They’re not vermin. They’re humans doing bad things, who need to stop doing bad things.
I’m kind of on the fence about “infested.” I think it’s heavily context-dependent. Are we saying “infested” to support a view of these people being like pests who should be exterminated? That’s bad, obviously.
But if we’re implying that these people have forced themselves into a place they have no right to be, doing things they have no right to do? Sometimes that’s true, and in those cases I think “infested” is weakly defensible. But it’s so close to the line that IMO it merits a note to the effect of “be careful with this kind of language.”
Except it’s not always bad. There is a vast gulf of difference between disliking someone because of their values and actions, and disliking someone because of who their parents were. To not be able to recognize this, is to be able unable to recognize the difference between, “I hate Jews,” and “I hate Nazis.”
We don’t want to ban the use of infest, though. We want to reduce racist expressions on the board. “Infest” is fine when used in non-racist ways. It’s problematic when used in racist ways. We want to moderate the problematic usages, not the non-problematic usages.
This is incorrect. It’s okay (broadly) to speak disparagingly of groups that are defined by behavior or ideology. It’s not okay (broadly) to speak disparagingly of groups that are defined by genetics. If someone wants to say “liberals are infesting the US government,” this is probably not going to draw a mod sanction. (“Probably” and “broadly” because despite your ideas about how we should moderate, context and nuance are important things.)
Antisemites in the '30s and '40s may have treated Jews as a race. But modern-day antisemitism, the kind still clinging to a Jewish conspiracy and the like, that’s not based on genetics at all.
Racists might be overrepresented in certain ethnic groups, but that doesn’t mean criticism of racists constitutes bigotry against the ethnic group in which they are overrepresented. That’s ridiculous. I mean, okay, that kind of persecution fantasy is what the Repulican Party is selling right now. But that doesn’t make it non-ridiculous.
Positing that people espousing evil doctrines are vermin to be dehumanized is wrong not only because it dehumanizes them, but because it implies that we as humans aren’t susceptible to being tempted into such doctrines, and don’t have to watch out for them in ourselves, or in anyone who we do think of as humans. It’s another form of ‘it can’t happen here’, and it’s dangerous.
I haven’t been calling it out; maybe I ought to.
– I also think that XT, at least after the first immediate reaction, has been behaving well about this. The first WTF reaction was followed by a reaction of wait, people are saying something here worth listening to; and by listening.
And positing that enemy military forces are vermin to be dehumanized is wrong because it makes it easier to justify killing them when they do invade your country.
I see it as a rhetorical tool against the bad guys. I wouldn’t use this in all circumstances, but I don’t have a problem in general with the rhetorical sentiment that Nazis are vermin, Nazis are trash, Nazis are the scum of the earth, etc.
No, I recognize it just fine, I am Jewish. Everyone that’s posted here had no problem understanding that xtisme wasn’t being racist. He wasn’t talking about any kind of minority group. He’s talking about a group of people from Ukraine that would welcome a Russian takeover of their country. Did the post get flagged by other posters who thought it was racist?
Why was this one problematic if nobody that’s commented on it assumed it was racist? Part of the context is that the poster was xtisme, who as far as I know hasn’t displayed any racist tendencies in the past.
Yes context and nuance are important. And the context and nuance in this case seems to have told most people that there was no racism involved.
Good post, I agree. Calling people names really adds nothing to solving the problem. All it does is make you feel superior. Simply saying they are Nazis tells you all you need to know about them.
I’m going to reinforce that it’s a judgment call, and we do the best we can. @Miller has very well articulated how I would frame my concern in the moment I made the note – better than I would have, frankly. I can’t improve upon his statements.
There’s no hard and fast rule. We don’t get a Moderator Handbook when we join the team. We use our best judgment, and this was mine. I have no problem with this ensuing discussion – it has been enlightening. In hindsight, it may have been better for me to have kicked it around in the mod loop before issuing a note – though I’m far from sure the outcome would have been different. It simply didn’t seem like a hard call to me because of what I perceived to be unintentional racist overtones.
Context is everything. The word itself is useful. It is a loaded term in any context, but in my view, it is not acceptable in racial contexts.
A mod note is not a Warning. I never felt that @XT was intentionally making a racist slur. I felt it was a lack of understanding about how loaded the term can be. He agreed with this earlier in this thread, and I applaud his willingness to learn.
Lastly, I responded to a flag. I didn’t seek out @XT for his use of the term. I rarely moderate for things other than what is brought to our attention. None of @Cervaise’s examples were flagged, and maybe that’s because we mostly understand the difference in using the term when in a non-racial context and otherwise.
Not clear to me if that was supposed to be sarcastic?
Yes, it is wrong. Partly because generally most of them were drafted and/or lied to in order to get them into the invasion forces; and partly because it makes it easier to justify killing them even when they’re not invading any country.
Sometimes it’s necessary to kill people. But it’s very dangerous to forget or to deny that that’s what we’re doing.
Not sarcastic, I was thinking of something like a general in Ukraine talking about the Russians on the other side of the border as having “infested” Crimea or waiting to “infest” the Donbass region. Or even the ethnically Russian civilians (colonists) who are occupying Crimea, “do you want the Russians to infest the rest of Ukraine?” etc.
Oh yes, dehumanizing language is very often used by armed forces to try to make it easier for those who have to actually do the killing to do so – and more likely that they’ll follow orders to do so.
Carries the same dangers, of course; if anything, more so, as the armed forces are after all armed forces. And the language tends to make its way through the civilians, also.
Practicing a religion is much like practicing an ideology. You just said you wouldn’t refer to members of a religion as infesters. I think the distinction you are making is quite poor.
Dehumanizing language is dehumanizing language, regardless of the preferences and biases of the speaker/writer.
Well, he was talking about a minority group - Ukrainian citizens of Russian decent, who are a minority in Ukraine. But that’s not really relevant, because the problem isn’t that he was referring to a minority. A poster arguing that we should nuke China would likely get a note (if not a warning), despite the fact that there are more Chinese people on the planet than any other ethnic group.
Along somewhat the same lines, while Russian occupation might be viewed favorably by many ethnically Russian Ukrainians, it is almost certainly not a universally held position among that group. Attributing political positions to someone based solely on their ethnicity is… well, not the strongest move when you’re trying to argue that the original statement was not problematic.
I think you’re also misreading the room with your appeals to popularity, as it appears that most of the people responding to this thread recognize that the phrasing XT used was racist, even if that probably wasn’t his intent. It’s worth noting that, if the moderators had felt that he was being intentionally racist, he likely would have drawn a warning, not a mod note.