I don’t think that statement would receive a mod note. Again, if you take the post in question and change the wording enough, it no longer is the same thing. A better paraphrase, and one that probably would be moderated, is:
Every conservative in America has been promoting and benefiting from racism, misogyny and xenophobia for decades.
Now, you may argue that a rule which distinguished between those statements isn’t useful, but that’s a different matter. As it stands now, the mods are asking posters to refrain from gratuitous, partisan sniping that labels the entire political opposition in a certain, negative way.
I agree that I’m not seeing a meaningful difference between my statement and your statement, but perhaps that reflects a malfunction in my context meter.
If my version would be acceptable for debate in Elections, then I would have no further concern in this thread. I just don’t want to close off all discussion on the topic.
The mods are never going to draw a bright line, so I didn’t mean my statement to be definitive (especially since I’m not a mod). I’m just going by what I’ve seen and what the mods have said in other threads like this one. You’re certainly better off when posting like that to explicitly say “Many Conservatives…” or even “Most conservatives…”.
I personally just don’t see the need to insist your original statement must be interpreted as saying “All Conservatives…”. Did you mean it that way? That every last conservative has been promoting those things for decades?
Welll - I don’t really want to argue it here, since what I’m really doing is debating about the right to have a debate about debatable things.
Purely on the semantics - I would say that if a person self-identifies as a part of a group, they shouldn’t get offended if they are lumped in with that group if the group does shady stuff.
A person who says “I am a frizzbot” can’t be surprised if, when the Frizzbot Party develops into a Neo-Nazi party, then people say “Frizzbots are nazis”. It’s no good trying to insist that - no no, you’re a Good Frizzbot. You chose to self-identify with the neo-nazi group. It was a voluntary choice.
We are known by the company we keep. Also, the friends we make, the fights we pursue and where we donate our money.
Now we can debate about whether or not the Frizzbot party supports nazis - I have my arguments and you have yours - but we shouldn’t have to curtail our debate because the people who deliberately choose to self-identify as Frizzbots are offended when I say that Frizzbots are nazis and you can tell because they chose Orange Hitler for their presidential candidate.
What I see it boiling down to is: Does a given statement add anything to “reasoned debate” of the subject at hand, or is it just a gratuitous swipe at the other side? I can’t see that the mods would stop you from starting a thread to discuss how pervasive racism is in mainstream conservative America. But, if one lobs out a statement like “conservatism is racism” in the middle of larger or different debate, does that really help move the debate along? I wold say that you are certainly allowed to debate that subject, but time and place.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that the OP of the thread in question was:
*If the Republicans do end up nominating someone else…
Fox News reports that the rebel delegate movement is growing, although it’s still a long shot. Still, with Clinton badly wounded, how can they pass up this opportunity?
So what happens if they did nominate someone else, and we assume that that someone else is a fairly mainstream Republican of the Romney/Ryan/Bush variety, as opposed to a Ted Cruz?*
I would certainly support moderation of such a comment as “conservatism is racism” if it was an unrelated political jab or hijack. I am not a fan of the random swipe.
But in that case, the people who picked the first nazi Frizzbot are the same people who would need to pick and approve the second nazi Frizzbot - so pointing out that the Frizzbots are all nazis to begin with and coming from the same place is not an unrelated swipe.
At any rate, if a particular Frizzbot wants to argue that it’s inaccurate to say that Frizzbots are nazis - let him step up and make his case. Running to the mods to get them to ban a simple declarative statement is damaging to debate.
I concur that I could have worded the note more clearly.
OTOH, I was pulling back from smacking him with a Warning for trolling when I posted what I did.
The post was not an expression of a considered opinion, but an inflammatory attack that served no purpose other than to rile up other posters. (And, as with personal insults–which I did not consider the post to be–the “But, it’s TRU-U-UE” defense carries no weight. Even if one actually believed the claim, it was expressed in a way that was intended to inflame.)
A warning for trolling would have been completely inappropriate. If you’re defining “trolling” to mean “sincerely-held opinions expressed using inflammatory language,” you’re going to need to be warning yourself a lot of the time. Take, for instance, the text you italicized in that quote above: DigitalC’s post was no more intended to inflame than those words were.
So if I sincerely believe that liberals are shithead racists that are intentionally trying to start a race war and ruin this country just so they can get and hold power by dividing the country into an us vs. them mentality so that they will always get the minority vote by saying conservatives want to lynch black people and hate brown people then you would be cool with me dropping that into threads in GD and Elections and you would come to my defense if I were modded.
No reason someone can’t drop a “sincerely held belief” into a thread for the purpose of stirring shit up.
Hi Straight Dope. I’m newly arrive from Strmfront, and I think you guys are a bunch of lily livered liberals. Just wait until your own children are half-breed mongrels, and see how you feel then. LOL!!!*
Again, it was not the idea; it was the expression.
A statement that conveyed a belief, preferably supported by evidence, that “Conservatism” fostered those beliefs or opinions would have not garnered any Mod attention.
The statement, as posted, was little more than name-calling to get a reaction.
I can live with that.
More context. Adaher shoots from the hip a lot. I see that shooting from the hip while simultaneously characterizing one ideology or another in a derogatory fashion is not allowed in Elections.
So you can shoot from the hip and make unsubstantiated claims as long as it’s not a derogatory broadside. This is permissible though obviously not encouraged.
You can make derogatory remarks about an ideology in elections but they must be substantiated. This isn’t necessarily best practice as it preaches to the choir.
Like I said, that’s ok with me. Also I’m not picking on adaher. His posting has gotten a lot better over time IMHO. I think I’ve said so in the pit. I would warn others though to resist the temptation to meet unsubstantiated assertion with unsubstantiated assertion, if the latter contains an broadside accusation against a wide group.
A lot of really smart people have debated for about a century now the question of whether an idea can be fully separated form it’s expression. The general weight of opinion is “no.” In fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of a philosopher or legal scholar who thinks otherwise, though I’m sure they exist. Your proposed version here is a different idea than the one moderated, which seems to prove that camp right.
Justice Harlan put it well in addressing Paul Robert Cohen’s rights to free expression in wearing a “Fuck the Draft” jacket to the county courthouse:
(emphasis added)
Perhaps SDMB moderators are better able to make principled distinctions between regulation of style and regulation of content. But I doubt it. Obviously, the SDMB is free to moderate in ways that lead to more censorship than the US government might (see, e.g., SDMB’s hate speech policy). But you should either bite the bullet and admit to the censorship of ideas in certain forums, or stop doing it.
I don’t think it’s a big deal to admit that you censor some ideas outside the Pit. You already admit it with respect to, say, attacks on posters or attacks on protected classes. Why not just admit that you’re also fine with censoring certain inflammatory ideas in favor of ones more likely to be conducive to civil and focused debate?
In regards to me calling Trump voters I know “low information voters”, it’s not really intended as an insult. Most voters are “low information” because most people have lives and do not enjoy following politics, and even among those who enjoy it, the emphasis is on “politics” more as a team sport than actually caring about policy. My labelling of Trump voters I know as “low information” was merely to distinguish them from the conservative activists that normally are opinion leaders within the party. None of these people are the people I’ve spent years talking politics and policy with. They are people who don’t actually talk about or seem to follow politics much. Trump’s just managed to push their buttons.
That’s correct, but not the point. tomndeb’s position is that he is merely moderating style but not content. I’m saying that such a distinction cannot be reliably drawn. Inevitably, moderation of style is moderation of content. And that’s fine. This board has lots of such restrictions on content. But for whatever reason, some mods are loathe to admit it. In part, I think, because they don’t like the implications of that truth.
The accusations of bigotry and racism do nothing to further any debate and are just name calling. Compare:
Poster A: We need to built a wall along the Mexican border to stop the flow of illegal immigration.
Poster B: You racist! You just say that because you hate brown people.
with
Poster A: We need to built a wall along the Mexican border to stop the flow of illegal immigration.
Poster B: I disagree. The cost would be prohibitive, illegal immigration has declined in recent years, and the people coming across the border are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families.
What does the first example do other than derail the entire thread into a debate about whether building a wall is racist or not? It may be a good idea, yet still racist. It may be a good idea and not racist. It may be a bad idea, but not racist, or it may be a bad idea and racist.
The question was not whether the proposal was racist, and throwing those types of bombs into threads derailed them in the past. That is why the mods are putting a stop to it.