Honestly, "Those are the eyes of a rat" is a fairly tame insult compared to the kind of toxic drivel Jones usually says, and seems like weak grounds for termination.
He should've been kicked off long ago, but I fear that having this particular example be the "final straw" is only going to strengthen the alt-right's persecution complex.
Some insults are simply worse depending on who they are targeting. It is the difference between calling GW Bush a monkey because he occasionally looked like a monkey and Obama being called a monkey as a racial slur. The former is a childish insult that is easy to ignore. The latter is a form of bigotry that shouldn't be tolerated.
> Some insults are simply worse depending on who they are targeting.
That's just an ideological step that is unwise to adopt. Taking that as a philosophy, anything you say is an intolerable statement because of who might get offended by it. This is antithetical to free speech as prior restraint. I don't know why anyone would subscribe to such a viewpoint. Every philosophy has boons and banes, but that doesn't mean the philosophy is absolute nor moral.
> anything you say is an intolerable statement because of who might get offended by it.
That isn't what OP said though. I believe they were commenting that all words are not the same to every group of people and cultural and historical context matters.
Exactly. It has nothing to do with who might be offended. It has to do with a history of racial oppression. No one is going to complain if you compare a individual black person to a rat or an individual Jewish person to a monkey because there is no historical precedent of those insults being used as blanket attacks against those groups. It is when you flip those two that you will get in trouble.
I think the position you're addressing is actually a practical one. Context is huge in communication, and who is being addressed is a big part of that context. It's hard for me to believe that you actually think that taking that specific context into account leads to the conclusion that all statements are intolerable.
The person calling a black person a monkey or a Jewish person a rat is either ignorant of the history of those slurs or they aren't.
If they are ignorant of that history, they can easily be excused. The ignorance is usually obvious based on their history of behavior because the accusation would likely be an isolated incident. Considering the history of accusations against Jones and Roseanne, I am pretty confident in saying they are both aware of how their words could be interpreted.
If that person is aware of the history of using those comparisons and isn't racist, what is the reasoning is still using that specific language? You can call Obama any number of insults and not be called a racist. Why would you choose an insult that you know will draw racial comparisons?
Power dynamics are real, and the legal system deals with context all the time. So do humans, they handle it quite well in fact (hence why our languages are not context-free).
I know computer people want consistency in rules. However, do you want to have a simple-minded consistency (with full invocation of Emerson intended here), or do you value full inclusion and reparative actions to restore full humanity to everyone who shares your DNA, yet were considered non-human in the past? (and still are by many people, who are actively attempting to return the past to the future.)
Slavery is ugly and MOST people don't love thinking about that era. Some people DO love thinking about it, and are actively attempting to bring it back. To quote a choose your own adventure:
- If you want to turn your back on historical realities, turn to page 55
- If you embrace the uncomfortable and pledge to work for the betterment of all, turn to page 100
Much of the point of a dog whistle (as I understand it) is plausible deniability. The parent comment stands: shutting it down over something that "may mean something" -- even though with context you may be quite sure -- is a bad look.
The next step is simply to point at the myriad of other times anyone called someone a rat on Twitter and Twitter is left to defend a position of shutting people down over what they were thinking when they wrote something.
They should have used one of the many better reasons they had for this this case.
Or we should just be willing to call dog whistles what they are and stop feeling the need to respond when people cry 'but that person used the word rat over there!'.
It's possible I've been living under a rock, but while I'm aware of rat being pejorative, I'm finding out in this thread for the first time about the anti-semitic undertones.
It's pretty clear that the difference is context, but I also don't think there can be clear guidelines if Twitter is expected to delve into the context for each tweet its users make.
In fairness, context typically doesn't provide smoking guns as pungent as this one. I'd still say it's not beyond reasonable doubt (and I'd guess most would be ok with that for a Twitter ban -- it's not prison or death).
So, sure, everyone should call it a dog whistle on the preponderance of evidence, but there were almost certainly better grounds for the ban. I doubt there will ever be a good ban target whose only giveaway is dog whistles.
I was aware of it, but I couldn’t have told you about it without prompting. I didn’t remember it that well. As soon as someone mentioned what it was it made perfect sense to me.
Yeah, that’s the complex part of all of this. As you said context is king here, and Jones is very well known for making implicit or explicit derogatory remarks about Jewish people. There really isn’t room for him to claim “I didn’t know that“.
> there were almost certainly better grounds for the ban
I think you’re right that this was sort of a cherry pick.
He’s done way more than enough stuff in the past to earn him a ban but they never acted on it.
After the hearing and his behavior immediately after I’m guessing they were tired of defending him and having to answer these questions AGAIN.
But it would seem especially strange/capricious just say “that thing you did three months ago that we gave you a pass on? Now you’re out.“
So I think they just chose the latest thing as their “instigating” incident and said that plus the totality of his previous behavior meant a total ban.
Even though the most recent thing is not as bad (relative to his previous ‘highs’).
I know with the hearing was about. And I know they’re desperately trying to say that they are not silencomg conservatives. Jones has been a very obvious case of someone who has stayed on the platform despite violating the TOS multiple times.
And then after the hearing: Jones went up to a reporter from CNN, screamed in his face, made anti-Semitic remarks about him, AND POSTED IT TO TWITTER.
They was supposed to continue to let the TOS violations go? He probably chose the worst possible time/place to misbehave.
The only thing that would make any sense is that he PURPOSEFULLY did this to get kicked off as “proof” he’s being censored. I’m sure that’s the narrative he’s pushing.
Did he know the end was coming anyway and decided to make the best of it? Did he think they were “losing“ the hearing and he needed to provide “proof”?
Or is he just that incapable of controlling himself/behaving?
Doesn’t matter. He explicitly chose to shoot himself in the foot. I don’t see how Twitter had a choice.
“Do we want all the Democrats mad at us over Jones plus all the Republicans over ‘censorship’... or do we want to enforce our TOS, say he didn’t give us a choice, and be no worse off than yesterday (slightly better with Ds)?“
> I know they’re desperately trying to say that they are not silencomg conservatives.
And then they go and silence Alex Jones the very next day...
> Jones went up to a reporter from CNN, screamed in his face, made anti-Semitic remarks about him, AND POSTED IT TO TWITTER.
He confronted one of the key people responsible for deplatforming him.
He wasn’t screaming and he didn’t make anti-Semitic remarks.
He did get in the guys face and was making a lot of offensive comments.
> The only thing that would make any sense is that he PURPOSEFULLY did this to get kicked off as “proof” he’s being censored
Of course he did.
Now all conservatives have to do is document all the offensive left-leaning tweets over the next few weeks and Congress will drag Jack right back to explain his clear bias against conservatives.
Or alternatively Twitter will be forced to start applying its rules equally to the left (fat chance). I’ve reported 3 significantly more offensive tweets already today.
If Jones did nothing then smaller less popular conservative voices would continue to be unfairly silenced and in the long term he would surely be banned as well.
Quite. See, for example, the 1940 Nazi propaganda film "The Eternal Jew." Quoting Wikipedia: "The film utilizes a montage that juxtaposes these images of ghetto Jews with images of rats to draw an analogy between the migration of Jews from Eastern Europe with the migration of rats. For example, one of the shots shows a pack of rats emerging from a sewer, followed by a shot of a crowd of Jews in a bustling street of the Łódź Ghetto. Close-ups of those in the crowd reveal sickly, malformed facial features. The narrator states that, as rats are the vermin of the animal kingdom, Jews are the vermin of the human race and similarly spread disease and corruption."
If this kind of behavior is against the platform rules, should the rules only apply if someone can prove that the person didn’t make a mistake in who they were targeting?
I am not a fan of Alex Jones but he is not an anti-semite.
In fact I suspect you have it backward. Jones will be intimately aware of (some of) the far left and (some of) far right anti-semite culture - it takes some character to see the big picture and in my personal exhaustive experience with that world most people exposed to those cultures would become anti-semites fast.
Jone's nemesis is altogether more abstract - he sees himself as crusader against a modern meme similar to communism or fascism.
I've seen clips of Alex Jones deriding Brian Stelter, zooming into his face, calling him a "devil" and a "demon" of all things. It was rather surreal. What could Alex Jones possibly getting at with that?
I think it's possible many people don't have much experience with anti-semitism so it seems unrelated (as for me) but given Jones' track record and other clips I've seen of him, it's pretty clear he plays with anti-semitism.
I have a lot of experience with anti-semitism - I've followed many extreme forums over the years and it's one of the most consistent patterns - even in oppositional ideologies.
Alex Jones is influential enough that he could, to use the parlance 'name the jew' and most of his followers would follow along with it or he would get new ones. If you think that he would find himself marginalized you are absolutely wrong - that would only occur at one level of society and the polite part isn't close to being meaningful - there is a huge market for this.
Throwing all people you find objectionable into one bucket is an error.
That’s kind of the point. It’s a message intended to be “heard” by a certain audience but not everyone the same way dogs hear a dog whistle but most humans do not.
I'm confident that people tend to extrapolate anecdotal negative experiences about groups of people in bad faith, and that, as the group size increases, this tendency increases relative to the availability of more objective observations. If that's true, the broader the group subjected to a negative generalization, the more likely it is that the observation is as I described. Combined with intuition about the nature of the negativity, I can sometimes feel confident expressing an opinion about the observation one way or the other (e.g. "I think X people are less conversational" vs "I think X people are mostly violent thugs").
He was put on notice by Twitter with a week ban. That's the exact circumstance where someone like him would start using coded language to try and avoid a ban while still promoting his ideas. That's the purpose of coded language.
At least the grandparent comment had the decency to generalize about a smaller, more ideologically narrow group of people than "the right" or "the left".
> He should've been kicked off long ago, but I fear that having this particular example be the "final straw" is only going to strengthen the alt-right's persecution complex.
He is quite correct in the assessment that he's being persecuted on ideological grounds, unless he says "by the government". Why would you deny that ?
And let's face facts here. If you held an alt-right viewpoint in San Francisco ... would you tell your employer ? Would you tell your friends ? Would you tell a police agent ? Would you tell city hall ?
Because I'd sure be afraid as hell to tell anyone. Neither Damore nor Eich deserved what happened to them, and it's disgraceful (and, of course, discriminatory/racist) that such things happened. They, of course, will not change their opinion or their vote, and will give more power if this movement does grow to the point they can get enough politicians elected.
The really sad part is that it really looks to me like neither Damore nor Eich had an alt-right worldview when they got screwed, but ... let me ask you ... if they held one now, because of what happened to them, would you find that surprising ? Would you blame them ? I wouldn't.
So let's just say that I REALLY think this is the wrong tactic. Engaging with them is the only way things might happen. That's difficult, takes constant effort, and will require people to sustain insults. Yep. Absolutely. Censorship, aside from being an act of desperation, mostly strengthens the hand of the people being censored, and convinces new people that what is being censored is true. I mean, just the act of censorship by itself does that. Plus, it won't stop them, Breitbart and Infowars are more than big enough to grow their audience organically.
This act of censorship is doubly counterproductive even. Before we had very concrete things to point at to show how despicable he sometimes is ... and now we don't. Or at least, he has a lot more arguments against those.
Let's face facts here. These bans, takedowns, ... they make most of us feel better. They make the situation worse, but they make us feel better. That by itself is dangerous as hell.
"Neither Damore nor Eich deserved what happened to them, and it's disgraceful (and, of course, discriminatory/racist) that such things happened."
I find it incredible how many people are more upset that those two got called out for their crappy views, and don't care at all what the actions of those two meant to the groups they targeted. Suppose you were a gay person working at Mozilla. How would you feel if you found out that your boss thought that you were not deserving of basic human rights?
"Would you blame them ?"
Yes, I absolutely would. Because they're adults, fully capable of taking responsibility for their own actions.
"Engaging with them is the only way things might happen."
No, it isn't. Because they do not engage in good faith. They do not debate in good faith.
"That's difficult, takes constant effort, and will require people to sustain insults"
The fact that you refer to what they're saying as merely "insults" says a lot. They are questioning the very right of these people to exist. They are questioning the ability of these people to be in public. They are questioning the idea that these people are entitled to basic human dignity. That is not just an insult to be sustained.
"Breitbart and Infowars are more than big enough to grow their audience organically."
Then they don't need the megaphone of Twitter.
"This act of censorship is doubly counterproductive even. Before we had very concrete things to point at to show how despicable he sometimes is ... and now we don't. "
This is directly contrary to your previous point, which was that they still have their own websites to get their message out.
I would like to reply that both your assumptions are wrong.
1) a state has the right to deny marriage on any grounds other than religion, race or nationality. So a state has the right to impose conditions on marriage that have to do with gender. Hell, the treaty almost says that a state has to impose some limits (without specifying what those limits are)
Article 16 UDHR (paragraph 3)
2) You DO NOT have the right to treat either adult different because of their political opinion EVEN IF IT DID VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS.
Article 1 and 2 UDHR
So not only did both of these individuals not violate human rights, you did.
It is no good appealing to human rights - because human rights are the subject of great controversy and debate between Enlightenment scholars themselves.
I am tired of people using 'human rights' as a flag for moral uprightness.
There are good arguments against human rights from all parts of the political spectrum.
The thing about persecution complexes is that those who have them will find persecution in anything, so it's kind of a waste of energy to worry about what might trigger those prone to thinking in such a way.
If you're on the right, then I'd say look at the Presidency, look at the Congress, look at the Supreme Court, look at most of state and local governments and stop crying.
If you aren't on the right, why do you care how they feel? Do they spend time worrying about the suppressed people they victimize? Or do they mock them and deride them?
I was really thinking that your crazies on the right simply make up that "intellectual left that looks down on them", but boyyy, HN discussions have convinced me that the US left is quite rotten too (I assume people here are actually friendlier and more likely to try to convince the other side than general population).
The thing about persecution complexes is that those who have them will find persecution in anything, so it's kind of a waste of energy to worry about what might trigger those prone to thinking in such a way.
Interestingly enough, that’s probably why Twitter feels comfortable ignoring the screams of outrage from the “this is censorship, and the internet is now dooooomed” crowd. When the only thing a group has to stand on is a slippery slope of their own invention, ignoring them is a safe option. People who can only accept their own rigid interpretations at the direct expense of everyone else are impossible to engage with, and a global megacorporation simply doesn’t have the luxury to try.
The banning of Alex Jones from one platform doesn’t spell the end of freedom, or the rise of unfettered censorship, it’s just the application of the most bedrock, basic standards of both intellectual honesty and human decency. The idea that freedom can only exist if we require something like Twitter to lend their platform to the likes of Jones is intellectually bankrupt. It’s also ironic on Hacker News, which explicitly exists as the result of strong curation and moderation. Having standards isn’t censorship, and just as a newspaper doesn’t owe you and everyone else their own page, no other outlet does either.
So as seems likely - suppose a schism opens up that pushes 'those people' off some platforms.
The next step is to prevent DNS resolution working.
I assume that like myself you would see that as a step too far. The problem is that the average millennial will not see a meaningful distinction between being blocked on plaform X and being prevented from using a protocol.
There is a good chance of that happening I think - it's a matter of time before somebody develops a 'fake news' list and the wrongthinkers are effectively not part of the web for nearly everybody.
What will happen then is a big expansion of that other portion of the internet, and eventually citizens will go there to 'find out what really happened' on event x.
When the only thing a group has to stand on is a slippery slope of their own invention, ignoring them is a safe option.
Then you open with a slippery slope, “Suppose a schism opens... the next step...”
If that next step ever begins to materialize that would be the time to worry. Paralysis of decency and standards out of fear of a possible slippery slope is the miserable status quo, and not desirable. If this... then maybe that... and possibly later... isn’t an argument, it’s a fallacy.
I reiterate: the average millennial does not make a distinction between a website service and a protocol.
If you make ban lists (the Silicon Valley companies are operating in near sync with each other) - then the public expectation won't just be that level of moderation/censorship within the walled garden - but also outside of it.
We're already at the point of materialization, Stormfront and a socialist organization I can't recall (World Socialist something) are prevented from using ___domain names and other services like turning up in Google Search, Cloudfront or GoDaddy - effectively banning them from the web. They have then migrated to more censorship resistant networks. Legitimacy to the political persecution (by liberals) narrative has solidified in far right and far left circles - even the ones who aren't affiliated with the two organizations - it is now taken for granted in parts of mainstream web, parts of Reddit that organizations like DW are outright lying.
The trend is consistent, and I don't believe either of those two organizations were accused of being law breakers - and next to go down it will be Alex Jones - a watershed moment and advertising for censorship resistant networks because Jones is more famous than either. In the case of Jones his brand will be bolstered by this. China and Russia will say he is a ideological refugee, a political dissident and they will be able to make a great argument for that.
This is how censorship looks like from the inside perspective - it's just that you're on the inside. The Chinese feel the same way when being told off by the West on the subject of reeducation camps. You'll scoff at that I expect - but at least the Chinese are able to say these people needed handling because of real terrorism and illegal activity - where you've nothing to stand on.
He should've been kicked off long ago, but I fear that having this particular example be the "final straw" is only going to strengthen the alt-right's persecution complex.