Words can not be violent.
If you think one person being offended means speakers must be silenced, then you're on a dangerous pathway to fascism.
If you think one person being offended means speakers must be silenced, then you're on a dangerous pathway to fascism.
It went viral.
Low key, I'm basically horrified of the hash tag version of this popping up. There's a poignant black mirror episode about this I believe.
Although... I do believe that the relative diversity of today's public internet forums is a safeguard against this. That spares me a little of my worry.
> It went viral.
What?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
> The genocide was planned by members of the core Hutu political elite, many of whom occupied positions at top levels of the national government. Perpetrators came from the Rwandan army, the Gendarmerie, and government-backed militias including the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi.
[..]
> The RPF military campaign had resulted in some intensified support for the so-called "Hutu Power" ideology, which portrayed the RPF as an alien force. In radio programs and other news, the Tutsis were portrayed as non-Christian, intent on reinstating the Tutsi monarchy and enslaving the Hutus. Many Hutu reacted to this prospect with extreme opposition. In the lead-up to the genocide, the number of machetes imported into Rwanda increased.
> On 6 April 1994, an aeroplane carrying Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down on its descent into Kigali. At the time, the plane was in the airspace above Habyarimana's house. The assassination of Habyarimana ended the peace accords.
> Genocidal killings began the following day. Soldiers, police, and militia quickly executed key Tutsi and moderate Hutu military and political leaders who could have assumed control in the ensuing power vacuum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Civil_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Revolution
I didn't read all that right now, but just reading some it's very obvious that to just sum it up as "this one random guy on the radio going viral with racist rants" and the rest following from that -- instead of the radio broadcasts being part of something that was already underway -- is kinda stunning. Especially in this context, preparing the ground for shutting up random people, because what they say might go viral and lead to genocide. You called it "a hashtag version of this", after all, of what you claim caused the Rwandan genocide.
Who was this random guy? Who told you this story, or where do you have it from? How did this claim go viral, that one random guy on Rwanda ranted on the radio, and it ended in genocide?
> I do believe that the relative diversity of today's public internet forums is a safeguard against this
If anything, it's people on the ground, in real life, living together, that would innoculate them against people on the radio or on the web telling them how other people are and what they will do if not attacked first. FWIW, the internet seems less diverse in spirit than it was, we used to be small groups of totally random people who had to get along and get to know each other, because we couldn't just block everyone or drive them off.
> Who was this random guy? Who told you this story, or where do you have it from? How did this claim go viral, that one random guy on Rwanda ranted on the radio, and it ended in genocide?
I picked this up from a documentary I saw years ago.. It was probably made in the late 90s or early 2000s. I don't remember what it was called, although I think I saw it on PBS.
The following article gives a very good overview of the origins of the myth I perpetuated in my above comment (starting on the bottom of page 3 is a section Common Claims about Media Effects in Rwanda—and a Critique):
https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20100423-atrauss-rtlm-radio-hat...
And a quote from that section:
> Pulitzer-Prize winner Samantha Power claims, “Killers in Rwanda often carried a machete in one hand and a radio transistor in the other.” (The implication being radio delivered instructions, and then men attacked with machetes.) Such conceptualizations suggest a strong causal link between radio broadcasts and genocidal violence.
The radio station was called RTLM, and actually had a handful of broadcasters (2 or 3?), but was quite small. To me, they are still just random guys in the same way that Sean Hannity is just a random guy, or Alex Jones. Although now I read that they had direct connections with the organizers of the genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...
I didn't mean to imply that the radio broadcasts solely caused the genocide, but more-so that they played a critical role in exacerbating civilian participation in it, that enabling that participation it in a triggering way. I would also argue that the radio broadcasts played a role in galvanizing and normalizing hatred and motivation in the more organized militia and military participants.
Here is a popular empirical study which attempts to "quantify" the effect of RTLM:
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/...
But I actually like this article the best:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13698249.2018.15...
From the conclusion:
> The findings herein do not, of course, mean that the RTLM broadcasts had no effect on the genocide. Indeed, there is good reason to think that they had some effect on specific instances of killing, given that there is evidence that the broadcasts were used explicitly to coordinate the actions of some of the genocidaires (Kirschke 1996, Des Forges 1999). In addition, because, as Straus (2015) notes, elites do not need large-scale popular participation for genocide to take place but rather only need ‘popular compliance – they need citizens not to mobilise to resist violence’ (66), it is certainly plausible that exposure to anti-Tutsi propaganda might have made implementation of the genocide easier, such as by reminding listeners of the founding, exclusionary ideology of the country (Straus 2015), by causing civilians to internalise norms that legitimised the killing (Smeulers and Hoex 2010), or by spurring the adoption of oppositional identities (Fearon and Laitin 2000, Mamdani 2001, Kalyvas and Kocher 2007; Balcells and Steele 2016).
My fear still stands, that mob "hashtag" violence could pop up any time now, that it could spill out in a way that would be hard to contain. Arguably, it already has and does. I don't blame media as a cause, but it certainly is a conduit.
The trauma of this incident still haunts me:
https://kstp.com/news/four-men-charged-minneapolis-fourth-pr...
People very dear to me were at that protest, and I was out of town. I heard about it on Twitter and was very afraid that someone close to me could have been shot.
> If anything, it's people on the ground, in real life, living together, that would innoculate them against people on the radio or on the web telling them how other people are and what they will do if not attacked first. FWIW, the internet seems less diverse in spirit than it was, we used to be small groups of totally random people who had to get along and get to know each other, because we couldn't just block everyone or drive them off.
I absolutely agree with you in all of this, especially the part about people living together in real life. Self-segregation is a dangerous condition, especially when it is driven by inequality, fear, misunderstanding and hate. Too many of us passively accept, even foster, segregated lives without realizing the powder kegs we unwittingly charge.
And what I meant by "relatively diverse" is that the internet's public forums are way more dynamic than a small number of radio stations and newspapers, which were the primary media channels in Rwanda. Of course it cannot and must not be taken for granted that the internet will always be this way.
I remember when a woman I was interwebs friends with casually mentioned about a bombing in Israel "oh hey, that's a bus stop I drive past on my way to work every day". It's silly, because I'm an adult and I have an imagination, but just that tiny bit of personal connection made the situation feel vastly more real for me, and kinde sent me reeling for a bit (I may have had a little crush on her tbh). And that was after I already knew she was okay. And I knew she lived in Israel, and that bad things happen there too often, so why would it make a difference that the bus stop was on her way to work? It makes no sense, but it made all the difference to me, like seeing it for the first time. So I can not even imagine how that must have been for you, not to mention your friends. I have the utmost respect and sympathy for that, and my response wasn't intended as some kind of "yes yes, sure, BUT!"
> I didn't mean to imply that the radio broadcasts solely caused the genocide, but more-so that they played a critical role in exacerbating civilian participation in it
But you can see how you put it, with that "It went viral." on its own line even, read as implying that random guy single-handedly caused it all, right?
I was kicked from Facebook after 9 years of using it, with many RL friends and classmates, always under my real name, with photos, with photos I was tagged in; after a time during which I corrected hardliners in both Palestine and Israel, and for my troubles got called a supporter of the other side by each, (though I had FB friendship extended to me by two awesome people, a Jewish author and an Israeli journalist, for bitching so much in comments on Haaretz articles), I suddenly had my acount suspended and was asked to provide ID.
Mind you, not one of my posts ever had violated any guidelines. No posts or comments were reported, but simply me as a person. And of course, I did not get to face my accusers, either. Those "user report" mechanisms also enable mobs, and shutting someone up may not be violence, but it is the objective of violence, the end to which violence is just one of several means. Achieving it without violence doesn't make it okay, at all. I have no illusions that FB has any info that would be in my ID anyway, it's not a privacy thing, it's just a matter of principle to me. I won't play along with that, so "I got kicked off Facebook", and I'm naturally wary of whoever might get banned under the guise of "hate speech getting banned".
That is, I don't just accept that at face value, not in a world where there is STILL ElsaGate content on YouTube, 1 year after YouTube claimed it's gonna fix that ASAP, which in turn was after years of being begged to do anything. In a world where I run the risk to get mocked with "think of the children!" for mentioning that, while it's considered normal to think of adults who seek out words they don't like and get offended.
So I'd want every single case of someone getting banned for hate speech or whatever to be documented and verifiable, that would be a start. I'm not going to take the word of the people in charge, nor the word of the people who think everything must be in order, because they themselves haven't been on the wrong end of it yet. And I got lucky to get kicked over 2 years ago and not sometime in the future, because already I see people saying about the Patreon stuff, "oh, some might be innocent, but most are really nasty". To me, that is in spirit more aligned with radio broadcasts villifying people, than useful a tool against it. It's a weapon, not a tool at all.
This dehumanizing, this "throw them out, I don't care where they end up, just out of sight, out of mind", also spills over into physical violence. How could it not? Some examples here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbqqefsfC14
They're not fighting evil. They're being evil. They're using evil that others did, to do the evil they want to do. The actions matter, not the words. Even more, in part it's what people don't do, not just what they do. Everybody can get angry sometimes, but not everybody can laugh at themselves, or feel compassion with others.
Either we support "due process" (I put it in quotes because I'm not thinking of a specific process as much as one that applies to all), or our grievances lose their foundation. That is, if we don't think the same principles and rules should apply to all, on what basis could we possibly criticize someone for saying a certain race shouldn't vote, or anything like that?
I'm from Germany, and usually my part in discussions about free speech is being an asshole for thinking it's perfectly fine that we can't walk around glorifying Nazism. Facebook had so many horrid groups and comments spouting lies to incite hate and violence even 2.5 years ago, I don't even want to know how bad it's gotten since. So while I'm for, uhhh, "Facebook being allowed" to ban people or groups, I'm concerned with intransparent processes and double standards, and the normalization of treating speech like a luxury, that is granted or withdrawn by an unnaccountable group.
You would object strenuously.
Yet I would only be engaging in "free speech".
All of the information you state is public record, and for someone like me who always uses my real name, I'm not concerned about people knowing it. You are free to call whomever you like to say I should be "disemployed and harassed at home" but making fraudulent claims and engaging in harassment can be handled like it always has, by me calling my local power brokers (police etc...) to prevent you from breaking the law.
Your implicit point though, that systems of free speech when combined with systems of wide ranging granular information about individuals, can be abused.
If your solution is to get rid of the former, rather than limit access to the latter or create better systems of verification with power structures, then indeed you're (IMO) on the wrong side of a free society.
You fight hard for speech because words have an incredible impact on society.
No matter where you fall in regards to Facebook’s right to set standards on their own platform, implying that words are meaningless is silly.
That is, speech itself cannot deprive someone of liberties. Only physical action can do that. It's unquestionable that certain forms of speech[1] can "incite" violence, and we have laws that cover such speech.
[1] intent, imminence, and likelihood from: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test
Indeed, and the top post in this thread didn’t use the word “violence.”
The point is that words do have profound impacts on society. Words can and do lead to material conditions which may cause actual harm to someone’s day to day life.
As I said, regardless of where one falls on Facebook’s right to pick and choose their own standards, let’s not pretend words are so meaningless they will never lead to material changes in someone’s life. That’s a silly implication. We fight hard for speech precisely because words have so much power.
Edit: clarifying.
FB is not taking down web sites - they are managing public discourse on their own channels. Constitutional freedoms don't quite apply here.
When the Feds take down web sites, I think a much higher standard needs to apply.
Then it's just state censorship, laundered to look like it's "only a private party's decision within their narrow domain".
And
It's often just not seen, which to me is worse then being "laundered to look like it's [private-party]'s fault"
When speech is erased, or otherwise hidden and downranked, many people assume, both the poster of the content and those people that have followed or liked believe that content they are expressing desire to get, never existed at all
- so there is no blame because so many do not realize the censorship in the first place - which is even worse imho.
You are defending some pretty awful excuses for humans....
But the actual quality of you as a human being wasn't the issue. The issue is that, if you're going to block speech by scumbags, there is someone who is going to consider you a scumbag. If you allow speech from scumbags to get blocked, then you need the people controlling the blocking to have the right ideas of who is a scumbag. Will the right people be the ones making the decisions? Will they always be the right people - not just this year and next, but always?
I'm not willing to condone that power, because it can be used against me, not just against the people I want it to be used against.
The word is powerful; invoking mental constructs and emotions. Indeed everything ever created or destroyed by a human began as a mental construct and/or emotion. Therefore words themselves are critical to destruction or creation and can be so much more than just violent--they will make or break the entire human species.
Do we agree that stories are a powerful medium for spreading good stories that make people happy? What about making people sad? What about educating people?
If 'words' can do all of this, then surely 'words' can also incite harm?
Incitement is a specific class of speech that is generally prohibited. I see nobody here arguing against this.
However, much speech that is not incitement is also called hate speech, and that part of the Venn diagram is what we're talking about. These words are called harmful to justify the use of force to silence them, on much more abstract grounds than incitement.
Words are not the only form of speech, and physical violence is not the only way to cause harm. This is a "No True Scotsman", since hate speech is limited to neither.
>Hate speech is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
>The laws of some countries describe hate speech as speech, gestures, conduct, writing, or displays that incite violence or prejudicial actions against a protected group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group, or disparages or intimidates a protected group, or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group.
sure, sure.
please explain how Facebook did not contribute to the Rohingya "situation" in [Myanmar].
please document how violence-inciting speech never helps spark actual violence (xenophobic violence everywhere since the dawn of speech).
i know, i know... guns don't kill people, people kill people. the issue is: we're all latent murderers. civilization is a very thin veneer. if we were all perfectly rational, maybe we could all get along much better. but were but speaking [animals] and need all help we can get to maintain our outward civility.
i know it's a very fine line to tread, but we must not conflate the baby with the bathwater.
[Myanmar]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... [animals]: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe