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posted by janrinok on Friday January 31 2020, @04:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the picking-holes dept.

Source: Technology Review

A new study [PDF] suggests what we've suspected for years is right: YouTube is a pipeline for extremism and hate.

How do we know that? More than 330,000 videos on nearly 350 YouTube channels were analyzed and manually classified according to a system designed by the Anti-Defamation League. They were labeled as either media (or what we think of as factual news), "alt-lite" intellectual dark web, or alt-right.

[...] The alt-right is what's traditionally associated with white supremacy, pushing for a white ethnostate. Those who affiliate with the "intellectual dark web" justify white supremacy on the basis of eugenics and "race science." Members of the alt-lite purport to not support white supremacy, though they believe in conspiracy theories about "replacement" by minority groups.

[...] The study's authors hypothesized that the alt-lite and intellectual dark web often serve as a gateway to more extreme, far-right ideologies. So they tested that by tracing the authors of 72 million comments on about two million videos between May and July of last year. The results were worrying. More than 26% of people who commented on alt-lite videos tended to drift over to alt-right videos and subsequently comment there.

[...] The team, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, also found evidence that the overlap between alt-righters and others who dabble in intellectual dark web and alt-lite material is growing. The authors estimate that about 60,000 people who commented on alt-lite or intellectual dark web content got exposed to alt-right videos over a period of about 18 months. The work was presented at the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Barcelona this week.

In a statement, YouTube said it's working through these issues: "Over the past few years ... We changed our search and discovery algorithms to ensure more authoritative content is surfaced and labeled prominently in search results and recommendations and begun reducing recommendations of borderline content and videos that could misinform users in harmful ways."

A spokesperson added that YouTube disputes the methodology and that it doesn't take into account more recent updates to its hate speech policy or recommendations. "We strongly disagree with the methodology, data and, most importantly, the conclusions made in this new research," the spokesperson said.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday January 31 2020, @07:39PM (31 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday January 31 2020, @07:39PM (#951916)

    You're acting like people haven't been shot and killed in the US for the heinous crime of attending a synagogue multiple times in the last few years.

    Most white nationalist groups are infiltrated by Federal, State, and Local agencies.

    I think you're leaving out something important, namely that according to the FBI, many federal, state, and local agencies are infiltrated by white nationalist groups [documentcloud.org]. That, along with the big demonstrations, mean that when a white nationalist shot at a crowd, the cops just stood around watching like nothing was happening [nytimes.com].

    "Blue by day, white by night" is an extremely common phenomenon. Friends of mine who worked as cops said several departments in the area were well-known among cops as the places to work if you became a cop with the express goal of beating and killing black people with impunity, and this matches the fact that several black people have been beaten and killed by police for little or no reason and nobody has been punished.

    The downside to not having stable, non-glow-in-the-dark white nationalist groups is that disenfranchised whites won't have people there to deescalate them from committing lone wolf attacks and instead find them something positive to do like building white enclaves.

    Oh, so you want them to go from disorganized terrorism to organized terrorism? Because "building white enclaves" involves kicking out any of the non-white people that happen to be there and making sure that any non-white people that show up are prevented from staying there, by force if necessary. There have been an unusual number of hate crimes occurring in western Montana, northern Idaho, and eastern Washington, right about where you suggested setting up shop. And that you describe that as "something positive" is telling.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @07:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @07:52PM (#951924)

    Good points, not sure I understand how these bigots can say such things with a straight face. Just a complete disconnect from reality, or a craven defense of their darkest desires.

  • (Score: 0, Troll) by XivLacuna on Friday January 31 2020, @08:16PM (13 children)

    by XivLacuna (6346) on Friday January 31 2020, @08:16PM (#951939)

    You know of the concept of the lesser of two evils. Good and evil are points of perspective. You have a media and educational system telling white people they are monsters that must be erased. A white kid sees his opportunities curtailed by racial quotas that push forward others who might not be as qualified. They become disillusioned in a country where they are slowly but surely being outnumbered by other groups that vote as a bloc for their own particular interests.

    Take higher education for example. Non-Jewish whites are under represented in proportion to their population. Jewish people are counted as white when it comes time to calculate if there are the right amount of white, black, asian, hispanic, etc in the student body. A group that is actively hostile against the interests of non-jewish whites are taking up slots that should be going to non-jewish whites.

    Now a disgruntled white guy might see this and feel like there is nothing to live for and then go off and waste his life on taking a couple lives. This is something that we can both agree is a negative outcome.

    You call white people going off and making their own towns away from non-whites terrorism. Would you say the same general idea to any other race? I see it as a potential lesser or two evils from your perspective. White people having the option to live away from non-whites. Think of it as just one last white flight.

    Orthodox jews go around and bully black people to sell their houses for pennies on a dollar. We'll just be setting up a new settlement far away from the people we don't want to interact with.

    I get the feeling that you are afraid that if such a settlement is successful, more white people will want to partake of it. We're just 11% of the world's population. We have the right to exist.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @08:47PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @08:47PM (#951952)

      We're just 11% of the world's population. We have the right to exist.

      Irony in the extreme. Please, do educate us on the white genocide threatening to snatch your existence away!

      At least we're finally getting some honesty around here.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 31 2020, @09:34PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Friday January 31 2020, @09:34PM (#951977)

      You have a media and educational system telling white people they are monsters that must be erased.

      And that right there is the first flat-out lie in this post.

      White people aren't under threat of "erasure". The "threat", if you could call it that, is that white people will no longer be the majority of America. Everything after that is nothing more than an assumption that white nationalists make is that if white people are no longer the majority, sooner or later it would result in white people being enslaved or genocided or otherwise oppressed for being white. In short, it's assuming that the majority of modern non-white people are just as bigoted and evil as white supremacists are. Also, their definitions of what constitute "white people" follow the "one drop rule", where all mixed-race people are considered more non-white than white, when that's simply not true, e.g. Barack Obama was raised partially by white people and is 50% white ancestry and is thus about as white as he is black.

      I should also mention here that the category of "white people" was made up by some self-declared white people for the purposes of deciding who to be prejudiced against. It has absolutely no scientific validity. One way you can tell this is that who is considered "white" has shifted over time not because of any genetic drift or variation but because of political convenience, e.g. for a long time Italians and Greeks weren't "white", but now they are.

      We're just 11% of the world's population. We have the right to exist.

      I'm pretty sure people named "Steve" are an even smaller percentage of the population, but you don't see them forming enclaves where only Steves are allowed and anybody not named Steve may be targeted with violence. And that designation is no more arbitrary than "European-descended people who aren't Jewish".

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 31 2020, @11:36PM (10 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday January 31 2020, @11:36PM (#952053) Journal

      We have the right to exist, but we don't have the right to take away other peoples' right to exist. Why is this difficult? And if you think the media paints all white people as monsters when it rightfully points out the actions of a bunch of violent racists, stop and think why you're making that connection. Here's a hint: most of us aren't violent or racist. *The media are talking about whackaloons like you.* Kindly stop lumping me in with you just because we're both low-melanin and high-lactase, kthx.

      The projection is incredible. Every single thing you're sitting there pissing your tighty-whities in fear over? Yeah, that's the shit white folks did to other people throughout history, Old World and New alike. You think everyone else is as violent, hateful, and dangerous as you, you think everyone else divides the human race up by what shade they're painted, and you're absolutely shitting yourself over the idea that the same things will be done to you.

      Wanna know how to stop the same things being done to you? Be different. Be better. Don't give better people than you a reason to sink to your level. You're trying to provoke them to become the same kind of itchy, twitchy degenerate you are so you have an excuse to kill them before, you assume, they do the same to you. Pathetic.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @10:12AM (9 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @10:12AM (#952284)

        We have the right to exist, but we don't have the right to take away other peoples' right to exist.

        You are correct of course, but consider the general reactions to the following statements :

        We have bought 50,000 acres of land and we are going to set up a community exclusively for People of Color.
        We have bought 50,000 acres of land and we are going to set up a community exclusively for Women.
        We have bought 50,000 acres of land and we are going to set up a community exclusively for Jews.
        We have bought 50,000 acres of land and we are going to set up a community exclusively for LGBT.
        We have bought 50,000 acres of land and we are going to set up a community exclusively for Native Amaricans.
        We have bought 50,000 acres of land and we are going to set up a community exclusively for Whites.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday February 01 2020, @02:58PM (8 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday February 01 2020, @02:58PM (#952335) Journal

          Pretty damn stupid ideas all of them, IMO. Then again, not only did I spend the first 27 years of my life in New York City, I spent them in places where white people were such complete minorities that most of the signs in my hometown, for example, were in Chinese. So there's never been any "keep the races separate!" impulse in me. If anything, my diet and culture are about as Chinese as my girlfriend's, who is herself ethnically Chinese but comes from Malaysia. So the idea of making these closed-off enclaves just strikes me as stupid and self-defeating.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:18PM (7 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:18PM (#952376)

            I meant the general reaction of society, not yours in particular.
            The first five might get some disapproval, but it would be shouted down as racist/sexist/bigoted. The most common reaction would be "well, they bought the land they can do what they want with it."
            The last would provoke demonstrations, legal action, and violence.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:34PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:34PM (#952438)

              Pure speculation, and you're free to file your own discrimination lawsuit if you can come up with a real world example.

              I'm pretty sure there are such places, there have been cults, militias, and I think it is safe to say the Mormons probably have some giant secluded enclave.

              Dumb harder, we're all just waiting to leap to your defense as soon as you have a valid complaint. If you're just mad st people yelling at you for your racism then I'll have to tell you to follow the advice you give when liberals complain about racist morons, stop whining you snowflake little bitch.

            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday February 01 2020, @11:07PM (5 children)

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday February 01 2020, @11:07PM (#952545) Journal

              Do you understand that there is no need for a whites-only enclave for the same reason there is no need for a Straight Pride parade or a White History Month? Hint: it's because *everywhere in the US is the white enclave.* Everyone else is outgroup by default. I personally find the idea of the first five loathsome in its stupidity and self-destructiveness, and would happily go on record saying as much.

              And why? Mainly because trying to circle the wagons doesn't work when you're by definition wagon-encircled to begin with. It perpetrates the divisions and hatreds and grudges, too. It's dumb to concentrate people who have very real fears of persecution in one place, *because that makes it easier to find them and make them suffer.* And finally, it triggers a lot more bigots to demand integration than to try and wall off :)

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
              • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @02:25AM (4 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @02:25AM (#952601)

                So there is only one group who cannot have a pride march. Cannot have their own enclave. Will never have a history month. Equality for all except Them.
                Can you see why some of Them might think that is a bit discriminatory?

                Next time you hear a statement that includes any of (White, Black, Colored, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Straight, LGBT) try say that statement out loud substituting every other word in that list, and see which ones provoke outrage. If a statement is wrong with any of those words in it then it is wrong with all of them.

                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 02 2020, @02:42AM (2 children)

                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday February 02 2020, @02:42AM (#952608) Journal

                  You completely missed the point. And I half-wonder if it wasn't on purpose, if you are truly that thick.

                  What angle do I need to turn this at so you understand it? *The dominant group does not need this sort of display.* Why would they? It's a given, for them. Is this seriously difficult to understand? I don't demand a White History Month because every frickin' month is White History Month in the USA. It's superfluous.

                  --
                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @04:49AM (1 child)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @04:49AM (#952640)

                    And you fail to understand that everyone is an individual. To you, everyone is part of a group and must be treated as the average of that group.
                    You put some poor, blue-collar worker supporting a family on $30K in the same class as a CEO taking home $30M just because of skin color.

                    That worker doesn't see very much of that "privilege" you keep going on about, and he's getting angry about the fact that he is expected to pay for it.

                    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 02 2020, @07:02AM

                      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday February 02 2020, @07:02AM (#952654) Journal

                      That's not how privilege works, dipshit. I make 20 a year gross, not even that 30 you mention, and I still have white privilege. All privilege means is "would things suck even harder if I were $ETHNICITY/$GENDER/$SEX/$WHATEVER?" Sorry if this is hard for you to understand.

                      --
                      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @09:37AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @09:37AM (#953495)

                  Fuck Whitey! There, I said it, you racist scumbag! But do you know, there is no "white"? White is only the combination of all colors, what we call diversity. So, yes, we need to kill off all who call themselves "white" as if it were something real, destroy them during their "pride" marches, exterminate them in their "race exclusive enclaves", and cut their bodies into quarters and drag them down the streets as a lesson to anyone even thinking about being so stupid ever again. Do you want me to explain this to you again, since, being "white", you are not too bright, and unlikely to understand the first time? Just ask, Whitey!

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:31AM (12 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:31AM (#952222) Journal

    You're acting like people haven't been shot and killed in the US for the heinous crime of attending a synagogue multiple times in the last few years.

    People have also been shot and killed for the heinous crime of attending church or going to school multiple times in the last few years. A bunch were run down on the West Side bike path in Manhattan for the crime of walking. Others have been stabbed to death in London for the crime of walking on bridges.

    Do we count those as hate crimes, too? Can we talk about the rising persecution of Christians in the West?

    Because "building white enclaves" involves kicking out any of the non-white people that happen to be there and making sure that any non-white people that show up are prevented from staying there, by force if necessary. There have been an unusual number of hate crimes occurring in western Montana, northern Idaho, and eastern Washington, right about where you suggested setting up shop.

    There's no need to build white enclaves in those places because they already are almost exclusively white. I really question your assertion of an "unusual number of hate crimes" there because there just aren't any minorities to target there. There are two Jews in Montana in Helena, and I know one of them. And it must be said that just because there are no minorities in those areas does not mean the people there are racist. They're not. The vast majority of them despise the handful of white supremacists who fester in their craziness in remote valleys.

    The ADL and SPLC are full of shit when they assert white supremacy is on the rise. They gin up BS to keep the donations flowing.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday February 01 2020, @03:01PM (11 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday February 01 2020, @03:01PM (#952336) Journal

      "Rising persecution of Christians in the west?"

      Yeah, it's awful. We've never had a Christian president, Christians can't practice their religion openly, there aren't any Christian groups like the Dominionists amassing power and money and government positions to remake the nation in their own theocratic interest...all these things aren't real. None of them are happening. Christians are persecuted.

      You are a shit Christian. Persecution is part of the package according to Jesus. If you're in power and not being persecuted, you should ask yourself if you've actually taken up the Cross. Or, for that matter, if you're actually acting in Christian ways...you know, standing up to oppressive government and private entities, caring for poor people, things like that.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:23PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:23PM (#952435)

        Zing and a win!!

        Phoenix is co servative adjacent. Has swallowed some of the poison pills because the world is changing and change is scary. Sure there is a lot of anti-christian sentiment from the growing body of atheists who are tired of oppressive religions. As you point out this is not the same as oppression of christians.

        Wake me up when the local zoo starts feeding the lions.

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday February 01 2020, @08:24PM (8 children)

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday February 01 2020, @08:24PM (#952476) Journal

        And the point went right over your head. It's OK. It's the weekend, and you're probably upset by the news on Friday.

        Christians are the most persecuted in the world [huffpost.com]. You never read about that in the Western press, though, because it does not fit their narrative. In fact it surprised me when I read that article in the Huffington Post.

        So my point was, again, that if we're going to fret about religious persecution shouldn't we also include everyone who is persecuted or killed for their religious beliefs, be they what they may? If people shooting up mosques means rising Islamophobia, and people shooting up synagogues means rising anti-Semitism, then wouldn't people shooting up churches mean rising anti-Christian terror?

        Or is it just OK to slaughter Christians now because reasons?

        I know, I know. Does it bruise your tribalism to suggest, however mildly, that white people, heterosexuals, men, and Christians are people, too? Is it that you just hate them, and want them all to die because they're bad? I mean, if you're going to cast aspersions on each others' motives, then surely what goes around will come around...

        Finally, I don't think you really get what it is to be a Christian. Nor have you ever offered up any evidence to suggest that you are fit to judge the relative moral standing of others, least of all how "Christian" someone else is. I know you're a lesbian, and that you are intelligent--something I admire about you--, but you don't know me or how I live my life to be able to reasonably assess how true to my faith I am. That's a matter for the Almighty to decide.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday February 01 2020, @10:57PM (3 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday February 01 2020, @10:57PM (#952539) Journal

          You owe me an apology for 2/3 of this post, mostly for assuming I'm okay with slaughter of others for any reason like religion or ethnicity or skin color.

          As to whether I'm fit to judge someone else's moral standing? Oh yes. Absolutely yes. In fact, if you subscribe to what is technically referred to as "Divine Command Theory," *you* are the one who is not fit to judge others morally, for the very good reason that DCT cannot and does not offer an ontological grounding for morality. I've spent almost 15 years informally studying logic, moral philosophy, apologetics, and counter-apologetics. Argue with me on these topics if you wish, but do not, DO NOT, take that high-handed approach with me. How dare you? If you have a shred of intellectual honesty you'll apologize for that too, and then if you want to, we can start from what it *means to be moral.*

          As to who's shooting up worshipers in the United States, ask yourself something: are the people shooting up a given $PLACE_OF_WORSHIP of a different faith, or the same one? Note that, and I'm sure this is going to rustle your jimmies, I consider Catholics and Protestants the same faith, i.e., branches of Christianity, the same way Sunni and Shi'a are both branches of Islam. More distance there, in fact, than the difference between for example Orthodox and Conservative Judaism. What is the motive of the shooter? Because, newsflash, if the guy who shoots up a synagogue does it because "dem goddamn Heebs're controllin' the world!" and the guy who shoots up a church is just full of pent-up whiteboy angst, *the latter is not a religious hate crime.* Then too, the fact that Christianity is default in the US needs to be considered; these faiths do not exist in a vacuum, and neither does the flow of secular power around them.

          Regarding how true to your faith you are, if you'd done the kind of research I had you might be very surprised indeed. Look up the Council of Nicaea, and do note this was all the way back in 325AD, for when the faith became irrevocably corrupted. And you can go right to the Bible itself and compare Paul to the Synoptic Gospels, or the Synoptics to John even, to discover quite a lot of theological disagreement within decades of Jesus' death, no synods or secular power required!

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:36AM (2 children)

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:36AM (#954030) Journal

            As to whether I'm fit to judge someone else's moral standing? Oh yes. Absolutely yes. In fact, if you subscribe to what is technically referred to as "Divine Command Theory," *you* are the one who is not fit to judge others morally, for the very good reason that DCT cannot and does not offer an ontological grounding for morality. I've spent almost 15 years informally studying logic, moral philosophy, apologetics, and counter-apologetics. Argue with me on these topics if you wish, but do not, DO NOT, take that high-handed approach with me. How dare you? If you have a shred of intellectual honesty you'll apologize for that too, and then if you want to, we can start from what it *means to be moral.*

            Oh, OK. You're a theoretical moralist. Yes, yes, those who put shoes on their faith and actually go out and help people cannot hold a candle to a woman who slummed it for a couple semesters in Div school. Give me a fucking break. How dare you? You think that using words like "ontological" cow everybody into acknowledging your moral and intellectual supremacy? Perhaps it does in your set. But that makes me think less of you if that's the kind of company you keep. And you think that the only path to faith and morality is received faith? There is also achieved faith; that comes through a series of questions that can cross a threshhold but never really end.

            So, no, I don't owe you a fucking apology. I owe you the same I owe everyone--wounds to your conceit. I owe you insults to your vanity. I owe you challenges to your truths. And I owe you the reflection that you flipped out across the nine dimensions and acted like an asshole because I pointed out that it's not just Jews who are killed for their beliefs.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:53AM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:53AM (#954034) Journal

              You completely misread me. Back off and take a breath. And if you think I never did anything concrete or real, you very clearly have not been reading my posts about the anti-human-trafficking work I did, nor the six people I saved from suicide (one of whom is now my girlfriend and has been since 2012!), not to mention the things I've never posted about because I never thought it was worth bragging or virtue-signalling about them.

              Div school? What kind of bourgeois crap is that? I'm entirely self-taught! And if you think I taught myself those things for the sake of lording it over other people, that says a lot more about me than you. You have no idea about my upbringing, my religious history, the long dark night of the soul that impelled me to begin this search half a lifetime ago as it is, NONE OF IT! How dare I? No, how dare *you?!"

              Come face me on equal ground. We will speak of morality, what it means to be moral, what the grounding of morality is and is not. If it helps you can think of me as another of those "series of questions that can cross a threshold" you spoke of. I know exactly what it feels like to be convinced of a religious position. And I know what it is to be completely devastated when my own research and questioning shows me how deluded I was. It sucked. It's painful. I'm still suffering from it. But I've come out of it one king hell mountain of a lot stronger, and better able to face all the horrible things that were done to me.

              Are you brave enough, secure enough in your faith, to face me honestly using the tools of logic, reason, and discourse? I believe you are. I believe the real question is whether you will, and what your summum bonum really is...

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 05 2020, @04:12AM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday February 05 2020, @04:12AM (#954041) Journal

              Christ almighty, I *cannot* let this just go with one reply! Do you have *any* idea of the things I've suffered to get to this point?! Any clue how much time I've spent homeless or frightened or displaced, how many times I've eaten out of trash cans and dumpsters, what I've suffered at the hands of family, employers, ostensible friends, how many people close to me I've seen suffer or die or simply disappear and never return?!

              You've got your head so far up your ass you think anyone challenging you is some kind of smug, faithless, spoiled petit-bourgeois brat who's never had to deal with anything more troubling than what his or her next day's outfit was going to consist of. How completely, utterly solipsistic of you. That view keeps you trapped in your persecution complex and makes you see nothing but enemies on every side. You see the entire world through shit-colored glasses, as if it's made of people who are personally out to get you, yes you, Phoenix666, because they can't stand what a paragon of long-suffering virtue and faith and goodness and incorruptible pure pureness you are!

              You, with your Greenpeace and Sierra Club activism, your Korean wife you deign to marry despite her being a Catholic heretic, your two beautiful interracial children, your desegregation efforts. You, the "good one." You, the shining example of How To Do White Straight Christian Middle Class Male The Right Way (TM), how *dare* all those people *assume* things about you? Don't they know that's discrimination? How would *they* like it if someone did that to them? How would *they* like it if your saintly patience snapped and you stopped being "the good one" and gave all those uppity ungrateful sons of bitches (and bitches) what they deserve for their ignorant backbiting!

              Have I got the message across yet? You're suffering from Pride, a huge surfeit of it, the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins according to many Christian thinkers, the vice that impelled Lucifer to place himself above Yahweh in the mythology. You need to take a good, long, hard look at yourself.

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday February 01 2020, @11:01PM (2 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday February 01 2020, @11:01PM (#952541) Journal

          Also, will you kindly tell me what the fuck my being a lesbian has to do with any of this? Was that a veiled threat, like "well my religion says people like you should die and will burn in hell for eternity anyway, but lookit meeeee, so tolerant, I'm condescending to talk to you like you're not just kindling" or what? Public masturbation is illegal, you know...

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:09AM (1 child)

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:09AM (#954019) Journal

            It has nothing to do with it. It's just one of two things I know about you. But it doesn't mean I know you or have any standing to judge the disposition of your soul. By the same token it's preposterous for you to appoint yourself the arbiter of my soul based on what you know from me here.

            I would never consign you to hell or wish you death for being a lesbian or an atheist or anything of the sort, but it does rather sound like to you it's no big deal when Christians get killed for being Christians and we should just all stop talking about it and pretend like it doesn't happen, the way one does not speak of the shining wire in Cowslip's warren in Watership Down.

            Do you castigate Jews and their beliefs the way you do Christians? I bet you don't. Do you belittle Muslims and their beliefs this way? I bet you don't.

            You should ask yourself why that is.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:31AM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:31AM (#954029) Journal

              You...uh, haven't noticed me roundly blasting the Abrahamic religions as a whole, then? Do you even *read* my posts? I make it a point to use the phrase "Abrahamic religions" as it is, and very often mention Islam and Christianity as a pair of siblings for the very good reason that the underlying pathology is the same. I don't know as much about Judaism as about Islam or Christianity, but I *do* know enough to observe that there's much less theological distance between them than any of their partisans want to acknowledge!

              And no, I *don't* think it's right for Christians to be killed for being Christians, and replace "Christians" with "followers of any other religion" and it still holds.

              You now owe me *two* apologies, as you've launched an ignorant broadside which 10 or 20 minutes of going through my post history would have precluded.

              Again: I've spent a decade and and a half, granted on an informal basis, studying everything from comparative ANE religion (which of necessity includes the Sumerian and Babylonian antecedents to Judaism) to moral philosophy to predicate logic to apologia/counter-apologia. You are not dealing with some ignorant, half-cocked atheist ranter here, not least because I'm not an atheist to begin with--actually, unlike you, I have a concept of God which is internally consistent and doesn't conflict with observable reality!

              Besides which, the only reason *you personally* wouldn't "consign me to hell" for being a lesbian or whatever is because you believe you don't have to, that your demonic God will do it for you. Did you know that passage in Leviticus is only speaking about gay men, and doesn't mention us at all? Did you know the one in Romans 1:18-30 or thereabouts, says God *essentially made people gay (and a whole lot else) for not kissing up to him?*

              You don't know your own source material, Phoenix, and it *shows.* Educate yourself. This petulant persecution complex is making you look much weaker and more ignorant than you probably are, and it's a bad look. Consider that unbelievers disbelieve not out of some perverse pride or stubborn unwillingness to bend the knee, but because we know your religion and your Scripture and the character of your God and its followers better than you do.

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 2, Troll) by aristarchus on Tuesday February 04 2020, @09:42AM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday February 04 2020, @09:42AM (#953497) Journal

          I think we need to bring back the Lions. It was a two-fer! Great entertainment for the Roman masses, distracting them from the corruption of Emperor Trump, and a really great opportunity for Christians to demonstrate their faith via martyrdom. Christians can only exist as a covert, prosecuted minority, otherwise they turn in to Republicans supporting decadent and corrupt rulers like Justinian and Trump. So let's bring back the Lions. Better than Super Bowl, I promise!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @08:53PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @08:53PM (#952492)

    yes, it's called the Northwest Imperative and we will have our ethno-state. I would advocate being friendly to non whites when explaining the situation and paying them fairly for their trouble in moving out. It's not their fault we didn't control our politicians for the last couple hundred years. For people attempting to move in that should be directed to the white that is trying to sell the property to a non white. once again, not the non white's fault.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday February 01 2020, @11:02PM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday February 01 2020, @11:02PM (#952543) Journal

      Hah, no you won't. Remember what happened about 160 years ago the last time a bunch of assholes like you tried that? By all means, do go ahead and try; I'll bring the marshmallows to toast over your corpses, once the smoke clears.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @09:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @09:46AM (#953499)

      yes, it's called the Northwest Imperative and we will have our ethno-state.

      No, because the Northwest is already populated by sane people, most of whom vote Democratic and have guns. Aryan Nations is no more. Montana Freeman are not so free. The Mormon Sagebrush Rebellion got lots of lube and sex toys from supporters, but almost none of that was local. People in the Northwest will hunt you white supremacists down, and arrest you, and put you to useful work, like making license plates. Or shoot you down like the racist dogs you are. Go back to Louisiana, racist!