forming their own opinions, I really doubt they check with you to make sure they match up with your absurd AM-radio stereotypes.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Aighearach]

Exactly! I never heard people say, "Oh, that's a really horrible thing to say, won't you please be more political with your speech?"

Instead what I always heard was, "Wow, you're a real asshole, why don't you shut the fuck up you racist prick?" And then instead of shutting up, the asshole just starts lying about their views, followed by whining about "having to" be "politically correct."

No, there was never anything political about telling people their offensive words were offensive! They could also just have kept being honest, and accepted the social consequences. I have more respect for the nazis than for their sniveling sympathizers who sympathize while denying it! Honest nazis at least deserve a last meal and a clean death.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Aighearach]

You might want to double-check that history.

Bad things did happen in history, but not the bad thing you claimed.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Aighearach]

North Korea isn't communist in any form at all; they are very clearly a traditional Confucian dictatorship! They adopt the language and iconography of communism because their sponsor is China, and China used to be Communist before switching to a mix of Representative Democracy and Representative Confucianism.

In Communism,everything is collectively owned by the People, and there is some sort of government that purports to represent the group based on concepts of Social Ownership; Communism rejects the idea that a class of people can be inherently better suited to governing than the others. So the authority to govern is based on dynamic social factors. Authority to govern is to be decided by meritocracy of some sort, not on membership in a class, or inherent ability.

North Korea doesn't have anything of the sort; leadership is based on the inherent superiority of the family that leads, and the belief that they have more inherent merit to lead based on Confucian ideas of inherited merit.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Chas]

Actually I'd say that the Far Left and Far Right are driving EACH OTHER further apart.
Meanwhile, the rest of us who have to actually WORK for a living wish they would just all meet up in an alley somewhere and end our problems for us...

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Aighearach]

Stalin killed around 5 million people just to try to goad the US into war, openly comparing what he was doing to what the nazis did. The reason many of them didn't die in gulags is that they didn't put enough food on the trains for everybody to survive the trip. And it was a long trip.

I tend to agree with you about Moa, though. The Maori probably killed them all off in response to famine. Or did you mean Mao? If so, maybe. But also, China deleted most of the history. So not sure.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Aighearach]

Or, when they became that rapid (Stalin) they ended up being replaced personally before the system collapsed. Might not end up saying anything comparative about the ideologies!

Hitler was nearly assassinated from within, Germany could easily have ended up replacing Hitler with somebody more moderate, signed peace treaties, and maintained something slightly-less-horrible for a long time.

Perhaps also if Stalin hadn't been killed, the Soviet Union would have collapsed much earlier!

The part that is more clear is that in all these cases, as long as mass murder is ongoing there are forces that remain opposed to it, and those forces tend to become more powerful over time.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Chas]

Honestly, no. He is right.
The Far Left, dragging the centrists along with them, have exposed this country to 2-3 decades of "political correctness". Basically, certain necessary things became "unsayable". And those who said them anyhow were made into pariahs and silenced. In essence, secular blasphemy.

FUCK
THAT
NOISE

As to cultural appropriation. Culture has worked by blending, exchanging, taking, conquering, etc since time immemorial.
So trying to tell people that things are "off limits" because they belong to another culture? Complete and utter bullshit.
Hell, it's to the point where Native Americans are taking other Native Americans to task for dressing in Native American garb for Halloween (another "loaner" from another culture).

I honestly don't give a shit if it hurts someone's feelings. "It hurts my feelings" isn't an argument. It's a whine. Nothing more.

And yes, you're right in acknowledging that the brain-deadness of political correctness has infested the Right too.

What do you expect? For years, the Left has played the "We care more!" card. And the Right simply didn't have an answer. So they'd wilt up like a flower in a snowstorm. Until they discovered that this whole victim mentality could be useful to them too.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Aighearach]

Specifically who is calling for war?

I'm a mouse, and I'm stirring!

I've been saying for this for years: War with North Korea is unavoidable, and waiting until the very last possible day for it to happen will result it many more lives lost than if we can see it is unavoidable, and get it over with. And I'm a Democrat at least, we don't have any group that is actually "The Left."

I also believe that war is probably necessary to bring peace to parts of East Africa that have been overrun by armed non-governmental groups.

I'd also rather support war in Kurdistan than to see it conquered.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[alexgieg]

In Communism,everything is collectively owned by the People, and there is some sort of government that purports to represent the group based on concepts of Social Ownership; Communism rejects the idea that a class of people can be inherently better suited to governing than the others. So the authority to govern is based on dynamic social factors. Authority to govern is to be decided by meritocracy of some sort, not on membership in a class, or inherent ability.

That's idealized Communism. It's beautiful. As beautiful as idealized Fascism, idealized Libertarianism, idealized Monarchism, idealized Republicanism, idealized National-Bolshevism, and many other utopic systems in which actual human nature is ignored in favor of some abstraction or another.

Here in the real world, Communism is a system implanted by a bourgeois faction (with a few proletarians mixed in their ranks so it doesn't look so bad) who proclaims themselves to be "the vanguard of the proletariat". These bourgeois then go and fight with the incumbent bourgeois faction by making an ideologically-motivated revolution ('ideology' in one of the many meanings Marx gave the word, in this case, when you do something for the actual reason A while rationalizing it as being for noble reason B). The alleged motives are the laws of History, the proletariat, overcoming injustices etc. The real reason, shown over and over again, is power for the vanguard itself, with the actual proletariat, the individual men, women and children who constitute it, relegated to servile functions under the new bourgeois leadership, who, as the old leadership, remains the de facto owners of the means of production while de jure being merely managers of it for the people.

So, yes, North Korea is Communist. They have their well developed Communist ideological credo, the Juche. They have Communist parties all around the world supporting them as Communists. They have the vanguard in power, for as long as it takes to make the Proletariat think for themselves and not need anymore of the vanguard's dictatorship of the proletariat. And once that happens (never), then everything will be alright, in the New World and New Heavens of Communist prophecies.

If you really want something actually different you should look away from systems that accept and endorse the centralization of the means of production in the hands of the few. It makes no difference whether the few are Capitalists or Bureaucrats, as long as anyone is devoid of their own means of productions and from being able to make their own rent, which in turn would grant them autonomy in face of authority, there won't be equality, for those who concretely decide what is to be done with the means of production, you'll have a two class society, always.

If you'd like to know one such system, search for Distributism. The name comes from the core notion of distributing the means of production among all the individuals of a society so that every one of them has autonomy and authority over their own means of production, rather than allowing it to be centralized and thus decided upon by a few. If Capitalism and Communism are the two faces of the same Centralist coin, Distributism is the system that opposes the coin as such.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[alexgieg]

Conservatives got tired of the bullshit and kicked the neo-cons out

Conservatives didn't do that. Actual conservatives are well informed intellectuals who read, understand and apply the notions of actual conservative philosophers such as Burke, Mill, Tocqueville, Belloc, Chesterton, Kirk, Voegelin and others. Those actual conservatives were kicked to the curb too, and replaced by idiot savants who take their "conservatism" from Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh, Jones and other idiot savants. And who are now so starved of actual conservatism that they end up even taking the neo-Fascism of Dugin's Fourth Position (through Breitbart and other sources influenced by t) as if it were a form of Conservatism, which it isn't.

The GOP isn't conservative. It's liberal with a "minus" sign in front. Both things are nowhere similar, at all.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[david_thornley]

Sure. What I'm saying is that Nazis and militarist Japanese and Soviet and Chinese Communists and such were all extremely murderous, and that picking one out of those four to dismiss as lightweights isn't really supportable. Some of them killed more people, some less. Some had more time to work in, some had less. Some killed in larger populations, some in smaller. I see them all as abhorrent.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[HornWumpus]

Excessive concentration of power is an unfixable flaw of Marxism (and all flavors of 'command economies'). All your words don't change that, or even address it.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[Aighearach]

No, I was talking about real communism. How the fuck can you not detect in what I posted the discussion of real events? There was nothing abstract about it at all!

Oh, I see, you're saying it isn't a True Scotsman!

BTW, go look up bourgeois. It means "lower middle class."

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[angel'o'sphere]

I did not claim any bad things ... you did.
You claimed that all "communists" committed crimes.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[angel'o'sphere]

On twitter likely not, so why do you ask?

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[e_pluribus_funk]

LOL.

Verification

[michaelmalak]

So... now there's no way to verify that a white supremacist actually said that racist thing?

Re:Verification

[amiga3D]

I guess the internet is going to end up split with left wingers having their own little nest and the right wingers theirs. Pretty much how the media worked out and now it'll be on to other things. We'll have right wing stores and left wing stores. The only thing that bothered me is I never thought that in the divorce the liberals would get the NFL.

Re:Verification

[murdocj]

Or maybe we simply won't pretend that it's ok when people who want to commit mass murder preach their hatred openly?

Re: Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the plan, then the Antifa needs the same treatment. No white supremacists with verified accounts, and also no black supremacists with verified accounts.

Re: Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

And the BLM / Black Power racist of the DNC "street army".

Re:Verification

[DNS-and-BIND]

Random scumbags on the right always represent everybody you disagree with, but when an asshole from Black Lives Matters murders five cops or a Muslim blows somebody up, they are anomalies and we shouldn't paint with a broad brush.

The Bernie Sanders supporter who attempted to murder a dozen or so Republican Senators and Congressman left us no possible doubt about his motivation. In a March 12th post on his Facebook page, he wrote.

"Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time To Destroy Trump & Co."

Now, it must be admitted that his reasoning isn't actually all that bad. If the President really is a traitor and, if he is literally destroying our democracy, then it's not unreasonable to think that violent action might be warranted. So, his inference isn't really what's crazy here. It's, rather, the ideas from which he derived it that are the problem.

So, where did he get these crazy ideas? Well, let's see. Here's a March 7th Newsweek headline from a piece by President Clinton's Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich: Is Trump a Traitor or a Paranoid? Former MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, Democratic propogandist Michael Moore, and venerable Democratic wise man Bill Moyers have all explicitly called the President a traitor. And, of course, the list of Democratic celebrities and politicians who have accused the President of serving Russian interests without necessarily using the word "traitor" would be very long indeed.

There can be no real debate about where exactly James Hodgkinson got the ideas that made trying to murder a dozen Republican politicians seem not totally unreasonable. He got them from perfectly mainstream political and intellectual leaders of the Democratic party. Anyone with half a brain knew all along that it was only a matter of time before someone started taking their manipulative nonsense seriously, as well as the horrific results that would ensue.

Why hasn't Twitter taken away these people's blue checkmarks?

Re:Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

I am with you on this, and I lived under commies... sadly they cant look in the mirror

Re:Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

Does liking American Football make me a liberal now...

Re:Verification

[ScentCone]

Found the person who doesn't have the intellectual honesty to actually address the perfectly valid points he made. Thanks for being a typical liberal. Please whine some more.

Re: Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh bullshit. The Antifa openly call for genocide, but that's okay because you ignorantly think it's a white culture they want to exterminate.

Re: Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

God help me... I'm going to defend white nationalists.

a) Antifa are in no way "black supremacists"

They weren't called that. Only a call for treating all groups similarly. And yes... Antifa is a hate group.

b) Antifa are not they remotely as bad as white supremacists.

Because...? Do you really want to compare the commonality of violence from Antifa to the far lower level from the white supremacists?

c) White supremacists are a far bigger problem than Antifa and black supremacists combined.

Because... ? Interesting that only now do you draw a distinction between the group... earlier you seemed outraged that they would be listed together... and in your mind, thought of as the same thing.

Isn't it odd, that those most worried about 'white supremacists' are often the most angry when 'radical Islam' is spoken of? We don't dare use the "i" word, for fear of alienating peaceful Muslims who are unfairly being grouped in through the use of the word word.

Should we not now worry of alienating non-supremacist white people in with the supremacist sort by labeling all as 'white'?

Re:Verification

[Hal_Porter]

So your argument is that if his side commits violence your side can too? That sort of thinking leads to civil war.

Re:Verification

[Gravis Zero]

There can be no real debate about where exactly James Hodgkinson got the ideas that made trying to murder a dozen Republican politicians seem not totally unreasonable. He got them from perfectly mainstream political and intellectual leaders of the Democratic party.

If you have to tell us then it's obviously debatable.

Anyone with half a brain knew all along that it was only a matter of time before someone started taking their manipulative nonsense seriously, as well as the horrific results that would ensue.

Hyper-partisanship is a problem and yes, I know that violence is going to occur but not for the reason you believe. The truth of the matter is that the less representative the government is of it's people, the more prone people are to violence. Right now we have a very low-representation government. This has been done though a number of ways of filtering who and what people can vote for.

* First-past-the-poll voting is reductive and always result in a two party system. You can't vote for the people you want, just the people you agree with more.
* Gerrymandering heavily distorts representation to a minority.
* Keeping elections on a workday excludes many of the working poor by making it difficult as everyone rushes to vote at night.
* Adding registration excludes people by default and photo ID requirements exclude more poor people.

The problem is that's just for the voting system itself, not even how politicians campaign or are selected. Anyway, when you have a highly unrepresentative group in power, there are going to be people who feel cheated (because in a very real way they have been cheated out of accurate representation) and will express themselves with violence.

Re: Verification

[quantaman]

God help me... I'm going to defend white nationalists.

a) Antifa are in no way "black supremacists"

They weren't called that. Only a call for treating all groups similarly. And yes... Antifa is a hate group.

The phrasing of the comment certainly left an implication they were black supremacists, I wanted to make sure to explicitly contradict that.

b) Antifa are not they remotely as bad as white supremacists.

Because...? Do you really want to compare the commonality of violence from Antifa to the far lower level from the white supremacists?

Antifa certainly doesn't shy from low-level violence like punching and vandalism, and it's something I deeply abhor about them. But if you compare all the low-level violence from both sides I'm honestly not sure who is worse.

But the white supremacists have a literal and extensive body count. Here Antifa isn't even close.

c) White supremacists are a far bigger problem than Antifa and black supremacists combined.

Because... ? Interesting that only now do you draw a distinction between the group... earlier you seemed outraged that they would be listed together... and in your mind, thought of as the same thing.

Huh? You think because I said "Antifa and black supremacists combined" I think they're the same thing??

Isn't it odd, that those most worried about 'white supremacists' are often the most angry when 'radical Islam' is spoken of? We don't dare use the "i" word, for fear of alienating peaceful Muslims who are unfairly being grouped in through the use of the word word.

The problem with talking about "radical Islam" is it's usually done in the context of talking about terrorism, and it implies that terrorism is caused by being really Muslim.

But there you can be a really, really devout Muslim and be totally opposed to violence. And you can be a really crappy non-devout Muslim and be a terrorist. It's not a great correlation.

So this ends up causing a bunch of really peaceful non-terrorist Muslims to be unfairly suspected of terrorism and exposes them to all sorts of harassment.

It also means some Muslims are going to hear you keep equating Muslim with terrorist and they're going to make the same association and be more likely to embrace terrorism. I suspect this has played a role in some of the "lone wolf" attacks in the west, people who didn't have a strong Islamic identity embraced terrorism because the media told them that's what true Muslim's did.

Should we not now worry of alienating non-supremacist white people in with the supremacist sort by labeling all as 'white'?

No because it's a complete non-sequitur. The problem with "radical Islam" is it easily applied to all Muslims because it basically means someone who is really Muslim.

"White supremacist" doesn't generalize about white people, it specifically identifies the group of people who think that whites should be supreme.

Re: Verification

[liefer]

Is this really what slashdot has come to? One of the highest modded posts is "You're a democrat/republican therefore you're simple and stupid! Hah! Got 'em" Please, keep that stuff on Reddit

Re:Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you joking?

CNN
MSNBC
CNBC
ABC
HuffPo
WashPo
NPR
VOX
Buzzfeed

The leftist crap goes on and on.

Re: Verification

[war4peace]

Antifa certainly doesn't shy from low-level violence like punching and vandalism, and it's something I deeply abhor about them. But if you compare all the low-level violence from both sides I'm honestly not sure who is worse.

But the white supremacists have a literal and extensive body count. Here Antifa isn't even close.

So what you're proposing is to wait until they're tied in this metric? "Oh, they're not that bad... yet. We should wait until they are!"

The problem with talking about "radical Islam" is it's usually done in the context of talking about terrorism, and it implies that terrorism is caused by being really Muslim.

But there you can be a really, really devout Muslim and be totally opposed to violence. And you can be a really crappy non-devout Muslim and be a terrorist. It's not a great correlation.

I think you need the term "radical" defined.

So this ends up causing a bunch of really peaceful non-terrorist Muslims to be unfairly suspected of terrorism and exposes them to all sorts of harassment.

Look, if you have a huge festering would on your arm and don't take care of it, you'll be perceived as being sick. Everyone's going to say "quantaman is sick", not "quantaman's festered wound on his arm is sick". Yes, a disease which is being not taken care of will make the whole person be defined as sick.

No because it's a complete non-sequitur. The problem with "radical Islam" is it easily applied to all Muslims because it basically means someone who is really Muslim.

"White supremacist" doesn't generalize about white people, it specifically identifies the group of people who think that whites should be supreme.

Maybe you see it that way. Ask a black person though, you'll be surprised by their response.
Those white supremacists are a festering wound much like radical Islamist types and generally any other racist, hate-ist etc. group.

Re:Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

Random scumbags on the right always represent everybody you disagree with, but when an asshole from Black Lives Matters murders five cops or a Muslim blows somebody up, they are anomalies and we shouldn't paint with a broad brush.

Those are false equivalents. We are talking about twitter banning white supremacists. If you support white supremacy, you are racist. If you support Black Lives Matter, at a minimum you support black people not getting murdered for being black. That is all you can infer from supporting either of those causes.

Re:Verification

[PopeRatzo]

I guess the internet is going to end up split with left wingers having their own little nest and the right wingers theirs.

These guys aren't just "right wingers". I know right wingers. I have friends who are right wingers.

These are white supremacists who are calling for a white ethnostate and genocide (albeit Spencer has now changed that to a "soft genocide" (his words)). You can be way right wing and not be a little goose-stepping trust fund fuck.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Twitter doesn't want to amplify in any way the voices of people who talk about putting Jews in ovens.

The only thing that bothered me is I never thought that in the divorce the liberals would get the NFL.

You know, I gotta tell you, the NFL is on borrowed time anyway. I've been a big player of fantasy football for the past ten years and it's really increased my enjoyment of the game, since I have a stake in almost every game being played. But in the past few years, the level of injuries has gotten so extreme that there's precious little skill left in it. You can come into the season with a terrific roster and be completely out of the running by the end of week 1. This year, I had my first week where three of my starting star players went down with injuries in the first quarter of the game. It's really killed the fun for me. Add to that the specter of brain damage and it's just starting to get the same kind of feeling that boxing started to get in the 1980s. I just read about the unbelievable amount of brain damage that Aaron Hernandez had (found in his autopsy) and I don't particularly enjoy seeing healthy young men having their lives ruined for a big payday.

I'm a lifelong football fan, but I'm starting to prefer watching less violent sports like NBA basketball or NHL hockey, both of which are currently offering superior products. It won't be kneeling players or pro-military cosplay shows that kill the NFL. It will be because it became a sad spectacle of exploitation.

Re:Verification

[markdavis]

Really? THIS kind of crap is what is modded as "Informative" or "underrated"? Slashdot really is sinking lower and lower.

Re: Verification

[msmash (Top Editor)]

You're violent thoughts do not belong here. Go elsewhere, friend.

Re: Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

How Trump is being treated in the media isn't even close to how right wing media treated the last President. You could buy gun targets with President Obama's face on them. Some on the right were stopping just short of calling for armed revolution. They were certainly hinting at it. And despite all of this, we didn't have armed right wingers shooting Democratic law makers. All this means is you can't blame media for what crazy people do.

Re:Verification

[Hal_Porter]

And Nazis is defined as "anyone who isn't an AntiFa" I presume. "Liberals get the bullet too", remember?

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

If it was disturbing after Charlottesville when the media came out in support of the masked mobs of black-bloc "anti-fascists" who "seek peace through violence" (CNN), it was downright Orwellian when that support faded after yet another episode in Berkeley, where Antifa attacked random passers-by with an advantage of sometimes ten-to-one. But the weirdest part is how the group has been condemned.

Vox is worried that "deploy[ing] violence . . . could seriously backfire"; The New Yorker is concerned Antifa is "helping Donald Trump"; and the Guardian thinks the group is "undermin[ing] the Trump resistance." A New Republic writer whose camera and phone were "jacked" "felt sorry" for his attackers, who had "real pain in [their] eyes" and seek "to stop [white supremacist] hate." All across the funny papers, the message is clear: If there is a Trumpist rally in your town and you see a group of people with bats just whaling on somebody, their hearts are probably in the right place - they just haven't thought hard enough about the "bad faith" right-wing arguments, based in "false equivalencies," that their actions will legitimate.

This line is almost as disrespectful to Antifa itself as it is to the everyday reader or viewer wondering what to make of an angry mob beating the tar out of someone. After all, the group has kept neither its tactics nor its values a secret. Its members did in Berkeley what they always do. Last winter, when they attacked a crowd outside a Milo Yiannopoulos event, they took sticks to people passed out on the ground and spray-painted "Liberals get the bullet too" around town. Liberal journalists, refusing to take them at their word, happily shared videos of Richard Spencer getting punched in the face. All that's changed is that Antifa's message is finally starting to sink in, and liberal journalists are figuring out that they're next.

Re: Verification

[Bongo]

The problem with talking about "radical Islam" is it's usually done in the context of talking about terrorism, and it implies that terrorism is caused by being really Muslim.

But there you can be a really, really devout Muslim and be totally opposed to violence. And you can be a really crappy non-devout Muslim and be a terrorist. It's not a great correlation.

So this ends up causing a bunch of really peaceful non-terrorist Muslims to be unfairly suspected of terrorism and exposes them to all sorts of harassment.

It also means some Muslims are going to hear you keep equating Muslim with terrorist and they're going to make the same association and be more likely to embrace terrorism. I suspect this has played a role in some of the "lone wolf" attacks in the west, people who didn't have a strong Islamic identity embraced terrorism because the media told them that's what true Muslim's did.

I haven't followed the thread so am just commenting on this one point. The thinking, decades ago, was that, to help social cohesion, we should not have labels for groups, especially when those labels become fuel for bigots, for bigots to hate those groups. The idea, and it sorta comes from PostModernist thought, is that culture is made up of the words and language which people use, so if you could just remove all racist labels from language, then racism would disappear. And that's why we have been taught to be careful with language, and why saying "Islamic terrorist" or "radical Islamist" or even "political Islam" is seen as problematic, and frowned upon.

Now some thinkers, people who have worked for human rights and equality for decades, are starting to see that this method is flawed. The problem is that sometimes, a particular group really does have, objectively speaking, a problem. For example, Glaswegians with drugs and knife crime (take that as an example for sake of argument, I haven't looked it up). There is something going on in that situation (assume there are stats to back it up), but if your concern was to NOT paint a fine Scottish city with the same brush, and to not invite more bigotry against Scottish people, and so on, it would be fair to say that we should NOT use those terms, "Glaswegian drug and violent crime epidemic". But that would not solve the problem.

Also, if we are trying to reduce bigotry, well the people who are bigoted are often kinda stupid, but they are not that stupid. If they notice you avoiding saying certain things, like, avoiding using the term "Islamist attack", when in fact, the attackers were shouting God is Great and picking out people who could not recite a holy verse and shooting them on the spot, and there you are avoiding the term "Islamist attack", then the dumb but not so dumb bigot is going to take that as evidence that there is a conspiracy to support Islamists. So by not talking in plain terms, this can fuel the bigotry even more. And then people like Trump get elected **ducks**

Also, there is no shortage of Islamic intellectuals now, and people from various Islamic backgrounds, who are actively criticising Islam and saying that Islam does indeed have a problem. And yes, the vast majority of Muslims are not radicals. And yet, also, it is a dangerous thing, the ones who are radicals, because, and I hate to compare with Nazis, but it isn't like all Germans were Nazis, and actually it was a case of a particularly nasty bunch getting power. Plus the whole Mecca/Media thing, and the rules of abrogation, and so people can, if they want to, emphasise the warlord aspects of their religion's founder, as it is there. I mean, it gets much more complex. But the lack of open mindedness in Islamic culture and education is probably a bigger problem than what a few nuts with guns do. In Pakistan, they actively persecute the Ahmadis and declare them to be not Muslims, and this is an example of the closed minded, intolerant culture which is a bit too common. And Islamic intellectuals will decry this lack of open mindedn

Re:Verification

[KozmoStevnNaut]

These guys aren't just "right wingers". I know right wingers. I have friends who are right wingers.

Exactly! I have friends who have right wingers. A couple of them are even running as candidates for right wing parties in the upcoming elections in my country. We're still friends, we go out and drink together, we sometimes have spirited discussions, but we're still good friends despite disagreeing on politics.

And even though I don't like that their parties are way too deep in the pockets of corporate interests and will probably contribute to an erosion of worker rights and other causes I care about, they're not outright evil. Perhaps just misguided.

Literal goose-stepping, swastika-wearing, nazi flag-waving white supremacist shitheels, though? Yeah, those guys are definitely pure evil.

We shouldn't conflate the two.

Re:Verification

[Hal_Porter]

True, and people on both the left and right would be very naive to think that 'Nazis' are the only target of the far left. They also want to target normal Republicans and in the long run 'Liberals Get The Bullet Too' as the graffiti says.

Re:Verification

[Kiuas]

Are you joking?

CNN
MSNBC
CNBC
ABC
HuffPo
WashPo
NPR
VOX
Buzzfeed

The leftist crap goes on and on.

I'm going to ignore the fact that you just listed Buzzfeed, a clickbait site that doesn't do actual news together with actual news organizations and point out that as a European leftist I find it rather confusing that someone would label stuff like CNN 'leftist'. I live in a country that's comparatively very far to the left of the US, which means we've got, among other things, universal health care and education systems. I admit I do not read/follow CNN regularly but i certainly have not been left with the impression that they support either of these policies for example. They certainly lean more towards the democrats, but the democratic party is not 'the left'.

The point here is this: compared to other western nations, the US has tilted heavily to the right in the past few decades. The democrats are now what the republicans were in the past, whereas the republicans have kept going to the right, so you essentially have 2 right-wing parties, one far-right and one more centrist, but no leftist party, and this reflects in the media landscape as well, so that anything close to the center is labeled 'the left', and anything actually to the left is labeled 'communism'.

Overall the two party system has caused american politics to become hyperpolarized. Any and all nuance seems, at least from the outside, to be gone. It's all a game of 'blue vs. red', 'us vs. them' and both sides are making the divide worse by actively demonizing the other side.

As a case study look at the way the attempted ACA repeal went down. The republicans have the congress, the presidency and the senate, yet they failed to repeal the ACA because the suggested repeal was not right-wing enough for a segment of the republicans, even though said proposal would have robbed millions of americans health care and likely resulted in tens if not hundreds of thousands of deaths. In Europe, a health care plan that would remove coverage from millions of people with low income would be considered extremely far to the right, but even this was not enough for some republicans.

And then when outlets like the CNN point out the fact that such plans would lead to massive amounts of deaths when people are robbed of coverage, they're labeled 'leftist crap', as if not towing the line of the ruling party and presenting facts about the proposal somehow makes them 'the left', which is not true.

Re:Verification

[Cederic]

Ah, good point. I'd forgotten that. Time to spend a few hours reporting twitter users for promoting violence on the basis of gender and gender identity.

Re:Verification

[Chris Mattern]

You're not going to stop them short of full-scale repression (which I'll do you the courtesy of assuming you don't want). They'll just do it where you can't get at them. Like the OP says, we'll split right down the middle.

Re:Verification

[swb]

First-past-the-poll voting is reductive and always result in a two party system. You can't vote for the people you want, just the people you agree with more.

We have ranked choice voting in my city for municipal elections. I voted for it when it was up as a charter amendment, but after the recent election I worry it has its own weird flaws.

In a couple of races, the person who got the outright most 1st choice votes lost the election. I can certainly see situations where this happens and it creates a sense of lack of representation.

It also tends to result in a lot of candidates, often with widely overlapping stands on issues. The leading candidates seem prone to co-opt ideas of marginal candidates, which in theory is good because it means that they're adopting issues important to minority (small, not just racial) constituencies. But in practice it felt like me-too-ism and not sincere adoption of those platform ideas.

I also think it prevented meaningful debate on issues during the campaign. 3 of the 5 candidates seemed pretty interchangeable, and I think this kept the debates from being very meaningful, and most of the 3 wound up ultimately supporting one candidate by the final round of voting.

I'd almost prefer a open runoff system, where "round 1" was an election similar to a US primary but not party based (ie, the winners could in theory be members of the same party). Round 1 would reduce the field to the top 3 vote getters, and then round 2 would choose the winner. I think this would reduce the field of minor variant candidates and the second round campaigning would force the candidates to provide more substantive differentiation, and spend less time me-tooing similar candidate positions.

Re:Verification

[davide marney]

You'll know that President Trump is no longer bringing semi-trailers full of advertising cash to Twitter when they remove his check-mark.

Follow the money, people.

Re: Verification

[aquacrayfish]

So what you're proposing is to wait until they're tied in this metric? "Oh, they're not that bad... yet. We should wait until they are!"

Following this line of logic is rather difficult, so please help me out here. I don't typically root for the thought police approach to handling crime, but I don't think you're advocating for that. So I looked back earlier to the talk about labeling Antifa a hate group. Debating that point aside, I'm unsure what your intentions are by backing that. We don't, but let's say we agree there - what will that accomplish exactly? What should we be doing about hate groups? Perhaps more related to the topic at hand, why does a private company, let's say Twitter, need to accommodate them?

(Note: Personally I don't care about Twitter all that much - I struggle to figure out why others do or what blocking achieves)

I think you need the term "radical" defined.

My personal favorite. We're going to to co-opt the term radical to point to terrorism. Why not just call it terrorism, or... something more focused? I'm not a fan of any religion, but I'm also not naive enough to point to any of them and put them all in the same bucket. I think we've all had our share of people perceiving themselves as being persecuted for their religious beliefs.

As such, when a non-violent person who believes in peace is lumped together with 'radicals', or whatever term you feel compelled to use, of a religion, remember how much a lot of Christians feel in this country when that happens. Is there a stronger correlation of violence in some religions? Sure, but lumping people together doesn't resolve anything. I only mention this because that's what your commentary appears to be circling around, rather than attempting to drive toward any coherent point.

Re: Verification

[mjwx]

Antifa certainly doesn't shy from low-level violence like punching and vandalism, and it's something I deeply abhor about them. But if you compare all the low-level violence from both sides I'm honestly not sure who is worse. But the white supremacists have a literal and extensive body count. Here Antifa isn't even close.

This.

I hate the "but Jimmy hit me as well" excuse. Its childish and completely wrong in any adult situation.

I'm against fascism, but I don't consider Antifa to be any kind of force for good... let alone the white knights that the Facists would think I believe.Trying to get people to forget your organisation is bad because your opponents are bad is simply stupid. However when it comes to a credible threat to my society, way of life and health, its the far right that represents a bigger threat. This is because my nation, like most western nations leans a bit to the right, this I have no problem with. In many respects, agree with but its a centrist position so it doesn't go to far. However it also means we are more accepting of far right positions than far left positions. A proper (Marxist) communist would not stand a chance in an election in any English speaking developed nation, however the UK, US and Australia all have elected far-right politicians.

Personally I'm a 3rd way centrist, left and right ideas can live together, I staunchly agree with universal health care, the Government can manage this better than private organisations but OTOH, I wouldn't want government handling grocery distribution. They can even work together, I.E. internet service, let the govt own and maintain the fibre in the ground and lease it to any private organisation at a fixed cost. The private providers handle retail and compete on equal ground.

White supremacists, ultra-nationalists, fascists and their ilk are bad not because they're right wing, but because they're extremists. Same with Marxists. Never let the fact they have one or two good ideas from seeing how bad their overall goals are.

Re:Verification

[e_pluribus_funk]

>The only thing that bothered me is I never thought that in the divorce the liberals would get the NFL.

That's just the NFL committing suicide under Roger Goodell.

Re:Verification

[DNS-and-BIND]

LOL Nazis were socialists dumbass. Fascism grew directly out of socialism. Get an education.

Re:Verification

[e_pluribus_funk]

Fox News didn't cover Pizzagate at all. That was all reddit/T_D, reddit/pizzagate, and VOAT. And if you defending Comet Ping Pong Pizza and James Alefantis, you have issues.

Re: Verification

[Bryansix]

Does this metric of body count actually take into account things that happened in this Century or are we still just talking about things that happened before I was even born?

Re:Verification

[Gravis Zero]

In a couple of races, the person who got the outright most 1st choice votes lost the election. I can certainly see situations where this happens and it creates a sense of lack of representation.

It's possible but I think that's more of an issue with how information is presented. It would be better for the media to show voting results as issues rather than just their names.

It also tends to result in a lot of candidates, often with widely overlapping stands on issues. The leading candidates seem prone to co-opt ideas of marginal candidates, which in theory is good because it means that they're adopting issues important to minority (small, not just racial) constituencies. But in practice it felt like me-too-ism and not sincere adoption of those platform ideas.

This is part of the campaigning reform that is also badly needed. This could be cleared up by a shorter campaigning period and a requirement of layout out your "platform" in writing that everyone can read online upon entering the race (which would be a set date). I would say addendums could be made but they would need to be separated.

I also think it prevented meaningful debate on issues during the campaign. 3 of the 5 candidates seemed pretty interchangeable, and I think this kept the debates from being very meaningful, and most of the 3 wound up ultimately supporting one candidate by the final round of voting.

Debates need to be fixed too. I think the realtime aspect needs to be removed because it promotes showmen rather than thoughtful answers. Human psychology is complex and we need to account for it.

I'd almost prefer a open runoff system, where "round 1" was an election similar to a US primary but not party based (ie, the winners could in theory be members of the same party). Round 1 would reduce the field to the top 3 vote getters, and then round 2 would choose the winner. I think this would reduce the field of minor variant candidates and the second round campaigning would force the candidates to provide more substantive differentiation, and spend less time me-tooing similar candidate positions.

Well, almost anything would be better than what we have, so seems like a decent idea.

Re: Verification

[Ksevio]

Antifa isn't really a group though. Sure there are a few anarchists that show up to fight at rallies, but the right would have you think there are thousands or millions of them

Re:Verification

[Kernel Kurtz]

The only thing that bothered me is I never thought that in the divorce the liberals would get the NFL.

Why would you not think that given the number of black players?

Re:Verification

[Kernel Kurtz]

Now, it must be admitted that his reasoning isn't actually all that bad. If the President really is a traitor and, if he is literally destroying our democracy, then it's not unreasonable to think that violent action might be warranted.

Isn't that why you own guns? So you can overthrow the government?

Or does everyone have to agree on it first?

Re: Verification

[AmiMoJo]

Let's see some evidence of Antifa openly calling for genocide.

Re:Verification

[DNS-and-BIND]

When the already super powerful government wants to make you even more powerless, that scares the crap out of regular Americans, but you guys have been all in favor of it. Take those nasty guns! Guns are scary and bad. Don't you stupid rednecks know what's good for you? The people should live at the whim of the state!

http://monsterhunternation.com/2016/11/14/a-handy-guide-for-liberals-who-are-suddenly-interested-in-gun-ownership/

Re: Verification

[david_thornley]

Can we all agree that Muslims at this point are producing a disproportionate share of terrorists? This wasn't always the case, and it won't always be the case, but it's happening now.

There's still serious problems in attributing the terrorism to Islam. There are dangerous Muslim terrorist groups, sure, but Islam itself isn't the problem. Lots of Muslims believe that the terrorists aren't true Muslims, and aren't following the way of Islam. We want to encourage these people, because Muslims who want peaceful lives are as much our allies as Christians and Buddhists that do also. We want Muslims in general to not provide support for terrorists.

We need to make a distinction between Islamic terrorists and Islam in general.

Re:Verification

[david_thornley]

Learn some real history, dumbass. Study what socialism is, and what capitalism is. Learn about what happened in Germany and Italy in the 1930s and 1940s. Get a real education.

Re:Verification

[david_thornley]

I really miss the kind of Republicans we had when I was a kid. I typically disagreed with them on the issues, but they could be thought-provoking and reasonable.

Re:Verification

[whyyisthissohard]

Why hasn't Twitter taken away these people's blue checkmarks?

Because people like YOU have surrendered your agency and let this keep happening in all aspects of society.

Why hasn't some authority solved all my problems for me yet? I pay taxes and I do what I'm told!!! Not fair :-(

Re: Verification

[e3m4n]

antifa means anti fascist not anti-nazi. There is a huge difference. They became facists when they decided violent protests to supress speech of ANYONE not deemed 'liberal enough'. They are now the very thing they claim to despise. I had no fucking clue who Mark Shapiro was when they violently protested, hoping to get it cancelled. So I went to youtube and watched his speech. I saw and heard NOTHING that promoted ANY sort of 'concentration camps' or 'genoside'. I saw and heard nothing anti-Semitic (he points out that he is deeply jewish). So how is this a 'no nazi problem'? this is a thinly veiled attempt at thought control and thought police.

Re: Verification

[e3m4n]

how in the world do you get jewish from ny paymasters? The first thing that came to my mind was wallstreet and the 'sell their own mothers to save their asses' types that work there. By that measure of your logic, the entire Occupy WallStreet movement is inherently anti-semitic. I believe Carl Jung might say you were projecting? Does NY have some exclusivity on financial backers being jewish? Im confused here.

Re:Verification

[DNS-and-BIND]

Sure! Here ya go: http://www.la-articles.org.uk/fascism.htm The history of fascism, extensively footnoted and annotated. Think about this: We know the name of the philosopher of capitalism, Adam Smith. We also know the name of the philosopher of Marxism, Karl Marx. So, quick: What is the name of the philosopher of fascism? Yes, exactly. You don't know. Virtually no one knows. This is not because he doesn't exist, but because the political left - which dominates academia, the media and Hollywood - had to get rid of him to avoid confronting fascism and Nazism's unavoidable leftist orientation.

So let's meet the man himself, Giovanni Gentile, who may be termed fascism's Karl Marx. Gentile was, in his day, which is the first half of the 20th century, considered one of Europe's leading philosophers. A student of Hegel and Bergson and director of the Encyclopedia Italiana, Gentile was not merely a widely published and widely influential thinker; he was also a political statesman who served in a variety of important government posts. How, then, has such a prominent and influential figure vanished into the mist of history?

For Gentile, people by themselves are too slothful and inert to form genuine communities by themselves; they have to be mobilized. Here, too, many modern progressives would agree. Speaking in terms with which both Obama and Hillary would sympathize, Gentile emphasized that leaders and organizers are needed to direct and channel the will of the people.

Gentile was, in fact, a lifelong socialist. Like Marx, he viewed socialism as the sine qua non of social justice, the ultimate formula for everyone paying their "fair share." For Gentile, fascism is nothing more than a modified form of socialism, a socialism arising not merely from material deprivation but also from an aroused national consciousness, a socialism that unites rather than divides communities.

Gentile's philosophy closely parallels that of the modern American left. Consider the slogan unveiled by Obama at the 2012 Democratic Convention: "Government is the only thing we all belong to." That apotheosis of the centralized state is utterly congruent with Gentile's thinking. Only Gentile would have provided a comprehensive philosophical defense that the Democrats didn't even attempt. In many respects, Gentile provides a deeper and firmer grounding for modern American progressivism than anyone writing today.

Re:Verification

[e3m4n]

then maybe he should have abandoned his 'my side good, your side bad' montra. Both parties, since 2000, have experienced spans where they control the house, the senate, and the executive branch. Yet nothing gets done and they themselves get richer. Someone meeting your criteria of rationalizing violence would realize that both sides and working together to get nothing accomplished. There is no law giving member of congress, or its staff, a free pass from Insider Trading prosecutions. Yet not one charge has EVER been filed. Martha Stuart went to jail because her boyfriend couldnt keep his damn mouth shut after sex one night, and its impossible for someone to just let their money tank, so she sold her shares. She goes to jail for insider trading. Its not her company, its not her personal knowledge. She got the information second hand. Members of congress sit on committee's and APPROVE spending or kill spending, then IMMEDIATELY make financial trades based on the very policies they just manipulated. There has never been nor will there ever be a clearer case of prosecution for Insider Trading than one goes on on capitol hill. if this hate was a byproduct of not representing the people, why arent both sides under attack from all sides? Why still the entire 'my side good.... your side bad' horseshit that the media keep fanning the flames of?

Re:Verification

[e3m4n]

if that were true then BLM would speak out against black-on-black crime. In 2016 there were 232 black persons killed by a police officer. A vast majority of those were armed and shooting at the police. Only 16 of them where classified as 'unarmed'. This is across the entire US. This is straight from The Washington Post, a source I dare anyone accuse of being right-wing, alt-right, etc. That same year, 7,881 black persons were killed by another black, non-police person. If black lives matter, why don't they matter when another black person kills them? Why do only these 16 people matter? Or is it the 232, even though most were armed and dangerous? Is it really about black lives? Or is it really about promoting lawlessness?

Re:Verification

[e3m4n]

actually the right to bear arms is to keep the government from overthrowing the people. It may seem like semantics, but there is a difference in how its perceived. I would assume _enough_ people have to agree on it, otherwise it wouldn't last more than 5min and be deemed a wasted effort. A pitchfork is a simple tool in its day, but tens of thousands of them, in the hands of an angry mob, was enough to overthrow the Czar.

Re:Verification

[Gravis Zero]

then maybe he should have abandoned his 'my side good, your side bad' montra.

It's my understanding that the shooter was angry with Trump himself and wanted to hurt him. It's stupid that he short at the senators because Trump doesn't even care about them.

Re: Verification

[war4peace]

What should we be doing about hate groups? Perhaps more related to the topic at hand, why does a private company, let's say Twitter, need to accommodate them?
(Note: Personally I don't care about Twitter all that much - I struggle to figure out why others do or what blocking achieves)

That's exactly the point, it doesn't need to accommodate them, quite the contrary.
I think I haven't explained my point well enough, so here goes: I don't think there are "degrees of hate" in a hate group. The real question is what's the definition of a hate group, or what's the definition of hate speech? For a privately owned company hosting public data (such as Twitter, Facebook, etc) my opinion is they can define these things as they see fit and establish their own policies, as long as the hosted data is law-abiding, of course.

I think you need the term "radical" defined.

My personal favorite. We're going to to co-opt the term radical to point to terrorism. Why not just call it terrorism, or... something more focused? I'm not a fan of any religion, but I'm also not naive enough to point to any of them and put them all in the same bucket. I think we've all had our share of people perceiving themselves as being persecuted for their religious beliefs.

They don't fully overlap, or to be more precise in my opinion "radical" completely engulfs "terrorist" but not the other way around. There are radical people who never become terrorists. Many, many people do have radical views on various things but that doesn't make them terrorists. But I'm hard pressed to find any terrorist whatsoever who doesn't have radical views of some sort, some insanity-induced but radical nevertheless.

Re: Verification

[war4peace]

That wasn't my point. I wasn't talking about any particular group specifically, I was challenging the mindset saying "group A is not as bad as group B because it didn't have the time, the means or the success in doing as much harm as group A".

If group A says "kill people because X" and group B says "kill people because Y", and group A is less successful than group B, in my opinion it makes them equally bad.

Re:Verification

[Mike Van Pelt]

We have ranked choice voting in my city for municipal elections. I voted for it when it was up as a charter amendment, but after the recent election I worry it has its own weird flaws.

In a couple of races, the person who got the outright most 1st choice votes lost the election. I can certainly see situations where this happens and it creates a sense of lack of representation.

This is actually a feature, not a bug. It tends to disadvantage the extremes, and advantage those who appeal to a wider cross-section of the electorate. When most voters say "Well, he wasn't my favorite, but he was my second choice", that's not a bad outcome.

Re:Verification

[Aighearach]

So... now there's no way to verify that a white supremacist actually said that racist thing?

False! There is just no way to verify which specific moron supremacist said that racist thing. We can still verify that some moron said the thing, and if he was a moron supremacist or not.

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

There are no "black supremacists."

Even the historical Black Panthers, who were black nationalists, weren't supremacists! There is a big difference between fighting for your rights, or wanting to hold yourself above everybody else. They're not trying to hold themselves above me.

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

In my area there was a fight between two groups that both claimed to be "antifa": one group was against fascists because they don't like fascists, the other were nazis who were against being "merely" fascist!

One of the groups was definitely calling for genocide. But after getting their assess kicked a few times, they stopped calling themselves antifa and just put (literal) nazi flags in their yard. I saw "their yard" because it turned out that the whole group was one guy and a bunch of homeless skinheads he was boarding! lol

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

Can we all agree that Muslims at this point are producing a disproportionate share of terrorists?

No, but can we agree that if a Muslim shoots 50 people we'll call it "terrorism," and if a Christian shoots 50 people we'll call it "mass murder?"

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

The DNC criminally cheated Bernie Sanders out of the race.

Hillary and her supporters are indeed morally broken.

Lets remember also that Hillary Clinton was a Senator (D) and that Bernie is a Senator (I) not a (D).

As a longtime Democrat, it appears that he was graciously allowed to run under our banner, and it was probably a mistake because his supporters aren't Democrats and apparently didn't join the party.

I'd like to see a system with preferential voting where parties don't matter, but we don't have that, and perhaps we should pay more attention to cohesiveness of the whole instead of just trying to have the biggest umbrella?

Re: Verification

[AmiMoJo]

Any kind of news report?

FWIW Nazis calling themselves Antifa are full of shit. The real Antifa is explicitly against Nazis, it's what it was founded to oppose.

Re:Verification

[Aighearach]

Yeah, their only hope was to go all-in and support the players!

Instead they chose to be hated from all sides.

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

Not that gives the story clearly, the local TV stations are all Sinclair Media and don't explain any of their stories, they just alternate between pictures of flashing police lights, and kittens. I only found out about it because I was downtown one of the days they were yelling at each other... about a week before the fights started.

The local weekly did some good coverage of the other groups, but they're also having their papers stolen and burned by nazis, so I wouldn't expect them to feature any more of the conflict for a few months; they can't afford to have more than one group burning their papers at a time.

Re:Verification

[Kernel Kurtz]

I'm Canadian, vote Liberal here, and have owned guns for decades. Rifles, pistols, shotguns. There are regulations. They are not onerous.

I find it odd that in America liberalism and gun ownership are thought to be mutually exclusive. It's like any regulation is onerous.

We don't wonder why you have mass shootings every week though. We assume it is an American tradition.

Re:Verification

[david_thornley]

Okay, so you pull someone I hadn't heard of out of a hat (and I'm pretty familiar with the era), claim he's the father of fascist philosophy, and was a socialist. Even assuming that fascism has a philosophy (it's more mystical than that), and that Gentile is the originator, there are problems.

In the first place, movements don't always follow their founder. Mazzini was one of the people behind the unification of Italy, and he was bitterly disappointed that Garibaldi thought unifying Italy under a king was a good idea. The Soviet Union bore approximately no relationship to a Marxist utopia.

In the second place, learn about life in Nazi Germany. Learn how Hitler thought and acted. Look at how the economy operated. Hint: it wasn't anything like socialism at all. These are facts you can determine with some research, and they're very definite. If your philosophy says that the Sun comes up in the West on Fridays, guess what? It's wrong. If it says Nazi Germany was socialist? It's wrong. (I haven't studied Fascist Italy to that extent, but it appears to have been capitalist in addition. I know Mussolini was a socialist for a while, but he turned away from that to found Fascism. I suspect he just wanted to revolt against the existing government, and didn't care about the cause.)

The problem is that right-wingers don't like having to acknowledge Hitler as being in some respect like them (those that don't deify him, anyway), and so need to form their own fake history to lie about him.

As far as "Government is the only thing we all belong to," what's your problem with that? It's trivially true. Some people formed an association to discourage DUI called MADD. As a private organization, it had no power over others. It couldn't stop anyone who wanted from drinking and driving. It was influential in changing the law to be stricter, and then it was able to. Government is not the only power that can compel someone to do something or not do something, but the alternative is the private use of force, which is far more dangerous. Government can solve tragedies of the commons and eliminate free riders, which can be very useful. It can balance the market by putting costs on externalities.

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

Why not just call it terrorism, or... something more focused?

Ok, Islamic terrorism.

Is there a stronger correlation of violence in some religions? Sure, but lumping people together doesn't resolve anything.

On the contrary. You can't tackle the problem if you can't identify it. The "religion of peace" bullshit isn't working.

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

No, but can we agree that if a Muslim shoots 50 people we'll call it "terrorism," and if a Christian shoots 50 people we'll call it "mass murder?"

No, because that's like saying a serial killer is a terrorist. There is still no discernible motive in the Vegas shooting, and generally it looks like the guy was just fucked up and wanted to go on a killing spree, kinda like this guy.

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

You can label yourself as "against fascism" and be something else. Antifa in the US is anti-First Amendment, everybody-I-disagree-with-is-a-fascist Nazi, and say-hello-to-my-commie-friends.

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

So to you the terrorism isn't in the act, instead it is thought crime? I'm not really clear, are you saying it is a thought crime, or just that it depends on the perp's religion? Please say words that involve the religious issues because that is part of what you're replying to and your response is substantially lacking.

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

Please name a black supremacist with a verified account.

https://twitter.com/louisfarra...

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

Nearly all the people being called white supremacists are generally white nationalists.

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

What defines terrorism from other kinds of murder is intent. Try a dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.co...

There was no political motive. He wasn't trying to achieve a social change, or spread a message. It was just mass murder for the sake of mass murder.

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

I noticed the same thing. All the white supremacists invented a new word recently, but they didn't actually change their views at all.

In my experience the only time they deny it is when they're doing a build-up to a racist joke!

If I'm walking down a dark street at night and on one side of the street are some Black Panthers, and on the other side of the street are some skinheads, I'm definitely crossing to the Black Panther side; they're only willing to fight for their own freedoms, they don't want to take away mine. The idiot supremacists want to beat down anybody who doesn't agree that idiots are supreme, me included!

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

Right, got it: if the news-reader tell you to call it terrorism, then it is terrorism. If they don't tell you the person's motivations, or if they don't really dig into it because [whatever], then you know it wasn't. Easy-peasy!

Nobody is terrified by mass murder, after all...

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

It's called using your brain. Killing a bunch of civilians for an ideology to inspire terror is, what for it... terrorism! Killing a bunch of people just for the sake of killing people because you're a sick fuck... is not.

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

they're only willing to fight for their own freedoms

So when black nationalists agitate for a black state within America, it's called "fight for their own freedoms", but when white nationalists advocate for a white state within America, it's supremacy.

If I'm walking down a dark street at night and on one side of the street are some Black Panthers, and on the other side of the street are some skinheads, I'm definitely crossing to the Black Panther side

That's because you're a useful idiot.

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

I don't doubt the skinheads will call me names; that isn't even new! They do that already.

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

OK, so you call knowing what is in somebody else's mind, knowing their true motivations, is using your... "brain?"

Wow! On my planet they can only do that in bad sci-fi movies! We have to judge people's actions here!

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

You don't need to know what is in somebody else's mind when they make their intentions clear, both directly and indirectly. But I'm sorry your brain is so nonfunctional that you can't understand these simple concepts.

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

Conspiracy to commit mass murder of minorities etc... is not a first amendment right, and that's exactly what the Nazis are all about.

Please, show me where the anti-First Amendment crowd broke up a meeting/talk where that was the topic of discussion. Because you know damn well it's never happened.

Antifa = everybody-I-disagree-with-is-a-fascist Nazi, and say-hello-to-my-commie-friends

Re:Verification

[DNS-and-BIND]

Nazi Germany wasn't socialist. *facepalm*. National Socialist German Workers' Party. Gimme a fucking break. Fascism grew directly out of Socialism. They're two branches of the same tree. But they can't both be right, eh? That's why the Nazis had such a war with the Soviets: National Socialism vs. International Socialism. The war between brothers is always the most vicious.

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

If you don't need to know what is in their mind, then perhaps it is in your mind, and not theirs?

Re: Verification

[Pseudonym]

True Scotsmen against Scotsmen in this case.

Re:Verification

[Pseudonym]

Do I need to bring out the chart? The chart is pretty good.

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

I mean you don't need to be a mind reader when "when they make their intentions clear, both directly and indirectly".

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

You do, though. Actually, the limits of what is your mind and what is somebody else's mind were explored rather extensively even in ancient Greece! This is not a new or controversial concept. Your claim of knowledge is a claim of what is inside your own mind only.

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

Sorry, I'm not interested in sophistry. No more replies from me.

Re: Verification

[Aighearach]

Derpa derpa derpa derp! I didn't ask you to reply, dumb ass.

Re: Verification

[aquacrayfish]

Again, the problem isn't about what term you use. The problem is lumping people together. In general terms, making policy for everyone who practices a religion is a bad idea. So you need nuance. Slapping a label on Islam and making people believe everyone who follows it is the problem sure isn't working either.

Re: Verification

[Raenex]

This is the politically correct head-in-sand approach to Islamic terrorism. The terror is Islamic. It is inspired by Islamic scriptures, preachers, history, and followers. You can't address a problem if you don't identify the root causes.

How the "peaceful" Muslims respond to the beating black heart within Islam is up to them. But pretending that it isn't there isn't going to solve the problem.

Re:Verification

[david_thornley]

Slashdot poster who believes any word that came out of the Nazis. *facepalm*. To repeat what I've posted many times before, there were national and socialist branches of the part until the mid-30s, when the socialists were removed from the party in a very bloody way. If you actually struggle through the prose of Mein Kampf, you will come to a part where Hitler carefully describes the relationship of propaganda to party doctrine, and why you should never change the propaganda even when the doctrine changes.

Socialism, as it was used back then, was not capitalism, but a completely different economic system (which doesn't work well). It tended to be left-wing, but appealed to some people more on the right (followers of Bellamy's "Looking Forward", which were pushing for real national socialism and calling it "Nationalism"; certain Japanese right-wingers pushing for the "Showa Restoration" something like the "Meiji Restoration", in which all property would be returned to the Emperor). People influential in Nazi Germany were often old-line industrialists. In the Soviet Union, such people either converted to Communism, and renounced their positions as industrialists, or it was execution or Gulag time. The way you worked your way up in the Soviet government was somewhat similar to how you worked your way up in Nazi Germany, but you subscribed to very different beliefs.

So, people think the check means

[Anonymous Coward]

So, people think the check means Twitter is endorsing the verified person. So, now it officially does.

Re:So, people think the check means

[Anonymous Coward]

If a bunch of retarded American children can change the definition of literally to figuratively, then sure, people get to decide what things mean.

Re:So, people think the check means

[DNS-and-BIND]

"This perception became worse when we opened up verification for public submissions and verified people who we in no way endorse"

The verified status literally means Twitter endorses them.

By the way, as long as we're talking about it, I ran across this story the other day that explained where Richard Spencer got his start. It was the Duke Lacrosse non-rape case that was made up and never happened. The Left literally created the alt-right movement. In 2014 Rolling Stoneâ(TM)s false rape story at UVA didn't help either.

I can see where he would feel vindicated," K. C. Johnson said. "His basic take on the case proved to be correct, and he was right in a way that the establishment media was not. It took a lot of guts to do what he did."

Re:So, people think the check means

[Anonymous Coward]

"The verified status literally means Twitter endorses them."

No, it means that they are who they claim to be. There are lots of fake accounts for famous people, the checkmark clears it up.

As Michael Jordan once said when pressured to say something bad about the right..."Republicans buy shoes too". Twitter may have done the morally right thing but it sure won't help their bottom line.

Re:So, people think the check means

[DNS-and-BIND]

"This perception became worse when we opened up verification for public submissions and verified people who we in no way endorse"

It literally means that Twitter thinks that verification means endorsing the person. Literally.

Re:So, people think the check means

[aevan]

So the people who became unverified... it is because it turned out it really wasn't them? Or was there some global amnesia and they stopped being famous?

Re:So, people think the check means

[Hal_Porter]

Jack Dorsey obviously looked at this famous incident where the Commies airbrushed Yezhov out of a photo after his execution and thought 'Gee, that's a good idea'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Marx was right in his comment history repeats itself, "the first as tragedy, then as farce"

Re:So, people think the check means

[Cederic]

mmm. Lets see who is using the term "gas yourself" (and not 'gas yourself up') on Twitter.

Clearly a white supremacist: https://twitter.com/QueenGatho...
Obvious nazi: https://twitter.com/rxmsxy/sta...
Must be a 1937 blond German behind this account: https://twitter.com/IWillRedPi... (although comically the person to whom that comment is direct has been accused of being a nazi)
https://twitter.com/yarng/stat... looks like a clear four out of four here.

Yes, Google confirms: You're full of shit.

(Don't even get me fucking started on 'who does the doxxing around here')

Re:So, people think the check means

[AmiMoJo]

You think "IWillRedPillYou", with their Pepe the Frog memes, is not part of the alt-right?

And that guy with a photo of Assad, clearly a leftist...

What is your actual point here? It's not clear why you linked to a bunch of unpleasant Twitter accounts.

Re:So, people think the check means

[Cederic]

Mainly my point is that it's actually fucking hard to find any nazis on twitter telling people to gas themselves. That was all I found in seven pages of search results, and it's hardly fucking conclusive.

Or to put it another way: Your justification for removing verification doesn't make any sense at all.

Re:So, people think the check means

[GameboyRMH]

It effectively DID amount to an endorsement before this incident, it's just official now. Twitter wouldn't give a verified checkmark to Joe Sixpack, even if he attempted to follow the same verification process as Kim Kardashian and was able to do so. Twitter picked and chose who would get one. As such, how could they defend giving one to a nazi and not Joe Sixpack, while arguing that it doesn't amount to an endorsement?

Re:So, people think the check means

[AmiMoJo]

Oh, okay. Well, in that case, I was just giving an example, not saying that is the specific behaviour that is the issue here. Twitter Nazis are actually careful to avoid giving themselves away with such obvious things (although that RedPill person clearly didn't get the memo). They call it "hiding your power level", after that Dragon Ball Z cartoon.

Re:So, people think the check means

[GameboyRMH]

How the fuck are you blaming the left in general for either of those false stories, when no leftists had any say in the matter whatsoever, apart from those employed by Rolling Stone magazine or Duke University?

It's actually far more ridiculous than blaming the right in general for Pizzagate, at least some factions of the far-right in general deserve blame for that since they created and pushed the conspiracy theory.

Re:So, people think the check means

[david_thornley]

I ran across this story the other day that explained where Richard Spencer got his start. [nymag.com] It was the Duke Lacrosse non-rape case that was made up and never happened. The Left literally created the alt-right movement.

I, on the other hand, believe that right-wingers are fully human, which means that I believe they decided to create the movement of their own free will (whatever that is).

Re:So, people think the check means

[Aighearach]

So, people think the check means Twitter is endorsing the verified person. So, now it officially does.

I checked the etymology of endorse and it turns out that it comes from medieval Latin indorsare, meaning "in or on" + "back." So signing on the back of something to verify identity is the literal original meaning of endorse.

The check literally means that twitter checked their identity! It is about as literal an "endorsement" as is possible.

And so it actually makes more sense and is more consistent than people might realize at first glance; they're simply withholding their endorsement. They endorse the identity of people they like, and other people will have to have somebody else vouch for them! Sounds normal to me.

Re:So, people think the check means

[ayesnymous]

So Twitter endorses therealDonaldTrump?

Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[AbRASiON]

Considering the recent moves in the media, be it twitter, facebook, news articles, reddit posts, moderation across the web, youtube, shaming campaigns etc, it's extremely difficult to actually identify, clear, distinct, genuine racists.

The term has been wildly thrown around the web in the past 3 years (along with misogynist and other such things) to the point it's verging on meaningless.

Why take someones words and analyse them when you can just shriek and bray and imply they're saying something they're not. The accusation alone is enough to "throw a dead cat on the table" and totally redirect the conversation.

I myself am 'clearly racists' according to some comments I've got on reddit, because I have the gall to take issue with my countries *extremely high* immigration policy, which is impacting housing affordability, renting affordability and the jobs market (as well as general congestion, sustainability) - I need not mention a race mind you, but I'm clearly racist because I think maybe we should be thinking about this long term.

The wild labeling of any 'dissenter of our groupthink' is just causing more backlash. I can't help but take a cynical view now of anyone accused of such things and try to find the *actual truth* of what was said, to see if it's taken out of context or not.

In conclusion, basically, I'm not sure I really trust twitter to get this right, in the slightest.

NOTE / DISCLAIMER: (general rant, 2 people mentioned in article could *totally* genuinely be lunatics for all I know, but I'll be damned if I'd take twitter opinion as the final word on it, nor the average twitter users 'reports' either)

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[arbiter1]

Sadly people get called racist or white supremacists if they don't tow a certain view point. Its to a point that word has no real meaning since its used to loosely and freely to describe anyone a person with a conflicting view point.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I myself am 'clearly racists' according to some comments I've got on reddit, because I have the gall to take issue with my countries *extremely high* immigration policy, which is impacting housing affordability, renting affordability and the jobs market (as well as general congestion, sustainability) - I need not mention a race mind you, but I'm clearly racist because I think maybe we should be thinking about this long term.

You do not need to actually do anything to be a racist . . . if you are a white, middle-aged male . . . "You racist!"

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[onepoint]

Well, if in the pursuit of absolute freedom, some firms will pay the price.
I don't think most of the world is ready for a Star Trek universe where most
of the time, the growth of the mind is valued more than wealth.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[murdocj]

I'll make it easy for you: When people self-identify as "white nationalists" they are racists. By definition.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[aevan]

But they DO call people 'white supremacist'..even if they aren't white, as long as they are right-wing. Alongside Nazi, Literally Hitler and so forth.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[AbRASiON]

I'm in Australia,

My government *LITERALLY* cuts a cheque / tax refund for property investors who purchase their second / third / fourth (and so on) properties, as a rental. They get a tax credit on all expenses, interest paid, maint fees, management fees etc.

We have a housing crises in this country, it's significantly worse than the USA. The average home is now 12x the average yearly wage, on this particular metric, some of the worst prices on the planet, excluding a small handful of trickier places (Hong Kong)

We let in nearly 300,000 people a year, it looks good 'on paper' as our GDP grows, but our GDP *per capita* is worse, ie: average person is getting poorer.
Houses are insane expensive, rent is going up fast, we do *NOT* need more people here.

However, I'm just a loony racist unfortunately.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[luther349]

yep protest the libtards deleting history and is nothing just pulling the race card. maybe we need to start deleting black history see how well the black people will like it.

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh no, try to keep up. They're even calling Jewish people and Israel "white supremacists" now.. Like mainstream news organizations (CNN, HuffPo, etc)

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Anonymous Coward]

False.

Racism and supremacy are based in relational value judgment by race.

White Nationalism is a belief in an ethnocentric nation, like most African countries, India, Israel, Japan, etc. They do not promote superiority. They want to have their own country, regardless of racism.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Pseudonym]

We let in nearly 300,000 people a year, [...]

That's a very misleading figure because it includes short-term visas for students and business people. In 2015-2016, the number of immigrants was 189,770 under the migration program plus 17,555 under the humanitarian program. Net migration is around the 178,000 mark.

But even this is beside the point. The problem isn't that we let in so many people, the problem is that we shove them into capital cities. There is no housing crisis in regional centres. But there isn't enough infrastructure either.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[whoever57]

Want to solve the world's problems? Educate people to have fewer children, worldwide. Pretty much everything that is wrong with the world today, pollution, war, economic problems, stems from overpopulation.

Well, the GOP is working to make education levels in other countries equal to that in the USA. The problem is that their approach to this is to lower education levels in the USA.

The most recent example of this is the proposed taxation of tuition waivers for graduate students.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only solution to White people not knowing how to have kids is to ethnically cleanse them with open borders. The only way to make our communities safer is to make all illegal criminal Mexicans EXEMPT from taxes and laws, and then flood the country with millions of them, and Muslims that aren't refugees or from Syria, and then put them all on welfare, otherwise it causes crime and economic collapse.

This is obviously propaganda written by George Soros Bots to push the exterminate White People Open Society, Globalization agenda while raking in billions of dollars from all the chaos and destruction that will result. Meanwhile, Israel is growing more powerful and purifying their own genes pool.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll make it easy for you: When people self-identify as "white nationalists" they are racists. By definition.

Long before a(t least a) bunch of racists started labeling themselves 'white nationalists', there were many 'black nationalist' self-labelers, and it seems like they weren't called racist (as much at least). I myself am not a 'nationalist' of any sort, I believe in human rights that should be protected and fought for around the world. Though the radial importance of locality, despite the internet factor, still means that it is most logical to deal with your vaguely near neighbors socially before worrying more about people on the other side of the globe.

It seems understandable to me that there are many self-identifying 'nationalists' that don't consider themselves 'supremecists', because they believe that the(ir) world would be better with all the groups of nationalists forming nations. I guess the non-nationalists like myself become a nation in some kind of venn-diagram mathematical proof. But whatever. The point is that the jump from nationalist to racist supremecist does not seem necessarily implied to me. I also presume their are many trolls spread throughout that enjoy stirring up angered emotions. Not to mention leveraging the tactic for other political aims. Or perhaps you are correct in your nationalist->racist (!nationalist->supremecist) view if you define preferring to live near others of your race as racist (even if you might not equate that desire with believing that your or any race is actually 'superior' in any way).

Take for instance the famously tragic situation in California's prison systems. A few years ago a federal court had an order in place that some significant percentage of the prisoners must go free by a certain date if the overcrowding problem was not solved. Some may find such a news story shocking. The shocking part was that the california prison system *had an OFFICIAL policy of racial segregation*. They claimed, plausibly, that they needed to do this to best provide for the security of the inmates (that were severely obviously overcrowded). One can imagine some 'nationalists' that would prefer to live amongst the same race, not because they believe their or any race is superior, but because they have a realist view that there are so many racists of all races amongst the general population, that such a tactic increases their chances of safety, survival, and comfort.

This is not a simple problem. It's big. It's ugly. It's not new.

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[cyber-vandal]

It could be worse. They could have turned up, taken your country, stolen your children and desecrated your holy sites.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Mashiki]

You do not need to actually do anything to be a racist . . . if you are a white, middle-aged male . . . "You racist!"

You can also be not white, and still be a racist too. The current favorite among the left is to label asians(especially JP, CN, or PH) who support western ideals, democracy, free speech, etc. Is to label them as banana's aka "yellow on the outside, white on the inside." Which isn't any diffrent then the old house ni*ggers, uncle tom and other labels used by racists.

I hope the left is enjoying their identity politics, because this is the beast you created. Even funnier is just how far they'll twist themselves into a pretzel justifying their own bigotry or racism when you point it out to them.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[fafalone]

Sadly that's where we're at these days. I've been declared a racist because I hold the 'nazi' belief that we're all equal and decisions should be color blind. That infuriates the 'two wrongs make a right' crowd who believes we must address past discrimination by flipping which group gets the advantage. I'm also pure evil for acknowledging the black-white IQ gap; even entertaining the idea that such a thing exists makes you an alt-right nazi, nevermind that I'm calling for the problems that lead to it to be fixed. SJWs inform me that merely asking the question 'are scores different between blacks and whites' makes you irredeemably racist, because you've already exposed yourself as thinking there's even a possibility that there may be differences between races. Whether it's true or not never enters into the equation.
But that's nothing compared to how incomprehensibly sexist I am for having the unmitigated gall to believe that women are every bit as strong willed as men, and thus capable of saying 'no' to a sexual advance, so affirmative consent is not needed, and further that when a man and women are both drunk, the woman is just as responsible for her actions as the man-- regret isn't rape, and when two equally impaired people have sex, the woman isn't a victim nor is the man guilty of sexual assault. And I'm supporting rape culture and the patriarchy because I believe these college Title IX kangaroo courts lack essential due process, very clearly acting on a principle of 'guilty until proven innocent' and using a burden of proof so low it doesn't even come close to meeting the weak 'preponderance' standard it's ostensibly supposed to require (unless the person accused of misconduct is female, then the burden exceeds even 'beyond a reasonable doubt'-- in a case where a slightly buzzed woman gave a bj to a blacked out unconscious man, and explicitly admitted to that, it was the man who was found responsible for assaulting her. while unconscious. with his penis in her mouth.). If you don't support guilt upon accusation with no ability to challenge the veracity of the story, that means you support rape. Lawyers should be allowed to speak and ask any relevant question? How dare I support traumatizing the survivor with facts that cast doubt on her lived experiences.

Facts are racist, due process is sexist, and anyone not supporting the most radical actions of the progressives is Literally Hitler. And it's getting worse and worse and worse. The left is imploding because they can't stop turning on allies to the progressives who dare challenge the orthodoxy- flipping the oppressors instead of ending oppression, and insisting there's no difference at all between men and women, or between races. And god forbid you use peer-reviewed studies to show that the wage gap largely doesn't even exist because men and women on average make different choices-- science is just propaganda from the patriarchy. Demonizing white men likely contributed to Darth Cheeto's victory, but the left has just been doubling down on the same extreme identity politics, and is just asking for an even stronger backlash.

I'm extremely liberal myself, and would never even consider voting for a Republican, as I loathe 95% of their platform, but as a cis-hetero white male who insists on adhering to equality and facts, I feel very unwelcome in the left.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure very few will self-identify as "white nationalist". Many will identify themselves as nationalist, or will support ideas traditionally related to the nationalistic movement, and they may happen to be white. This will make them "racists by definition", by the current PC standard. Race may not even have anything to do with their views or message, but many will take a look at the color of their skin and flag them with a label.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[fafalone]

That someone modded this comment troll pretty much proves everything in it is accurate.

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Freischutz]

Uhh no, try to keep up. They're even calling Jewish people and Israel "white supremacists" now.. Like mainstream news organizations (CNN, HuffPo, etc)

Wouldn't call them White Supremacist, but Israel is certainly an apartheid state with serious racial issues.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[angel'o'sphere]

Only if you are a WASP ...

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[AmiMoJo]

To the extent that non-racists complaining about what they consider high levels of immigration are described as racist, it's usually because they posted a racist meme without fully understanding the context, or used an argument based on racism with a thin veneer of respectability without realizing it.

Your position was the one taken by overt racists during the recent Brexit and US presidential campaigns. In that climate, it's a hard position to hold and you have to try hard to distance yourself from those people, unfortunately.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Cederic]

Sadly on here you can get accused of being a white supremacist for saying that, "Kill all whites" is not acceptable.

As for jews, I find them to be excellent cooks but lousy in bed. Mostly I enjoy dancing with them; haven't tried chanting but next time I'm invited around for Friday dinner I'll give it a go.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Cederic]

The only way to combat severely shrinking growth is to rapidly increase immigration to make up for low birth-rates

Well, tell the fucking government then, because the population is rising rapidly and it's entirely due to net migration and the extent births by immigrant women.

That's not making up for low birth-rates, that's filling the country up, stressing public services and congesting cities.

and continue to force the expansion of many aspects of the economy. By driving competition and severely restricting QOL for its citizens, birth-rates may increase and return to sustainable levels.

Wait? You think that to save the economy we must fuck over the existing population? I'd rather let the economy collapse, be equally badly off and at least still have the chance to visit the countryside.

What other options are there?

Well, looks like everybody's going to have to work until they're senile even with all this immigration, so that's one option.

Me, I'm happy to let the population shrink. It's a green and pleasant land, if we could just stop fucking building over it.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Cederic]

With misogyny we're dealing with the fact that we historically have a really misogynist culture.

Yeah. That explains life expectancy rates by gender. Oh.
How about the justice system outcomes by gender. Oh.
What about national health spending by gender. Oh.
Maybe the family court judgements, by gender. Hmm.
Luckily death rates at work or by suicide are equa.. Oh.
Ah, violence against women and girls. So prevalent it gets its own acronym. Clearly misogyny*.

*Caution: Do not investigate domestic violence prevalence by gender, do not assess domestic violence support resources by gender, do not investigate domestic violence policy by the police, do not explore total violence faced by each gender and do not stray from your safe fucking space or you'll find out that yet again, it all works out better for women.

I have no idea what comments you made that drew such accusations, you may be guilty of writing some sexist or racist stuff, or you may have been the target of some people who had no idea what they were talking about.

Such as yourself?

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[GameboyRMH]

Sadly that's where we're at these days. I've been declared a racist because I hold the 'nazi' belief that we're all equal and decisions should be color blind.

Colorblindness is an often unintentional form of "passive" racism. It's certainly far from Nazism.

I'm also pure evil for acknowledging the black-white IQ gap; even entertaining the idea that such a thing exists makes you an alt-right nazi, nevermind that I'm calling for the problems that lead to it to be fixed. SJWs inform me that merely asking the question 'are scores different between blacks and whites' makes you irredeemably racist, because you've already exposed yourself as thinking there's even a possibility that there may be differences between races. Whether it's true or not never enters into the equation.

This makes you a supporter of scientific racism which is quite evil. "Whether it's true or not" indeed should never enter the equation of any practical decision for ethical reasons.

But that's nothing compared to how incomprehensibly sexist I am for having the unmitigated gall to believe that women are every bit as strong willed as men, and thus capable of saying 'no' to a sexual advance, so affirmative consent is not needed,

Clear trivialization of sexual assault and the value of consent, and denial of the possibility that a woman might freeze at the terror of being raped. Calling this sexist and supportive of rape culture is reasonable.

So you aren't a Nazi but you are a scientific racist and a sexist/chauvinist. Change it or own it.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Mashiki]

Well, the GOP is working to make education levels in other countries equal to that in the USA. The problem is that their approach to this is to lower education levels in the USA.

The GOP was behind Common Core? Really. The things you learn every day.

I guess pushing garbage like title ix and wanting to allow parents to pick public or private schools via vouchers is like hitler coming back from the grave for you.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[quantaman]

Why would a group of people based on hate and the desired genocide of blacks and homosexuals also spend their leisure time doing shots and laughing at a karaoke bar with blacks and homosexuals?

There's a bloody youtube video!!!!

What standard of proof can it possibly take to convince you?!?

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[fafalone]

You're reasons A-Z of why people find progressives intolerable. Saying colorblindness is racism is ludicrous. It makes *you* the racist, because you're saying that everyone isn't equal.

This makes you a supporter of scientific racism which is quite evil. "Whether it's true or not" indeed should never enter the equation of any practical decision for ethical reasons.

So you favor continuing the societal mechanisms that support the achievement gap? Because that's exactly what happens when you refuse to acknowledge it. You're putting you head in the sand and it's hurting black people, not helping them. Scientific racism would be arguing that the IQ gap can't be erased because it's biologically based. But that's not what I'm arguing-- I believe it's *not* biologically based, and that the gap can be erased. How can we do that if we pretend it doesn't exist?

Clear trivialization of sexual assault and the value of consent, and denial of the possibility that a woman might freeze at the terror of being raped. Calling this sexist and supportive of rape culture is reasonable.

So you're a sexist that believes women are delicate flowers who can't hold their own with men, got it.

You've quite accurately demonstrated the hypocrisy and faulty reasoning that belies thinking what I said is racist or sexist, thanks. Good luck next election, you're going to need it while you keep demonizing people who aren't actually what you're calling them.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[squiggleslash]

I've seen people called racists or white supremacists purely because they're members of white supremacist groups, or consider blacks and/or hispanics and/or jews and/or muslims to be inferior people, and even because all they've done is make wild unpleasant and false accusations against non-white non-christian minorities.

It's getting ridiculous man. I mean, if you can't say "Jews do all the crime" without people calling you a racist, then what kind of society do we live in?

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Bryansix]

Exactly this. Richard Spencer is a white nationalist, not a white supremacist. I'm sure he giggles internally every time he gets called a supremacist because he has another example of how he is unfairly characterized. Now I will note that white nationalism is a dumb idea. Race as a construct to determine citizenship is moronic. People don't need to adopt a culture based on the color of their skin. In fact many don't and adopt whatever culture they agree with most. So why use ancestry to determine who you might get along with better. It's dumb, but it's not supremacist.

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[jez9999]

And Nigerians generally want non-blacks to not be in Nigeria.

And Chinese generally want non-Chinese to not be in China.

And Japanese generally want non-Japanese to not be in Japan.

And Mexicans generally want non-Hispanics to not be in Mexico.

I could go on. How long do I need to carry on for you to figure out the gigantic double standard of the left wing?

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[GameboyRMH]

Colorblindness is racism because it ignores historical context. Opposition to it isn't saying everyone isn't equal, it's saying historical context is real and we shouldn't ignore it.

Your attempt to find the source of the achievement gap could be not scientifically racist...but ethically, researching this subject is playing with fire in the middle of a gasoline fight, so don't be surprised when people have a negative reaction to it.

I'm not arguing that women are delicate flowers. I'm arguing that they're normal human beings and not all the hardened action-movie badasses you argue they are.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[david_thornley]

I hadn't gotten the note from the Left that Asians were to be called bananas. Do you think it got lost in the mail or something?

The right has its own brand of identity politics, favoring white Christian people. It's really easy to miss identity politics, of course, when you're a member of the favored group.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[david_thornley]

Start deleting black history? Start? It's been going on for a long time. Now that people object to it, people like you want to double down.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[fafalone]

You're trying to use "historical context" to say that because some people were judged by the color of their skin to their detriment, they should now be judged by the color of their skin to their benefit, and vice versa, to compensate for the past. Once again, two wrongs do not make a right, and people should never be judged by the color of their skin in a world where we're all equal. Even if you disagree, its absurd to suggest this is a racist attitude.

There's just no way of getting around the fact you have to study the achievement gap to correct it, and the extreme hostility towards that and inability to do it without being labeled racist is exactly the problem.

Men are expected to be able to say no if they don't want something, and arguing women are so scared of men, in situations where there is no objective threat, that they have to continually be questioned because they lack the ability to say no, is highly insulting, or at least should be if you're not saying they're weaker willed or not equally responsible.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[david_thornley]

So you're a sexist that believes women are delicate flowers who can't hold their own with men, got it.

Strange, in the earlier paragraph you said that being aware of racial differences isn't racist, and now you're calling someone sexist for being aware of sexual differences.

The average man can beat the crap out of the average women. Men on the average are considerably larger and have considerably more upper body strength. I don't know how much of this is cultural, but boys tend to get considerably more preparation for fighting than girls do. We have separate athletic competitions for men and women, just to allow female athletes to compete.

The average woman is incapable of holding her own in a fight with the average man. Flowers have nothing to do with it. If a random man is willing to get physically aggressive and rape a random woman, he's likely to be able to. Some men are and do - not many, but enough to constitute a threat. That is one fundamental thing about relations between the sexes.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[fafalone]

You think people who argue that affirmative action, diversity quotas, and progressive stacking are wrong because they judge on the basis of skin color, thus violating equality, don't get called Nazis and assorted other terms for it?

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[fafalone]

While with the left, you don't have to associate with the asshats who called you a racist, any more than a conservative ever has to have his reputation tained by association with Republicans. Shit, I bet most conservatives happen to vote for Democrats (though usually holding their nose) over half the time anyway.

When it comes to voting I do have to associate with the left, because while I obviously disagree with the radical progressives, I agree with 90% of the Democrat's platform, and absolutely hate 95% of the Republican's platform. Outside of voting I mainly associate with libertarians, although I'm more of a social libertarian, favoring social safety nets, regulation to limit corporate abuse, and universal health care; not to mention disagreeing with their absurd notion that civil lawsuits are enough to protect the environment... so don't completely fit in there either.

Liberals don't think you're a bad person (racist) for being against affirmative action. (Ok, some on the fringe do, but most don't.) Conservatives don't think you're a druggie for not wanting to take tax money away from the public to spend on locking up marijuana users, and don't think you're a bad person for opposing new laws to prevent gays from marring each other. (Ok, some on the fringe do, but most don't.)

It's a lot more than a fringe that thinks you're racist for opposing AA. With gay marriage, it's a lot more than a fringe element that thinks opposing it makes someone a bad person, and I agree: Let's take the best possible reason for opposing it, that they think it's damaging to society because it weakens the family, and set aside whether the bible is or is not a good thing to base your morals on. Opposing gay marriage would be not a moral issue, but sadomoralism- denying equal protection to someone under the law because of private actions that directly impact no one else. And forget drug issues, both parties are appallingly horrible.

These are Democrat and Republican positions much moreso than they are liberal and conservative positions, and even in the parties, there is immense division.

Indeed, and that's where the trouble is coming from. While the right seems to tolerate minor differences on a few issues, the progressives on the left have exactly zero tolerance for anyone that's not 100% on board with their nonsense. Take that one professor at Evergreen State... the extreme progressives declared that for one day, all white people should stay off the campus. The professor, who was very liberal and supported all of the progressive identity politics before that, thought this wasn't right. The students went apeshit on him, calling him every evil name in the book, demanding he be fired, disrupting his classes, literally screaming at the president because the prof wasn't fired... all simply because he didn't think minority students should ban white people from campus for a day. And that's par for the course; attempt any rationality or dissent, and you're treated no better than David Duke.
The bigger problem is that that group has essentially captured the Democratic Party.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[luther349]

gimme a fucking brake you get a entire month dedicated to it. nobody tares down your stuff or anything else for the matter.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[GameboyRMH]

You're trying to use "historical context" to say that because some people were judged by the color of their skin to their detriment, they should now be judged by the color of their skin to their benefit, and vice versa, to compensate for the past. Once again, two wrongs do not make a right, and people should never be judged by the color of their skin in a world where we're all equal. Even if you disagree, its absurd to suggest this is a racist attitude.

Hardly. Give this a read:

https://www.psychologytoday.co...

Good luck with your sociology project. I encourage you to ask a woman's opinion about your thoughts on sexual assault. There's a reason every one will find them reprehensible.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[fafalone]

Strange, in the earlier paragraph you said that being aware of racial differences isn't racist, and now you're calling someone sexist for being aware of sexual differences.

Are you suggesting that women are more psychologically weak-willed than men? And therefore should not have the same responsibility for their actions? I was saying that racial differences shouldn't matter because we're all equal; IQ should be the same because blacks are not biologically inferior, and the decisions should be color blind because you shouldn't judge based on differences. Are you saying that the differences between men and women mean that women shouldn't be treated as equals? (You are, but I don't think you think you are)

The average man can beat the crap out of the average women. Men on the average are considerably larger and have considerably more upper body strength. I don't know how much of this is cultural, but boys tend to get considerably more preparation for fighting than girls do. We have separate athletic competitions for men and women, just to allow female athletes to compete.

Just out of curiosity, in a situation where the woman was vastly superior in strength and fighting ability to the man she was going to sleep with (say, Ronda Rousey with a skinny little nerd scared to even talk to women), would you be arguing that that man would be justified in feeling so threatened in the absence of any actual threat, the he no longer was responsible for saying no to an unwanted advance? Doubtful.
This isn't about situations where a man is doing something to be appearing to be using force or other power. The average woman can't hold her own in a physical fight, but that's not what we're talking about. The average women *can* hold her own with a man in terms of psychological strength. The average woman is *not* so dominated by fear that she's incapable of expressing her wishes in the mere presence of a man, lacking any indication of a threat. The average woman is *not* so fragile that she shouldn't be given equal responsibility. You're suggesting otherwise... how little respect you must have for women.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Aighearach]

You do not need to actually do anything to be a racist . . . if you are a white, middle-aged male . . . "You racist!"

As a white, middle-aged male I've not had that experience at all.

Maybe there is some other difference between us that causes you get called a racist, and me not to?

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Aighearach]

The only Asians that I know of being referred to as fruits are the Thais who support Thaksin but are working for the Army. They're called watermelons; green on the outside, red on the inside. (red is the chosen political color of Thaksin supporters)

But that is in Thailand, not in America. Over here we have to get the translations via the Bangkok Post. :)

I do frequently say, "Asian farmers should be growing more bananas, because it takes years to develop the trees and they have a lot of varieties; the store variety is dying from disease, small farmers are missing a huge future opportunity here!"

I'll have my wife ask her ESL class if anybody has ever been called a banana in a racist way!

Actually, most Asians would have a hard time even finding the insult in being called "white on the inside." You'd probably need a more political term instead of "white" to let them know you were associating them with America, rather than just saying they have a nice personality. They may all be brown to some, but many Asians want to have "white" skin, and they don't mean they want to be Caucasian; they mean they want to have skin like the other Asian people who lighter colored skin. The idea that western ideals would be connected to being white, that would probably sound pretty strange to them. There seems to be a tendency to associate "western ideals" with being European, rather than with skin color, and they don't necessarily have the same assumption of skin color being the sole defining racial characteristic; or even the same opinions about what the different skin colors are!

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Aighearach]

They want to have their own country

Except, they want that "own country" to be a country that already exists. They're not advocating to all move to an artificial island somewhere.

They don't want "their own" country. They want my country . And it is already taken.

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Aighearach]

No. Telling 4 lies about others is not enough to mean that other people have a "double standard."

There are no number of lies you could tell that would mean anything about anyone other than yourself.

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Aighearach]

Sorry to double-reply, but I just wanted to add a little public service announcement:

Hispania is an archaic name for part of what is now Spain. Hispanic is a non-racial term used to describe a cultural affinity among the Spanish-speaking nations in the Americas. Hispanic people can be of any race; indeed, Mexico has Hispanic people of all races! When you say that Mexican generally want non-Hispanics to not be in Mexico, you're accusing them of linguistic elitism, not racism. And it isn't true; they have many indigenous groups who speak their own languages are not driven out, but rather they're granted significant local autonomy.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[fafalone]

That article is flawed in several ways. First of all, it's just re-hashing the idea that we should judge someone based on their skin color as compensation to them for historical wrongs. The article is explicit in its call to use skin color as a remedy. Second, it erroneously concludes that colorblindness favors white people, when in many important areas, that is simply false. At elite universities and graduate programs, as well as major tech companies, a color blind policy would hurt white people and substanially benefit Asian people, who on average out-score white applicants on SAT scores, GPAs, MCAT scores, etc. Do you think I'm a white Asian supremacist, or that maybe I'm putting forth a principle because it's right even if it might not benefit me? That error alone renders every point in the article without merit, as it's based on a faulty premise.

Let's look at some specifics:

Colorblindness creates a society that denies their negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage, and invalidates their unique perspectives.

Denies their negative racial experiences: Why should these give rise to preferential treatment?
Rejects their cultural heritage: Everybody has their own culture. The cultural heritage of a minority is no more or less valuable than the cultural heritage of anyone else.
Invalidates their unique perspective: Lots of people have a unique perspective. Intellectual diversity is indeed important, but can be achieved without using skin color as a proxy.

The alternative to colorblindness is multiculturalism, an ideology that acknowledges, highlights, and celebrates ethnoracial differences.

This again repeats the motif that only the cultures of racial minorities have value. There's hundreds of unique cultures all over the world where the members are white; the article (and presumably you) deem these to not matter, because they're not held by someone with a certain skin color.

Finally, the article presupposes that colorblindness inherently leads to a lack of diversity, when that simply isn't true. It's again part of only the diversity of skin color mattering, and all other forms being unimportant. You can also increase diversity of all kinds by methods that don't involve saying "because your skin is x color, you don't have to meet the same standards of person with skin color y."

It saddens me that people like you are so thoroughly against the concept of equality that you believe anyone who doesn't favor judging someone based on their skin color is a racist. Maybe one day you'll realize how counterproductive that is.

And what have I even said regarding sexual assault? Nothing. That's not what we've been talking about. I said if two people are drunk, they're equally responsible for an encounter. And that affirmative consent isn't needed, because women, like men, can say no. You really think 100% of women disagree with those? Contrary to what your progressive brainwashing tells you, that's not even close to accurate. Now a lot more women favor destroying due process so that we have guilt upon accusation in Title IX kangaroo courts, but there's a clear motive for why, and you're one google search away from finding that there's certainly no shortage of women opposed to such an unfair system as well.

So once again, thanks for illustrating the logical failures that underpin progressive alienation of their allies because you think people that want equal treatment are the same as people who want to discriminate, because "good" discrimination is the only acceptable viewpoint.

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[jez9999]

Nonsense. It's become a racial term (at least in the US) which people clearly understand to mean "at least darker skin than pasty white".

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[jez9999]

So those groups *would* be OK with being replaced in their own country?

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[mjwx]

Sadly people get called racist or white supremacists if they don't tow a certain view point. Its to a point that word has no real meaning since its used to loosely and freely to describe anyone a person with a conflicting view point.

Translation... I want to say something racist but don't want to be called out on it. Sorry, but there's no global or national conspiracy restricting your viewpoints (sorry, white males are not oppressed). If you find your views are being criticised too much for your liking, simply exercise your right to go somewhere else and expunge them. If you find the only people who share your views are sad old men who sit in dark corners at the pub and use the term "Them" to refer to groups they don't like, maybe your views need re-evaluation. Unlike you, I find that my views can withstand criticism, in fact robust debate helps me improve and strengthen my views. I like to think this is because my views, in some ways differing from others and from some social norms, are not too extreme that they cannot be debated in a public forum.

Yep, modded down for daring to question the White Male Victim syndrome.

I think that is a massive demonstration of how much faith they have in their own reasoning.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[david_thornley]

Women are responsible for their own actions. These actions are performed in a context that tends to be different between men and women, and we're specifically talking about actions interacting with a man who she might not trust and who can overpower her. Man-on-woman sexual violence is unfortunately too common, and in particular if a man starts behaving physically aggressively he turns into a threat, and the woman needs to assess the risks. It is possible for a man who isn't really sensitive to commit sexual assault without knowing it, if the woman is afraid to say anything. At a job I had long ago, when a woman was talking to a man about going over the line, I stayed in the room and pretended to read the bulletin board. She was doing just fine, but I didn't trust him not to escalate physically if nobody else was there.

I think what we're disagreeing on here is what constitutes force or threat of force. I'm trying to imagine where the threat begins. In addition, there's a lot of stuff in our culture favoring aggressive behavior such as kissing, hugging, and pinning against the wall. There's a certain amount of cultural distrust here.

Obviously, this can work in reverse. Because most women are weaker and worse fighters than most men doesn't mean all are. There are women who could beat the crap out of me (and could have done so forty years ago, when I was in significantly better shape). If such a woman were to start getting physically and sexually aggressive with a man, the man could certainly be intimidated and let her have her way with him. More usually, there's a social power difference between the two in this case. The woman might be the man's boss, or otherwise important to his future, or just powerful and known to be vindictive.

As far as, say, both parties getting drunk beyond the point of no consent, then it can be legally rape for both of them. Alternately, one can force himself (more typically) or herself (less typically) on the other, and then it isn't mutual. It can be really hard to determine who's at fault here. (I have a relative who worked as a nurse for mentally ill and dangerous patients. She said that any sex had to be stopped because it was rape, possibly mutual rape.)

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[david_thornley]

And white history, with mentions of blacks, is taught twelve months of the year. Please put a brake on your own mouth.

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Aighearach]

As an exercise, can you find the words you missed? Or do some of the words just conveniently disappear, depending on who is being talked about?

This question you pose shows what a liar you were being above! You didn't actually mean what you wrote, you meant some other thing that requires different words. Is it true you're really so stupid you can't tell the difference between throwing somebody out for being the wrong _____, and being the one thrown out? You can't comprehend that if nobody is trying to throw somebody out, nobody is getting thrown out?

It is pathetic and it exposes your evil to those who have become educated in the language your evil deploys.

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[Aighearach]

Comprehension fail! Try reading it again, more slowly. I wasn't talking about how people in the US understand the term. Oh, I see your mistake, you can't comprehend that other people are people! Pathetic.

Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[cyber-vandal]

Yeah it's totally the fault of the victims not the killers

*CRAZY*

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying that it's treated as an endorsement, they are acknowledging they use the checkmark as an endorsement now. So the 'Verified' checkmark means Twitter, as a corporate entity, is endorsing whomever they give it to. As a potential investor, I find it extremely off-putting a media organization would taint themselves with moderation of speech because there's no way to come out clean. Someone *always* disagrees with whatever you say, and Twitter decided to join the fray? That's *insane*!

politics

[geekymachoman]

> "inciting or engaging in harassment of others," "promoting hate and/or violence against, or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease

Fuck those 3 white supremacist dudes, but it's ok for tens of thousands ANTIFA and similar to spew hate, insult and otherwise promote hate and violence ?

Everybody is aware of this.. just making sure it's pointed out, as it should be, every time they do something like this where they decide who gets to have a voice and who doesn't.

Re:politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Also significant chunk of slashdot marking it "insightful"...also noted..bros

Re:politics

[aevan]

Calling oneself anti-something doesn't necessarily mean you're anti-something, or even that you aren't the something you claim to hate.

Re:politics

[Mashiki]

Being for antifa means you're a communist agitator that's trying to overthrow society. That's treason son. You sure you really want to go down that path?

Re:politics

[AmiMoJo]

it's ok for tens of thousands ANTIFA and similar to spew hate, insult and otherwise promote hate and violence ?

You are making that up. I doubt there are tens of thousands of Antifa accounts on Twitter, even including the fake Russian ones, let alone "spewing hate". Can you give us some examples?

Did you make it up on your own, or is this inspired by the recent panic over the fictional Antifa uprising that was going to overthrow the government and behead white people?

Re:politics

[angel'o'sphere]

I guess you wanted to be funny.
But there is no difference in facism wether you are a far left or far right, communist or nazi.

Re:politics

[squiggleslash]

What accounts, supposedly associated with Antifa, are *verified* and can you link to tweets from those *verified* accounts that promote hate (other than hate of Nazis, which, you know, fuck those guys) or violence?

Re:politics

[whyyisthissohard]

Why would you get invested in something some one said that has nothing to do with you? Why "fuck those dudes"? Do you even know what they said in what context? You're being played, you're having a reflexive reaction conditioned into you. If you want to defeat your enemy at least understand his argument and then his motivation. But does your programming allow you even try?

Re:politics

[cyn1c77]

> "inciting or engaging in harassment of others," "promoting hate and/or violence against, or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease

Fuck those 3 white supremacist dudes, but it's ok for tens of thousands ANTIFA and similar to spew hate, insult and otherwise promote hate and violence ?

Everybody is aware of this.. just making sure it's pointed out, as it should be, every time they do something like this where they decide who gets to have a voice and who doesn't.

Good point. I think we should just do away with Twitter entirely to fix this issue!

Can we get rid of FaceBook too?

The core problem of these types of social networking sites is not that they exist, it's that the public is largely beginning to use them in place of actual news sites.

Re:politics

[Pseudonym]

I doubt there are tens of thousands of Antifa accounts on Twitter, even including the fake Russian ones, let alone "spewing hate".

Forget tens of thousands, I would be surprised if there were three verified antifa accounts in existence.

Wrong thing to do

[Todd Knarr]

I think this is the wrong thing for Twitter to do. They ought to reinforce the idea that verification is just that: verification of identity. It's no more an endorsement of the person than a driver's license is an endorsement of them by the DMV. Personally I like a flag that tells me whether an account really belongs to the person in question or a troll trying to get them in trouble. In the case of white supremacists and their ilk, I consider the verified checkmark to be a target selection aid. It helps me insure I'm taking offense at and responding to someone who deserves it, not someone who's gotten the MAGA folks annoyed.

Re:Wrong thing to do

[Zontar The Mindless]

This, exactly.

Re:Wrong thing to do

[Pseudonym]

It's no more an endorsement of the person than a driver's license is an endorsement of them by the DMV.

You don't have to pass a driving test to get a licence in America? You learn something every day.

In my country, a driver's licence is proof not only of your identity, but also that you have demonstrated some level of knowledge of the road rules and some level of competence in operating a 2 tonne death machine in a public area.

Re:Wrong thing to do

[Pseudonym]

They are certifying that you have demonstrated a certain level of competence as a driver. That is not an endorsement but it's somewhat analogous to it.

Re:Wrong thing to do

[davide marney]

Don't you hate it when someone uses an analogy to illustrate a point, and then someone in the audience treats it as a claim and runs down 12 bunny holes critiquing it?

I do.

Re:Wrong thing to do

[angel'o'sphere]

In my country a driving license is worth nothing.
You can not cross a border, open a bank account or what ever ...

It is a driving license ... not a passport.

Re:Wrong thing to do

[Pseudonym]

All analogies break down at some point. In this case, though, the DMV, while not exactly endorsing you, is certifying that you have satisfied certain minimal competence requirements to drive.

To be fair, judging by some of the other responses, they are extremely minimal by world standards. So the analogy is probably better than I thought it was.

Only one case?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the BLM radicals which speak about killing the police officers.. the radical left hiring the unemployed to disrupt the vote.. and even congressional members that infer the assassination of our current president and the left-loving media decide to also create an even playing field I'm OK with that. But the extreme difficulty of any conservative viewpoint... be it on campus or on social media that is being currently quashed is also judiciously addressed.. I'm not happy with this tact. Free speech is free speech. The British didn't like it so we revolted. Now the left wants to limit it.. and we accept it?

Then again... when does the first amendment end? You don't *have* to listen to anybody unless you are stuck in a checkout line or an elevator with them. You should not have any "right" to "not" listen to anything you don't agree with as you can just move on (safe spacers.. this is a reference your battle cry).

I fear for the crowd-sourced limitations on our bill of rights.. just like I fear that my children will inherit an earth with the seas rising. Our founding fathers brought us definitions of liberty and they didn't include "clauses".

Peace out.

Make it actually mean verified?

[sanosuke001]

How about they just make it actually mean "verified" and allow ANYONE to get verified by sending in identification verification? Problem solved and it isn't a special club anymore!

Re:Make it actually mean verified?

[DNS-and-BIND]

But they LIKE having a special club. It's all about status, and they LOVE status. Twitter handing out Vs is like Hollywood handing out Oscars. And they only hand them out to people they really like, such as Roman Polanski.

Hollywood is rallying behind the fugitive filmmaker. Top filmmakers are signing a pro-Polanski petition, Whoopi Goldberg says the director didn't really commit rape, and Debra Winger complains "the whole art world suffers" in such arrests.

More than 100 industry leaders and prominent authors -- including directors Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Mike Nichols, Woody Allen and Neil Jordan -- have signed a petition asking that Polanski be released from Swiss custody. "Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision," the petition says.

Re:Make it actually mean verified?

[imidan]

There's no going back, now.

Apparently, that was their original goal for the program ("The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic"). But the perception was that verification implied endorsement, and then Twitter started reinforcing that by doing things like revoking Milo Whatshisface's verification because he was being shitty on their service. By doing that, they imply that verification doesn't just mean that an account is authentic--after all, Milo's Twitter account was authentically Milo's.

So they opened Pandora's Box on that one. How can they credibly go back to saying verification means authentic? They're going to have to eliminate the whole thing and redeploy it with a different name ("identity check" or something). Because if they don't, people are going to start using that status as a political litmus test, which is going to make it even worse.

Re:Make it actually mean verified?

[Aighearach]

I looked it up, and it turns out that is already exactly what one of the dictionary definitions of "endorsement" already means!

Maybe it is only the ignorant shouting at each other, and they don't even have a valid disagreement?

Re:Make it actually mean verified?

[Aighearach]

The difference is that Pandora's Box was filled with bad things, and Twitter's box is only filled with whatever things Twitter wants to have in their box. They can dump it out on the floor, they don't have to fit it back in unless they want to! And unlike Pandora, they don't have any magic preventing them from just putting the things back in the box that they want in the box. If they wanted anything in a box.

They can literally just put something in the box, or not, and that is where it is. You saying bad things about their box isn't going to equate to evil escaping from Pandora's box. It only escapes your lips, and it only lasts a few seconds, your words fade automatically without being put back in the box.

Re:Quick

[russotto]

No, and their Saudi Arabian patron Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is in trouble at home.

Wrong platform dude

[thesjaakspoiler]

For truth verification you ought to be on Facebook. Twitter only revoked the right to be a verified scumbag.

I feel like its going to be a long wait

[JustNiz]

I'm very much looking forward to seeing a few radical left Twitterers getting the same treatment, because I'm sure there can't be any significant political bias at Twitter or any of the other giant CA-based internet companies that are forcing their PeeCee agenda down our throats, right?

The twitterverse ...

[CaptainDork]

... is a depressing rabbit hole of great importance because uh, you know ... no, not that it's profitable, that's not it ... because uh ... no, it's not a vetted source of commentary, it's because, you know ...

You know what?

Fuck it.

Where's my water?

[boudie2]

Is it hot in here or is it just me? Civil War in 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 -1 - !

When did Twitter matter?

[CustomBuild]

I refuse to take the platform seriously. Itâ(TM)s anazing how political corporations have become.

Yep. Not endorsed=no check mark, so check mark=

[raymorris]

Yep, they removed the mark from these people BECAUSE they don't endorse them. So "if we don't endorse someone, we remove the check mark".

They did NOT remove the check mark from Black Panthers and Antifa accounts.

Twitter fucked up here. Once they start removing the check mark from people they don't endorse, obviously people will say "so why don't you remove the check mark from bad person)?" If they refuse to remove the mark, that now looks like an endorsement.

Re:Yep. Not endorsed=no check mark, so check mark=

[GameboyRMH]

Yep, they now have to play politics with everyone they give a check mark to. Which is fine, if they think they have the manpower to pull that off while threading around boycotts from both sides.

If they don't want most of their employees employed in a sprawling new politics department, they should've either made the verification process available freely and fairly to everyone (meaning they'd now need a sprawling new verifications department), or they should've removed all check marks.

Re:Yep. Not endorsed=no check mark, so check mark=

[G00F]

I'm not seeing the Verivied icon on either https://twitter.com/newblackpa... or https://twitter.com/theblkpant...

But I do see one for https://twitter.com/theblackpa... which is Marve's Black Panther. I can see how that can be confusing....

It is quite possible they got removed too, or that they have some logic to who they show the verified status too.(seeing how my twitter is more conservative aligned.) Could you please link to ones you see do have the verified icon?

"Gee I've gone off Richard Spencer...

[Hal_Porter]

He seemed so sane and rational to me and in no way a literal national socialist. And his idea of setting up an ethnostate would in no way cause civil war and ethnic cleansing. But then he lost his blue check mark and now I don't trust him."

Said no one ever.

People who follow Richard Spencer - and they're not very many of them if you look at the low turnout in for Unite the Right in Charlottesville - are not going to change their opinion of him because he lost his blue check mark.

And the vast majority of people who think setting up an ethnostate means turning America into Yugoslavia in the mid 90's weren't going to listen to him anyway.

But I'm sure Twitter will get praised for this latest bit of virtue signalling.

Re:"Gee I've gone off Richard Spencer...

[Hal_Porter]

There's nothing wrong with the term. E.g. Wikipedia describes it as

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Virtue signalling is the conspicuous expression of moral values done primarily with the intent of enhancing standing within a social group.[1] The term was first used in signalling theory, to describe any behavior that could be used to signal virtueâ"especially piety among the religious.[2] In recent years, the term has become more commonly used as a pejorative characterization by commentators to criticize what they regard as empty, or superficial support of certain political views, and also used within groups to criticize their own members for valuing outward appearance over substantive action

Which applies to Twitter making a big fuss about removing the blue checkmark from someone like Spencer. Spencer is someone who can't fill a meeting room for a talk and is widely despised on the right and, as I said, removing his checkmark or even banning him will do absolutely nothing to change anyone's mind about him. Most people who know about him know he's a literal national socialist. His tiny fan club think that is a good thing and everyone else think he's almost as bad as the Communists.

If anything the left building him up to into a boogeyman, failing to counter his arguments and condoning AntiFa commies rioting outside his talks is helping him recruit people. Though, like I say, I think most people on the right are a lot closer to Ben Shapiro's Reagan Republicanism than the are to Richard Spencer's National Socialism and White Nationalism. And, given Spencer wants to expel Jews from his Ethnostate, I think it's fair to assume that you can't simultaneous like both. Given a choice, it's clear who most people on the right would pick.

Re: "Gee I've gone off Richard Spencer...

[Hal_Porter]

I've just written a long explanation of why I don't agree with Spencer's politics

Re: "Gee I've gone off Richard Spencer...

[Aighearach]

It sure didn't read that way to me! You sounded to me like you were trying to virtue-signal to the racists that you're one of them, and doing whatever that anime powerbar thing they do where they lie through their teeth and pat each other on the back.

antifa or fake Russian accounts?

[Phantom of the Opera]

Some of those claiming to be antifa are counterfits.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/craig...

https://www.vice.com/en_us/art...

Indifference

[belthize]

Considering I seriously doubt there's anything Spencer and I agree on except maybe whether it's raining and that I don't pay any attention to Twitter I'll just go ahead and enjoy my ability to be indifferent to the whole thing.

Anti-Russian delusions

[Anonymous Coward]

Citing actual, known historical facts about communist tyranny now makes one a Russian?

The same Russia which was the tip of the spear for the tyranny being criticized?

Do you see here how your argument is self-refuting? Do you realize that seeing Russians everywhere is a delusion?

Re: Anti-Russian delusions

[ScentCone]

So, let me get this straight: I criticize leftists thugs and totalitarians, which includes in a big way the conduct of the Russians for decades and STILL includes the Russians today (the willingness to use violence to suppress others is a common practice in Russia) ... and that makes me a Russian troll? Hilarious.

The left's childish need (for lack of anything more constructive to say) to resort to "it's the Russians!" every time anyone points out things like the violent behavior of their own brown shirts, is really something to behold. Please, keep it up.

Re: Anti-Russian delusions

[ScentCone]

When I comment, it's to point out hypocrisy. Like yours.

You seem to think I should spend my time here running down a laundry list of every bad thing that everyone does so I can earn your patronizing approval for being endlessly whiny about everything in the appropriately SJW tone. No, I don't bother. In a world of billions of people, there are billions of things that deserve contempt. But because the majority of the media in this country, which has a powerful effect on our culture and discourse, is displaying an ugly form of irrational pandering towards people who are trying to sell a bundle of lies in order to deflect from their own bumbling political losses, I'm very happy to put that tiny portion of my week that it takes to type a few sentences responding to that hypocrisy. Your own deliberate projection (in place of EVER addressing substance) doesn't really need more commentary since it's a personal failing you can't shake off. You might want to seek some help, but you won't get it here.

Re: Anti-Russian delusions

[david_thornley]

Modern Russia is not leftist in any sense of the word, any more than Nazi Germany was. You want to condemn violence across the board, fine. You want to blame all the violence on leftists, not fine.

Re: Anti-Russian delusions

[ScentCone]

When have I ever said otherwise? That's the whole point. The difference is that we have a relentless parade of one-sided, partisan BS from a media/celebrity/entertainment complex that is overwhelmingly aligned to the party that lost nearly a thousand legislative seats, most of the governorships, both houses of congress, the White House, and the good will of millions of two-time Obama voters in the years and months leading up to the last election ... and they're so tweaked that they've wasted all of that time energy and billions of dollars on such a atrocious performance be the party generally and by their awful choice of candidate in particular ... and that non-stop crap from the CNN/NBC/NYT's of the world and their countless counterparts DOES earn some push-back. Because the hypocrisy on display is overwhelming. Calling them on it isn't the same as claiming the lack of any mis-deeds by anyone else, it's simply pointing out the endless, disingenuous hypocrisy on the part of those who essentially run the culture.

Verified schmerified.

[Chas]

The verified tag is nothing more than badge of social status. At which point, it's useless.

The mere fact of being DE-verified pretty much proves this.

Re:Verified schmerified.

[whyyisthissohard]

"Useless" for what? The brainless twitter drones seem to accept it. "Proves this" to who? You are so focused on your own perception and congratulating yourself for spotting the deception that you're missing the point, and it is terribly important:
There are hordes of absolutely brainless drones being bred and trained that can be mind controlled through the media. You are going to be replaced by these animals. Your life and the lives of your children are in danger of being consumed. Forever. Exstirpated.

Re:Verified schmerified.

[Chas]

For being an indicator of anything other than the person posts within the bounds of what Twitter considered "right-think".

Re:Absolutely

[Mashiki]

There comes a time you have to pick a side. So yeah "dad", we pick the side of the constitution. If that means we have to refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of you traitors, then so be it.

Funny that you're advocating for the exact side that's opposite to the constitution. Did you skip the part where antifa says "liberals get the bullet too." Yeah, I bet you did. The only people being traitorous here are the ones using violence in order to make changes that are shittier for everyone else. Too bad your parents didn't teach you that.

It's a checkmark, not an endorsement.

[91degrees]

Richard Spencer is a pretty well known arsehole. He at least reaches Wikipedia's criteria for notablity. And presumably he's sticking to the right side of Twitter's abuse policy. Surely there's some benefit to knowing this is the genuine arsehole.

Plus, I can see this backfiring later. Twitter is now making a moral judgement. Does Kevin Spacey keep his checkmark? Ex-senator Bob Marshall (He doesn't actually seem to have a checkmark but should he have one?) They haven't banned Trump, and I accept their reasons but does the checkmark mean they endorse him.

How about orange supremacists?

[nospam007]

Will they be next?

Re:How about orange supremacists?

[Aighearach]

I find it strange that it took Trump getting elected before everyone in the country (and the world) started referring to our president by the color of his skin.

It would have happened sooner, but Boehner lost in 2008!

In other news...

[xenobyte]

How many left wing nutjobs and so-called anti-fascistic fascists have had their twitter recognition and/or accounts removed?

Thought so. This is standard censorship where we block those voices we don't like hearing, leaving more room for those we do like.

Re:In other news...

[david_thornley]

How many have been violating Twitter's ToS? How many of those are verified? How many has Twitter done something to? One of the differences between us is that, when I ask a question, I typically don't immediately pull the answer I want out of my ass.

Who watches the watchmen?

[Anonymous Coward]

And just who will decide who and what a white supremacist is?

Was Milo a white supremacist? No. But Twitter called him one and banned his account.

We live in an era where anyone who isn't "left" is considered "evil". Or even "uneducated".

Conservative intellectuals are basically being hunted, shunned and delegitimized.

This is a dangerous time. Pol Pot would have approved.

Re:Who watches the watchmen?

[Cederic]

Was Milo a white supremacist? No. But Twitter called him one and banned his account.

Oh, come on. He has a very public track record of taking sperm from black men and holding it within himself.

What further proof could you need to demonstrate that he feels he's a superior receptacle.

White is right

[wolfheart111]

Except in the summer, then golden brown is right. lol ahh hell...

Re:Is Twitter any better?

[nospam007]

"I think Twitter is overstepping its bounds on determining what is offensive and what is not."

Read the fucking Constitution. Only the govenrment is barred fromcesoring.

Private companies like this just don't want to bake a wedding cake for racists, as it is their right.

Most of these strongly oppose white supremacy

[Roodvlees]

I can say that without seeing the list, because like Tommy Robinson said:
The truth is hate speech now https://twitter.com/TRobinsonN...

Re:Is Twitter any better?

[Mordaximus]

"I think Twitter is overstepping its bounds on determining what is offensive and what is not."

Read the fucking Constitution. Only the govenrment is barred fromcesoring.

Private companies like this just don't want to bake a wedding cake for racists, as it is their right.

Did the OP even mention the 1st? Why is it an automatic assumption that if someone mentions freedom of speech or censorship they are referring to the constitution? Furthermore, why is it an assumption that a particular Twitter (or any other social/forum based platform) user should be conversant in the Constitution of the United States, when there's a good chance they aren't from the United States? To wit: 79% of Twitter accounts are based outside the United States

One can agree with the sentiment that twitter is overstepping its bounds, while having no interest in the "fucking" constitution as you put it.

The only way out of this for Twitter

[Chris Mattern]

Is to offer verification to anyone who wants it because that's the only way it can not be some kind of endorsement, and use banning to control hate they don't want on their service.

Re:The only way out of this for Twitter

[Chris Mattern]

I don't need to define hate: it's up to Twitter what they do or do not want on their service. The point is that verification is a bad tool for this but the only to prevent from being used as such a tool is to make it available to everyone and using banning to control who is posting.

Does this make sense?

[walterbyrd]

The idea of having a verified status is to prove that you are you.

It is supposed to discourage fake accounts. It supposed to stop people from pretending to be public figures.

Instead, this is being used as another tool to silence descent.

And /or change the symbol to more neutral (ID)

[raymorris]

Certainly text like that makes sense, though maybe linked from the "verified" symbol.

Perhaps some people think it looks like an endorsement because it's a *green check mark*. Instead of un- verifying a few people they don't like, perhaps it would have been more effective to change the "ID verifiedâ symbol to something else. Maybe a stylized "ID" symbol. (Think UL mark or the copyright C and trademark TM symbols.

And/or don't use a green check mark to mean ID

[raymorris]

> they should've either made the verification process available freely and fairly to everyone (meaning they'd now need a sprawling new verifications department), or they should've removed all check marks.

Or, if they don't want people to think the symbol means "good", don't use a friggin green check mark to mean "ID verified". If they had switched to a neutral symbol such as a stylized "ID" instead of a green check mark it wouldn't look like the symbol meant they thought it was good.

Re:And/or don't use a green check mark to mean ID

[GameboyRMH]

Decent idea, I'm not sure it would've avoided this problem entirely (there would've still been the problem of selective issuance of lD verification), but that definitely would've been an improvement.

Does Ye Recall Ye Olde Slashdot Of Yore?

[poity]

Bush era Slashdot understood that to defend the rights of terrorists didn't make one a terrorist supporter, nor did fighting back against those who wanted to judge accused terrorists by a different standard make one a terrorist sympathizer. Now, we have self-styled "liberals" who mock principles and wallow happily in double/triple standards.

Gen X Slashdot was clearly superior to Millennial Slashdot.

Re:what's the deal with the checkmark?

[GameboyRMH]

Twitter was selective in who it would issue these check marks to, regardless of a user's will or ability to meet the criteria:

https://slashdot.org/comments....

This was a bad idea and they should reverse it

[Cajun Hell]

verification has long been perceived as an endorsement

Twitter won't be a useful platform, until they get over this.

I understand: they think they are just adapting to their users' perceptions. But they are actually setting their platform's policy by legitimizing that perceived perception.

In other words, their statement and actions cause it to be true, that on Twitter, verification is endorsement. Most people probably don't think that, but Twitter thought some people did, and they decided to let those peoples' opinion shape their verification policy.

Twitter now agrees with everything being said by every verified user. This very story is evidence that they verify or un-verify based on their agreement or disagreement.

And that's stupid, of course. What they should have done, instead of pretending that the nazis hadn't been correctly identified, was to remind people that verification isn't endorsement.

Re:Privately held power

[hey!]

for some reason I'm always able to trace that privately-held power back to be a direct consequence of the government force, and government policies.

Of course you can; this is almost trivially true. As you point out, corporations are creations of the law. The very reason for corporations violates certain natural-law assumptions like the inviolacy of debts and obligations. But laws allow them to do this because it is immensely useful for encouraging the formation of capital; it stems from that same deontological/utilitarian split I mention. And corporations becoming too powerful because of their immunities violates utilitarian principles too; under a purely utilitarian approach you'd allow corporate owners to escape some responsibility for debt if that's useful, but then regulate them. Treating them as if they have the rights of natural persons is nonsensical except by special pleading. Their very existence presupposes the violations of individuals' rights for utilitarian reasons.

I do appreciate your thoughtful response.

Does not add up

[HermMunster]

The wording seems to grant them permission to ban anyone that supports what they deem bad. That is ripe for abuse. It gives them carte blanche to censor anyone. I'm sure they could do this already, but this codifies the alleged legitimacy of their acts of censorship.

There are a lot people that made claims where those people were considered trolls. Those people were shutdown and smeared by the accused and this was successful because the accused were more powerful and successful. They were made out to be something they were not. For example, the claims of President Clinton's accusers that were once reviled by the media and smeared by Hillary that are now getting some justice. How do you deal with effectively silencing them and the effect of your actions in doing so years later, like Bill Clinton's accusers? Don't be fooled because we are not just talking about white supremacists. As despicable as white supremacists are they are being targeted like we make Russia the target of every negative political claim.

Did they uncheck...

[MoarSauce123]

...and ban Trump's account as well? He's the worst Twitter hater of them all.

I should have clarified $some_bad_guy

[raymorris]

I should have been more clear that those were example possible values for $some_bad_guy, not literals. WHICHEVER objectional accounts remain verified now have an implied endorsement, because they've announced that they remove (or don't issue) the check mark for people they don't endorse.

As someone else pointed out, to whatever extent Twitter uses their own moral judgements to decide what is shown on Twitter pages and how they are prioritized in feeds, Twitter starts to become the EDITOR of the pages rather than a neutral carrier of subscriber messages. That can have significant legal consequences. By also banning people based on the things they say, Twitter is further taking on the role of deciding what's said on Twitter and what's not said. That role comes with responsibilities.

Re:White people stand against government corruptio

[Aighearach]

BillyBob! BiiiiiiiiilllyBob... ! Dinner TIIIiiiime!

Hurry home Billy, mommas callin!

Hamfisted censors today, gov't collaborators today

[jbn-o]

Part of the fun of this (so long as this is limited to talking about twitter.com) is seeing how the hamfisted censorship-based commentary works. What's okay with corporate power today? Who are media corporations trying to placate today? Nobody needs twitter.com or any of these other single-point-of-failure censorship havens (including /.), so if they go away or one's account is eliminated virtually nothing of value is lost. There were other venues for discussion before they arrived, there are others that co-exist with them, and there will be others when they die.

But it's a different matter of far greater importance when Americans face something similar with their government as is the case with RT (Russia Today) right now. See RT's stories on how the US Government has made RT America & Sputnik register as a "foreign agent". This is particularly interesting in light of Twitter's about-face (aka flip-flop) on RT—Twitter went from offering them a highly lucrative ad package to censoring RT (likely at the behest of the US Government) in order to go along with that government's 'Russiagate' narrative (which itself is protracted baseless distraction coupled with a casus belli for war with Russia). It's difficulty to live up to Noam Chomsky described as supporting freedom of speech ("Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech.") particularly when you "believe that everyone should have the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers" like Twitter claims to!

It is not censorship. It is honesty.

[fygment]

So verification simply meant that a tweet was actually from the human it seemed to be from. It was not an endorsement, simply an indication that what you read actually came from who you perceived it was from.
Now we can say definitively that verification is actually an endorsement by twitter.
It's not censorship unless you believed that twitter was a completely open system.
What it is: simply a statement of the obvious, twitter is a for-profit company whose profits are correlated to how it is judged by its clientele.
Seems kind of stupid because nobody ever thought otherwise ... right?

Why Is Twitter endorsing a Homophobic Hate-Monger

[schwit1]

Curiously, while white supremacist Richard Spencer was de-certified, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton, Al Franken, Dan Rather, and Louis Farrakhan all still have their blue checkmarks.

Regarding that last fellow, as Liel Leibovitz of Tablet asks, if Twitter is judging verified users’ offline behavior, “Why Is Twitter Endorsing Anti-Semitic, Homophobic Hate-Monger Louis Farrakhan?”