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by shuntress
3361 days ago
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>From my experience "symbol X is offensive" doesn't actually help distinguish between malicious and non-malicious people because the thing that makes someone malicious is their actions and views, not the iconography they use to express said actions and views. I completely agree with this. I think most content creators make a conscious effort to make their intent known through the work. For Example, movies like "Inglourious Basterds" or "Downfall" are clearly using Nazi iconography to build the aesthetic of their world without suggesting they support the ideals of the real-world Nazis. Perhaps a more poignant current example is youtube personality JonTron. The basic gist as I understand it is: He occasionally makes off-color or insensitive jokes that could easily be considered offensive but are generally regarded as OK because the intent is understood to be a place of comedy. Now after defending some racist remarks, his past statements are seen in a new light that makes their original intent less clear. I do think it's something important to discuss and we clearly can't have a discussion if what we want to talk about is a banned taboo. But I also think it's clearly wrong to treat any hate-speech/iconography as if somehow doesn't have all that extra cultural baggage. |
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I think it's at the very least disingenuous to claim that his recent remarks are racist (the more we use that word, the more watered down it becomes). And it's also sad that people assume that your politics cannot change either.
My reading of the situation is that he was just doing a thought-experiment and asking why multiculturalism is only an issue in the western world. It's true that he appears to be more right-leaning than other people in the skeptic "community" but that view is not racist. It's just a question. When he went on to "debate" someone else, it's quite clear that he hasn't debated this topic before and it's quite clear that he probably hasn't heard any of the counter-arguments to his points before (because he hasn't argued them before). Would he change his mind if he had heard those counter arguments? Would he refine his opinions? Maybe, but calling him a racist doesn't help anyone. I would've assumed people learned that with all of the recent political events (Brexit, Trump, everything that's happening in Europe), they'd realise that calling everyone a misogynist/racist/Nazi doesn't actually help...
> But I also think it's clearly wrong to treat any hate-speech/iconography as if somehow doesn't have all that extra cultural baggage.
Right, but "cultural baggage" doesn't appear to me to be a justification for wanting such things banned or not allowed. I find some of 4chan's trolling distasteful and I probably wouldn't have done what they did, but I would never say they shouldn't be allowed to do what they do (not the least of all because I find some of their trolling quite funny).