[washadjeffmad]

The concern is with the subs, users (including mods), and behaviors that are miraculously exempted.

For instance, reddit has a raging hardon for Sinophobia, but Asians in general aren't treated as a protected human class. Incredibly vile, vitriolic content and comments get huge acclaim as long as you frame anything Asian as being tacitly un-American.

Look through the Olympic speed skater threads, or the recent "the result of Chinese lock down policies" video that's just a compilation of Asian people committing suicide, totally unrelated to lock downs.

I get nobody wants to feel like they're surrounded by closet xenophobes and ethnopurists, but all it takes is seeing the collective blind-spot in "remember Russian people are innocent, it's just Putin we hate!" versus "makes sense, Chinese are all freedomless brainwashed moral aliens" to drive home how rotten it is.

This is just one example. Terrible behavior by megamods going unacknowledged and unaddressed weakens the platform, and reddit stoking the tribalism that makes people feel like they're safe and powerful there lends itself to harmful extremism. It's like nationalism is okay as long as it's not white nationalism.

[Spivak]

Right but the solution isn't to go backwards and say, "well we think it's fine to be xenophobic to the Chinese and so to be consistent we should allow xenophobia across the board," that would be absurd. It should really go the other way and I think you would get a whole lot of support for it.

> It's like nationalism is okay as long as it's not white nationalism.

I think the issue is because "white" isn't really a race, nobody is trying to cancel someone proud of their Polish heritage. Black ended up becoming a de-facto race to deal with the descendants of slaves who had their ancestry erased so they're not really comparable. I can only speak to the US but "white nationalism" (hell even "American nationalism") just became the rallying cry for white supremacists. Which sucks for anyone who was benignly proud to be an American but this is just the reality we have to deal with. It's political suicide to run on "I'm racist and proud" anymore so we're surrounded by dogwhistles and people organizing under informal banners and "you know what I mean wink" type policy.

[lamontcg]

> "remember Russian people are innocent, it's just Putin we hate!"

That's pretty much gone in the comments section on r/politics.

The vitriol directed against Russians is often over the top now.

As someone who remembers the hatred towards Russians by the American Right during the 80s that is fairly disturbing to me.

Of course the Hacker News threads which try to play down the consequences of a nuclear exchange with Russia are probably worse.

[ncann]

I'm not sure when it started, probably around Trump's time but the Sinophobia on reddit is becoming unbearable. Any random "China bad" thread is upvoted to the sky even with sketchy or non-existent sources, and anyone expressing skepticism or asking for source in the comment is immediately personally attacked and called names like tankie/50c army/Chinese bot/etc. Unlike HN, when it comes to politics everyone on reddit seems to immediately assume bad faith when discussing with someone who doesn't agree with your political view.