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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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Racists and fascists usually go around them using dog whistles but any place using outright racists ideologies and rhetoric wouldn't be so easy to hide.
For example while a website like Stormnews and Stormfront is legal in the US it would be outright banned in Germany and they have enough racist comments and content that would even get them into legal trouble under Brazil's laws against racial discrimination.
Also by making racist/bigoted speech, even if covert, harder to publish in the public sphere helps by making it less accessible to the general populace. Which would prevent people who would otherwise have racist leanings to become full fledged racists.
There is the issue that by making racist/bigoted speech politically and legally acceptable also opens the room for them to become socially acceptable, not on society as a whole, but acceptable enough for the racist/bigot enclaves to grow in number and influence.
On the subject of speech.
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Wrecked the Middle Class
.
Here is the TL;DR version in NY Times archives.
Recommended reading, but not only curbing outright racial speech is something the US needs to do in order to address its woes but also be aware of how speech can be tailored to appear innocuous but at the same time massively screwing the middle class and minorities over.
edited 12th May '17 8:11:42 AM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent legesYou bring up the internet which is its own basket of regulatory problems. Anyone determined enough to run something illegal from a website is going to find a way to have that website up short of some global agreement to deny such groups service. Look at how The Pirate Bay persists even with multiple governments and multi-national corporations having tried to shut it down and their founders serving jail terms.
Don't know if this has been mentioned (Vox links to the video of the NBC interview
):
Vox: Trump has now admitted he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation
Now, in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, Trump has admitted it did.
Asked by Holt about the White House’s initial story that he fired Comey because of a recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Trump said, “I was gonna fire him regardless of the recommendation.”
In explaining how he made up his mind, the president directly brought up the Russia case, calling it a “made-up story” (emphasis added):
He [Rosenstein] made a recommendation, he’s highly respected, very good guy, very smart guy. The Democrats like him, the Republicans like him. He made a recommendation. But regardless of [the] recommendation, I was going to fire Comey. Knowing there was no good time to do it!
And in fact when I decided to just do it I said to myself, I said, “You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”
And the reason they should’ve won it is, the Electoral College is almost impossible for a Republican to win, it’s very hard, because you start off at such a disadvantage. So everybody was thinking they should have won the election. This was an excuse for having lost an election.
How many different versions of the reason why Comey was fired has Trump told now?
Edited to add: NBC has fact-checked the interview as well:
Fact Checking Donald Trump’s Interview With NBC’s Lester Holt
edited 12th May '17 8:21:31 AM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.The difference between hosting the piratebay and a website like stormfront is that Pirate bay technically doesn't do anything illegal and mostly has a large userbase willing to seek newer domains to it to work.
Under anti-racism laws, storm front and daily stormer would be outright illegal, thus liable to be blocked at ISP level. Not to mention that while it is impossible to make those websites inaccessible you can make it harder to access, which by itself prevents the content and ideology from becoming widespread.
In the realm of social medias, sharing content and publishing bigoted views is liable by both the service provider and the government to prosecute the offender. It is also viable, as much as of a legal clusterfuck and inefficient the Brazilian legal system is, it still manages to deal with online racism. A country as well equipped and technologically proficient as the US wouldn't have that much trouble.
The goal is not to eradicate bigoted speech, it is impossible, but making it less accessible and lessening its impact on the general public is very doable and there are plenty of practical examples of European, specially Germany, and even South American countries managing to pull it off.
Inter arma enim silent legesDays before? There was suspicious stuff with the Russians ever since the summer.
edit: The timeline for it being a hoax makes no sense. Unless you believe the Democrats cooked up a conspiracy theory to cover their asses in the supremely unlikely chance they lost.
edited 12th May '17 8:23:57 AM by Kostya
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and a lot of people who read sources like breitbart are not Neo-Nazis or something like that. What fake news plays on is people's unconscious bias, and fear of the other. something along the lines of:
"Since that terrorist was a muslim, all muslims must be terrorists, and it is ok to be hate them."
It appeals to many people's unconscious fear of the other, so every time they see a muslim, they regard them with suspicion and hate. that's part of why fake news is so dangerous.
edited 12th May '17 8:42:02 AM by megaeliz
I will say this: a lot of the internet propaganda appearently gets traction through advertising channels and news delivery algorithims that reenforce the information bubbles. Advertising can be regulated, social media companies are working on the algorithims and it would help if we had a way to go after shady outfits like Cambridge Analytica
(who are operating out of Canada and have been a major propaganda machine linked to both Trump and Brexit).
Antivaxxers campaign contributed to a measles outbreak in Minnesota.
Between this and the recent surge of climate change denialists becoming more common, the amount of time needed to reach my monthly but that is wrong you fucking idiot threshold is becoming shorter and shorter.
Darwin Award contenders, all of them.
Inter arma enim silent legesThat's what I figured was going to happen, and I think both of those are true. The Republican hardcore base was never going to stop supporting him by default, but the independent voters on the other hand don't have quite the same fanaticism, I suspect many of them simply thought Hillary would be worse.
@Angelus: The fundamental problem with hate speech laws and other legislature that limits speech in a public context that is not directly and imminently harmful in the bodily sense is firstly that it doesn't change the underlying attitudes which lead people to say such horrible things in the first place, and in fact may very well push them even further into their respective bubbles, which elevating the risk for radicalization.
The second issue is the question of whether the enforcement of those laws can be trusted to someone like Donald Trump; someone getting into a position of power who really, really shouldn't be there is not an "if", it's a "when", with Trump being a great example of that, and from what I've heard Latin American countries have a fair number of examples of anti-defamation laws being creatively reinterpreted by unscrupulous administrations to target political opponents and the like. As much as it's a cliche, a variation of the golden rule is something to consider here; don't give others power you aren't prepare to see used against you, because in the fullness of time, the shoe will be on the other foot.
edited 12th May '17 9:29:53 AM by CaptainCapsase
The red states would then go ahead and start banning speech in favor of abortion and crap like that on grounds of it being offensive to Christians (in fact they've already trying to do stuff like that); it's not the wording of the particular law as much as it is the precedent it provides for less well intentioned restrictions on speech. I know that European governments are more centralized than ours, but I find it hard to believe there isn't any problems with local governments trying to pull this sort of crap in the more backwater parts of those countries. Even if that actually isn't a problem, the nature of America's political system makes that sort of fuckery pretty much guaranteed in red states.
That also doesn't address the first problem of it simply covering up problematic attitudes rather than doing anything to address them.
edited 12th May '17 9:37:46 AM by CaptainCapsase
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Advocating for it and spreading false information should be illegal as well. This movement is doing more damage in North America at least than any terrorist group has done in the last 15 years. It needs to be stopped. By force of law.
edited 12th May '17 9:32:37 AM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Here is the thing: Law is based on opinion. It is not made on research.
Lawyers, who are the people who actually sign stuff into law, hear the opinions on certain experts on the field (and can pay so called experts on the field) to say something, and then they can for whatever reason say "Their opinion was funky and all but I'm doing what I want anyways"
So yeah, Evil Lawyer Joke
edited 12th May '17 9:36:35 AM by Aszur
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
Hey!. Legal work has nothing to do with lying. Just convincing the audience that the issue something completely different then what's clearly said, using whichever of the probably more than a dozen laws on an issue exist, and a few omissions of unimportant things. Geesh, Stop Being Stereotypical.
More seriously, there are several reasons statutes are written the way they are. Translating science-ese to legalese isn't easy.
edited 12th May '17 9:42:57 AM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our livesPlease excuse the Doublepost but: Update with the Laptop Ban—Europe is working on working something out with the DHS
US, EU set to discuss airplane laptop ban
DHS spokesman David Lapan said no decision is expected today on the possible expansion, which has caused consternation among some aviation officials and travel industry groups on both sides of the Atlantic. The department already prohibits laptops, tablets, e-readers and other electronic devices larger than a cellphone from riding in the cabins of planes from 10 airports in the Middle East.
The department and European Commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen both said Kelly would speak this afternoon with several European officials. The Associated Press reported that they would include representatives of Britain, Germany, Spain and Italy — as well as France, whose current administration leaves office this weekend.
European representatives plan to emphasize the dangers of stowing so many laptops and their potentially flammable lithium batteries inside planes’ cargo holds, noting that many aircraft still don’t have in-hold fire prevention systems, one senior EU official said. European officials are also concerned that communication from the U.S. has been almost non-existent, and that nobody knows for sure which countries or airports might be affected.
DHS has said it is considering expanding the ban but has made no final decisions, despite a widespread expectation among the industry that an expansion is imminent. The department held briefings Thursday with U.S. senators and major domestic airlines.
edited 12th May '17 9:49:40 AM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

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Actually the Af D is currently collapsing more than its growing.
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