This is a deplatforming site. People get banned. Shit gets deleted.

It doesn't prevent engagement, it enables it.

Unfortunately, we don't have a thriving Nazi forum here so no one is entirely sure if the Nazi's were good or bad. In fact there's good reason to believe they were awesome, precisely because we don't allow discussion of their merits here. It's how we give them the space they deserve.

Perhaps it would help if mods didn’t call others questions “fucking stupid” and delete posts where people announce their dislike of the topic like we’re meant to give a shit?

Just saying ... now delete ;)

Did you really just write this? And mean it? 'By not giving them room ... we're giving them room"; How does one go about writing a sentence like this? How does this transmit from brain to fingertip to keyboard without stalling at any point from the self-imploding force of its own vacuity? And add to this a casual acknowledgement of how it happens to be 'offensive and emotionally neglectful' - an acknowledgement made to all the better dismiss these as irrelevant - and one has to wonder what the actual fuck went on during the writing of this sentence.

Incidentally, let me tell you how I, and probably millions of others, learnt how fascism was bad. We studied it, like everybody else; felt its effects as we walked through the remains of concentrations camps, like everybody else; understood its history, like everybody else. You know what we didn't have to do? At least, not until liberals lost their collective fucking mind under the sway of the conservative rewriting of history and political mores? Debate a fucking fascist. Holy hell. In what universe must this be spelt out? Unlearn these memes. They are destructive of your intellectual ability. — StreetlightX

People like Shapiro and Spencer have been able to build significant followings despite the lessons of history, and willingness to debate them hasn't contributed to their rise (we're only willing to debate the because they have significant followings). If you look at the contemporary origins of the alt-right, or Shapiro's rise, you'll see that they're reactionaries who are responding to the excesses of the left.

You might be too intellectually advanced to lower yourself enough to actually debate a fascist, but having an emotional breakdown doesn't seem to dissuade them (it encourages and energizes them), so perhaps you should try a new approach?

If you look at the contemporary origins of the alt-right, or Shapiro's rise, you'll see that they're reactionaries who are responding to the excesses of the left. — VagabondSpectre

Called this out for the unempirical untruth it is long ago. This is just recycled memes at this point.

Also consider that perhaps debating a fascist isn't an 'intellectual' issue, but an ethical, lived one. But by all means, continue to intellectualize fascism. Consider also that I don't want to 'dissuade' them. I want them to be terrified for their bodily safety.

But Shapiro & Spencer don't argue in good faith. Shapiro's thing - much like Peterson (on politics) - is just the aesthetic of reason. I'm not saying they're not smart, I think they are, but Shapiro's appeal is the smouldering fuck you ('facts don't care about your feelings' etc) underlying his stuff. Everything else, including his ' look-i-like-pop-culture!' is veneer. There are very, very few people who agree with Shapiro who are going to be persuaded through debate, because its all theater. The arguments don't matter - its the emotional stance embodied by the character.

If we shame people to stay quiet about beliefs they hold, there's exactly 0 chance of them changing their minds. Considering the alternative (social) media and communications channels available I suspect it inevitably leads to reinforcing existing bubbles, which just takes us farther away from constructive political debate. — Benkei

I'm quite pro shame here. If the worst excesses of political opinion are shameful to express in public and in private, it's a much better deterrent than reason. Even if in some cases you might get ressentiment backlash and 'X DESTROYS Y' porn on social media and Youtube as a reaction. If xenophobia and racism are shameful that's a lot stronger an imposed sanction than being merely wrong.

Edit; for distinctions between personal and systemic injustices, though, I think it's still quite helpful to be exploratory and gentle. It's hard to get your head around 'it's not about you' for systemic issues, especially when there are reactionary fuckwads everywhere claiming that it is.

It doesn't prevent engagement, it enables it. — unenlightened

I think that's a false analogy. That's fine for a website, excluding people who don't meet certain criteria or who breach the rules. I'm not convinced exclusionary politics is a good idea when the rules haven't been breached (eg. still in accordance with the law). In fact, I think it's the opposite.

I've got some pretty racist family members. Yet I can still talk to them, work together and have fun at parties. They know I disagree and we even sometimes talk about racism and politics.

If I'd verbally attack their preferred candidate "oh, Thierry Baudet is such a douche" it's just me signalling I cannot be spoken to about his ideas without his ideas actually being deconstructed. But he has a platform precisely because people already agree with his ideas, which aren't novel at all. He's symptomatic of what exists in society. Deplatforming is effective at repressing symptoms and lowering its spread but ineffective against the disease itself.

In this sense, data always comes too late: by necessity it must take certain conditions as fixed for the sake of comparison and conclusion at all. But changing conditions just is the sine qua non of political action. There's a nice passge by the political philosopher Byung Chul-Han on data and politics, where he writes that: — StreetlightX

It reminds me of the kerfuffle that's happened with 'predictive policing' in statistical modelling. You make a model of where the crimes are, distribute police in accordance with crime rate weighted by a measure of police intervention effectiveness per crime type per unit area. Unfortunately, you have a finite number of police officers, and without careful control of the model's time based updates you end up with increasing concentration of police in poor black areas and less in the white areas. Why? Because crime rate is measured as observed crime rate, the more police you have in an area generating reports, the more crimes will be reported in that area.

Anyway, biased as I am, political arguments and programs are never purely conceptual, and should be evidence based where possible; a good statistical workflow can generate a lot of insights and condense information usefully; and the ideal model of 'evidence based policy' has data analysis feeding into every step and assessing the policies.

What I'd like to draw attention to here is the poverty of mathematics for extrapolation in complex systems; even if you know the weather now, if you add or subtract 10^-32 to the measurements being fed into a dynamical climate model, the simulations still produce different results after a relatively short (sub month) period of time. 10^-32 is millions of times more precise than the most precise measurements physics has ever made. If we need to 'know the future' to produce guides for action, and 'knowing the future' must be evidence based in the long sense, this is a good excuse for the indefinite suspension of any intervention.

Conceptual and historical arguments can aggregate the phenomena into readily understandable qualitative chunks with fuzzy boundaries of relevance, providing heuristics for action rather than quantified expectations of the results. Political interventions can only be imposed under the guidance of heuristics due to the social's infinite statistical complexity but relative qualitative simplicity. This isn't to say political thought is easy; it's fraught with framing issues and the difficulty of inferring causal chains from historical data (rather than confounded causal chains of disjunctive events); but it's definitely possible to do well. The role statistics should play here is in the operationalisation of conceptual-historical heuristics for assessment and study, rather than the driving conceptual machinery of justification for any intervention.

But Shapiro & Spencer don't argue in good faith. Shapiro's thing - much like Peterson (on politics) - is just the aesthetic of reason. — csalisbury

They very much rely on aesthetic appeal. In fact, over the course of hundreds of debates against them on alt-right platforms, in dozens of cases they openly admit that aesthetics alone is the only coherent basis for their political beliefs as they shift the goal posts back inside their own ass-holes in response to my attacks. It's definitely a surreal experience when you say "So you're basing your entire moral, cultural, and political platform on the emotional whim of aesthetic appeal? Like some kind of pretentious post-modern-art critic?", and then your interlocutor says "Yea, so what? Morality is subjective, man", but just getting to that point can be a major victory because the audience then gets to see alt right views distilled into the basic emotional appeals that actually drive them (which must then be worked directly).

The alt-right believes more than anything that it embraces reason and science over ever every other political group, which I see as a vulnerability of hubris. The scientifically inclined tend to give politics a wide berth, lest their work be co-opted by lay-zealots, but bringing expert knowledge to a debate with someone like Shapiro or Spencer (and an ability to withstand and rebut the memes and rhetoric) regarding those topics the alt-right claims to embrace (sociology, genetics, evolution, economics, psychology, history, statistics, etc...) actually goes a long way to countering them in the eyes of their audience. I'm no scientist, but I have a better understating of most of these topics than the average alt-right pundit/proponent, and I've used that understanding with great success in such debates, despite the unending theatrical pretense they entail.

While it's true the alt right is mostly veneer and bluster, they do have a general mix of core beliefs that they've internalized as facts, and which they substitute for arguments when required (such as, for example, the belief that because of declining birth rates and interracial marriage,the white race as a whole will cease to exist in anywhere from 100 to 1000 years, depending on who is asked).

I'm not saying they're not smart, I think they are, but Shapiro's appeal is the smouldering fuck you ('facts don't care about your feelings' etc) underlying his stuff. Everything else, including his ' look-i-like-pop-culture!' is veneer. There are very, very few people who agree with Shapiro who are going to be persuaded through debate, because its all theater. The arguments don't matter - its the emotional stance embodied by the character. — csalisbury

While they don't exactly argue with the same good faith that we try to maintain on this forum, there still is a relationship of good faith between them and their followers, and even if I could never get one of these pundits to fully recant in real-time, it's still possible to be persuasive in the long run, and to the greatest number of listeners. When directly challenged, almost nobody ever recants their views in real-time (especially obeliefs involving emotional commitment), but the challenges they're exposed to might stay with them, and overtime, presumably, cognitive dissonance allows them to organically evolve and change their fundamental beliefs. It might be a lofty and naive goal, but I don't want to give up and accept the less optimistic conclusion that political suasion is now for the birds.

I'm quite pro shame here. If the worst excesses of political opinion are shameful to express in public and in private, it's a much better deterrent than reason. Even if in some cases you might get ressentiment backlash and 'X DESTROYS Y' porn on social media and Youtube as a reaction. If xenophobia and racism are shameful that's a lot stronger than being wrong. — fdrake

Unfortunately, they've immunized themselves against particular sources of shame. Getting called a racist is a badge of honor for them because to them it means "you're too stupid to understand the science". Their platform intrinsically frames itself as struggling against the progressive embrace of diversity and equality, which they fundamentally conceptualize and perceive as the source of all their problems. Calling an alt-righter a racist is like calling Adolf Hitler a Nazi. Shame might still play a role in their pathology, but it would have to derive from other sources.

Unfortunately, they've immunized themselves against particular sources of shame. Getting called a racist is a badge of honor for them because to them it means "you're too stupid to understand the science". Their platform intrinsically frames itself as struggling against the progressive embrace of diversity and equality, which they fundamentally conceptualize and perceive as the source of all their problems. Calling an alt-righter a racist is like calling Adolf Hitler a Nazi. Shame might still play a role in their pathology, but it would have to derive from other sources. — VagabondSpectre

Rhetoric shouldn't be designed to capitulate to politics it despises; this literally sends mixed messages and is easy to co-opt - bad rhetoric. On the level of reactionary politics; or mobilisation by TweetStorm; memorable rhetoric is the identifiable content through the medium's constraints on the message.

EG: Even facts become rhetorically charged factoids. True or false, people remember things like "More Israeli citizens die per year from peanut allergies than from Hamas rockets' than any of the data analytic context which derives the claim. Or pick any dubious Murdoch statistic citing headline about Muslims for the 'other side'.

When you're sure you can sit down and have a discussion about it without issues, when everyone agrees the gloves are (mostly) on like here; for sure, skewer stupid ideologies with systemic reason and moral critique. Adapt the level of reliance on rhetorical (or out of the marketplace of ideas, violence and subterfuge) strategy to the amount of good faith (or violence and subterfuge) your opponent shows. Bad faith interlocutors don't care about your ideas, they care about your audience (which is why we made gurugeorge fuck off a while back). In the gloves on case, this goes both ways; @StreetlightX's approach is not likely to work for the rare intellectually honest person who sympathises sincerely with personally (rather than systemically) prejudicial or genocidal authoritarian politics; bigots through circumstance rather than studied conviction. They won't see the conceptual work done to get to that opinion, they (typically white adults eh?) can mistake the vitriol for nothing but the whining of another reactionary nincompoop; even though the union of good reason with precisely articulated contempt is a very potent perturber of belief. For the systemic case with the gloves on, intellectually honest debate about the relative importance of systemic vs personal prejudice and the propagation mechanisms for both is useful; pending good faith. Systemic critique is always a useful intellectual resource, but a poor promoter of itself by itself.

Edit: when discussing garden variety liberalism or conservatism's inherent weaknesses to fascism, the gloves will almost never be on. It's way too emotionally charged. Though, this metagame of rhetorically motivated exchange makes the marginal strategy of good faith engagement on the topic especially useful to those who are unaware of the arguments or are intellectually honest to a fault.

I don't want to 'dissuade' them. I want them to be terrified for their bodily safety. — StreetlightX

Yes, as I remarked earlier, some proponents of change embrace much more radical and violent methods than others, up to and including inciting terror. It's a potentially valid ethical discussion, but isn't it a bit extreme?

And while we sit here openly discussing how we're to dispose of them, they're listening in from dark corners, and reporting the worst that they hear back in their own echo-chambers (which is monetarily incentivized through clicks to boot). And so, both sides start organizing thanks to the emotionally galvanizing opposition each side provides for the other.

If someone who holds fascist views really is the imminent and existential threat you make them out to be, then why don't we arrest them?

P.S. I realize you're about to say "WELL I NEVER!", so consider the following:

Fascist 1: "Liberalism was originally a reactionary movement against fascist governments that relied on force and repression to keep power. Maybe we can persuade the liberals to accept Fascism if we don't make that mistake?"

Fascist 2: "I called this out for the unempirical untruth it is long ago. This is just recycled memes at this point.

Also consider that perhaps debating a liberal isn't an 'intellectual' issue, but an ethical, lived one. But by all means, continue to intellectualize liberalism. Consider also that I don't want to 'dissuade' them. I want them to be terrified for their bodily safety"

I know you don't support terrorist activity, but this is precisely the kind of rhetoric that radicalizes both sides because of how it sounds; how it looks.

this is precisely the kind of rhetoric that radicalizes both sides — VagabondSpectre

At the point at which you're dealing with fascists, more 'radicalization' - worrying about what's North of the North pole? - is the least of your worries.

As for arresting them? The force most responsible for protecting fascists has always been the state. At any far right rally, the police are inevitably there to protect them. The state is not your friend.

I've used that understanding with great success in such debates, despite the unending theatrical pretense they entail. — VagabondSpectre

By 'great success', what exactly do you mean? (& in terms of the venue - are you talking about posing as an alt-righter on a discord or something similar?)

Rhetoric shouldn't be designed to capitulate to politics it despises; this literally sends mixed messages and is easy to co-opt - bad rhetoric. On the level of reactionary politics; or mobilisation by TweetStorm; memorable rhetoric is the identifiable content through the medium's constraints on the message. — fdrake

Good rhetoric is more or less the rub in all of this. In the political climate of today, the gloves only protect the knuckles (e.g: anonymity as protection and the allusion of reason as the high ground), where good rhetoric is not only based on solid facts and sound arguments, but is also emotionally appealing and highly persuasive.

There's almost no real sitting down with the opposition these days (heck, even Shapiro could scarcely sit with a British conservative lobbing soft-balls down center-plate), where every engagement is a standing affair, usually with a lot of yelling and righteous indignation. Getting an opportunity to put forward substantive arguments needs to happen in spite of the memes and the spittle, so I do see why it looks like actually pulling this off seems like a Herculean task.

All it really takes is patience and dispassion. In a one-on-one engagement, genuine good-faith does seem to be required, because if one side gets incensed they can just end the interaction. But if there is an audience watching, rage-quitting is really bad optics, and in a one-vs-many situation (my favorite!) the same knuckle-protector-only rules apply.

Adapt the level of reliance on rhetorical strategy to the amount of good faith your opponent shows. — fdrake

This is good advice, but it only works up to a point. When your opponent hits the rhetorical bottom of the barrel and has nothing left to offer but bad faith nonsense or ridicule, it's better to stay composed and to stick to substance. You might need to deflect verbal flak as they go down in flames, "destroyed" in the eyes of the audience, but in my experience it is worth the result.

By 'great success', what exactly do you mean? (Are you talking about posing as an alt-righter on a discord or something similar?) — csalisbury

Posing as an alt-righter, no; but debating alt-righters on alt-right Discord servers, yes.

It's a grotesque affair given the rabid nature of internet chat rooms, but it can be done.

These sometimes tight-knit communities are often run by a vocal few, but there can be hundreds or sometimes thousands of lurkers who do nothing but absorb what gets said (they're also significant entry points for new members). Deploying effective rhetoric against them in that setting can have a strong influence on individual members of its community, especially the less hardened. Specifically, by "great success", I'm essentially referring to the influence I was able to have in those mediums.

This is good advice, but it only works up to a point. When your opponent hits the rhetorical bottom of the barrel and has nothing left to offer but bad faith nonsense or ridicule, it's better to stay composed and to stick to substance. You might need to deflect verbal flak as they go down in flames, "destroyed" in the eyes of the audience, but in my experience it is worth the result. — VagabondSpectre

Yes, like with the intermittent Randroids here. So long as you're willing to see that this is confined to media contexts where shaping the audience's interpretation/ideological commitments is the goal we can come to some kind of consensus.

Then there'd be a different conversation about tactics 'in the wild'.

At the point at which you're dealing with fascists, more 'radicalization' - worrying about what's North of North - is the least of your worries. — StreetlightX

But the fascists aren't yet in control. For all of Trump's harmful stupidity he is still being checked by a liberal system and the rule of law.

I'm worried that upon concluding it's a war against fascism, our resulting hasty generalizations of who's the fascist will lead to our self-defeat. How severely conservatism has been minced with fascism in this thread (despite our effort to be clear) is at least some evidence of how easily this can happen.

As for arresting them? The force most responsible for protecting fascists has always been the state. At any far right rally, the police are inevitably there to protect them. The state is not your friend. — StreetlightX

Police also protect progressive rallies as well, in which case, aren't they our friends?

If the far right rallies in question were proliferating hate speech, I would like to see them prosecuted where possible.

These sometimes tight-knit communities are often run by a vocal few, but there can be hundreds or sometimes thousands of lurkers who do nothing but absorb what gets said (they're also significant entry points for new members). Deploying effective rhetoric against them in that setting can have a strong influence on individual members of its community, especially the less hardened. Specifically, by "great success", I'm essentially referring to the influence I was able to have in those mediums. — VagabondSpectre

I've checked out a couple & I think I know the dynamic you're talking about. Let me know if this is your experience as well ( since I'm generalizing from only a couple visits):

There's usually a couple guys who are charismatic in the way a fuck-the-system senior might be attractive to angst-ridden freshmen. They combine a confident seeing-through-the-bullshit ideology with a seeming easy mastery of christian theology, or history, or something scienc-y or some other Western Knowledge signifier. The appeal seems to be that they echo the same doubts you've had, and they have a bunch of extra knowledge to fill in the blanks. They hold court and the people who have just un-lurked try to get their attention and cautiously advance their own ideas and look for approval and direction. (in another lens: you feel humiliated and powerless? well here is validation that you're actually right plus very powerful [knowledge/culture signifier]

I do see the potential for arresting radicalization in these venues. I'm too old to have been a young lurker on discord - my charismatic older figure was Zizek (for the same reasons, he echoed doubts I had and helped make sense of them, and knowledge signifier (german idealism, even tho he knows it for real, it still had a signifying aspect) so I lucked out.

Two caveats:
(1) While I think this works in the pirate corners of the internet, I'm not sure the logic carries over to larger, more mainstream platforms. My guess, no offense intended, is that you've probably swayed a very small number of people. Showdowns draw blood and attention, but on the enemy's turf things scab over pretty quick.
(2) How are you measuring the influence you've had? Is it dms confirming you've had an effect?

My take away is there is no consensus on what qualifies as speech. If "actions speak louder than words" and yet some here insist on a seemingly narrow definition of it involving spoken or written words, then there's a sea of meaningful difference. Not speaking in response to another is "speech" in itself in my view. — Benkei

A simple, unnuanced definition of speech would be to say that it involves words, spoken or written. But the visual arts can obviously also speak to us without requiring any actual words to do so. And then there is body language and facial expression, not so easily used online, although emojis play a part. Not speaking in response to another, per se, could mean many things, when the situation is face to face, facial expressions, body language and non-verbal vocal sounds would give clues as to the attitude behind the silence.

Considering the alternative (social) media and communications channels available I suspect it inevitably leads to reinforcing existing bubbles, which just takes us farther away from constructive political debate. Plus, I think inviting certain controversial speakers usually isn't about real interest but trolling and then they can attack non-existent neo-Marxists academia and SJWs. Don't feed the trolls. — Benkei

I think the problem of "bubbles" may be due, at least in part, to human beings having evolved to be able to personally interact with, and thus really care about, only a relatively small number of others. Some people care only about themselves, others about family, extended family and friends, then perhaps some community that probably would not exceed 100 to 200 people. Also the number of people one interacts with and more or less cares about will likely not form a cohesive community in modern life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

People will pay lip service to caring about other communities, nations, or humanity in general, but this is arguably only on account of having introjected an ethical imperative to do so. As soon as the going gets tough, people will narrow the range of others they care about to the extent that they will be willing to inconvenience themselves in order to help them in times of need or crisis.

I agree with you that inviting controversial speakers may often be motivated by a desire to appeal to and manipulate the mob's love of sensationalism. On the other, more conventional or "mainstream" side, institutions are generally conservative and the decisions as to who to "platform" are made on the basis of who the administration thinks will say best what they want to hear and have heard by the public. If the platformed one says what the administration does not want to hear, or what it fears will cast them in a bad light in the public eye, then, if they have the power to do so, they will surely de-platform.

Should we approve or disapprove of that fact of power, or be indifferent to it? Does it depend on the circumstances? What difference would our approval or disapproval make in any case? The only real power "consumers" have is to refuse to consume. As an example if you want to do something about global warming and resource depletion, then don't own a car, have children or travel to other countries, buy only local products and so on. If you want to do something about financial instability then don't invest in the share market, or at least if you do, invest long-term in companies you believe are the most ethical and sustainable. First change yourself before worrying about changing the world, in other words. Lead by example or else keep mum, lest your voice be just another "pouring from the empty into the void".

There's usually a couple guys who are charismatic in the way a fuck-the-system senior might be attractive to angst-ridden freshmen. They combine a confident seeing-through-the-bullshit ideology with a seeming easy mastery of christian theology, or history, or something scienc-y or some other Western Knowledge signifier. The appeal seems to be that they echo the same doubts you've had, and they have a bunch of extra knowledge to fill in the blanks. They hold court and the people who have just un-lurked try to get their attention and cautiously advance their own ideas and look for approval and direction. (in another lens: you feel humiliated and powerless? well here is validation that you're actually right plus very powerful [knowledge/culture signifier] — csalisbury

This is definitely an apt description. To add to this, in some of the more populated rooms the chaos is extreme, where a team of party-loyal lieutenants moderate only spam (and ban people they suspect of recording or "doxing"). The text chat rooms consists of an endless and ever devolving torrent memes and group-signals which scrolls by so quickly that fast and loose rhetoric is sometimes the only means of participation. Live chat rooms for even the most positive and politically neutral venues are often described as "cancerous", so you might be able to appreciate just how bat shit insane a Discord server filled with hundreds of 15-25 year old alt-righters actually is. Words can't describe that level of unhinged verbal lunacy.

I do see the potential for arresting radicalization in these venues. I'm too old to have been a young lurker on discord - my charismatic older figure was Zizek (for the same reasons, he echoed doubts I had and helped make sense of them, and knowledge signifier (german idealism, even tho he knows it for real, it still had a signifying aspect) so I lucked out. — csalisbury

I don't know much about Zizek but from his "debate" with Peterson I gathered he at least knew what he was talking about. Interestingly, Peterson was adored by the proto-alt right (for them he was one of those charismatic figures, first for his perceived rejection of transgenderism, and second for his overall conservative rejection of the left). The alt-right broke away from him primarily as the result of the strangest damn thing: he was asked by an audience member what his opinion on the "Holodomor" was, and whether the "Marxist Jews" were responsible; and Peterson had no sweet clue what the audience member was talking about. Alt right memes emerged depicting Peterson as intellectually dishonest or cucked, and before long Peterson was publicly disavowing far right collectivism. That whole affair is only the tip of the ridiculous rhetorical iceberg. The stories I could tell...

1) While I think this works in the pirate corners of the internet, I'm not sure the logic carries over to larger, more mainstream platforms. — csalisbury

Elevated platforms do work a bit differently, where higher standards in discourse are more important. There are, however, exceptions that depend on the expectations of the audience.

How are you measuring the influence you've had? Is it dms confirming you've had an effect? — csalisbury

The amount of attention and feedback I've been able to gain at those venues was astounding. By merely asking questions and making satirical commentary (and rebuking their responses quickly and persuasively) the loudest among them quickly became obsessive, which ensured I was always the center of attention (my very own triggered town-criers). At any given community, finding success was a prolonged affair, but once I built up a reputation as the competent leftist (by, in their eyes, beating back the many headed hydra that is the alt-right ideological platform, but also by subverting their expectations by not presenting as the caricatured "deluded emotional leftist"), they then wanted to "destroy" me so badly that they had to actually answer my questions and respond coherently to my attacks (lest they lose their high ground of "reason"). The vocal minority spamming me with insults would generally then be silenced by the more highly ranked as they stepped in to "red pill" or "black pill" me.

They would demand debates in voice chat or that I debate on one of their many youtube live-streams (generally in voice chats I didn't break a sweat, but for whatever reason voice-chats seemed to accentuate their incompetence, and the pool of participants was smaller), while my dm inbox would be flooded, surprisingly, by mostly positive feedback, friendship requests, and invitations to seemingly every other Discord server even vaguely connected to the one I happened to be on at the time). I could see undecideds move in my direction in real time, and at least on some occasions I watched my views begin to defend themselves (their own ranking members were ceding critical ground) and internalize within local communities. Some or all of my successes aren't really that impressive given that what I was actually refuting was beyond reason in the first place ("We're going to create a whites only nation in Antarctica, and because whites are the best, it too will be the best! Huzzah!"), but it's honest work for honest influence. On some of the more serious and seriously pernicious subjects, I often found myself giving lengthy lectures (me? lecture!? HA!) after it had become clear to everyone that none of them bothered to do any fact checking or had a clue what they were talking about (for example, their arguments expounding "white death" based on birth rate statistics are a huge foot-in-the door sales tactic for the alt-right (one of their many fear-based appeals), but the so called statistical analysis they base it off is laughably bad, and an easy target for rebuke). Almost nobody has the patience or the will to entertain their ideas, so they've never really seen them competently rebuked, especially the younger initiates whose only political experience comes from classrooms schoolyards, and especially not on their own turf; down there in the mud and the muck and the merde; and in terms they actually understand.

That's fine for a website, — Benkei

It's also fine for academic institutions, serious newspapers, government advice panels and so on. Even public libraries need to have some quality control.

Speakers' Corner is where batshit crazy arse-wipes can have a platform of a soapbox and free speech. And sensible folks can go elsewhere while they indulge. For god's sake, even Belgium's Got Talent needs a bit of discrimination!

In other news, and note that my stunning analysis will not be appearing on mainstream news sources, Physics departments do not discuss flat Earth theories, and political analysis does not discuss David Ike's Alien Lizard theory. And it would be a pretty good idea and long overdue to start de-platforming climate change deniers.

And in other news again, speech is nowhere free and equal, or at least platforms are not, because people can and do buy time on platforms both openly and, when advertising tobacco is banned, by secretly suborning people like Scrotum to lie on their behalf, by the endowment of academies and by charitable think tanks. Money has always talked a lot louder than hard work, and scandal much louder than virtue, that is why other forms of protest and resistance are legitimate and essential. Peasants are always revolting because nobles are always monopolising the platforms; That's capitalism. And talk that it is the other way round and nobles are being unfairly treated belongs on speaker's Corner, not a sensible debating forum.

Throwing milkshakes at far right wingers has been good

Oh its been glorious.

But the protesters are anti-democratic. Whereas Farage and co. who lied their way to a narrow victory for a cause the most destructive version of which they are now pursuing with gusto against the will of the majority of both Parliament and the public are... Where was I going with this?

But the protesters are anti-democratic. Whereas Farage and co. who lied their way to a narrow victory for a cause the most destructive version of which they are now pursuing with gusto against the will of the majority of both Parliament and the public are... Where was I going with this? — Baden

Embracing your tribe?

I remember earlier there was this French guy who attacked famous people by throwing cream cakes at their faces (in the old slapstic comedy way). Once he (and his accomplices) got to cake Bill Gates. When asked about it, he said that the people from the Belgian subsidiary of Microsoft contacted him and asked him to do it, told him where and when he would have the opportunity to cake Gates (which sounds quite likely). They told him, assumedly, that their CEO was starting to take himself a bit too seriously. The thought of that being the truth, that company employees making such a practical joke on their CEO, makes me smile.

Here's how American media reported the incident:



Now I don't know if people throwing milk shakes take these issues in similar way, because in the end they seem to be fighting evil.

Embracing your tribe? — ssu

There isn't a tribe in the world absent of members who can't fire their poison arrows straight, but when they hit the target, I'll applaud. Just highlighting some hypocrisy really.

Here's how American media reported the incident: — ssu

"Hitmen" is hyperbole but that did look considerably more traumatic than a milkshake in the groin. :brow:

Well David Frum, who argued in favor for the Iraq War and coined the phrase "axis of evil" said that throwing milkshakes is a "symbolic assassination attempt".

It would be nice if politicians could walk around doing their jobs without being harassed. The guy who threw it felt like doing so - and he cared not for the law (good for him!)

I’ve seen how some people have been misrepresented in the UK media and find it difficult to trust anything said in the mainstream news (more so today than ever before). I’ve always known it was mostly bullshit, but now the shit is thicker.