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I've removed this post as it was just a copy-pasted article. Please remember:
In other words, this is a place for discussion. If you'd like to discuss this essay, you may link to it, even quote from it, but then you have to do the work of offering some evaluation or insight of your own. There is no minimum word count, but "low effort" is something that is often evidenced by a low word count.
On a somewhat meta point, this isn't the first case of a low-effort repost of some white nationalist rant on the Motte, is it? I'm starting to feel a little concerned that the Motte has been identified as a possible recruiting site by people in that sphere.
As Naraburns points out in another comment, if you want to stick to spaces where white nationalists are not allowed to attempt persuasive arguments in favor of our positions, you are welcome to try everywhere else on the entire internet. Can you let us have this one teeny-tiny space where we can actually have a respectful and open dialogue with people, allowing them to weigh our arguments without multiple layers of reinterpretation and misrepresentation by media gatekeepers? I do hope that’s not too much to ask.
I think there's a difference between an open dialogue and low effort link spam.
I agree, but you did not express concern with low-effort link spam - your expressed concern was with white nationalists trying to “recruit” people. Given that this is your concern, shouldn’t you be more worried about white nationalists using sophisticated and high-effort argumentation in order to make our side look respectable and interesting, rather than posting shitty low-effort links, which makes us look lazy and bad-faith?
It's worth noting that attempting to build consensus is explicitly against the Motte's rules, and the top post of every Culture War thread says:
So when I object to 'recruiting' I am objecting to something that is already forbidden here.
I am not objecting to people being honestly persuaded of things.
I acknowledge that the line between trying to convince someone of something and trying to recruit someone into a movement can be pretty hazy. "Here's why I think Marxism is true" isn't that far away from "you should become a Marxist and join the class struggle" - indeed, if Marxism is true, then becoming a Marxist and joining the class struggle may logically follow from that. But I still think there's some value in trying to allow the former type of post but not the latter, even if the borders are unclear.
To take this specific example, I think cake's posts are very clearly on the recruiting side of the line. He's not coming in here with an idea to discuss, including the possibility of genuine give-and-take or being convinced by his interlocutors, but rather with a manifesto to share. He's since reposted the link here in a more acceptable format, and gone on to make posts that clearly read like political recruitment - I take comments like these as aiming at building a coalition.
So what's my ultimate position?
I don't want a screening test where we ban anyone who might fit a definition of 'white nationalist'. That's impractical and foolish. However, I do want it to be clear that cake-style white nationalist recruiting is unwelcome, and I'd like a more proactive approach to our rules against recruiting and consensus-building. I'd particularly note that rules in favour of kindness, against weakmanning, and in favour of writing like you want everyone to be included seem like they implicit rule out a number of white nationalist arguments anyway. I do see posts here that come off like "so, fellow white people, how do we deal with such-and-such problem?", and those definitely seem inappropriate to me.
"Recruiting for a cause" is "Hey join my organization" not "my team's ideas are great and you should adopt them because they're great".
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