I agree.
But then I think that about the “Do Blacks have a genetic tendency to sub-moronic IQ? I’m JAQing, y’all!” type threads, too, and Dexter specifically says threads like those are fine, so there you go…
Jacking (off) is more like it.
Yes, but think about how many threads we have by people blacks are " genetically less intelligent" while still denying they’re racist or, while they’re not as numerous, threads ranting about the evils of Islam or Muslims.
To me such threads are just as obviously bigoted and in this case the mods made the appropriate decision that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and to give Gack the benefit of the doubt/room to hang himself.
Edit: Oops, Mr. Dibble beat me to it.
While to those who are knowledgable, such questions are almost always racist at bottom. However, there are plenty of youngsters who are not knowledgable, who hear these things (did you know that the internet is full of such crap? I’m shocked, shocked!) and are asking legitimately. I think of the “moon landing was faked” where conspiracy-theorist nutcases always have arguments that SOUND reasonable until you know the facts. Similarly, it is possible to ask lots of questions about things like the Holocaust, racial trends in athletics/scholastics/movie ownership, etc. There can be a legitimate underpining, and we want to be sure that anyone young and uninformed who is reading such things, can be exposed to education and reality.
Hence, we let them go on for a while.
All that is true, and thank you for all you guys have said.
Still, I’d still be a late trigger on these things. I do always hope that something good can come out of any thread or poster who’s not blatantly spamming/trolling. If - sometimes - that means that the board puts up with them longer than it should have to…I consider that a small price.
I don’t mind such threads. The only thing that concerns me are all the racist links provided by them that might collect clicks when people check them out…but I guess it’s a trade-off.
Just to express an opinion, I’d say that even the most evil, vile, and bigoted ideas should get a fair hearing – so long as they obey the basic rules.
The trouble is that such threads usually don’t come with real evidence. (Well, of course!) The dear departed Gack was playing games. He’d say “Let’s look more closely at the photographs” but never formally say what was wrong with them. He didn’t have a major premise. He wasn’t engaging in debate, just sitting off to one side and tossing nuggets at us to see which way we’d jump.
He (and some others still extant) practice a kind of “content free” debate. They try to shift the burden of proof. “How do you know Richard Nixon wasn’t a child molester? He might have had a whole cellar full of pre-adolescents in chains.”
This, ultimately, is the more ban-worthy offense: not being willing to defend – or even define – a point, but filling up page after page with “I’m right, because you haven’t proven I’m wrong” gibberish.
Racism in any form is bad, and I wouldn’t mind seeing all the other JAQers shown the door. But Holocaust deniers strike me as being in a category all their own, one that is even more evil. (No, I’m not Jewish.)
I’m leery of putting Shoah on a pedestal, because it seems to be playing into anti-Semites’ hands somehow. They get to go “See how powerful the Jews are, they got their genocide to be made special. Nobody cares about the poor [Armenians/Cambodians/Rwandans/Chinese/Deletewhateverisn’tapplicables]” And sadly, I can sort of kinda see a point there - genocide is genocide, in the end. It likely wins the prize for the worst one, depending on how you define things, but other than that, there’s no real reason to mark it as more evil. I think there’s an absolute “evilness level” to genocide that they all sit at.
So ban the Armenian-genocide etc deniers as well. Problem solved.
Trinopus’s solution is best: ban the gibberish-spouters, regardless of the topic.
Some poster’s complain that we are “giving a forum” to those who post pernicious views. However, it’s not hard to find them being posted unrefuted on other websites. In my opinion, what we’re really offering is a forum where such nonsense can be thoroughly debunked. I doubt many people reading Gack’s threads here were convinced by his posts. However, the posters countering him provided a great deal of ammunition for anyone wanting to dispute his positions elsewhere. I feel this is more beneficial than immediately banning anyone who posts such views (within the rules).
It’s difficult to draw the line on when to decide someone is arguing in bad faith. If we started requiring posters to present logical and relevant arguments, Great Debates would be a lot less active.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I think they are in good company with Sandy Hook deniers
I am pleased the thread stayed open as long as it did and was closed after it looped back on itself. The Generation that was there; perpetrators, victims and witnesses are almost all gone, very soon there will be no eyewitnesses. This sad fact alone can help these revisionists and make it easier for them to convince others.
My Grandmother, who witnessed the aftermath as a US serviceman’s wife made sure I understood what had happened, not that the Germans were “bad” but that “good” people can and will do “bad” things if properly motivated. If she had not done that I probably would not care about the Holocaust like I do.
IMO we must fight this kind of ignorance and fight it hard
Never Again
Capt