I see no problem whatsoever in publicly identifying white supremacists who come to public rallies to espouse white supremacist ideas. I do see a big problem in identifying the wrong people. Thus, care is necessary if one is going to use this tactic.
And this is a tactic. Like almost all tactics, it can be used for good or for ill. Using it for good requires care and discretion.
I’d suggest to you that the damage to otherwise innocent parties is more likely to be higher and with a larger radius of effect if people don’t take an effecting response to racist rallies. Including, potentially, to said teenager who learns as a result that there’s no particular negative result to such a rally.
I didn’t claim Chimera was a witch. I just said “let’s go hunting for witches”.
What on earth could go wrong?
My interpretation upon reading it carefully was a bit less cut and dried but fair enough. Were you aware I started the thread apropos of the second post I brought up, specifically,
which demonstrates a comprehension that unrequited violence is wrong, and an obliviousness to the ethical peril of the activities described?
Well, yes, but only because I’d feel betrayed by one of my parents, and my parents would probably be getting a divorce, and I’d have to deal with all that. This would mean a severe drop in income, for us, and likely some hardship.
The one thing that I would not do is in any way blame the former employer firing my parent. The parent is entirely responsible for the consequences of being a full on racist.
Sure, we need to be sure and not fire the trigger on the wrong person. If you are pointing the trigger of social ostracization at someone, you’d better be ready to fire.
But racism is evil, and good people will make sure there are negative consequences for it. Complaining about that is like complaining that ice is slippery. You want to avoid falling down, avoid the ice. You want to avoid being fired for racist shit? Don’t be a racist shit.
Yeah, it’s a hell of a note.
uh huh.
like maybe “slave” ?
I don’t like mob justice in situations where someone has made an effort to conceal their identity and their just spouting off opinions, such as on an anonymous messageboard like this. There’s a reasonable expectation of privacy. It’s kinda like having a private conversation recorded at a restaurant table or in someone’s home and then releasing snippets of a conversation. If it’s an anonymous harmless conversation, people ought to be allowed to have that. We sometimes say things online anonymously because we’re just voicing opinions that can’t be expressed easily at the workplace or even among friends who might for whatever reason take offense.
But when someone parades around in a public place and has the audacity to attach their identity to that, I think they’re fair game. I don’t know why anyone would expect to participate in a hate rally and not expect consequences from that. It’s really no different than if friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and supervisors happened to see you doing something embarrassing in public. There’s “doxxing” that invades privacy, but there’s also “doxxing” that expands the public sphere from a physical to a virtual space. Are television reporters “doxxing” people if they investigate and find out the identities of these people?
Now that being said, I agree with what someone said upthread: if you’re going to play detective and investigative reporter, make damn sure that you have the right target. I have no sympathy for people who are accurately identified at one of these events. I also have no sympathy for people who get their asses sued off for inaccurately identifying people. If you’re going to play private detective, get your shit right or don’t do it at all.
I’d say you’ve been whooshed.
The goal is not to encourage doxxing but to discourage the mob, causing them to panic and scatter.
I did fucking admit he was hurt. There’s nothing in my post that says otherwise. All I did was say it was indeed a regrettable consequence. You are falling for Bricker’s emotionally manipulative argument.
One person getting hurt on accident that has the situation then remedied is not a reason to stop doing the one legal thing we can do to actually fight Nazis. Bricker’s attempt to try and undermine that aren’t going to work.
I am not on the apologist side here. This thread is Nazi apologia. I hate Nazis more than I hate doxxing, especially of people in fucking public who are publicly declaring their horrible views.
I will 100% support the one legal thing we can do to actually stop Nazis by providing the natural consequences for their actions. If they get fired, great. If there are some people who get misidentified, that sucks, but it’s not a reason to stop.
It’s only a reason to be more careful. Just like I said.
Yes. Document them and take pictures.
Show everyone who they are. It’s not hard to take a snap of a guy with a Nazi flag, and say “that’s a Nazi”. And then splatter it all over the news and the internet.
DO IT.
If I found out that any of my employees were marching along with Nazis, I would fire them. Yes, for marching, chanting, and publically showing themselves to be racist douchebags. I don’t want that sort of thing in my shop. My only regret would be that I had the poor judgement to hire racists in the first place.
Now, not saying that means that I hear a name that is similar to one of my employees, I would give them a chance o tell their side of the story. “It wasn’t me,” assuming it is true, is a perfect defense. I would not fire someone for having a similar appearance or name as a nazi. “I was there as an undercover blogger to gt an inside scoop no the nazi mind,” is an acceptable defense, but I’d like to see this blog.
There may be other potential mitigating factors that would give me reason not to fire an employee for marching with nazis, but I can’t think of any right now.
“But, I was just marching!” or “But, I was just chanting”, or “But, I was just publically showing myself to be a racist douchebag” are no defense.
It would bother me quote greatly to have bigoted parents. That their employer fired them would just make me more upset that my parents hold these views.
I’ve been to a few protests, mostly about ending the drug war, and the first few times, I was worried about being seen and publically named. Since I was with the anti-drug war peoples, I was concerned that I would be labeled as a drug user. I was a bit concerned about employment issues if a potential or current employer saw me.
After a few protests, I was more comfortable. I didn’t mind the idea that someone might put my name and face together with people who are against the drug war, I was proud of that in fact. I realized that there was some small potential for employment impacts, but felt that that was worth it for showing support to a cause I believed in.
These people marched in public. They have no expectation of privacy. The reason to show up to something like that is to show that you support it’s views and ideals, and concealing your identity does not go well with that.
Is it doxxing if I happen to see the face of one of my employees on the news? No public reveal, no social media shaming, I just see one of my employees marching down the road alongside nazis and white supremacists, can I ID him myself, and fire him for his actions?
So when is it okay to doxx someone and when is it not?
Was it permissable to doxx Zoe Quinn? How about that girl who made a bad joke about AIDS in Africa and had her life ruined as a result? How about the relatives of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre? How about the cop who allegedly murdered Michael Brown? The convicted rapist Brock Turner?
If we’re going to claim that sometimes it’s okay to doxx people, we need hard and fast rules for when it’s okay and when it’s not okay (I still don’t think it’s okay because I don’t think any such objective rules can exist, nor will they be universally agreed upon.) It’s one thing to publicly identify someone and another to give out personal details that could endanger them or their loved ones.
I don’t give a shit about the feelings of Nazis. I care about the wild irresponsibility of the mob mentality in general, and the precedent it sets when any such behavior is recognized as legitimate recourse. Much like in a mob, everyone participating is absolved of feeling personally responsible for what is happening, which means the more harassing behavior escalates, the less likely the participants will feel any sense of accountability. That’s how we get from, ‘‘woman makes stupid Tweet about AIDS in Africa on a plane’’ to ‘‘entire world clamors for woman to lose her job, while people openly proclaim that she should be raped by someone with AIDS and have her uterus cut out.’’
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Is it doxxing if I happen to see the face of one of my employees on the news? No public reveal, no social media shaming, I just see one of my employees marching down the road alongside nazis and white supremacists, can I ID him myself, and fire him for his actions?
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Doxxing as I understand it means revealing highly sensitive personal information, ranging from one’s address and phone number to social security and bank account numbers.
So, no. While I think online shaming is problematic in the majority of cases, particularly when the shaming goes viral, doxxing is a different beast altogether.
I thought it was more just putting a name to a face (or more generally, putting a real name to a screen name). I mean, I have all that info on my employees, but if I found out that they were nazis, I would terminate them, but I wouldn’t reveal any of that to the public. I don’t know that I would publicly shame them, but I would actually probably tell any future employer why I fired them. (I generally do not say anything negative about past employees.) If a client asked where they were, depending on my relationship with that client, I would either answer, “They found a better fit elsewhere,” my standard line, or “They were nazis, and I couldn’t tolerate that i my shop.”
So, I guess my question is, is just putting up screen stills and photos from the rally with names put to the faces doxxing to you, or does it have to go further, and get into personally sensitive info like ssn’s and bank account numbers?
Another side question, would firing someone for being a nazi be with cause, or without cuase for unemployment insurance purposes? Thinking on that, if it would be without cause, allowing them to collect unemployment, I may have to rethink how I would dismiss them.
I’m not sure where I stand on the former, because it’s such a nebulous thing. People use such weak-ass reasons to shame people and have destroyed their lives over it, but to be openly spouting violent white supremacist ideology is a pretty shameful thing, and why shouldn’t there be social consequences for publicly declaring yourself a loathsome individual? I just watched the VICE documentary and the white supremacists are clearly reprehensible individuals who do not deserve sympathy. But I do in that case still care about collateral damage. I would say that if that if public shaming is a tool that is used by the left, and I have no basic opposition to calling people out for white supremacy in general, it is a tool that should be wielded responsibly. As a business owner obviously you can fire anybody you want for any reason (other than the protected ones, of course) and nobody can say shit about it. I’m not sure how it would be defined re: unemployment.
This whole debacle underscores a lot of thorny ethical issues for me personally, because I generally view these tools as tools of oppression, often internet mobs act when they don’t have the entirety of the facts, people may be punished just for being accused of a crime, or even just for having a different opinion. If you take Anita Sarkeesian for example, I watched a few of her videos on sexist tropes in video games, and they are so non-confrontational as to be almost boring. And yet some people felt positive that she deserved doxxing, bomb, rape and death threats.
Now here are some people, Nazis, that are unequivocally bad. And people want to use this tool that I’ve always viewed as a tool of oppression to punish Nazis for being Nazis. And I wonder if I endorse this public shaming, does that mean I endorse anyone doing it to anyone for any reason, and does it make me a hypocrite if I think Nazis are an exception? And how is public shaming different than the media taking up a story and running with it, which has been happening for a long time? The only real answer I have is that usually in cases of public shaming, it’s over something minor and stupid (or, if bad, still inconsequential) that would never be real news twenty years ago.
But this is not a usual case, is it?
I just don’t know.
Are you advocating doxxing of people?
Isn’t doxxing revealing an anonymous online identity? That’s different than pictures in public spaces.
Isn’t it self evident that any time you are out in public, regardless of what you’re doing, you are at risk of being identified?
Go to a gay bar for lunch with an office mate and run into an old friend? Recognize that stripper from high school?
Being identified isn’t always about formal doxing so much as it only takes one person to recognize and name you. And in today’s world, like it or hate it, it IS the reality that people have social media profiles, from Facebook to LinkedIn. So being named has a wider reach than just your mates and relatives.
(Of course we also live in a world of trolls, who track down the wrong Joe Blow and threaten them. Always was a crime, still a crime and unacceptable.)
When someome marches down the street sig heiling and waving a flag, and someone else says: “Hey look, it’s Jim!”, thems the risks a brave nazi’s gotta face. Suck it up nazis.