I think when you give people a forum, they’ll take it. And the next person along sees that you gave that first person a forum. And the next. And the next. And that is why we have longstanding racists posting here who obey all of the rules except the most important one but are free to post and post and post long past the time when we all know that they are jerks.
The dope offers shelter to racists and then claims that gosh, there’s simply nothing to be done about it because this slope is oh so slippery.
Actually, it does happen occasionally. Very rare, but it happens. A friend of mine is a former racist and holocaust denier. He had a change of heart years ago, before I knew him, and now is active in local politics, working against racism.
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I think when you give people a forum, they’ll take it. And the next person along sees that you gave that first person a forum. And the next. And the next. And that is why we have longstanding racists posting here who obey all of the rules except the most important one but are free to post and post and post long past the time when we all know that they are jerks.
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Nobody gets a free ride on this message board. If they bring that stuff in here then they are going to get smacked around by the posting community. And the next guy will as well. And the guy after that. And people will be able to see our responses to these losers, and see them humiliated, even if they don’t get banned.
Again, I can’t for the life of me see why this is a problem that needs fixing. Are you scared to debate one of these idiots? Scared of what they could or would say? Scared that giving them the chance to say it will somehow make reasonable people rethink their stance on this? I say bring em on and we’ll bring the pain.
You claim that there are long time 'dopers who are racists…I won’t ask for names, and just assume you are correct. So what? They don’t post racist threads attempting to back up their bullshit unopposed. Obviously they stay within the boundaries of the rules for the board. You don’t see a lot of long time 'dopers starting racist oriented threads in general because they KNOW they will feel the pain of a full on 'doper pile on.
Another famous case (or at least famous in Nebraska): a rabbi converts the Grand Dragon of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Nebraska to Judaism.
Nah. There are a couple of ‘scientific racists’ who are total tools, and spend all their time combing the internet for obscure tidbits to back up their baloney. Everything they say is disputed to the point that they only make very tiny assertions about gene frequency in this or that population.
They can’t say what they really want to say here, and what they do say means almost nothing. On the plus side, they spend all their time searching obscure gene frequency journal articles.
Real racists, like whatzisname, the Australians-are-Germans dude, they blow up in a public venue since they can’t make their point rationally.
I don’t think it makes sense to ban any sort of topic from discussion. Certainly, some topics are going to be patently ridiculous or overly dogmatic to the point that it’s just a train wreck. But, as a few others have mentioned, many of the sort of people that come here hardset in some bizarre mindset are likely to run afoul of the rules anyway and no one has to even engage them. The thing is, it may upset people that it’s not a winnable debate, but if you’re arguing with the sole purpose of convincing your opponent, they a lot of people are wasting their time here with so many political and religious discussions.
They’re coming here looking for a platform. If you just ban them outright, no ideas get explored, and it reinforces their position giving them yet another point in their perceived persecution complex. If they’re able to express they’re ideas and they’re all logically shot down and they eventually lose their cool and get banned for breaking rules, sure the worst case is the same, but there’s a chance that it has some affect on someone.
We can’t fight ignorance by ignoring it. It’s going to be a fight won in many smaller battles not just closing our eyes and hoping they die off.
Incredible. Now I’m 100% convinced that the Holocaust deniers should not be banned outright. Just this discussion about banning them taught me something I didn’t know.