[eatitraw]

> I don't think there is anything actually political on the final /r/place piece other than country flags.

There are various flags of different anarchist movements, very long trans* flag, LGBT flags here and there. IMO, all these count as "actually political".

[NoGravitas]

Yeah, look on the Far Left (/r/TheFarLeftSide/). Reddit's radical leftist contingent spent a tremendous amount of time protecting the hammer and sickle, Comrade Party Parrot, and BLM from brigading by the far right. In fact, I'd argue that one of the reasons there wasn't more ugly trolling and hate speech is that the alt-right were mainly wasting their time trying to deface the FarLeftSide rather than producing anything of their own.

[Grue3]

I don't see how hammer and sickle, a symbol used by multiple governments to oppress and murder millions of people, is in any way more appropriate than any far right symbol.

[vidarh]

As someone far left, I sort of agree. The hammer and sickle was conceived for the Soviet Union, and the Bolsheviks took power in a coup against the socialist provisional government that actually had popular support. It's a symbol of a movement that grabbed power in a coup and then went on to outlaw, persecute and kill socialists and communists with equal fervour as they killed reactionary supporters of the Czar (who had been deposed months before their coup).

At the same time it is in an odd position because it was also very early on, before it was widely known what was happening with the Soviet government, adopted by anti-authoritarian socialist and communist groups, some of whose members risked their life against Stalin, and it was later knowingly adopted by groups opposed to the Soviet regime, such as e.g. the Trotskyist 4th International, as well.

This makes it quite different to symbols that are singularly attached to totalitarian governments and movements, in that it also has nearly as long history of use by their opponents.

Personally I think it's unhelpful to use it, but I also understand those who use it as an attempt to "reclaim" socialist imagery that has been relentlessly abused.

[lacampbell]

I too am always baffled about how much more accepted communist imagery is than Nazi imagery. Mao and Stalins death counts far outstrip Hitlers. Also anyone advocating nazism in public would be rightly shouted down but you get heavily upvoted posts here advocating all sorts of nonsense proven to kill millions.

[vidarh]

I have never seen anyone here advocating "all sorts of nonsense proven to kill millions" without getting shouted down for it. I would love to see examples (well, not love, but you get the point).

I have seen people here advocating anti-authoritarian socialist ideologies of the types that would get you executed by regimes like those of Mao and Stalin.

[Grue3]

There are plenty of actual, unironic Stalinists and Maoists on Reddit.

[vidarh]

I don't doubt it, but the claim I responded to was that we get "heavily upvoted posts here advocating all sorts of nonsense proven to kill millions". Key word being here.

[giggles_giggles]

Everybody read Elie Weisel's Night in school but almost nobody's heard of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, for one thing..

[hueving]

>ugly trolling and hate speech is that the alt-right

Or your preconceived notions of conservative people are wrong.

[metamet]

Have you seen any of the alt-right communities? The alt-right is not your traditional conservative.

It's not a preconceived notion that /r/the_donald is filled to the brim with hate speech and trolls. You simply have to go there and look for yourself.

[wutbrodo]

I think the term "alt-right" at this point is just a catch-all derogatory for shitty people who happen to be a certain type of nationalist rightist, in much the same way that "SJW" refers to shitty people who happen to be associated with the social justice movement.

Before the election, there was a narrower meaning, but as soon as the Clinton campaign mentioned it and the media picked it up, any hope of the term having any concrete meaning was lost forever. (This isn't helped by the fact that people love using it to attack arbitrary conservatives, in much the same way that SJW is sometimes used to attack anyone who expresses views supportive of social justice without behaving badly).

EDIT: I don't let myself get worked up about downvotes in political conversations, but this one has me pretty curious. My comment wasn't even remotely offensive to any part of the political spectrum.

[H4CK3RM4N]

The best description I've seen of the alt-right is /pol/ as an ideology.

[AimHere]

Not to mention a small anarchocapitalist (black/yellow) flag under the snakes near the top left.

Supposedly the Trump Supporters at The_Donald attempted to create a few Trump memes and Pepe frogs, but gave up and concentrated on keeping the US flag intact.

Other than that, the right couldn't get much traction at all.

[sqeaky]

Do you think they are angry about the US/Mexico heart?

[smitherfield]

That's Ireland.

[Navarr]

Anarchist movements I can see, but I don't think trans/LGBT flags count as "political."

It's an identity, not a political statement. It'd be like calling christian crosses "political"

[grive]

Identity is very tightly related to political views.

Moreover, LGBTQ pride is definitely political, even in Western democracies (see contentions about gay marriage).

LGBT activism is definitely marked on the left political spectrum in the USA. Christians values will inherently push toward traditionalism, so social conservatism.

It is the same in many European countries.

[eropple]

Christianity is a completely political phenomenon (as a cursory historical examination will demonstrate) and public advocacy of it is a political act.

Similarly, most things, including fandoms, are political in nature whether they want to be or not. By liking Star Trek, you're buying into a box of propositions, some related to the art and some related to the real-world universe around that art. By (as in the Reddit experiment) working to expand it, you're making a political claim.

People are political, people are never not political, and drawing an imaginary line to try to separate some political acts from others is pretty fruitless.

[Karunamon]

This defines the word "political" to be so broad as to render it essentially meaningless.

I can't like Star Trek without "buying into a box of propositions"? Really? First, you're going to have to tell me why I like Star Trek.

[eropple]

What I am saying is that politics is an externalization rather than an internalization--which is very far from meaningless. Your why doesn't matter (and it's one reason why the right wing's "but I didn't support the Republicans because of racism" is so hollow). Your what matters. And it matters to other people. It's inescapably political because you live in a polity and your decisions impact other people. See, for example, the useful idiots of GamerGate who provided air cover to people who sent death and rape threats to women who had the temerity to make video games. If they're the one in a figurative million, literally-few-thousand who actually cares about "ethics in games journalism", that doesn't matter in the slightest because of what they enable through their action and their inaction.

Drawing those imaginary lines to segment off Some Topics (because otherwise one might have to defend them) is nonsense. People draw these lines anywhere from religion to fandoms to allegiance to political parties--but none of them are meaningful. You are your impact on other people and every impact on everyone else is inescapably, inextricably, definitionally "political".

[wutbrodo]

> "but I didn't support the Republicans because of racism" is so hollow). Your what matters. And it matters to other people. It's inescapably political because you live in a polity and your decisions impact other people. See, for example, the useful idiots of GamerGate who provided air cover to people who sent death and rape threats to women who had the temerity to make video games. If they're the one in a figurative million, literally-few-thousand who actually cares about "ethics in games journalism", that doesn't matter in the slightest because of what they enable through their action and their inaction.

It's this kind of maximalism that makes our politics so disgustingly toxic. It's entirely consistent for a hypothetical person to think that Hillary Clinton's hawkishness and role in the Middle East escapades of the last decade and a half are more damaging and evil than the Republican Party's association with racism in 2016's America. Your equally-ignorant doppelganger on the other side could say "it rings hollow that you say you didn't vote for Hillary _because_ of imperialism" and "see for example the useful idiots of the Democratic party who provide air cover for legitimizing the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocents"[1]. Both of you can sit on your high horse, convinced that everyone else on the other side is guilty of the worst sins and too ignorant to know or evil to care. In the meanwhile, the level of political discourse drops ever lower and the level of political dysfunction climbs.

Being unable to separate people's intent from their n-degrees-of-separation theoretical impact isn't enlightened, it's childish. I know it's a lot of mental effort to consider the fact that those that disagree with you aren't evil, but hey, being an adult is hard.

[1] Note that none of the hypothetical political views in this comment are necessarily ones that I hold.

[hueving]

Living in absolutes is like that is only afforded to people who agree with their group on absolutely every topic (a.k.a. mindless people).

Do you support the Democratic party? If so, are you okay being defined by Nancy Pelosi using a Muslim person as a prop?

[mproy]

You are mostly speaking of the potential external impact of personal decisions. This is almost completely antithetical to politics. If I'm not proselytizing about Star Trek or even Christianity, there is nothing political about it.

Even if one buys into your premise, your examples are quite notably biased and there is an obvious left wing analogue to each of your right wing boogeymen.

[Karunamon]

>Your what matters. And it matters to other people. It's inescapably political because you live in a polity and your decisions impact other people.

By the same standard, then, I can safely write off BlackLivesMatter as a group whose members are inherently racist, and in some cases engage in literal terrorism (definition: violence applied for political goals) with the sanction of the larger group?

Why or why not?

You are your impact on other people and every impact on everyone else is inescapably, inextricably, definitionally "political".

Except most of these definitions of yours, that are entirely yours as far as I can see, don't have anything to do with the actual definition of the word political. To wit:

relating to the government or the public affairs of a country.

Where's the connection to government and public affairs and Star Trek? You did make that connection, and I'm curious to see how you go about defending it, especially since you called out this division of political vs not as a rhetorical device used to avoid defending things.

On that same note, humans "draw lines to segment off topics" because that is literally the only way human reason about things. Your definition of politics implies that I can't watch a Goddamned fictional series about spaceships without a bunch of other ill-defined ideological baggage attached to it. I don't see the practical or metaphorical usefulness of this definition, and up to this point, you have not demonstrated it.

[Dylan16807]

> By the same standard

They were describing a situation of 99% bad people where you write off the 1%. You seem to be describing the inverse. That's not the same standard.

[PhasmaFelis]

I agree that being queer shouldn't be political, but as long as millions of people's politics are centered on being anti-LGBT, simply being out of the closet is a political act whether we like it or not.

[rmccoy6435]

I think that's an interesting conversation to have. I didn't know there were anarchist flags on there, could you link me to some of them, I'm curious to see.

As for the LGBT flags, I don't view those as political but rather as communities within reddit that together make up a large userbase who were committed to protecting each other's art and flags.

[sooheon]

> as communities within reddit that together make up a large userbase who were committed to protecting each other's art and flags.

What is this if not politics? Politics isn't a dirty word you know...

[rmccoy6435]

To clarify: I do not view orientation or sexual identity as politics.

In the sense of /r/place and their arrangements: that is politics, or more so rather diplomacy. They have common grounds and worked together, that's all.

[sooheon]

Well, having (or lacking) a sexual orientation or identity is not politics, it just is. But expressing it, identifying with others who share it, forming groups and alliances and a shared sense of community is precisely what politics is. I think we pretty much agree.

[hueving]

No, it only becomes political when it comes to forcing other groups to change or support your cause.

My meetup dedicated to showing off old hardware is not political. If I tried to force a tax on everyone through a referendum to support my group, then I've made it political.

[hirsin]

You can also be forced to become political - if someone tried to make it illegal to show off old hardware for instance. It's why the NRA is a political group, as are most LGBT groups.

[sooheon]

> My meetup dedicated to showing off old hardware is not political.

Can you be absolutely sure? How do you decide who shows and tells today? Who is the meetup "leader", and how did they get that position? What do you do about that old software meetup that always meets across the hall from you at the same time and steals your donuts and coffee? Almost anything groups of people do entails politics, without necessarily even going to the obvious case of forcible taxes.

Besides we were talking about staking out pixels on a limited canvas, which is a zero sum game, involves other groups and the need to consolidate efforts, a decidedly political affair.

[lukas099]

> No, it only becomes political when it comes to forcing other groups to change or support your cause.

I am having trouble understanding why you think this. Care to explain why?

[c0nducktr]

http://imgur.com/a/i9uS8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_symbolism#/media/Fil...

[rmccoy6435]

Huh. I obviously don't know much about Anarchist symbolism, as I had no idea what those represented after I was given the coordinates other than the Communist flag and the Black/Red Anarchist flag. I also never really looked at this portion of the board. Thanks for the insight!

[kmm]

At the left edge, somewhere above the middle, coordinates (0, 450) are a bunch of anarchist flags.