I would strongly advise people not to go there from a work computer lest they capture IP’s or worse you have to explain to your boss what you were doing there.
I wasn’t aware of the board invasion, per se. I’ve never liked that sort of thing, even back when some Dopers crashed the Left Behind site. But I did take the advice of Goose and others and visited their site (it was a bit hard to find). And the StraightDope threads there reminded me of that episode. We did learn our lesson, and the moderator who led the charge apologized gracefully.
I must say that, for some reason, I was daunted when the page loaded. Something about that phrase “White Pride” spooks me, just as “Gay Pride” does, or any phrase calling upon political pride that isolates people into groups. I even took the time to read some of their texts, and so far as I can tell, what they advocate is voluntary segregation. Yes, they hate. But so do we. Many of us hate them, for example.
Then I visited their boards. Much of it shocked me. No, not the supremicist stuff. I expected that. What shocked me was how normal so much of it was. It reminded me of my first trip to a gay bar. Like that visit, this one began with much trepidation and with my guard up all the way. And like that visit, this one ended by leaving me a bit perplexed and ambivalent.
They are, for all the world, quite ordinary people except for the fact that they are fixated on whiteness. In that regard, they are much like the Cherokee boards and other boards where the vast majority of what people are discussing are their “culture”. These people see themselves as a part of a white culture, and I have no problem with that.
There were, to be sure, a few total dipshits. But there are those here, too. But much of what goes on there, aside from separatism discussions, are discussions about hair styles, clothing, philosophy, books, and so on and so on. Just pretty normal stuff with their own specific twist.
By and large, most of them are not very bright. Well, at least they’re not as bright as most of us. They aren’t necessarily stupid, but they just lack that ability to see over the horizon that is indicative of a broad and open mind. Faulty reasoning and logical fallacies abound there, as in one discussion wherein they are explaining to a new member why Jews are bad.
But a few of them are pretty sharp. Of particular interest to me was a thread discussing a member’s friend, who is half Indian but wishes he were white. It was interesting to see that there were those who argued that he was a traitor to his own race. Finally, someone pointed out that, no matter what he did, he would be a traitor to one race or the other because he is a mixture.
It’s not a place I would like to hang out. But then again, it wasn’t the intellectual dungeon that I had feared. In one StraightDope discussion, someone pointed out our rule about mutliple identities, and another actually made the point that their coming over here might be interpreted as an invasion.
Apparently, Kukulkon is more mischevious than most of them, and is advocating clearing cookies and reregistering and so forth, but in general there is no more movement afoot there to exact revenge or engage in a board war than there is here.
I spent about two hours there reading and whatnot. I disagree with almost all their philosophy, but then I disagree with most people’s philosphy here as well.
I see that Goose has complained that, when they debate, they give links to supremicist websites. But to me, that is just a big duh. Of course they do that. For the same reason that evolutionists link to talkorigins and creationists link to idnetwork. People link to what supports their views.
So I’m pretty much ending up where I started. If they want to register and participate by the rules, I see no problem with that. Even if they want to state their opinion that Indians can’t hold their liquor, I don’t have a problem with that either. Of course, I’ll debate the point. But then, I’m always debating against views that I find truly bizarre.
The reaction from some of them to what happened here is that they were banned for the views they hold. I doubt that that’s the case. However, if someone will destroy literature with which he disagrees and dismiss it as trash, it is not beyond the pall that he will ban people for ideas.
Saying that they can come here so long as they never link to a supporting site or state a racist opinion is, to me, the very antithesis of fighting ignorance. Rather, it is promoting it. Ignorance is as ignorance does. And ignorance hides its head in the sand.
All that said, it is important to note that they do not tolerate dissent either, at least not in the main forums. But they do have an entire forum where dissenters may post. I think it was called “General Rants” or something like that.
In summary, I don’t know whether a racist would be banned for being a racist and arguing for racism, but I certainly hope not. But that’s just me.
Don’t ruffle your feathers DDG, it was a joke (it was funnier in my head with the GWB accent, I promise).
Gah, stupid Nazis and moral dilemmas. If they follow the rules here, i have no reason to see them banned. (no linking to WP sites, only one username). It is probably better to have nazi people out in the open instead of stewing in the basement, and this site might maybe, just maybe, change one or two of their hearts. Granted, multicolored chaos creators like Kukulkon should stay gone, but if someone from there wants to talk rationally, i see no reason why they should be automatically banned.
Lib, do a search over there for sdmb.
They are indeed planning on coming over en masse and spamming the living shit out of us.
So I guess the favorite past time of the Master Race is sitting on their asses and pestering others? And they’re apparently not intelligent enough not to post evidence of their activities. D’uh!
:smack:
Hmmm…I’m glad to be an inferior, if that’s the case. (I don’t know if I’d be considered an Aryan-I may be part German, but it’s the Southern Catholic Germans, and I’m also Irish-Polish-Slovak-Hungarian, so that would leave me out.)
They’re planning on disrupting this place, and I personally hope the Admins complain to their Admins.
This is one heck of an understatement, Lib. They’re not just fixated on “white culture.”* Instead, they’re fixated on the claimed superiority of white culture and race, and particularly the inferiority of everyone else (particularly Jews, it seems).
It’s one thing to be proud of your heritage. It’s another thing entirely to think–without any rational foundation or support–that heritage makes everyone else your inferiors.
I’ll second that sentiment. I’d rather see them have their asses handed to them on a platter in GD than leave them with the impression that they’ve been martyred for their cause.
Were informed why they got booted? It would seem prudent in this instance.
*To judge by their avatars, “white culture” consists primarily of repressing their homosexual tendencies, as shown by their depictions of themselves as sweaty, shirtless muscle boys carrying around large phalluses. So maybe that comparison of Stormfront to a gay bar isn’t far off after all.
I found three threads about SD. And I only saw Kukulkon advocating breaking our rules. I did see that they themselves welcome invasions from other boards, but no real conspiracy to invade here.
It’s weird that I, someone they might hate, find myself defending them, but facts are facts. Despite a few renegades, their overall “mission” seems to be advocacy for voluntary segregation. And I certainly have no problem with that.
Minty
I know you were being tongue-in-cheek, but just to be sure everyone picks up on that, I wasn’t comparing Stormfront to a gay bar. I was comparing two experiences wherein what I encountered was not entirely what I had expected.
And again, I didn’t see much of the superiority angle. In fact, I saw one thread in which someone said that Jews are more intelligent than they. I think that segregation, and not supremacy, is the gist of their schtick. I’m sure there are some who feel superior, but as someone there said, liberals often feel superior to “rednecks” (a term they consider to be racist!).
Then go over there and post, Lib!
They didn’t seem interested in debating, they came back with multiple names, and they didn’t follow the fucking rules!
Sheesh!
Lib, are you sure you and I were looking at the same board? The one I saw was filled to the gills with statements of hatred for everyone who wasn’t white or who was a “race traitor.” One particularly appalling example was a thinly-veiled invitation to commit acts of violence about some woman who advocated something or other they didn’t like, right down to posting photos of her listing her employer’s address. There’s a lot more than voluntary segregation on their agenda, I assure you.
Note: all quotes are from Libertarian
Your open-mindedness is admirable, but I think there may be a point when there is such a thing as “too accepting”.
I don’t really get the idea of voluntary segregation. Does this imply that they only want to be segregated if the other races agree that’s the way to go? If they think all white people should volunteer to associate only with others like them, where does that leave the other races. I don’t see the difference between so called “voluntary segregation” and plain old exclusionism. If you can explain this to me I’m all ears. And many of us don’t hate these guys. I don’t hate them per se, I just hate their ideas.
It’s the fact that they can only see themselves as part of an exclusively white culture that’s the problem.
Again, your attitude is somewhat admirable, but realistically speaking, when someone comes on a messageboard with the opinion that other races are inferior to their own, heated arguments are going to break out. Phrasing it as allowing them “to state their opinions” sounds noble, but it just doesn’t work in cases like this. I’ve run a messageboard for four years now, so I’ve learned first-hand: a single incendiary post can spark a flame war that affects the tone of the whole board. I would hate to see that happen at the SDMB.
I think you’re drawing a strained dichotomy here between life on the SDMB and life in general. In real life, you, me, and John Stuart Mill could march in the “Accept Everybody!” parade together. I want to hear the ideas and opinions that these guys have. After all, if I don’t hear the minority opinion, how do I know that my own opinion is correct?
But on a messageboard it’s a different story. Not tolerating racist ideas is not tantamount to hiding our heads in the sand. It’s merely choosing the type of community of messageboard we want this to be. There are plenty of “free-for-all” sites out there, where anything goes. I think most dopers would agree that the SDMB eclipses those sites in every way.
(note: when I say “we” above, it’s a whole-community kind of “we” - I don’t have anything to do with running the SDMB)
Nah, you’d count as an Aryan. The Southern Catholic German part wouldn’t be a problem…remember, most of the early Nazis were from southern Germany. The Irish part would be ok, too, being Celtic and all that. As for the Hungarian, might be a little problem, but remember, Hungary was a German ally in WWII, and the general perception was that Hungarians were an Aryan people. Same deal with the Slovaks. As for the Poles, it would have been a big deal 50-60 years ago, but now, the racist White-Power, neo-Nazi community, accepts Poles as “fellow whites”…they’ve mainly gotten past that whole Slavs as untermenschen thing. So, you’re good to go.
Guin said:
I think I made plain that it’s not a place where I care to hang out. Just a sec. Let me check. Yep, I made that plain.
Minty wrote:
No, I missed that. I only clicked titles that interested me. Certainly, if they advocated (initial) violence, they crossed the line.
Slacker wrote:
Oh, I agree. I would never accept coercion, for example. Not under any circumstance.
However, I find myself practically every day facing people in debates who do accept coercion so long as it meets their needs, serves some perceived “common good”, or accrues from a tradition of tyranny. Involuntary taxation, as far as I’m concerned, is tantamount to slavery.
It is very, very hard for me to be accepting of people who hold the view that because taxes benefit society, they are okay. They are in fact tyrannical. But part of what I learned from Straight Dope, at least early on, was that people aren’t necessarily evil just because I perceive their philosophy as evil.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=115540
Attempting an organized board invasion is pretty jerkish behavior, regardless of your opinion. So is registering multiple socks just because you can. The SDMB has tolerated white supremacist posters before. They didn’t get banned because of their opinions. They inevitably got banned for spamming, violating specific forum rules and, after a while, irrefutably demonstrating in GD a complete inability to put together a logical argument even if it came complete with colour-coded instructions. Compared to the people who’ve gotten themselves banned, December is bloody Aristotle.
If DrizzleFront.org and the SDMB were to merge, they would annihilate in a burst of gamma radiation.
Lib, DrizzleFront.org isn’t “shockingly normal,” it’s practically a parody of itself. If The Onion were setting up a white supremacist message board, that’s what it would look like.
The trouble with the mass banning is that it gave the SF members the martyr validation they needed <those faggots and Jew lovers didn’t want to hear the TRUTH!>. I wish that we had laid down the rules more emphatically and gave the SF members a chance to stay here, so that their hate could be debated and defeated by logic, not fiat.
Are you sure you looked at the SF boards? Those guys are evil.
There are a couple more explaining how to clear cookies in order to re-register.
And this guy:
They ought not to conspire to invade a board, but once again I remind you that this board once did the exact same thing, led no less by a moderator. And sock puppets are not against the rules of every board, though they are here.
Gobear
I do believe that some of them are evil, but I also believe that some people here are evil. But no one is evil because of a philosophy. Evil is born in the heart.
Shit. I hit submit instead of preview. I meant to edit the quote down to just this:
Apologies to anyone offended by the slurs in the full quote, any chance of a Mod deleting it?
See, I find that sad. Delete it?
Just last week, there was a Doper who was calling His4ever the most insulting (for her) names imaginable. Even though I hate what he said, I think his posts should stand as a testament to his intolerance, bigotry, and myopia.
okay, what is a “mud shark”?