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posted by janrinok on Friday August 30 2019, @06:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the right-to-speak-but-not-to-be-heard dept.

[Seconding-Ed note: This story is likely to be contentious. In the interests of helping set the tone, I would like to start off by quoting H.L. Mencken:

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Further, this quote which has appeared in various phrasings and attributions:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

To mind's eye, I must be willing to accept against my own words and actions any that I would wish to see imposed upon another. --martyb]

YouTube Restores Far-Right Channels After Appeal

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The channels of two prominent far-right YouTubers have been re-instated after the video-sharing site said it made a mistake in removing them. Initially, YouTube gave no reason for changing its decision and just said it had made a "wrong call". Later, it said that while many people found the channels "deeply offensive", they had not broken its rules. The decision came days after YouTube's chief executive said YouTube had to be open to hosting "controversial" ideas.

YouTube removed several channels and accounts this week, claiming they had broken its hate speech policies. Among them was a channel run by white nationalist Martin Sellner and an anonymous British YouTuber known as The Iconoclast. Mr Sellner was reportedly in contact with the man who allegedly carried out the Christchurch mosque shootings in March this year that killed 51 people. Austrian police are investigating his links to the attack. He denies any involvement in the shooting.

Both men protested about the closure of their YouTube channels on social media. They shared information sent to them from YouTube, which said they had "repeatedly" broken its guidelines. On Thursday, YouTube reversed its decision and reinstated the two channels. Several other far-right channels that YouTube banned this week remain unavailable.

An explanation for the change of heart came on Friday. Farshad Shadloo, YouTube's global product policy communications lead, said that after a "thorough review" it had decided that the channels had not broken its rules. "We realise that many may find the viewpoints expressed in these channels deeply offensive," he said. Mr Shadloo added that YouTube had recently updated the way it handled "hateful content".

Earlier this week YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki wrote in a letter to video-makers that YouTube must remain an "open platform". She said the desire to welcome all kinds of views had to be balanced against a "responsibility to protect the community".

"A commitment to openness is not easy. It sometimes means leaving up content that is outside the mainstream, controversial or even offensive," she said. "Hearing a broad range of perspectives ultimately makes us a stronger and more informed society," she claimed.

'I am Talking Directly to You': US Attorney Delivers Powerful Rebuke to White Nationalists

ABC News:

The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio on Thursday announced new federal charges against a self-avowed white nationalist accused of threatening to commit an attack on a local Jewish community center. James Reardon, who attended the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was arrested last week after authorities said he posted the threat on Instagram. U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman said Reardon has now been charged with one count of making threats as authorities continue their investigation into Reardon and whether he my have any accomplices.

Of course, not so much that, but what Herdman said after that.

"I am talking directly to you," Herdman said at a news conference announcing the charges. "The Constitution protects your right to speak, your right to think, and your right to believe. If you want to waste the blessings of liberty by going down a path of hatred and failed ideologies, that is your choice."

Herdman continued, evoking the sacrifices made by U.S. service members in World War II against Nazism, as well as those who marched for civil rights throughout U.S. history.

"Thousands and thousands of young Americans already voted with their lives to ensure that this same message of intolerance, death, and destruction would not prevail - you can count their ballots by visiting any American cemetery in North Africa, Italy, France, or Belgium and tallying the white headstones," Herdman said. "You can also recite the many names of civil rights advocates who bled and died in opposing supporters of those same ideologies of hatred. Their voices may be distant, but they can still be heard."

"The Constitution may give you a voice, but it doesn't guarantee you a receptive audience," Herdman added.


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  • (Score: 1) by XivLacuna on Friday August 30 2019, @09:25PM (3 children)

    by XivLacuna (6346) on Friday August 30 2019, @09:25PM (#887926)

    They go out and find autists and retards and egg them on, give them a fake bomb or a gun with blanks and then arrest the morons who are just trying to appease their supposed friend/FBI handler.

    It is better to be without friends than to be in jail. Disown anyone who wants you to go start off the race war. 100% chance of them being some sort of fed or ADL stooge.

    The way we win is by getting a majority of white people to know of and understand the problems we face. Every race has committed atrocities. It is just that only whites care about supposed crimes of their ancestors.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @11:01PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @11:01PM (#887955)

    Why are whites supposed to care about, and feel grief over, what people who looked like them did hundreds of years ago, when non-whites aren't ever supposed to care about what people who looked like the non-whites did yesterday?

    Seriously, a white person today is told to feel shame for slavery from the previous century, but take a look at the just the rapes and murders that were committed by non-whites during last week -- no non-white is ever supposed to take responsibility for any of those things. Or is crime the new non-white privilege now? (I'm not saying whites don't do those things too, they do, but at nowhere near the same rate per capita.)

    This whole white guilt thing is just a way to gain power over credulous white people. It's not the whites wanting to bring back slavery, it's the non-whites that are trying to bring it back, just with themselves as the masters this time around.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 31 2019, @01:14AM (1 child)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday August 31 2019, @01:14AM (#888009) Journal

      So, to boil this down, you're afraid of having the same injustices done to you that were done to others long dead.

      Okay, that's reasonable, but you don't then get to trivialize what *was* done. The entire point of keeping it in mind (which you refer to as "white guilt") is to create a system in which these things don't happen again. Step back and look at it on a big picture level; no one is asking you or me to take on the guilt of a Southern slaveholder from 200 years ago (and anyone who does can be ignored, fuck that). What we *are* being asked to do is to remember what kind of attitudes and ideas lead to these things and guard ourselves against slipping back into them, and to keep in mind that even today our society privileges us and our ends because of what we look like, at the expense of others.

      Acknowledging these things is not an admission of guilt. Reincarnation aside, or even not aside, you personally and I personally as who and where and when we are now did not wield the whip, did not traffic in human beings, did not run plantations. But we live in a society that was shaped by these things, and they have left centuries-wide scars across the timeline and the social fabric of this nation, and like any scars, they leave permanent ugly deformities.

      A good way not to have the same injustices as were perpetrated all those years ago done to us in "revenge" is not to give people the feeling that they need to take revenge. And I find it very, very revealing that you think every single member of $MINORITY_GROUP is out for vengeance for the sufferings and deaths of their ancestors, and willing to exact said vengeance on the hides of any random white person they come across. That sounds like projection to me, at the very least.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Demena on Saturday August 31 2019, @02:53AM

        by Demena (5637) on Saturday August 31 2019, @02:53AM (#888068)

        Interesting. I am not American but some of my predecessors were English navy and captured (or SANK) slaver ships. I doubt they paid much attention to the chained slaves aboard.

        The reason I mention this is because I have a vague guilt for their stupidity and ignorance despite opposing slavery in principle (and law). But I do not take that vague guilt very seriously as it was not I that did those things.

        The reason I post is that specific $MINORITY_GROUP (S) have a policy of conquering, replacement and revenge. A stated written policy that cannot be questioned. This a worry and I do not see how it can be avoided or what can be done about it. It is not the individuals I fear (other than the extremists) but that the acceptance of the long-term policy.

        I think that authoritarianism is ultimately to blame.