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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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Once you've reached "no Holocaust deniers" you've already set your feet on the slippery slope known as "viewpoint discrimination". The last conceivable step is "no politics except directly related to <hobby>", and that (and the previous one of "no politics at all") both depend on moderators not willing to agree with or fall for the whole "Your views are politics and mine are just common decency" thing.

Once you've reached "no Holocaust deniers" you've already set your feet on the slippery slope known as "viewpoint discrimination".

Here's the thing about slippery slopes: they exist, but every rule is a "slippery slope" of some kind. Maybe you think a hobby forum shouldn't draw the line at Holocaust denial. Fine, let the Holocaust deniers have free reign (and drive off almost everyone else). How about white supremacists talking about how we should send all the niggers back to Africa? Would that be okay? If not, then whoops, there you are practicing "viewpoint discrimination" again.

Even here, we don't allow people to actually call other people niggers. And we've gotten complaints about that.

Fine, let the Holocaust deniers have free reign (and drive off almost everyone else). How about white supremacists talking about how we should send all the niggers back to Africa? Would that be okay? If not, then whoops, there you are practicing "viewpoint discrimination" again.

Yes, that's on the slippery slope too. We know this because we've seen it. This always reaches at least as far as "your viewpoint implies something which could be harmful to me and mine, thus amounts to an attack on me, and therefore should be banned" covering a wide variety of ordinary right-wing viewpoints.

Yes, it is on the slippery slope. My point is that you can't decide you will never put any restrictions in place that are on a "slippery slope" or you cannot have restrictions at all. Do you want a place with zero restrictions? We've talked about this many times before. We know what those places look like.

Everything else is just negotiating where the line will be.

I've already said where there's a chance to make a stand.

Okay, I genuinely don't understand what your point is or where you think the stand should be made, then. If you are not arguing that every public forum should allow Holocaust denial and nigger-posting, then what?