politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Genuine question, what's wrong with it? Isn't it basically just a blog/self publishing platform?
Its had some "nazi bar" issues, i.e "we dont like nazis, but its cool if they come to our bar with their nazi friends and spend their nazi money here. If more Nazis show up, the more the merrier!"
They back tracked from the above a ways after outrage, but it's soured people on the platform.
Except it's not a bar, it's a web site where you only interact with people you have affirmatively decided to interact with.
It's like if there is a Nazi living in your apartment building, and specifically forbidden by the laws of physics from doing anything physical to anyone or making any statement or posting any literature to anyone who hasn't decided they want to hear from them. The risk of everyone in the apartment building deciding to become a Nazi in that situation is small.
I actually agreed with their viewpoint, and the fact that they had to backtrack after a noisy section of the community blew up at them, and that noisy section of the community decided that they were still bad people even though they'd backtracked, and now are "soured," is to me much more of an indictment of that section of the community than it is of Substack.
Being unaware is very different than knowingly accepting their company.
I think you and I are just not gonna see eye to eye on this.
The one additional thing I'll say is, the Nazis on Substack were absolutely undetectable to anyone who didn't choose to interact with them, but a bunch of people absolutely freaked out about them, to the point that it did a bunch of damage to a platform that was absolutely a positive force for good, just because people would have had to share the platform with literally about 0.05% Nazis somewhere out of sight.
Contrast with that, Lemmy clearly has some level of infestation of shills masquerading as real people with political opinions, and they impact the discourse every day. Some of them, if I had to guess, I would guess are actively funded by people who are actively in league with Nazis. You know the ones. Although, that's pure speculation on my part with basically nothing at all behind it beyond guessing. The impact to the discourse is the only part I'm confident about.
I haven't seen any level of freakout about that. Just an occasional bleat of "yo it's not cool that this is happening," and then business as usual.
Me
You
It's like you can't read and understand a simple sentence. Or you just like defending nazis, that could be it too.
My point is that the Nazis were not "in my company" on Substack. I didn't read them, I wouldn't even have known where to find them or how to interact with them without putting some effort into finding out. The fact that I knew they were there somewhere doesn't change that.
There's no call to get insulting with me about that or pretend that I'm saying it because there's something I can't understand. It's simply the truth. You have your viewpoint, which as best I understand it is that even using the same platform as an overt Nazi is unacceptable to you, which, okay, fine. But pretending I just can't understand something or I like Nazis is why we're disagreeing is just condescending and wrong.
Like I say, I think we're just not gonna see eye to eye on that aspect. Just repeating ourselves at each other probably isn't productive.
Make up your mind.
You agreed with them that it was cool to have nazis on their website, and disliked the fact that they capitulated to noisy people who didn't want nazis on their website.
You are defending nazis. That is what you are doing.
Yep
Yep
Defending Nazis' right to exist on Substack, yes. Defending their viewpoint, no.
Anything else I can clear up for you?
This isn't a disagreement about whether a tomato is a fruit. You are saying that people have the right to promote an ideology that promotes genocide.
Why don't you see that defending an ideology based on hate is defending that viewpoint?
Yes.
Defending someone's right to speak is not the same as defending their ideology or their viewpoint. This is a big part of the foundational principle of the United States. I realize Substack isn't the government, and the principles of informed self-government are a lot more complex than "just let everyone say whatever," but to me it's an important principle. It's the same reason the ACLU used to defend Nazis and the KKK and their right to have rallies.
It's a huge conversation honestly, and the Nazis are such an extreme example that people of good faith can disagree. In real-world space, I agree with you and I agree with the Nazi bar analogy. But in actually strictly-speech environment... Honestly? To cut to the chase, I think being exposed to viewpoints that are wrong is good for people. If every time you see speech that's evil, you freak the fuck out and demand that someone come and take it away because it can't be allowed, (a) you'll deprive others of the opportunity to see the wrong stuff and learn unpleasant truths about the evil that exists around them, and exercise their powers of judgement to determine it's evil for themselves (b) you'll get in that habit and start demanding that someone e.g. take Dave Chappelle away because you misunderstood a joke of his. That causes a lot more harm than the Nazis on Substack did.
That's my opinion. I'm actually trying not to get in an argument with you about it, because you clearly don't agree with me, and honestly you don't have to. I'm just laying out what I think.
The ACLU is wrong to defend nazi rallies because tolerating intolerance in the pursuit of tolerance is misguided and just leads to more intolerance. We don't need nazi rallies for people to be exposed to nazi ideology, we have the holocaust museum and other educational settings where people can learn about that without a bunch of hatemongers publicly displaying threats against other people.
Would you support someone's right to promote child sexual abuse, as long as it is words? What about direct threats to individuals? Are you cool with someone threatening your life as long as they just used words?
My kids aren't going to be doing any sex or drugs and alcohol, I kept them in a very strict environment and gave them all the information and kept them away from anything threatening. I'm sure once they go to college they'll be set on a perfectly good road because I was sure to keep them that way and give them all the education they needed.
Oh wait what is happening
Probably not, in all three cases. The Nazi example is already an extreme borderline case, since they are basically advocating for crimes, but there's a little bit of a political speech aspect to it and sometimes some vagueness to the overtly violent aspects. To me it pushes it just over the line to where I think yes it should be allowed. To me your examples are well over the line into just being crimes. In some cases Nazi speech is explicitly criminal, in which case, sure, prosecute them for threats of violence or seditious conspiracy or whatever criminal speech, but not just for using the wrong symbology.
Let me ask you this: It sounds like your goal in this is to "win." Like we have to talk, and you have to educate me on how your viewpoint is right, or prove to me or an audience that your way is the right way and mine is wrong. Do I have that right?
Yeah this is exactly what it is.
The commenter above likely read something they disagree with on substack and has chosen to hate the entire platform because of it.
They let like 2 Nazis on, taking the viewpoint basically (1) it's in the spirit of the 1st amendment to allow even reprehensible speech (2) guys it's like 2 of them and the number of people reading and being convinced by them is likely to be 0
And the entirety of the knee-jerk fediverse politics community saw an opportunity to take a pointless stand on something, and in their eyes shone the promise of being able to make some smug self-important postings about how something good is actually really problematic and you're just not enlightened enough if you don't agree
And now Substack is literally Hitler even though it was doing a whole bunch of great things, outside of the 2 Nazis
When you sit at a table with 2 nazis, there are three nazis.
And a table. A Nazi table.
2 Nazis walk in to a room of 1000 people and there are now 1002 Nazis in there, right?
If the 1000 people are fine with the nazis being there, yes.
If you let them stay, yes there are.
2 Nazis at the University
OH NO FUCK IT'S LIKE 73,284 NAZIS NOW
(Edit: In all seriousness, I know you already know this, but the problem with the "3 people at the table" analogy is that, A, there are 500,000 people involved, not 3, and if you aren't talking to the people at the table, or hearing from them, but merely existing on the same electronic computer without any interaction unless you decide to pursue same, which obviously most people won't do because they're fucking Nazis, then the risk of becoming suddenly a Nazi because they are next to you on the hard drive is in most cases pretty slight.)