banned
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
11mo ago
Changing accounts isn't against the rules. We would prefer people stick with one, because this place basically runs on reputation economy, and if you keep changing your accounts, you start from scratch every time (unless you're deliberately trying to obscure your alts and ban-evading, which is frankly why most people do it).
The OP wasn't banned for using an alt account. He was banned for already throwing many red flags as a troll and likely being a previously banned poster, and then admitting that yes, he's just cycling through accounts. If you tell me you're cycling accounts for "data hygiene," okay, whatever. If you're being trollish and cycling accounts, I see no reason to make that easier for you.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
If subways become excessively creepy and weird and violent, the middle classes will get Ubers, and vote for candidates who defund public transit. In short, if the middle classes (who have options) decide not to make use of public options, then public options will die their democratic death.
To put this in perspective, I live in an extremely densely populated city (Hong Kong) that would be unlivable as a car city. However, if the buses or metro became dangerous, then the middle classes could switch to the taxis, which aren't that much more expensive due to ultra-cheap labour.
The metro is uncomfortable and noisy - most carriages have TVs playing news and advertising - but crime on the trains is inconceivable. The only "offence" that I have seen is someone taking a surreptitious drink of water on a hot day, since eating and drinking anything is banned on the metro or in the paid areas of metro stations.
If I were a criminologist, I would spent my career studying how HK has eliminated most forms of crime, without usually feeling like a "police state". To what extent is it cultural? Institutional? Economic? Selection (so much of this city of made up of immigrants like myself, who were indirectly selected for conscientiousness)?
What would you call someone like Andrew Sullivan who is obviously not a republican but opposes the woke? Also consider the fact that almost reddit communities that used to be far right-wing are almost all gone, so this has led to many on the moderate or even far right adapting by appropriating more left-wing themes not because they necessarily want Marxism but to prevent being banned.
hydroacetylene
11mo ago
And in a lot of those places nonconformism is either inconceivable or banned even for people who aren’t making anything worse.
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
The only "offence" that I have seen is someone taking a surreptitious drink of water on a hot day, since eating and drinking anything is banned on the metro or in the paid areas of metro stations.
The worst “offence” that I’ve witnessed on the MTR (back when I was still in Hong Kong) were obvious mainlanders taking a leak in a carriage, though it was pretty rare, and I think incidents of that sort have dropped off a fair bit with mainland Chinese visitors developing more of a modern city culture. I haven’t been back since before covid, though.
Skibboleth
11mo ago
I'm not asking you to agree with me, I'm asking you to prove you actually believe what you say.
David Shor, a man for whom I have a lot of sympathies, was somewhat famously fired at the behest of a twitter mob for saying that rioting was a poor method of achieving policy goals. This was not censorship. I might prefer that people saying reasonable things didn't suffer serious professional consequences, but there's no way to do that without fatally compromising freedom of speech and association. If Civis wanted to disassociate from Shor for dumb reasons, that's their prerogative. To do otherwise would require allowing extremists (or anyone, really) to hold audiences hostage.
And this is a much more substantial injury that your typical far right grifter has, which is usually that they got banned from Twitter for blatant TOS violations.
To me it looks like you went of on a tangent.
No, the point is that your model is wrong. It doesn't matter whether or not some behavior is needful, because needfulness is only one possible motivation.
the people losing the soft power conflicts aren't unpopular
You're free to peruse stats about younger generations' views on race, religion, gender, sexuality, immigration, etc... Or just take a look at how right-wing populists keep losing what ought to be easily winnable elections.
If the threat of being banned is enough to adopt themes incompatible with their principles, good riddance to them then.
To_Mandalay
11mo ago
Weber, along with David Cole and David Irving, who were all pretty heavy-hitters in the revisionist scene back in the 90s, have all accepted the reality of the extermination program for some time. I'm not sure about Weber, but Cole and Irving, also accept 'limited' gassings at Auschwitz. For this reason among others the IHR has kind of fallen out of favor with most deniers. CODOH has more or less taken its place. 'Scholarly' Holocaust denial these days is basically just Carlo Mattogno who puts out a book like every two months (though to be fair large chunks of his books tend to be copy-pasted from his older books), with a little help from Jürgen Graf and Thomas Dalton. As you say, there's also Jim Rizoli I guess but he's a total clown. Ryan Faulk (the Alternative Hypothesis) is also dipping his toe into denial lately but he's not doing a very good job of it.
Interestingly there's actually something of a laundry list of 'former deniers.' Eric Hunt (a schizophrenic who once tried to kidnap Elie Wiesel) was probably the biggest name in denial in the early 2010s because of a number of revisionist documentaries he produced which got a lot of exposure on youtube back before they banned all that stuff. In 2016 he caused kind of a stir when he decided that the Holocaust happened after all and revisionism was bankrupt. There's also Jean-Claude Pressac who was sent to Auschwitz archives by French denier Robert Faurisson in hopes of disconfirming the extermination once and for all and instead ended up convinced that it actually happened. There was a pretty prolific/well-known blogger and poster on the various denial and anti-denial forums back in the day who went by "the Black Rabbit of Inlé" and who also ultimately decided that the evidence supported an extermination program.
Azth
Enoch Powells Friday night masseuse
11mo ago
Yes and Germans were not voting for Hitler because they all thought he was going to kill all the Jews. Some were, sure I expect so. All? no. A majority? no way.
Curtail their rights, restrict them, punish them, remove them from spreading "poison" and "Jewish science", etc? yes sure. Encourage them to move to, or deport them, somehwhere else? yes.
All covid measure supporters were not supporting killing all dissidents.....
Some sure. All? no....
Curtail their rights, restrict them, punish them, remove them from spreading "covid" and "anti vax science misinformation", etc? yes sure. Encourage them to wear masks, be banned from healthcare, prosecuted for murder for going outside, prosecuted for murder for not agreeing with the government, going outside being a criminal offence when not sick, walking less than 2 metres from someone else to be a violent crime on par with stabbing them? yes.....
And so on.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
11mo ago
I intend to "keep shooting varmints from my porch" until someone provides a compelling argument as to why I should not.
The argument is in the rules you used to enforce. You're expected to be civil here and address the arguments, not the poster. You know this. Of course saying "You're stupid and you suck" will get you banned.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
11mo ago
One thing I learned from Run Unz's article on Holocaust denial is that it began as a sort of quirky, libertarian-adjacent focus group. Revisionism made a lot of headway in the 1980s and 1990s. The fall of the Soviet Union resulted in some major revisions that were a big victory for the movement, like the downward revision of the official death toll at Auschwitz from 4 million to 1.1 million, and the official revisions at Majdanek that proved the Revisionist archival research and criticisms of that extermination narrative to be correct. The internet promised an increase in reach for heterodox thinking of all stripes, including Revisionism. In 1994 David Cole debated Revisionism on the Phil Donahue show, where the Revisionists wiped the floor with the mainstream on national television. It's unthinkable now that a show with an establishment figure and reach like this would platform a Holocaust denier at all like this.
There was a very real inflection point in the 2000s. September 11th, the Iraq war, spreading Democracy with Israel as the greatest ally and such. There was also much greater pressure to censor and prosecute Holocaust deniers. David Irving, the historian, was arrested in 2005 and sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of Holocaust Denial (then imagine, people here point to his repudiation of Revisionism as being a victory for the mainstream after he was thrown in jail for his position- an academic gets thrown in jail for believing X, and then you celebrate him repudiating X as an academic win?). Most Holocaust Denial laws were not established until after the 2000s, it's a recent phenomenon in response to the Revisionist movement. Canada outlawed Holocaust denial only in 2021.
The internet, which promised the free flow of heterodox thinking, has become much more restrictive of Holocaust revisionism. Revisionism was the very first political content to be 100% censored on YouTube. All Revisionist books were banned from Amazon on 2017, a policy which is still strictly enforced. Revisionist subreddits were the first politically-oriented subreddits that were banned, long before there was any censorship at all.
To illustrate the point, take a look at the ADL's 2023 Online Holocaust Denial Report Card. The first thing you will notice is that no platform has a grade higher than a C+, imagine what these platforms will have to do to get their A from the ADL. You will also notice that there's an Action taken for trusted partner metric, which essentially means "can the ADL get this removed if we flag it", which is "Yes" for all platforms except Fortnite. Why is Fortnite on a report card for Online Holocaust Denial? Are they going to change their content policies as a result of their F?
The point here is that Holocaust Revisionism went from being a quirky movement of libertarian-adjacent autists to a genuine political dissident movement. Being the public face of that movement is the least desirable job in the world. The current man who has that role, Germar Rudolf, is currently in hiding because his application for a Greed Card renewal was denied by the United States and his passport was not renewed by Germany. Despite the fact he has an American wife and American children, he is in hiding so he doesn't face deportation by the United States, prosecution in Germany, and years in jail. As mentioned, David Irving actually did face arrest and prison prior to his repudiation of Revisionism. Likewise, David Cole frequently talks about how threats of violence made against him from Jewish groups motivated him to step away from Revisionism. Weber's organization, the IHR, was firebombed in 1984 and it lost 90% of its inventory.
One pattern that I never respected, even when I was on the fence, was on the mainstream pointing at people who were chilled by authoritarian chilling effects, including threats of violence and prison, and then declaring an academic victory.
Suppose The New York Times were to report tomorrow that Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum had announced that no more than one million Jews died during World War II, and that no Jews were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz. The impact on Jewish-Zionist power would surely be minimal.
It's also easy to see Weber's perspective in that 2009 article. Who else here remembers 2009? It was the high watermark of Neoconservative influence on American policy and culture. The big issues of the day were Islamic terrorism, Middle East wars, and Health Care. It's easy to see Weber's perspective that Revisionism is a lost cause, with mounting pressure on Revisionism from all corners and with no apparent saliency to the problems of the day.
2023 is very different from 2009. The culture is radically different. There is a counter-culture of disaffected young people who are highly receptive to radical critiques of post-modernism, and it that does not resemble anything in 2009. Revisionism becomes an extremely potent, radical critique of post-modernism by inverting the work of the critical theorists. The critical theorists used the Holocaust to assert the psychopathology of gentiles, and propose post-modern culture as a therapy for the authoritarian personality. Revisionism turns the tables, it invites a psychoanalysis of Jews and their behavior that has contributed to the state of the culture and the Holocaust's prominence within it. It's not a populist aspiration- Joe Sixpack won't care about the truth of gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. But I suspect it would be highly disruptive to the thinking and world model of smarter people who potentially have more influence and status.
Nobody is acting as if the truth of those claims is irrelevant. The ADL isn't acting as if Revisionism is irrelevant, they and adjacent groups assert nothing less than enormous alarm over any Holocaust denial content anywhere. People here don't seem to think that this the truth is irrelevant, as I frequently see comments like one made only yesterday: "About the only thing that could make the Holocaust not be real is if the entire world isn't real and I'm just a brain in a jar." I can see how Weber felt that way in 2009, but if Revisionism gained any sort of foothold, even a non-populist foothold like HBD has, it would be highly disruptive to the thinking of many people.
DradisPing
11mo ago
Here's one that's related. The reason for the intense fight over Trump asking about citizenship on the census was because accurate citizenship information would make some current service locations illegal.
Spending federal money on social services for illegal aliens was banned in the 80s. Courts ruled that so long as the office was serving >50% citizens the service was legal, and also they weren't allowed to ask about citizenship at the location.
There are almost certainly things like federally run dialysis clinics in parts of California that serve less than 50% citizens, and they'd need to be shut down if there was ever an accurate count.
functor
11mo ago
Germany is in a recession, and I paid 80 cents/kWh in December in Sweden. My gym still hasn't opened its sauna, and I got shamed for having 18 degrees in my apartment in the winter. Inflation is the highest it has been in decades, and there was a major shortage of firewood. The system didn't snap, instead there is a cost of living crisis combined with cities turning off their street lights and companies banned from expanding due to lack of power. I agree that people adapt. Covid didn't end the world, yet it created problems that will continue for years.
As for energy, the renewable hype died with cheap gas. The wind-hype only worked with cheap nat gas as a backup. Now we have almost free power some days, followed by extreme prices other days. Building a long term functioning electrical grid is different from just generating power. Cheap, bountiful wind power didn't alleviate the high prices when the wind wasn't blowing in the winter.
Magusoflight
11mo ago
All that information will be banned, just as facial recognition software has been banned for police
On Trump:There was a very obvious tip-toeing going on with Trump and Christianity during the 2016 campaign. I wouldn't call the disposition of Christians to him a decline in their religiosity or a change of faith since that would place Christianity and religion in general on a pedestal it doesn't really occupy.
Being a 'good Christian' was always just as much about showing allegiance to the ingroup as it was about actually being a good Christian person. You can be accepted, as an outsider, to the ingroup as long as you demonstrate respect for and allegiance to it. Which is what Trump did. There's no hand of god involved with this. It's just ingroup/outgroup bias.
As for the boycott thing: it's an exciting change. From a broad perspective it seems like, to some extent, the American system has, though from a narrow populist standpoint at best, worked. As an example, white nationalism 2.0 was killed off in its infancy. Banned from all platforms. And to this day any resurgence or reinvention gets a very similar treatment. From an idyllic and naive standpoint, the 'system' was corrupt in that instance. But red tribe conservatism was to some extent left to live. Aside from the massive anti-Trump thing, and in part because of it, red tribe conservatives managed to fumble their way into organizing on Facebook. And from there, luck their way back on Twitter.
You don't need all that much meme power to appeal to a group of disgruntled folks who have been left politically marginalized for a long time. Remember the TEA Party? I mean, most of the chest pounding group affirming rhetoric had been relegated to a loser like Glenn Beck. Every other conservative avenue for proper group formation got strangled dead or acted as controlled opposition, at least in my lifetime. Caring more about 'respectability' than winning. But now there seems to be a soft resurgence of the red tribe conservative movement that is, to some extent, free of the mainstream media right.
Maybe I'm tying too much optimism to this. There have been multiple iterations of this old dog called 'conservatism' growling back at the leg that's kicking it. It's never amounted to much of anything. Assuming this will be different is naive. Especially since the whole 'gay' thing is a red herring for more unfixable issues like mass immigration, which has already 'doomed' the country. But having a common enemy is always a good baseline for organizing. Maybe the rainbow colored flag can act as a unifier for the red tribe as well. I certainly wouldn't mind the dog getting a good bite out of that sadistic leg before it finally gets put down.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
11mo ago
After your last warning, posting this appears to be a particularly obnoxious way to flounce.
Banned, permanent unless the other mods dissent.
Gdanning
11mo ago
This seems awfully monocausal and deterministic. Eg, the claim that "When industrialization made slavery increasingly politically and economically untenable, the moral and legal consensus conveniently caught up" seems inconsistent with the timing; the Somerset case was 1772, and the slave trade was banned by Great Britain in 1807, still quite early in the industrial period, and by the US in 1808 (though the law barring it was passed in 1807), at a time when the US was far from being industrialized.
Also, you say that slavery became "politically .., untenable." Why did it become not just economically untenable, but also politically untenable?
Also, your argument does not explain other phenomena, such as the increase in concern with the human rights of people in far off lands whose oppression, if anything, benefited Western interests economically.
Finally, your argument is premised on the assumption that humans are motivated solely by instrumental rationality, when it is clear that value rationality also plays a role in human behavior.
Of course, it is certainly true that self-interest and values often conflict, and humans are more than capable of rationalizing self-interested behavior that violates professed (and even sincerely believed) values. It is also reasonable to say that the maintenance of practices which fly in the face of established values is possible only when those practices serve the interests of powerful actors, and that when those actors become less powerful, or when those practices become less valuable, the practices will fall into disuse. But that can happen even when values do not change at all. So, the evidence that values change as a result in changes in what serves one's self-interest is not as strong as you say.
Ordinarily I wouldn't post personal Reddit drama here, but the thread is slow and I'm mad.
Here is a post that I saw on /r/baseball:
Anthony Bass promoting anti-LGBTQ propaganda on his Instagram
You probably noticed that the thread is locked with a moderator message: "The trolls are flooding in, and the conversation has run its course at this point. Friendly reminder to love your neighbor, and that it's not intolerant to oppose bigotry. Everyone have a nice holiday Monday!"
This message was posted only a few minutes after I was permanantly banned from /r/baseball for comments in that very thread! In fact, I believe they are referring to me as one of the "trolls flooding in". Lets take a look under the hood to see what counts as perma-ban and threadlock-worthy comments.
First, the actual article in question. Anthony Bass is a pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays. He posted an Instagram story saying Christians should boycott Target and Bud Light. That's it. That's the "anti-LGBTQ propaganda". I posted a top-level comment in the thread sarcastically making this point.
Is this a high-effort comment? No, but if you are familiar with the sports subs at all then you know that this type of low-effort sarcasm is all over the place. That's the posting culture there. I also got involved in another comment thread.
JaysRaineman73 -18 points 2 hours ago: "Who the fuck cares. So tired of this shit. I only care about how he plays on the field. If he’s not abusing or hurting anyone, it’s irrelevant."
realparkingbrake 11 points 2 hours ago: "On what planet does denying people the same rights as everyone else not qualify as abusing or hurting them?"
QuantumFreakonomics -4 points 2 hours ago: "What rights do they not have? Name them? How is he hurting anyone? How does asking people to not purchase products from a specific mega-corp hurt anyone? Am I hurting people every time I go to Walmart and not Target? Please, I’m begging you. Actually think about the things you are saying. Don’t just parrot the same irrelevant lines you’ve seen other people use."
PuppyPunter21 4 points an hour ago: "Well, if any players live in Florida, they have recently passed quite a few laws targeted against them. The continued promotion of these types of boycotts encites more hate. Covid caused more hate towards Asians, Kayne West promoted more antisemitism. Ignoring it isn't a solution."
QuantumFreakonomics 3 points an hour ago: " 'Well, if any players live in Florida, they have recently passed quite a few laws targeted against them.' What rights did these laws take away? The right to have teachers come out in front of their students? I had never heard of that "right" before a few years ago. 'The continued promotion of these types of boycotts encites more hate. Covid caused more hate towards Asians' Is your position that someone shouldn't be allowed to talk about an issue if it could possibly cause someone else to hate another group? I don't see how that is a workable position at all. Should we not have instituted Covid restrictions or even complained about covid in order to prevent Asian hate? 'Ignoring it isn't a solution.' Why not? People speaking their mind on public issues is the bedrock of Democracy. Some of those people are going to say things you don't like. A democracy where certain issues are not free to be discussed is not much of a democracy at all.
This was the extent of my participation in the thread. I did not expect my comments to be particularly well-received by the Reddit population, but I felt that I pointed out enough legitimate issues that I would be safe from accusations of trolling. I was wrong.
Here is the modmail message I received informing me of my permanent ban, along with the brief conversation we had before they muted me with their absolute power.1 For reference, here are the /r/baseball rules. Would an honest reading of these rules give you any reason at all to think that anything I posted would not be allowed, much less permaban worthy? You would have to be steeped in internet leftist culture to understand that, "Trolling, threatening, harassing, or inciting violence towards individuals or groups will not be tolerated. Racist, sexist, or otherwise intolerant language in both comments and submissions will be removed." means that pointed questions against the progressive consensus will get you tossed out.
I understand why so many subreddits are complete circlejerks now. It's not about echo-chambers and voting dynamics. They literally just banned everyone who disagreed.
1. Here is the source they cited for their "62%" figure. I'll let you decide for yourself whether this poll is applicable
I'm trying to stay away from politics for now, but I feel a bit compelled to add to your comment.
As someone who's been involved in them before, Internet communities dedicated to the arts are probably the worst in this regard. There was a Discord server I was in a couple years back dedicated to a specific electronic band where the very same thing happened to me, except it was more farcical than this. So, some background - I was an early user of the server, I was casual friends with one of the mods there, and while little interesting conversation could be found from them they were at least pleasant to talk to. At first, the server was a fairly low-key place where one could talk about a certain artist's works, share their own music, etc. I came to be known as a regular there.
At some point, after an influx of new users, the server took on an explicitly political bent, despite (if I remember correctly) a rule stating no politics in the server. People would speak at length about politics and always from an incredibly progressive viewpoint, and when people would bring up concerns about the politicisation of the server the response was "Some people don't have the privilege of not thinking about politics". You had regular bashing of people like Jordan Peterson in there. You had users openly endorsing sentiments like "I hate men", stating that there was value in these open and unabashed statements of group hatred because it might enlighten people about their "privilege". The progressive conceptualisation of identity-based privilege and oppression, as well as the directionality of that oppression, were all taken as unchallengeable fact in that server and it never needed to be rigorously proved or demonstrated, just asserted.
Quite predictably, there was also talk about the underrepresentation of women in electronic music. The answer was always that some nebulous socialisation of sorts dissuaded them from trying their hand at it. Inherent or innate factors were not considered. As far as I know, no studies on the gender difference in empathising-systemising (E-S) or the impact of E-S on music preferences were ever linked there. It's also worth noting that the server at this point was also filled to the brim with purportedly gender-dysphoric people who identified as something or other. IIRC, one of the most political people on the server at the time I was there was a trans woman from Iran. I remember this person posting video of their "interpretive dance" which basically consisted of them uncoordinatedly jumping up and down on their bed while a song played in the background. I swear to God, I am not making this up.
I made quite a lot of attempts to argue that politics should be out of the server, that it didn't belong in a server dedicated to an electronic artist, and nobody really acted on it - instead, they continued having political discussion in complete contradiction to the rule. Eventually, I decided that if they didn't want to adhere to an ethic of "no politics", I would not be bound by that rule either. When they were having one of their many progressive-leaning discussions, I decided to outline some of my problems with that ideology in as polite and moderate a fashion as I knew how. I garnered responses, and before I could answer them a moderator came in and stated that things were "getting too political". The politics rule was conveniently invoked, and the entire conversation was shut down in a manner that allowed progressives to have the last word.
I left the server for a bit, and when I came back, things didn't seem to be that much better. I had only a bit of time to speak with some of the users there before I was abruptly banned from the server, and a longstanding friend of mine (who was still in there) posted me the text of conversations involving the mods - including the one who I was friends with for a good while - where they were shit-talking me. Stating that I had expressed "harmful things", and that I "creeped them out". My "harmful" take was stating that the relations between the sexes aren't characterised by oppression.
Apparently the topic of my banning still comes up with some regularity every now and then in that server.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
11mo ago
Hell, even subs that are loudly and conspicuously heretical appear to have been taken over by woke mods. I was permanently banned from /r/ActualPublicFreakouts - Reddit’s current go-to spot for videos of minorities behaving badly - (ostensibly) for making a few (fairly mild) off-color racial jokes. Certainly I would expect an instant ban for doing anything of the sort on a large public-facing sub, but on a sub that seems tailor-made for people who would be into that? It’s the sort of thing that fuels my suspicion that any remaining redoubts of non-progressivism are honeypots designed to corral all the heretics into one place for observation and eventual termination.
reddit sucks. news at 11... it has been going downhill for a long time in terms of worsening censorship of anything outside of an increasingly narrow approved worldview. mods have too much power, no way to remove bad mods. it's ridiculously easy to get banned on subs on reddit for even dumbest of reasons or no reason at all.
No_one
11mo ago
I understand why so many subreddits are complete circlejerks now. It's not about echo-chambers and voting dynamics. They literally just banned everyone who disagreed.
Banning all harmful voices is in line with their ethos. Has been for quite some time.
Popper suggested how to abolish freedom of speech all the way back in 1945.
Why wouldn't they ?
If you ban everyone who transgresses your holy values from an important online space, you are strenghtening your religion's position, no ?
They see this as good and laudable. "It prevents violence".
They've mostly dispensed with even the pretense of being interested in a debate.
Better learn to turn every criticism into a fifty Stalins type criticism. Maybe that'd work.
Regular user, I just like to make new accounts once I start to get too attached to the previous one and want a clean psychic slate.
I'm very curious who and what exactly you think this psyop is. Tell me the whole story, I especially want to see the Dasepost in response.
Edit since banned: Hlykna (and to a lesser extent Amadan): you've perfectly misinterpreted both this (not posted to be racially inflamatory, more Moloch and classic general culture war; I made a mistake with a thin single layer of sarcasm I thought would be obvious enough to everyone here, I was clearly mistaken and I apologize) and that other comment (which is quite literally the exact opposite of "whining about da joos").
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