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Notes -
How many layers of irony are you prepared to dig through?
I've been in groupchats where varying levels of racism, sexism, homophobia, and contempt for minority groups is tolerated. Never out-and-out calls for extermination, but at worst places where everyone can quote crime statistics from heart and Pinochet/Helicopter memes are in vogue.
Generally speaking, my perception is that the ratio of participants who engage in edgy humor and thoughtcrime for purely signalling purposes to those who truly have a core belief that is reflected in the statements is at least 3:1.
Which, under standard lefty logic makes them all just as culpable.
But I simply disbelieve that anything like a majority of them are actually in favor of literal Hitler taking power, rather than just noticing that he is one of the few taboos left that you can actual 'violate' for comedic effect. Decades of media programming that "NAZIS ARE THE ABSOLUTE WORST EVIL", you're going to get some people who find it amusing to trample on that message.
Indeed, digging into the actual texts make it clear much of what was being said was sarcasm with a negative valence towards the subject.
Anyway, I used to be the guy that occasionally reminded people not to go too blatant in their poasting since everything being said could in theory get publicized at an arbitrarily later date. I myself use the same sort of discipline I do in professional e-mails where I assume that I might have to explain what I wrote to a Judge at some point, so don't put it in writing unless you're okay with it being read into a Court record later.
I've since stopped doing that sort of policing... unless I see something that could be read as an actual call for violence or statement of intent to commit violence. The norm against such calls is what I myself dearly want to maintain.
Otherwise, trangressing taboos is ultimately a pretty standard way of establishing camaraderie, and a group chat is inherently not a space where these words are being exposed to people who would genuinely be offended or 'harmed' by them, so it seems obvious that the 'intent' is not to offend or harm. This is distinct from the types who go on twitter and elsewhere specifically to troll or get a rise out of others. I still disdain those ones pretty universally for polluting public discourse.
There are practical reasons to rein in the language a bit b/c of the risk of exposure like this, but at this point I am more in favor of adjusting the larger social rules to be more permissive than I am in punishing young guys for being uncouth or poorly socialized.
And of course, if the most benignly controversial statements of the kind Charlie Kirk used to make (and he was light-years from spouting slurs) is enough to justify killing you, why hold back at all? There's value in signalling to peers that you'll have their back if the left comes for them because you're stuck just as deep in thoughtcrime as they are, and there's value in signalling to the left that you're not afraid of thoughtcrime and there's more people on your side than they expected.
I've happily made many a macro of Bill Hicks screaming "HITLER DIDNT GO FAR ENOUGH" paired with Dave Chappelle just eyebrow waggling. It is AMAZING what people read into that.
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