[foldr]

>It was later reported that the manuscript included plagiarized sections from Chapter 12 of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (My Struggle), in which Hitler describes why the Nazi Party is needed and what it requires of its members. The authors replaced Hitler's references to "National Socialism" with "feminism" and "Jews" with "privilege".

Isn't this a pretty good example of how crude the hoax was? Of course some things that Hitler said won't be awful if you literally change the key words in the sentences. Imagine if I played this trick the other way round. I take something innocuous that a politician has said and replace random words or phrases with 'National Socialism' and 'Jews'. Suddenly what they're saying seems really controversial! And this shows...what?

[anon-3988]

> Imagine if I played this trick the other way round. I take something innocuous that a politician has said and replace random words or phrases with 'National Socialism' and 'Jews'. Suddenly what they're saying seems really controversial

I am not sure this is obvious or even true. Can you provide one example? "Gas all the <X>"...what? capitalists? murderers? rapists? pedophiles? It doesn't even make sense for them, what else is there?

inb4, no you don't want to gas these people, you want to fix them if possible or jail them otherwise.

[foldr]

Sure.

“We must fight against the influence of special interests in American politics.”

“We must fight against the influence of Jews in American politics.”

You may or may not agree with the first statement, but it’s hardly in the same category as the second (which is deplorable). It seems to me trivially easy to construct many more such examples.

The hoax paper replaced references to Jews with references to privilege. It’s hardly surprising that rants against an abstract concept are less offensive than anti-Semitic rants.

[godelski]

> “We must fight against the influence of special interests in American politics.”

> “We must fight against the influence of Jews in American politics.”

To be fair, some people do use the former language to mean the special interests of "Jews." No all, but dog whistling does exist and dog whistling is explicitly about covert language. I don't think the special interest groups reference is a great example because it is a common phrase that is used to mean a lot of different things and isn't uncommon in various groups using covert language.

[foldr]

It's a phrase that pretty much every major American politician has used. Of course there are dog whistlers and conspiracy theorists, but I think the less problematic usages predominate. Not that the phrase really means anything as far as I can tell, but that's a separate issue.

I do see what you mean though. There's something inherently gross about juxtaposing two sentences like that. I'm not doing it to suggest any equivalence between them. The point is exactly the opposite (and I would have thought an uncontroversial one): that switching out the major vocabulary items in a sentence can take it from being innocuous to offensive or vice versa.

[godelski]

> Not that the phrase really means anything as far as I can tell, but that's a separate issue.

Actually I think that's explicitly the issue and a main part of my point. In fact, dog whistling or other type of coded language typically depend on ambiguous language. It's literally because language works like an autoencoder. There's what you have in your head that's encoded into what you say and then decoded. The coded language comes through a learned/tuned decoding.

My point is that such phrasing isn't inherently innocuous. Vague language is always inherently dubious. The juxtaposition just makes it more obvious in this case, but it's always true. It may not always be dog whistling but in the least dubious case it lets people fill in whatever they want. That's why I'm saying it isn't a good example.

[foldr]

Hmm. I think it's a fine example because 'special interests' is very rarely used as a dogwhistle for 'Jews'. Can you even point to an example where it is?

[tomsthumb]

>they submitted coherent papers that they considered absurd

I’ve never heard anyone describe Mein Kampf as coherent. The ramblings of an asshole clearly abusing stimulants would be closer to the usual.

>Of course some things that Hitler said won't be awful if you literally change the key words in the sentence

The idea that swapping around the group being discussed is all it would take to make it not awful is, well, novel if nothing else.

[foldr]

Do you happen to have the passage in question at hand? Mein Kampf is a fairly long book, and it seems likely to me that there are passages of it which – with key words changed! – would not express anything particularly awful. But it is hard to judge without knowing what the modified passage actually said.

Edit: What the hoaxers actually say suggests that the passages were altered quite substantially: "The last two thirds of this paper is based upon a rewriting of roughly 3600 words of Chapter 12 of Volume 1 of Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler, though it diverges significantly from the original.". And you can read the paper here: https://newdiscourses.com/feminist-mein-kampf/#solidarity

[tomsthumb]

>Oh, and here's a rather important detail. The paper was rejected!

From the link you provided - “Accepted by Affilia , August 21, 2018”

Don’t lie.

[foldr]

Sorry, that was a good faith mistake on my part, and I edited it out before you made this comment. I got confused because the link also states (correctly) that it was rejected from Feminist Theory.

[fenomas]

> Don't lie.

We're not in youtube comments here - assume good faith and be civil.

[tomsthumb]

> assume good faith and be civil.

I did.

Twice in two comments foldr quoted from a source. Both of those quotes are literally right next to another sentence in the source which is exactly the opposite of what foldr asserted.

The Affila wikipedia page section titled “Grievance studies affair” is four sentences long. The sentence right before foldrs quote, which is the first in the section is this.

>In October 2018, it was revealed that the journal had accepted for publication a hoax article entitled "Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism."

The New Discourses link does say the paper was rejected from a specific journal in the first footnote which is . The second footnote says the article was accepted. Both footnotes quoted here:

> Peer reviewed and rejected by Feminist Theory

> Accepted by Affilia , August 21, 2018

At this point I am no longer sorry for not assuming good faith from someone arguing that a reformulation of kompf could be “not that bad”.

> We're not in youtube comments here

Be civil.

[foldr]

If I was intentionally lying, it seems unlikely that I’d have chosen to link to a page which clearly shows that my statement was false. It was just a careless mistake that I corrected as soon as I noticed it. Relax. I haven’t personally attacked you in this discussion. You’re not making your own point any clearer here by harping on this.

[fenomas]

> I am no longer sorry for not assuming good faith from someone arguing that..

Sorry, but assuming good faith is like supporting free speech - if you only do it for arguments you agree with, you're not doing it at all. ;)